The answer is anxiety. Even before COVID, there was a great + growing anxiety about the world. It was palpable.
I think that our anxiety is normal, it is biological, and it is inevitable. We are not that much more evolved than we were 20,000 years ago, but the things we worried about then are almost trivial now, and the ways in which we managed those anxieties are ineffective against the anxieties of the day. You can't run away from global warming, the surveillance state, or our increasingly rewarding but terrifying relationship with our world.
We need a new spirituality to combat this anxiety - it wont go away on its own. We need mnemonics that placate the animalistic parts of our brain that are appropriate for our times, and we need to be able to identify when our anxieties are being preyed on by others.
I think that our anxiety is normal, it is biological, and it is inevitable. We are not that much more evolved than we were 20,000 years ago, but the things we worried about then are almost trivial now, and the ways in which we managed those anxieties are ineffective against the anxieties of the day. You can't run away from global warming, the surveillance state, or our increasingly rewarding but terrifying relationship with our world.
We need a new spirituality to combat this anxiety - it wont go away on its own. We need mnemonics that placate the animalistic parts of our brain that are appropriate for our times, and we need to be able to identify when our anxieties are being preyed on by others.