Outpacing Evolution

We live pretty fast, don’t we? Someone once said that in one day we are exposed to more information than the average person living in the late 1800’s on the frontier was exposed to in an entire lifetime. I don’t know if that’s true, but my guess is that it can’t be too far off base.

It’s no wonder we spend so much of our time forgetting, losing, and trying to find who we really are. The industrial revolution changed the world in remarkable ways, most of those quite tangible. My pickup truck, the box of Cap’n Crunch our pantry now holds, the 10-day extended weather forecast from weather.com, all great marvels courtesy of that revolution. But less-tangible impacts are those that have lead us to self-help books and prozac. Whereas we’ve gone from pack mules to the iPhone in about 150 years, our brains remain essentially unchanged. But think of the pandemonium they are now in charge of trying to reconcile every moment of the day.

They say that in the Old West, folks drank whisky all the time because it was safer than water. Now we drink whisky all the time because it’s safer than having to face what’s in our heads.