Why Is Everyone So Mean Now?
Why Is Everyone So Mean Now?
When we are made to be gods, everyone else is less.
Recently I emailed with a reader and we discussed “why people are meaner than ever these days.” The reader didn’t directly ask, “Why is everyone so mean now?” but that was generally the topic of our conversation.
Below is what I wrote in one of my emails, and it is my short, overly-simplified thesis about why people are meaner than ever these days, and I’d like to elaborate on it a little bit under the quote:
Very broadly speaking, I think a lot of the reason people are so mean today—compared to 20+ years ago—is that modern technologies of various forms have made it easier than ever to bend the world to our wishes.
Everything from Google to air fryers to Bluetooth to social media has made it easier for us to feel like gods—like we can have and do and think and say whatever we want whenever we want, and whenever someone gets in the way of that (which is often) we lash out.
To put it even more shortly: I think the reason people are meaner than ever these days is because we have arguably never felt more like gods than we do today.
When it feels like almost every single year a new piece of technology is made available or becomes popular that makes it easier to feel like we can rule the world from our recliners, it is inevitable that a late food delivery driver or a teacher who tells us our kid is misbehaving will make us feel uncomfortable, vulnerable, or like our status as more-than-human is being threatened, leading us to lash out as people we perceive as subservient to us.
I think this sort of reality is at the heart of why we’re losing teachers, nurses, and people in other roles that are primarily service-oriented. It isn’t because people are lazy or don’t want to work. It’s because we are increasingly treating everyone from Kroger cashiers to local church pastors like they are really just insubordinate parishioners in our increasingly-optimized houses of self-worship.
Self-deification at the cost of dehumanization has never been easier or more culturally acceptable.
Yes. Some much for the long lost virtue of humility and the reality that it is possible we really aren’t as magnificent as we think we are.
I think you are spot on with your explanation. Reminded me of a book by Carl Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. You said it much more succinctly. We stopped believing in God when we could irrigate the crops (No need to pray for rain.), when penicillin was created (No need to ask God to heal us.), and it has morphed into us being mean, because we are gods, to thinking we can be any sex we want, do anything we want, and all that makes us meaner.
You can read the book, but you said it much more succinctly. Thanks.