clarity of mind and the "jolt index" threat to hum

For 20,000 years we lived within the natural environment and then suddenly two or three generations ago we started moving from the natural environment into the electronic environment and then now today, it’s fair to say that most people in the well developed countries of the world are literally growing up in this electronic environment and we haven’t quite learned how to negotiate that environment.

Co-incidental with this, over two generations there has been a tripling of mood disorders and worse in the highly developed parts of the world.

We now live in a mental environment that has all kinds of pollutants in it from noise to hype and various info-toxins and we’re losing cultural and information diversity. Our emotions to some degree are being eroded by various mass media shocks that are being administered to us to keep our attention. The “jolt index” we are now subjected to is way above the stimulation our ancestors experienced.

When it comes to the really large issues of our time, like climate change or choosing what we eat, we just don’t have that clarity anymore that allows us to deal with it as well as we should.

Kalle Lasn who grew up in Australia and now lives in Canada believes this pollution of the mental environment, this 'psychoeffluent' is one of the most dangerous developments of our time and thinks it’s the issue of issues. This is the "Silent Spring" of the human cultural framework.

‘It’s the issue of issues and if we don’t come to terms with this loss of clarity then it could very well do us in.”

The psychological landscape for the younger generation has imperceptibly by small degrees, but none the less radically, changed over the post-war years. The screen-ager generation lives more so in an electronic environment than prior generations and its physiological invasiveness puts them at risk of losing the clarity of mind enjoyed by previous generations.

There’s never been a better time to buy... You’re living in the factory, the product being manufactured is you.

I heard it on the radio... on the radio...
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/mind/stories/s1318358.htm