The Stoned Age

We are becoming increasingly dependent on virtual assistance to think.

There is increasing evidence that decades of excessive drug use has diminished the mental capacity and clarity of millions of Americans. One of the most credible sources of evidence is the massive expansion of nutraceutical treatments for mental fog. Dr. Ben Carson is one of many vendors of a formula to help people boost their concentration and memory, to increase their ability to pay attention, and to help people sleep better, too.

This is just the latest iteration of years of products introduced to our culture to get people away from big pharma. To wean us off of prescription drugs, and other kinds of addictive habits that are designed to create lifelong cash streams for the suppliers.

There are more people than ever attending rehabilitation centers to break their cycle of dependency. There are numerous new pharmaceutical treatments for drug, smoking, gambling, sex, and food addictions. The incidence of childhood mental and physical abnormalities and syndromes has skyrocketed since the turn of the century. Entrepreneurs are cashing in on the demand for self-help treatments, programs and group catharsis products.

We no longer ask parents if they have a history of drug use, it is just assumed that they did use recreational drugs at some point. Society has decided it serves no purpose to blame the tsunami of social maladies on the prior generations, instead we tend to suggest it is probably genetic. It is more "useful" to tell the victim "It's not your fault!"

Americans have more options than most citizens of the world. We live in a culture of abundance, and though that is a tremendous advantage, it can also lead to systemic dependency on distractions and self indulgence. Many parents use TV or video to babysit their kids. Kids are exposed to massive amounts of visual, aural and physical stimuli literally from the moment they emerge from the birth canal. Next to the hospital bed there are machines whirring along, the nurses and attendants are using electronic devices and even walkie-talkies as they rush around from room to room attending to their newborns.

Then mom takes them home and places a video attendant in their cribs. She puts a series of visual distractions aver the kids bed, and sings to her, or turns on soft music to help the baby sleep.

For the next few years, that child will be indulged, pampered and entertained virtually every woken moment.

For years, that child will be exposed to multiple forms of distraction, entertainment, and pleasure, by mom and dad, by babysitters, and by preschool and elementary school teachers, to the extreme. Everything the kids see, eat or play with has the sole purpose of making that kid happy and complacent. Those that can't be placated are served a prescription tranquilizer.

As the kids grows up, their experiences are focused on school, sports, art and crafts, socialization and games. In the absence of direct family interplay, like dinner and church, or vacations, various forms of mass entertainment suffice to pacify and maintain social order. To provide this envelope of comfort, the parents work hard at jobs, at creating programs and processes to fill the day with business. We all know boredom creates trouble. And the parents also work hard at keeping themselves occupied, entertained and productive.

This is Modern Western Culture today.

It is my contention that this culture of self indulgence, of self medication and extreme consumption leads to a culture of neurosis. To a systemic environment of deception and distraction from things that we find upsetting. In fact our culture is based on this formula of denying reality, of glorification of celebrity and entertainment, of over-indulgence of anything fun, exciting and titillating. Whether we obtain these via pills, injections, through our senses of video stimulation, of social interactions or all by ourselves, it doesn't really matter what the medium is. What matters is the message: the content and how it makes us "feel".

Where are Americans spending their disposable money? Data shows the leader is casinos. Next is restaurants, then it goes into thousands of forms of self indulgence: Entertainment, via shopping and travel, media, sports, and drugs and alcohol.

All of these activities are designed to distract us from reality. They are designed to create a sense of security and complacency. Additionally, our media performs an important function, which is to affirm this sense of social equanimity.

Have you ever been in a situation where you feel like the only one in the room that is self-reliant and able to think for themselves?

Maybe you were in a meeting with executives of your Fortune 500 company, and the CEO is praising the management, talking about how the stock is high, and the prospects for the upcoming fiscal year are really good, even though you know things are not so good. Later your boss encourages you to write a sales report projecting a 20% increase in business, and you know that would be a lie. You have been witnessing customers losing their business, and their homes, because they can't pay the loan payment they used to start the business. But you also know you better stay in line or risk losing your job. You cannot take the risk of telling the truth because you also know the ship will not sink. It is too big to fail, but you are not.

If you follow me on this path, we can start to understand why so many Americans, and to some extent people all over the first world, have descended into a stupor of dependency on GroupThink. Why virtually any challenge to the orthodoxy of nanny-state paternalism gets bashed by the media, by the so-called cabal of "leaders" and by the most gullible and uninformed portions of the populace.

I am speaking from experience: My generation willfully experimented with all kinds of drugs. We played doctor with pot, opium, uppers, downers, cough syrup, peyote, mescaline, LSD, and anything we could get our hands on. Some went crazy, some died. Some felt like they opened new horizons, increased their creativity and had positive experiences. But the hard truth is for the majority of people, if you never stopped using drugs, it hurt your prospects. It stunted your ambition, caused conflicts with your family, friends and lovers, and if you had kids that watched your journey, you created a wake that has never stopped impacting lots of other people in your circle of influence.

I haven't even mentioned cocaine or crack. The drugs of the modern prohibition era. The subculture's favorite drug of choice during the War on Drugs. The drug the middle and upper class adopted as the nirvana for the pressures of living in a wonderland of prosperity and abundance. But the point is, we are living in a fog of delusion if we think we have no complicity in the state of confusion, of instability, and of doubt that pervades our Modern Western Culture.

In just the last three decades, America has dropped from 7th in the world to 27th in world ranking in healthcare and education. Our students are falling further and further behind, 38th in math and 24th in science.(businessinsider,com). We can't blame that on them. Educators will blame it on funding, but America still outspends every industrial country on a per capita basis.

The problem of convoluted thinking, inverse reasoning, personal unaccountability, moral relativism and cognitive dissonance is so widespread, it is unreasonable to think it can be blamed on poverty, on religious resistance, on white supremacy or racial disparity. It spans multiple generations and affects men and women, young and old, and national and regional identities. The only groups that seem to be unaffected are highly isolated populations like North Korea where illegal drugs and most pharmaceuticals are absent. Where the immersion in the western culture of celebrity and self indulgence is punished with time in prison or death by firing squads.

What does this tell us? If they are the control group, then maybe we should learn from them. Unfortunately, that will never happen because these forms of escape, these addictive activities, which are totally banned in North Korea, are ubiquitous in Western Culture and generate billions in revenue, provide jobs and feed important ministries.

There is even more evidence that we have entered a modern Stoned Age: We are becoming increasingly dependent on virtual assistance to think. Our brains are going to suffer atrophy because we are using them less and less every day. We use Google for answers to all our questions. We use GPS to guide ourselves, Amazon to shop, Facebook and other social services to socialize. We use YouTube to learn, and virtually every other daily function is supported by the internet. Who needs to think?

Stone Age Man had a very simple existence: Hunt, eat and have sex. Provide a cave, protect your family and get some sleep. Things have changed, not necessarily for the better, except we can do all of those things by touching a button. He didn't need a lot of intellect, he just responded to his needs in a very direct and energetic way. It was live or die, be serious and stay focused, or die sooner.

Now it is a challenge to maintain any serious relationships, to raise a stable family, to practice your faith or to determine your own future.

Like the controlled society in North Korea or China, America is rapidly moving toward a controlled culture of mutual admiration, social continuity and monolithic existence. We are becoming more like machines, doing what we are programmed to do with no objections, no controversy and total obedience to a politically correct course of existence.

Most of the challenges we are confronting are global issues, or at least that is what we are being inculcated to believe. The challenges of global warming, pandemic diseases, and racial continuity are too big to be dealt with in any individual manner. The Global Community cannot allow individuals to wander off the plantation, to do their own thing anymore.

We are moving toward a communal approach to social issues, to handling economic and social disparity, to keep everybody fed, protected and contributing to the greater good. This is what we are teaching in our schools, preaching on our social media networks, and demanding in our business environments.

The forces that are affecting our everyday lives are more pernicious than the threat of carnivorous beasts or dangerous weather systems that confronted Stone Age Man. But he was at least clear headed and focused.

Today, we have amazing technological tools to help us (I was going to say "that serve us" but I think it is questionable who serves who). We have abundance of food, of protections, of access to information, to communications and transportation, but we still have difficulty with problem solving skills. Our tools help, but within our social circles we are facing increasing conflict in values. Between men and women, young and old, races and religions, we are still fighting for survival. So we inhale vast amounts of psychoactive substances, we distract ourselves with habituating activities we refer to as sex, drugs and rock and roll.

We refuse to grow up and be adults. Because there is a virtual adult hovering above us 24/7. We don't have to be grown ups. That role has been abdicated to our virtual family of machines.

So we stay mesmerized by our technological, physical and mental medications. We are living in a Modern Stoned Age.