reading, watching & listening to

the personal essay genre is my favorite and i enjoyed this one

fascinating historical perspective.

our ancestors experienced day-to-day unpredictability (you could die from childbirth, starvation was a constant threat, etc…) but global stability (if your parents were peasants, you’d prob be a peasant).

modern humans inverted that - routine defines us but there is global instability (the world is constantly changing - technology, climate, politics)

other weird things about modern life:

• children teach their parents how to use tools that are critical to thriving in modern society, a complete inversion of the transmission of knowledge through generations.

• non-local social comparison - we compare ourselves to billions of people, not a few hundred in close proximity to us.

• we are distanced from nature, whereas for generations before survival was tied to understanding the natural world.