Portland blogger Michael Totten – also the editor of Iraq’s Friends of Democracy group blog – has an amusing but provocative post on humanity’s difficulty in accepting social tranquility. He’s heard that cats often hallucinate their natural environment because their minds can’t handle suburban living rooms, and wonders if humans are fundamentally the same:
I’ve long suspected that activistas (meaning those who protest everything for the sake of protesting) are simply bored. Civilization and a comfortable middle class life in a First World economy remove epic and dramatic struggle from our daily lives. We don’t have to hunt. We don’t have to hide from predators. We don’t have regular violent clashes with neighboring tribes. We have to work, but we’re comfy. …
But we’re wired for struggle and drama. (Just read history. It comes across loud and clear.) A few years ago – just before 9/11, in fact – a friend of mine in the high-tech industry said “I wish we lived in more interesting times.â€? I knew what he meant. I worked in a cubicle variously as a software tester and a technical writer. It was a pleasant stress-free job and it paid very well. But God was life ever boring.
It might explain “the fringe of the fringe”:
People on the far-right who spent the 1990s holed up in the mountains of Idaho and Montana preparing for an apocalyptic showdown with the federal government and the United Nations. People on the far left who think they live in a brutal police state and that they’re bravely defying a fascist regime when they take to the streets.
Trivializing the social ramifications a bit, it’s why guys my age (and much older) chase each other in the woods, shooting gobs of paint. Why some women get catty with each other over guys that aren’t worth it except for sport. Why we cheer religiously for sports teams whose only connection to us is vaguely geographical. It’s even why little Einsteins forsake social grace for high academic marks, counting on their smarts to win them a place at the side of the popular and ruthless Lord of the Playground (and eventually, political advisor for grown-up lords).
As a social philosophy I can’t stand Social Darwinism and its subtle successors taking root under various guises in America and abroad. But weekdays at 9 a.m., the Metro escalator is a jungle to be conquered, where the quick-footed blow past the infirm, the aged, the lazy and the high-heeled in a quest to reach the train platform (and a seat) ahead of everyone else. Natural selection reigns, despite the likelihood no one will notice if I’m 5 minutes late from taking a leisurely pace. Instinct and the thrill of competition replace gentrified office life.
(Be glad I held back my lame pick-up lines about the jungle.)
I’m a tech journalist who’s making a TV show about a college newspaper.