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Millions have amnesia about the worst of Trump's presidency. Memory experts explain why.
(www.motherjones.com)
this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2024
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The most sinister part of the chaos that Trump brews, honestly, is the deep apathy and antipathy towards politics that seems pervasive in society. Everyone was already tired by capitalism, but post-COVID the grind and the demand has spun ever higher while Trump keeps orchestrating chaos from, well, not even the fucking shadows but more like the toilet at Mar-a-Lago.
It breaks a lot of people, and its fair, they're just scraping by, worrying about their own. They have their own serious problems, medical issues, sorrow, loss, you name it, people are suffering. It's validly hard for anyone to find the time for it and they become disconnected and disoriented.
It's fucking maddening that it works. It feels like humanity never actually left the dark ages.
Anyway, quality Mother Jones article, good breakdown on why a lot of people's memory of the past seems to forget the worst excesses. Explains a lot about the Bush administration, too, really.
I remember reading something like that years ago ... that there are some historians who think that we haven't left the dark ages yet. In everything else with technology and information we've progressed but we still think and act the same way we have for the past 2000 years.
And the more I read about the subject over the years the more I realized that as human animals, our modern species have only been around for about 50,000 years. In all that time, we've only ever been fearful, short sighted, frightened creatures that wanted everything as quickly and as much as possible all the time. We couldn't do it before but now we can.
In that 50,000 year timeline we're only on the very tip of history ... it's going to take us millennia to change.
Just to clarify, 50,000 years is 50 millennia. If you meant millions if years, the term for that is mega-anna. And eons for billions.
Other than that, I more or less agree. Humans have developed technologically much faster than we've been able to evolve/adapt to the changes we're creating, and the stress from that is growing. Occasionally I wonder if it'll prove too much for us in the end.
I dunno, couldn't humans short circuit evolutionary trends by hacking their own genetics?
Evolution being slow is a good thing. Trying to shortcut it would just be a more direct way to destroy the species. Also a great example of the kind of thing I'm referring to.
species could still either thrive or die out because of or in spite of the meddling.
I did not know about mega-anna as a term before. Is it always hyphenated, or did you add that for emphasis?
Had to look it up myself. I saw both, but went with the hyphen for clarity.
Maybe that's what's happened to every lifeform that's managed to achieve sapience.
Yeah, I've wondered if it's something like that. Seems like a fairly easy trap to fall into, but hard to say for sure with only our singular reference point.
My guess is that in order for life to survive long enough to get to the point where it becomes sapient, it has to be selfish and short-sighted, which becomes a tragically fatal hindrance.
"We're not gonna make it, are we? People, I mean."
"It's in your nature to destroy yourselves."
"Yeah. Major drag, huh?"
Homo Sapiens have been around for 300,000 years.
Yes ... but a human looking homo sapien from 300,000 years ago would not be able to understand our world today or be capable of imagining and thinking like we do. They might have looked like us but they didn't think like us .... that cognitive development didn't happen until about 50,000-60,000 years ago. I'm no expert but in all the reading I've done, our modern selves and people that think, act and imagine like us didn't exist until about 50,000 years ago.