Our “primal nature” encompasses the instincts which were engrained in us physically, mentally, and emotionally due to the way we lived since the dawn of Man approximately 2 million years ago.
During those first 2 million years, most significant changes in day-to-day living for our species came about very slowly. This type of change occurred over thousands and often tens of thousands of years.
HOWEVER, over the last mere 250 years, much of humanity, especially in the technologically advanced “developed” societies such as the United States, has experienced more daily living change than in all of those first 2 million years ……COMBINED.
And although our species across the Earth has proven to be highly adaptable and resilient throughout its evolution to date, arguably even throughout the unprecedented rapid changes induced by the “Industrial Revolution”….we do not seem to be adapting so well at the moment – the “moment” being the “Information Age” of the approximately last 30 years.
Something “feels” different now.
For instance, the current “system” in technologically advanced societies is escalating people’s detachment from the larger natural world like never before, as well as their detachment to loved ones – despite all of our electronic “connections”.
And in the bigger picture, despite all of the continued gains in material and physical comforts in advance societies, the overall physcial health of people in these societies is, for the first time ever, showing distinct signs of significant decline.
Can evolution be “negative”?
Note that the American “National Center for Policy Analysis” is now stating that the life expectancy in the US, is expected to decline over the next 50 years – the first reversal in US life expectancy since the US government started tracking in 1900.
How can that be?
For starters, maybe it is the cancer rate. According to the US “National Cancer Institute” in 2007, 1 of every 2 men and 1 of every 3 women in the US will be stricken with at least one form of cancer during their lifetime.
But why are so many people stricken with cancer in the US?
Unfortunately, many accept the mainstream notion that cancer is simply a disease of “old age”, and that high cancer rates exist simply because of the fact that people in advanced societies are now living longer than ever due to modern medicine and nutrition.
Yet the “Children’s Cancer Fund of America” is currently stating that cancer remains the number one disease killer of CHILDREN in the US.
Why is that?
Meanwhile, cancer rates of people, at any age, observed on the ground in relatively isolated/primitive societies…. are practically nill according to many anthropologically field studies.
Why is that?
Furthermore, although it is not well known that the life expectancy in the US is already among the lowest of the developed nations of the world……most people in the US would be stunned to know that their life expectancy is also already lower than the life expectancy in many nations considered to be ……..”developing”.
And although people in the US generally have been living longer with each passing decade until now, the vast majority of the elderly in the US are tragically spending, and have been for decades, the last 20 to 30 years of their life lingering in a legalized drug induced state….depressed, lonely, and anxious…..alive – but chronically sick.
Why?
On the other end of the age spectrum, several recent health studies predict most of the children in the US today will be riddled with chronic diseases and/or health conditions such as diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and cancer…soon after they hit the ripe old age of 30.
The US Center for Disease and Control Prevention (CDC) has already publicly stated that children born after the year 2000 have approximately a 1 in 3 chance of developing Type 2 diabetes during their lifetime.
Why is that?
The negative trends go on:
Obesity at all age levels is currently spreading throughout the developed world like a communicable disease. This development is despite a recent unprecendented proliferation of nutritional knowledge available to most people in those societies.
There is also mounting hard evidence documenting that many basic elements of “mental well-being” within people in advanced societies are eroding at alarming rates, despite the presence of legions of psychiatrists and readily available, and legal, mind altering drugs.
For instance, over 40 millions people in the US currently take legally prescribed anti-depressants……while the numbers of people in the US who self-medicate with dangerous “over the counter” and/or illegal substances – is practically incalculable.
Why are so many people feeling so miserable in the US?
Also, the spiritual and emotional well-being of people in the US, and its families in general, is declining according to most polls. Why? This negative trend is despite a cornacopia of religious choices, easily accessible spiritual leaders, parenting advice, counselors, and New Age self-help books.
According to many polls, the social well-being in many developed societies like the US continues to rapidly degrade despite e-mail around the world, and countless other “social networking” are available through the internet and other electronic devices. “Loneliness” has been documented in many developed societies as escalating to the point of an epidemic- despite all these readily available “connections?
Why?
Can a “virtual reality” social life really replace a “real” social life?
Perhaps more importantly, should it?
The global economic system led by the advanced societies of the world is run primarily by fossil fuels, and based upon a foundation of mindless consumerism, abject materialism, crippling debt, rampant waste, and a seemingly insatiable extraction of the Earth’s natural resources.
Now…..it may be imploding.
Why have we structured our economy this way?
Our physical environment worldwide continues to be degraded and it’s finite natural resources rapidly depleted. Why? This debasement continues despite an unprecedented knowledge base of natural science and a litany of environmental regulations and protection programs in the developing world.
Well documented and widespread mental, physical, emotional, social, spiritual, economic, and ecological……..DECLINE.
If the developed countries of the world, such as the US, are so “advanced” …..HOW CAN ALL THIS BE HAPPENING?