9 main signs of mass degradation of modern society

If you ask any average person what is currently the main resource of the economic system, one will answer that it is power, another will say that it is money, and a third will give preference to knowledge. Surprisingly, none of these answers are correct. The main resource of the modern economy is fools and degenerates!

Sounds strange, implausible and wild, doesn't it? But the advantage of fools and degenerates is that you can sell them absolutely everything! Obscurantism and ignorance are the engine of development of our society, the economic system, and global business. The degradation of modern society is an issue that no one is in a hurry to solve. And why deal with a problem that brings a lot of profit to interested parties? So it turns out that for many people the meaning of life lies in satisfying the needs imposed by marketers.

Why is society deteriorating? When did these destructive changes begin? What signs of societal degradation exist? In this article we will discuss these and other important issues relating to modern society and its degradation.

Degradation of society: where did it all start?

The maximum scientific and technical power was achieved by humanity in the 60s of the last century. One cannot but agree that after this no radical discoveries occurred either in technology or in science. The nuclear missile race at this stage of social development has become a kind of engine. It was thanks to this race that man's flight into space symbolized everything that humanity had been striving for and dreaming about for so long!

Therefore, it is not surprising that in the 50-60s of the last century the most prestigious, fashionable and sought-after profession was that of a mathematician, engineer, and nuclear physicist. Smart men in funny sweaters and long beards became heroes of films, TV series, songs and books. What girl hasn't dreamed of marrying an engineer and becoming the wife of a true hero? Those guys who were not lucky enough to take part in the nuclear missile race imitated the public's favorites and did everything possible to make a couple of nuclear friends!

All children dreamed of becoming astronauts. In the 60s of the twentieth century, the most fashionable and popular were those children who developed their mental abilities, were particularly kind and courageous, strived for victories in Olympiads and dreamed of studying at some MIPT or MEPhI after school.

In the 70s of the last century, the situation changed most dramatically. The nuclear missile race is no longer a priority. The nuclear superpowers, which previously were truly afraid of each other and did everything possible to protect themselves from the destructive actions of the enemy, switched their attention to solving completely different issues.

Previously, the real fear of becoming a victim of a nuclear attack turned into a common threat, which in America congressmen habitually used to scare their voters, and in the USSR they called it “the insidious machinations of capitalists and imperialists.” The arms race has not stopped completely, because a big business is characterized by great inertia. But it no longer caused panic attacks and hysterics among either Soviet or American citizens.

The nuclear missile race has turned from a combat matter into a bureaucratic matter. Governments no longer make demands on the scientific community at the same level as they previously did. And if earlier Comrade Beria promised to tear off Comrade Korolev’s head if the necessary thing at the nuclear test site did not explode, now political leaders began to treat scientists more calmly and loyally. Why create a panic and spoil the nervous system of both yourself and other people, if it is clear to even a schoolchild that there will be no nuclear war? Logical? Logical!

Therefore, in the 70s of the 20th century, the scientific profession had not yet lost its former prestige, but was already becoming a common profession. The prestige scale has already begun to change in the opposite direction! This change was symbolized by the famous Détente. Almost no one believed in a military threat anymore, so not a single sane comrade stood in line for gas masks or was engaged in the construction of a compact bunker on the territory of his summer cottage. Supporters of Détente shouted at every corner that this event could rightfully be called not only the true end of the Second World War, but also the true transition from war to peaceful coexistence. Many citizens of the USA and the USSR felt exactly this way, because everyone was already tired of experiencing uncertainty and emotional stress.

Science, technology, the scientific way of thinking and everything connected with them gradually ceased to be fashionable and in demand. If you think carefully, there is nothing strange in this, because science is not a “thing in itself.” All the problems it solves are always posed from the outside. Previously, scientists, satisfying their own curiosity at public expense, were engaged in improving various military equipment. When the arms race slowed down, the need to improve military equipment disappeared by itself.

The scientific way of thinking in the 70s of the 20th century began to give way to Eastern teachings, mystical movements and esotericism. Positivism and rationalism, characteristic of the scientific way of thinking, have lost their priority. People have become much more interested in organizing spiritualistic seances, studying esotericism and mysticism. The official ban only fueled public interest in these “miracles from overseas.” Over the hill, at that time, it was fashionable to become a Buddhist, practice yoga and study other teachings with mystical overtones, which are very far from a scientific and rational approach to the reality around us.

Best of all worlds

Statistics confirm that as a species we have reached unimaginable heights.
The average life expectancy in developed countries is under 80 years. Less than 1% of babies die during childbirth. A third of adults in Germany or France went to university for at least four years after school! Although 200 years ago the proportion was the opposite: a third of babies were never destined to stand on their feet, and less than 1% of the population received higher education. An ordinary modern European is capable of performing actions that would seem overwhelmingly difficult to a Napoleonic soldier: filling out the Unified State Examination test, using car sharing, choosing a diet for high cholesterol. But try googling “humanity is degenerating” and “humanity is getting smarter.” You will have to gather in the media field a handful of intellectual fighters who are optimistic about the prospects of the family. There are dozens of times more experts who claim that our great-grandchildren will be almost imbeciles.

The main reason for our degeneration is seen in artificial intelligence and in the institutions that motivate us to be lazy . The Neiman Marcus department store uses AI so that you can take a photo of the item you like, and a special application searches for similar or the same items in the department store catalog. At Sephora, a woman can choose makeup without putting it on her face or even using her imagination. Color IQ scans a customer's face and makes personalized recommendations for foundation and lipstick shades. Uniqlo stores have gone even further by creating UMood counters that show customers different products and gauge their reactions to color and style using neural transmitters. The visitor does not even need to press buttons; the network responds to signals from his brain.

Such care does not always only benefit people. For example, two men are driving in a car and discussing their varied personal lives, thinking that no one can hear them. But a smartphone with voice dialing, having heard the word “wife,” already calls the corresponding number from the contact list. And the wife of one of the interlocutors, having received an incoming call, listens to what the men are talking about for an hour. And a catastrophic “wrong” occurs immediately in all episodes over 20 years of marriage. The owner of gray hair will never realize that “smart” floor scales send an SMS to the owner with the result of each weighing. And, being on a long business trip, at one in the morning she will receive a message: “56 kg.” Although her husband left at home weighs twice as much.

And now seriously: every seventh Russian citizen aged 35-44 lives with his parents . Even if money were found for their own housing, 17% of overage children would still remain with their families. Although in 2003 there were only 13% of them. A similar situation is observed in European countries and the USA. In Spain, 67% of young people aged 18 to 29 live with their parents, in Italy - 60%. Half a million British adults are financially dependent on their parents to rent their apartment, for example. This, of course, is not a sign of degradation, but a bell: people cannot survive on their own even in the most comfortable of worlds.

On the eve of the presentation of the Nobel Prizes to the smartest people on the planet, Danish psychologist from Aarhus University Helmut Nyborg called for the sake of future generations to abandon the politically correct approach to the problems of human selection. From 10 to 20% of the Danish population, according to him, belong to the intellectual bottom of society: about half read poorly, and one in three will find it difficult if a paragraph contains more than two explanations. A third of the young men examined may remain infertile due to low sperm quality.

As a result of the targeted catching up of those who are lagging behind, the level of school education is declining: today's 15-year-old schoolchildren are unable to cope with the tasks that their peers could cope with a hundred years ago. According to Nyborg, the burden on smart women should be reduced, and stupid women should be paid not to have children . This is an absolutely necessary measure in order to reduce the number of degenerates.

Stanford professor Gerald Crabtree argues that human intelligence reached its peak several thousand years ago, and that our mental and emotional abilities have been slowly deteriorating since then. And with each next generation, from 25 to 65 new DNA mutations occur. Professor Crabtree writes: “I bet that if an ordinary resident of Athens living in 1000 BC were suddenly among us, he or she would be the smartest and most intellectually accomplished of our colleagues and friends - he or she would have a good memory , a lot of fresh ideas and a clear understanding of the essence of important things.”

So why did society not begin to live more cheerfully, but began to degrade?

In the late 60s and early 70s of the last century, humanity, distinguished by its progressiveness, faced a serious problem. The fact is that the basic needs of most people living in the United States and other leading capitalist countries have been met. Previously, people lived so well only in Paradise! After being expelled from Paradise, man had to constantly work hard to satisfy his rational and natural needs.

But in the 70s of the 20th century, average families not only did not lack healthy and tasty food, beautiful and high-quality clothing for the season, spacious, cozy and comfortable housing, but also acquired such luxury items as a car, household appliances, etc. d.

But just 10-20 years ago, all this was the American dream! Why a dream? Because all this was not available to the average person! In order to satisfy basic needs, a person who lived in the 50s and 60s had to work hard, endure all sorts of inconveniences and step on the throat of his own selfishness.

America 70s

And there is nothing strange about this, because in an ordinary English mining town in the late 50s there was only one bathroom. All other residents were forced to go to a public bathhouse, relieve themselves in street latrines during the day, and go to the toilet in chamber pots at night, the contents of which were covered with an ice crust by morning. Women washed clothes in a trough, ate fruit on major holidays, and bought flowers only for funerals.

In the 70s, two-thirds of the population of England and any other decently developed capitalist country gained access to security and everyday comfort. If earlier ordinary mortals, regardless of their country of residence, were forced to constantly struggle with hunger, cold and other signs of poverty, now the struggle for a piece of bread has faded into oblivion. Don’t believe that ordinary mortal people lived like this just recently? Then you definitely need to get acquainted with the works of Dickens, Remarque, Moravia, Hugo, Dreiser and their contemporaries!

Yesterday's poor man, forced to constantly scour for a piece of bread for himself and his family, overnight turned into a completely decent average person who eats well, dresses fashionably, has good housing, equipped with household appliances, and a personal vehicle. Elderly Europeans recall that after the end of World War II, many of them dreamed of simply eating normally and dressing normally. But after 10-20 years, the same Europeans noticed with surprise that they “no longer lacked anything.” A person who has nothing missing has eaten well, pushed the plate away from him, left the table and asked himself a reasonable question: “I’ve eaten to my heart’s content!” What next?”

The model of social development, based on satisfying basic needs with money earned by people, has exhausted itself. Not only did people not have any growth in cash or their needs, but they did not foresee any growth in the future. Only population growth could affect business growth, but in developed countries, population growth somehow did not work out.

The era of degradation

Our society is losing its moral character from generation to generation.
Each generation differs from the previous one, not for the better. In our time, such important words and concepts as “honor”, “dignity”, “work”, “duty” only cause laughter, since the current generation already considers these words to be archaisms. For today's people, it is more important to have many rights than to fulfill responsibilities. All this indicates the degradation of society. Comfort comes before goals in life. Status trumps dignity. Fun comes before duty. The fight for rights comes before the fulfillment of duties. Such a society does not have reliable support, and therefore any sufficiently significant social cataclysm threatens to seriously damage the society, which will be unable to survive it. Already now we see in the younger generation apathy about the future and burning away the present with endless entertainment.

Of course, this result was led to by many factors that, from generation to generation, shaped the current appearance of the younger, future generation. A generation attracted by excessive fantasies, dissatisfaction with the need to work, apathy, high self-esteem, and lack of respect for anyone other than themselves. Nowadays, running away from home is considered a feat, whereas previously it was considered the lot of the marginal class.

Even people who develop intellectually and morally still have neither the determination nor the strength to use their abilities for the benefit of society. Partly because they are unclaimed, not corresponding to the interests of modern society, partly because they do not find support from their elders and are not able to start and overcome the “entry” threshold for such activities.

No matter how good a person’s intention is to make society better or become a worthy person, he will find himself on the margins of society, while laurels will be received by media stars who only contribute to the degradation of society, showing images of an unworthy life, be it excessive luxury or certain messages that invest in their “creativity”.

In our time, songs about “love” based on base lust, songs about money, drugs, or simply a cacophony of sounds are more in demand than art that glorifies the virtues and dignity of man.

In an era of degradation, wealth alone will be considered the defining sign of good birth, correct behavior and good qualities of a person, and law and justice will be established by those who are stronger.
Srimad-Bhagavatam. 12.2.2

Fame is not the scale of accomplishment, but the number of fans

In its current form, fame is not the scale of an accomplishment, but the number of fans, success is not the ability to change society and the lives of others for the better, but the number of money and sexual partners, and the importance of an accomplishment is determined by the amount of money that this accomplishment brought. If you save the world from a cataclysm, you will be remembered less often than if you become a famous artist or billionaire.

A person will be trusted only if he earns enough, and the one who skillfully juggles words will be considered an outstanding scientist. A person will be condemned if he does not have money, hypocrisy will become a virtue, and marriage will be entered into simply by verbal consent.
Srimad-Bhagavatam. 12.2.4-5

Shame is now a psychological problem, just like guilt, just like a sense of duty. Now everyone has their own, unique and important opinion on all topics. Moreover, this “important” opinion may appear at the very first acquaintance with the topic. That is, pride and self-esteem have reached such a height that a person is seriously ready to argue with an expert, even without knowing the terms and concepts.

Global business, media and the degradation of modern society

Stakeholders directly related to global business did not wait for an ordinary mortal to think about the meaning of his existence and begin to think about what he should do next in order to determine this very meaning for himself. Global business has already found the answer to this question! Since all basic needs have already been satisfied, new needs should be created! By satisfying newly created needs, people will find the meaning of life for themselves and stop tormenting themselves with questions that no one needs! New markets, without which global business cannot exist, were found not in other countries (after all, there is nothing to catch there), but in human souls!

Cellular operators have created the need to constantly talk on the phone, pharmaceutical companies have created the need to swallow pills by the handful, clothing factories have created the need to update your wardrobe at least once a season, etc. Marketers, trying not only to make something unnecessary necessary, but also to sell it at a good price, play on the feeling of fear, create new dangers and protect against them with the help of certain products. Why be afraid of germs on your hands, toilet and gas stove, if you can simply buy the appropriate product and protect yourself from them? Modern marketing will protect you not only from germs, but also from dandruff, cell radiation, bad breath, etc.

In order for people to satisfy the needs invented and imposed by marketers and buy goods they do not need, it is necessary to turn rationally thinking individuals into cheerful and ignorant idiots who live by elementary emotions and constantly crave a sense of novelty. Global business needs people whose mental development stopped at the age of six. Such people will consume everything they see in advertising. They need everything at once!

To educate the ideal degenerate consumer who constantly buys something, eats fashionable food, and then actively loses weight with the help of innovative drugs specially developed for this purpose, global business uses the media. Television and the Internet are the most consumed media in modern society. They fool people and create ideal consumers. The latter, without demanding any evidence, facts or logic from the media, believe the argument that even a seven-year-old child would not have believed 60-80 years ago.

The degradation of modern society has led to the fact that most people spend their lives trying to earn more money, which can then be spent on buying a one hundred and eighty-seventh mobile phone, another blouse from a new collection, an expensive trinket pleasing to the eye, etc. .

Social elevator stuck in traffic jam

In a broader context, the problems of new houses, courtyards, neighborhoods and microdistricts are included in the degradation of the urban organism as a whole, inextricably linked with macro-processes within Russian society. Here, too, much arose precisely because of the refusal or, as at first it seemed, the “progressive overcoming” of proven Soviet practices.

In the USSR, for example, the limited opportunity to purchase a personal car was not at all connected with the mediocrity of the economic model and the callousness of the country’s top leadership, mired in the “arms race.”

The key factor was the understanding of the need to create mass motorization and the corresponding service infrastructure (networks of gas stations, car repair centers, etc.), radically and quickly increase the quantity and quality of roads, and just as radically rebuild all more or less large settlements to solve the inevitable problem traffic jams

In new cities like Naberezhnye Chelny, the forecast of an inevitable, but gradual and evolutionary increase in the number of cars among the population was “sewn” into the general plan, thanks to which they are now happily avoiding a transport collapse - for now they are avoiding.

For cities that were built before the revolution, especially those that grew into megacities, it is much more difficult, especially since motorization turned out not to be evolutionary, but revolutionary and thoughtless.

In addition, this process was clearly related to social mobility in society: having your own car quickly became one of the signs of belonging to the middle class, the growth of which in the 2000s also changed traffic flows in Russian cities. The development of the service sector has led to the concentration of a significant number of middle-class jobs in urban centers, and consequently to an ever-increasing load on the road and transport infrastructure. The price to pay for having a prestigious job in the service sector, your own car and an apartment in a “modern” residential complex has been more and more time spent in traffic jams.

The problem, by the way, concerns not only intracity, but also intercity road transport, despite the fact that many federal roads were actively built and completed in the post-Soviet era. In multi-kilometer and sometimes multi-day traffic jams on these roads, not only spoiled cargo or someone’s vacation days are lost, as traditionally happens in the summer on the M4 Moscow-Novorossiysk highway, where traffic jams stretch for several tens of kilometers. The people themselves die.

Bad weather also makes its own aggravating adjustments, a frequent phenomenon in the vast expanses of Russia.

Many people remember the “traffic jam of death” on the Orenburg-Orsk highway in early 2016, when policeman Danil Maksudov became a national hero, giving all his warm uniforms to freezing people and saving their lives at the cost of losing several of his frostbitten fingers.

A real feat - but it’s better not to make such a feat necessary. Smart alternatives could help relieve road congestion, but the once developed river passenger fleet and small civil aviation are in deep decline or have completely died out.

In cities, the situation increasingly resembles scenes from life in India.

As you know, if traffic rules exist there, they are formal, although the fundamental difference is that Indian drivers are mainly guided by the golden rule of morality “do not do to others what you would not wish for yourself,” which Russian drivers, alas, regularly forget . This leads to transport and logistics traps, including emergency services, especially at the entrances to yards and in the yards themselves, when help, as it seems, is already at arm’s length from those in need.

You can recall a high-profile story in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, when in a narrow courtyard, an official Ulyana Lobanova refused to remove her car in order to let an ambulance through, and as a result of the delay, a young man, to whom doctors were rushing, died. Lobanova’s guilt is undoubted and enormous, but one cannot help but recognize as destructive the flaws in house and yard construction that tie a person’s life to the whims of another person.

Would an ambulance have been able to get through the narrow passages between buildings if the woman had been somewhere far away or even close, in a store around the corner, and there had been no refusal to remove the car - but her car itself had been there? Saving on every centimeter of precious land, developers very often include potential tragedies in their “human development” projects.

You can easily verify this by walking in the evening through any new multi-storey area, where the space in front of the houses is completely filled with cars.

As in many other areas, having discarded the “damned Soviet legacy” in urban planning, we did not find ourselves in the bright capitalist paradise of the Western style. Rather, it is capitalism, of the Caribbean-Indian-African type, or still Western, but... the day before yesterday.

Let us quote the book of the English writer Peter Ackroyd “London: a biography”:

“An extremely vivid and detailed description of Tudor London was left by John Stow, the great antiquarian historiographer of the 16th century. He wrote about new streets and buildings constantly springing up outside the city walls, about “the encroachments of developers on large and small roads, on communal lands.” Where previously there were barns or shops crowded together, in one of which an old woman sold “seeds, roots and herbs,” now there were new houses, “built in large numbers on both sides further and higher, some three, four, five floors”... Stowe notes, again with displeasure, that “the unusual abundance of carriages, carts, carts and carriages in the narrowness of the streets and alleys cannot but be dangerous, and everyday experience confirms this”; These dangers increased when coachmen began to drive horses without being interested in what was ahead, or in those frequent cases when drunken drivers started furious street disputes about who should go first. And the noise was such that “the earth itself trembles and shakes, the windows knock, rattle and rattle.”

And next to the 21st century, which in fact is not much different from the realities of the 16th century, you can see feudal archaism in general.

Next to the new gloomy concrete yard, or even in it itself, there is impassable dirt, broken or missing road surfaces, rubble and potholes, a mountain of snow, perhaps already transformed into a different state of aggregation.

Looking out the window and seeing an ambulance or fire truck, barely making it through a traffic jam, but already in the yard immersed up to the window in mud or snow (this early spring alone there were similar cases in Kirov, Petrozavodsk, Khanty-Mansiysk), I would like to repeat rhetorically following Pasternak: “What kind of millennium is this, my dears?”

The main signs of degradation of modern society

There are many signs indicating that our society is deteriorating. Let's look at the most important of them!

Stimulation of infantile behavior in adolescents

Infantile behavior is stimulated artificially in order to slow down the process of onset of social maturity in adolescents. Young people from 15 to 25 years old are the most active members of our society. Therefore, it is not surprising that it was this category of the population that made up the bulk of revolutionaries and radical individuals throughout the history of human development.

Just 50-60 years ago, a 20-year-old man was treated as a mature, principled and serious member of society who was responsible not only for himself, but also for his already created family. In modern society, a 20-year-old man is treated like an unreasonable teenager who cannot be trusted with anything, because he is not capable of serious actions.

Instagram

Instagram is not only one of the most popular social networks, but also contributes to the degradation of our society. Can photos or videos posted on a social network somehow have such a negative impact on society? They can, because they do not require any written support. All you have to do is post a photo and sign “I’m at the seaside”, “I’m in a cafe with friends”, “I’m in the Canary Islands”, etc. Or you can write nothing at all, because the photograph will speak for itself.

If you don’t need to explain anything and come up with a caption for the posted photos and videos, then you don’t have to think about it. Why put your thoughts into words and sentences if no one needs it? And there’s no need to think if you can just look at the bright pictures!

Those people who actively use Instagram and measure their success in life by the number of “comments” and “likes”, conceptual thinking atrophies and substantive thinking begins to form, which is a regressive process in the development of our society.

General standards in raising children

Both boys and girls are raised the same. Educational institutions are no longer divided into male and female. This is done in order to turn girls into masculine creatures, and boys into effeminate creatures.

It has been proven that boys from 13 to 16 years old cannot normally perceive the material taught by the teacher and study adequately if they are in the same classroom with representatives of the fair sex.

Egocentrism

Young representatives of our society are forced to believe that selfishness is cool and right. They sincerely believe that they have some special characteristics and are the center of not only our planet, but the entire Universe.

But being an egoist and being a comprehensively developed person are two different pictures of the world. Global business does not need individuals, it needs egoists.

Those interested in the degradation of society are well aware that the principle of “divide and conquer” was not invented out of nowhere. Alone, no one can resist the system and fight destructive processes.

The image of a “successful” and “satisfied with life” person

This image is formed with the help of the media. In many films, TV series, books, magazines and newspapers you can see a perfect person who has reached the pinnacle of success and is completely satisfied with his life. But a “successful” person is an ideal slave of the existing system. Having a colossal dependence on his high social status, such a person will never go against the system and will do everything possible to maintain the existing state of affairs for as long as possible, otherwise his whole life will collapse like a house of cards!

Have you noticed that all modern characters who can be called "successful" people are a symbol of selfishness, greed and ignorance? They are guided only by their instincts, do not care about the feelings of other people and are ready to do anything to achieve their goals.

Satisfaction of sexual instincts and violence

Since sexual instincts are one of the most powerful human instincts, using them you can easily and imperceptibly not only manipulate society, but also destroy it. Sexual instincts represent the animal and unconscious part of our personality. Therefore, with the help of the media they are actively stimulated. Those interested and related to global business do not want a person to develop his higher unconscious, which is the source of scientific, creative and poetic inspiration. They need a person to satisfy his lower unconscious, which is closely related to fear, violence and animal instincts.

That is why love is now a rudiment, which society is gradually abandoning, because the priority of many modern people is sex without obligations, satisfaction of sexual instincts and violence. All this leads to the fact that traditional family values begin to crumble and disappear.

Senseless and merciless demand

Is consumption different from ordinary and reasonable consumption? It differs in the most dramatic way! The natural and reasonable need of a person to possess this or that object is consumption. Excessive and unnatural consumption is consumption.

If you bought new shoes because the old ones are already completely worn out and “begging for porridge” - this is consumption. If you bought new trendy shoes, although you already have 10 similar pairs in your closet, this is a need. And if you buy your 11th pair of boots on credit, then this is already a diagnosis!

The existing system benefits from this model of social behavior, because it regularly and systematically stimulates demand on the international market, allows producers to grow and develop, and facilitates the issuance of more and more new loans, which form the basis of the modern financial system. Consumption determines the scope of goals permitted for society, reduces tension in the social sphere, causes addiction, blocks the higher unconscious, turns people into easily controlled and defenseless zombies.

Cigarettes and alcoholic drinks

Alcohol negatively affects the human brain. Interested parties use alcohol to fool society, turn people into animals and turn peaceful and proud individuals into merciless weapons of mass destruction.

State-legalized cigarettes and alcohol take far more lives than the terrorists the media scares us with. In Russia alone, about 1 million (!) people die every year from alcohol and cigarettes!

Drinking alcohol and smoking turns men into stupid, soft, indifferent degenerates who are unable to protect themselves, their family, or their country. Women, trying to imitate men, poison not only themselves, but also their children. Children, having seen enough of their parents, begin to lead exactly the same lifestyle from an early age.

Ridiculing nobility

Since nobility creates uncontrollable and unpredictable behavior in people, it is very dangerous for the existing system. That is why there is now a taboo on nobility. It is much easier for interested parties to manipulate those people who are driven by addiction, thirst for profit, lust, vice and many other base qualities. Such people are very predictable and are not capable of any noble deeds.

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Degeneration is abolished: how we are convinced of the degradation of humanity

Finding yourself in the center of Moscow, London or New York in 2021, it is difficult not to notice that humanity is at its peak today. The smells of restaurants, car horns, the enchanting splendor of houses. People, although they wear masks, are elegantly and comfortably dressed, almost everyone has safe nests and the means to buy food. They, like gods, can make a telephone call to another continent with one keystroke. At the same time, scientists vying with each other to assure us that, against the backdrop of progress, we have forgotten how to think and act, and each generation is more stupid than the previous one. The saddest thing is that millions of people are ready to believe it.

Best of all worlds

But try googling “humanity is degenerating” and “humanity is getting smarter.” You will have to gather in the media field a handful of intellectual fighters who are optimistic about the prospects of the family. There are dozens of times more experts who claim that our great-grandchildren will be almost imbeciles.

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The main reason for our degeneration is seen in artificial intelligence and in the institutions that motivate us to be lazy. The Neiman Marcus department store uses AI so that you can take a photo of the item you like, and a special application searches for similar or the same items in the department store catalog. At Sephora, a woman can choose cosmetics without putting it on her face or even using her imagination. Color IQ software scans the customer's face and makes personalized recommendations for foundation and lipstick shades. Uniqlo stores have gone even further, creating UMood counters that show customers different products and gauge their reactions to color and style using neural transmitters. The visitor does not even need to press buttons; the network responds to signals from his brain.

And now seriously: every seventh Russian citizen aged 35–44 lives with his parents . Even if money were found for their own housing, 17% of overage children would still remain with their families. Although in 2003 there were only 13% of them. A similar situation is observed in European countries and the USA. In Spain, 67% of young people aged 18 to 29 live with their parents, in Italy – 60%. Half a million British adults are financially dependent on their parents to rent their apartment, for example. This, of course, is not a sign of degradation, but a bell: people cannot survive on their own even in the most comfortable of worlds.

On the eve of the presentation of the Nobel Prizes to the smartest people on the planet, Danish psychologist from Aarhus University Helmut Nyborg called for the sake of future generations to abandon the politically correct approach to the problems of human selection. From 10 to 20% of the Danish population, according to him, belong to the intellectual bottom of society: about half read poorly, and one in three will find it difficult if a paragraph contains more than two explanations. A third of the young men examined may remain infertile due to low sperm quality.

Stanford professor Gerald Crabtree argues that human intelligence reached its peak several thousand years ago, and that our mental and emotional abilities have been slowly deteriorating since then. And with each next generation, from 25 to 65 new DNA mutations occur. Professor Crabtree writes: “I bet that if an ordinary citizen of Athens living in 1000 BC were suddenly among us, he or she would be the smartest and most intellectually accomplished of our colleagues and friends - he or she would have a good memory , a lot of fresh ideas and a clear understanding of the essence of important things.”

Watch your hands

But it is impossible to verify such statements. From ancient Greek philosophy, only the works of Plato and Aristotle have reached us in original. How Heraclitus, Epicurus, Zeno and other sages thought, we know only from retellings. But it is impossible to assess the average intellectual level of the ancient Athenians on the basis of such material.

The great storyteller Michel de Montaigne tried to summarize ancient wisdom in the 16th century. But from his “Essays” it does not in any way follow that the Greeks had special clarity of thinking: “Based on considerations of reason, Crates and Dicaearchus taught that the soul does not exist at all and that the body is set in motion by natural motion, Plato - that the soul is a self-propelled substance, Thales - that she represents a nature devoid of rest, Asclepiades - that she is an exercise of the senses, Hesiod and Anaximander - that she is a substance consisting of earth and water, Parmenides - that she consists of earth and fire, Empedocles - that she is blood " The ancients also did not agree on the question of the location of the soul. Hippocrates and Herophilus place it in the ventricle of the brain, Democritus and Aristotle - throughout the body. According to Epicurus, the soul resides in the stomach. Although the Stoics placed it in and around the heart, and Erasistratus - in the skull. And these are the smartest people of the era! Does it seem that ordinary people had comprehensive knowledge of the “essence of important things”? Isn't scientific thinking based on experience, and not on what seems to be the soul in the crook of the elbow?

One of the main arguments for degeneration lies in our supposedly ever-decreasing IQ. But the publication of tables with IQ by country and era is shocking . If Wilhelm Stern introduced the concept of “IQ” in 1912, how were modern scientists able to assess the ability of a Victorian Englishman?

To do this, they had to pump up artificial intelligence with some materials from the 19th century so that the machine would “adjust” to the level of a Victorian (either a forester from Sherwood Forest, or the Duke of Buckingham) and pass the Eysenck test. And in the same way they “tested” an ancient Egyptian or Arab from the Abbasid Caliphate. But can the results obtained be considered in any way correct? Isn't science all about facts, facts, and only facts?

It seems that many researchers are simply tailoring the data to fit the results they want. And the situation is conducive to this – research based on AI and “big data” is in vogue. For example, they decided to show that poor ecology affects the brain even in the womb. The IQ of children 4–6 years old born in the most polluted regions of the United States was 2 points lower than that of their peers in cities with better ecology. Scientists at Lancaster University surveyed 18,000 young Britons to come to similar conclusions: children with mental retardation are more likely to live in areas with polluted air. What does this mean? About the connection between ecology and intelligence? About the need to support the “climate lobby”? Or is it about the fact that wealthy families, capable of giving their children better early development, settle, oddly enough, away from waste incineration plants?

Research showing that greenhouse gases impair our memory, concentration and decision-making is inexpensive. As well as the fact that red meat, dairy products, tobacco and alcohol, even in very moderate doses, will turn you into a degenerate. Tell that to Hemingway, Sinatra or Sir Winston Churchill . Tell this to the Soviet military instructors who taught the Viet Cong to fly MiGs during the Vietnam War. They will remember that in the first weeks and months the future pilot was simply fattened (with the same red meat, cottage cheese and wine) so that metabolic processes would give the brain at least some “fuel” for assimilating not the most simple knowledge.

According to a number of studies, we have been becoming more stupid since the 1970s. Bernt Bratsberg and Ole Rozheberg from the Norwegian Center for Economic Research Ragnar Frisch took the time to analyze the IQ test results of more than 700 thousand people to reach this fundamental conclusion. But if you delve even knee-deep into their research, it turns out that those born in 1976 had an average IQ of 99.5 points, and those born in 1989 had an average IQ of 99.4 points. An impressive picture of the degradation of humanity, which, as we see, does not go beyond the scope of statistical error.

But even if the difference were 10–15 points, there would still be no reason . The result depends on the specifics of the cities (it could be, for example, a university or mining city) in which the research was conducted, and on the “quality” of the volunteers participating in the experiment. For example, Norwegian citizens of the same year of birth could graduate from high school in Oslo, or they could complete three grades in Mozambique or Senegal. Doesn't this affect their ability to solve geometry puzzles from the test?

Men of science can also be understood. If Norwegian scientists, having done titanic work with almost a million IQ tests, had directly said that their compatriots had not fundamentally changed over the past half century, would they have received the desired feedback? Would their citation ranking increase? Would they be invited as experts on television, would people line up for interviews with them? Would news outlets even consider the neutral outcome of their work worth mentioning? How soon would they be offered a grant for a new study?

Degeneration is a global threat to our main value - posterity. This is a topic that interests everyone, but without an alarmist element it is dead. You cannot gain attention in the media by declaring that in 5 years humanity will not go hungry. It's obvious. It’s another matter if a smart scientist calculated that in 5 years we will still be starving.

Science games

Half a century ago it was believed that in the natural sciences there was almost no possibility of providing a basis for adjustment. Two plus two, whatever one may say, is four. The acceleration of gravity is always stable, and the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the legs. However, even biology and physiology increasingly seem less and less like sacred tablets that we can consult to resolve intellectual disputes. This has its advantages - otherwise how would knowledge develop. But the diversity has reached the point of absurdity: thousands of specialists are circling around us, each of whom has a tablet with his own written text.

Today there are more practicing psychologists in developed countries than police officers, but they may not at all agree on how a person works and how he needs to be helped. The founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, spent years conjuring his patients' childhood experiences, but for the father of behaviorism, Frederick Burres Skinner, they did not matter in the slightest. The conditioned reflex, dynamic stereotype and dominant are seemingly indisputable classics for experts in the functioning of the brain, but exercises based on them are offered mutually exclusive. Or another genius conducted some experiments with rats and announced to the entire planet that we have neither personality nor free will. In people, not in rats.

According to the World Health Organization, the number of people with dementia in the world will double by . Isn't this proof of degeneracy? If you look at it, then no, it’s not proof. Firstly, in developed countries, life expectancy has increased, and the more old people there are, the more Alzheimer’s disease there is. Secondly, dementia has become more frequently reported. In the past, mental hospitals used to say that they did not deal with “ordinary” senile insanity. And now this scourge is included in many health insurance policies, and we have to deal with it more often.

Or this statement: in 2000, the world average IQ was 90.31 points, and by 2050 it will definitely drop to 86.67 points. If we move at this rate, in a century and a half, an adult will have the intelligence of a 9-year-old child. But if you drank two more cups of coffee this week than the previous one, this does not mean that this trend will continue forever. And in a year you will drink 104 more cups of coffee. The observation of scientists in this case means nothing at all.

But a group of British science luminaries led by Dr. Michael Woodley analyzed the reaction speed of modern people and those who lived in the Victorian era. Using another clever extrapolation, they calculated that for men in 1889 it was 183 milliseconds, while by 2000 this figure had dropped to 253 milliseconds. According to researchers, this means that people are becoming less and less intelligent, deprived of creative abilities. “Most likely, the decline in intelligence will lead back to the levels at which ancient people began during natural selection,” prophesies the good Dr. Woodley.

To completely confuse people, in defiance of pessimists, the voice of Dr. James Flynn , an American psychologist, breaks through, who in 1984 calculated that from 1932 to 1978 in the United States, the average IQ increased by almost 14 points. He hypothesized that humanity is actually getting smarter with each generation , and found so much evidence in different countries that this statistical phenomenon was called the “Flynn effect.” However, much more numerous opponents skillfully neutralized the upstart, partially recognizing his conclusions as some kind of anomaly: they say that there was a surge of “wiseness” several decades ago, and today we are degenerating again. Geneticist Steve Jones , a professor at University College London, says: “I might as well say that as a result of mutations, a person’s aggressiveness has decreased, depression or penis length has decreased. But it is unlikely that any journal will publish this. Why do they publish stories about degeneration?” The college where Jones works has been studying IQ scores around the world since 1950, and in 2015 summed up the results: there has been an increase in intelligence by 20 points, mainly due to developing Asian countries.

The apocalypse can wait
Back in 1857, the French psychiatrist Benedict-Augustin Morel proposed a theory according to which various pathologies intensify from father to son, which leads to the degeneration of both individual families and the entire society.
Morel believed that this would happen over four generations: first neuroses and alcoholism, then social failure up to cretinism. A dozen generations have passed since then. His views were developed by the famous psychiatrist Cesare Lombroso , who believed that we have an innate tendency to commit criminal acts, and that the future bandit can be guessed by measuring his jaw and ears with a caliper. And as if there is a connection between epilepsy and the tendency to break the law. Subsequently, this nonsense was exhaustively refuted, but the idea of our gradual degradation deeply “went down to the people . But the more complex and comfortable the world humanity created, the more alarmist scientists claimed that it was about to start drooling.

Faith in Reason

However, we are not talking at all about who is right: the blunt-ended ones or the sharp-pointed ones. To understand our world, it is important to know how easy it has become to introduce facts into scientific circulation . How susceptible scientific journals have become to grand claims that are difficult to verify. To what extent does corporate solidarity make scientists tolerant of the cheating practices of their colleagues? And how they strengthen the information mess in the heads of earthlings.

A person already feels confused against the backdrop of the vigorous entry of artificial intelligence into our lives. The amount of knowledge known to mankind doubles every 20 years. We don’t have time to deeply understand everything – it’s good if we managed to “get on board” with the main trends. Ten times in a year have you seen messages that humanity is degenerating? Well, that means that's how it is. This is what scientists say – and trust in science is still high.

The soul asks for a brief and clear explanation; we don’t like it when halftones appear. For example, James Flynn noted that today humanity knows more thanks to advanced education and smart books, but thinks superficially and is easily manipulated. That is, the IQ is growing, but we are not becoming smarter .

The very concept of intelligence is becoming less and less acceptable to serious researchers, not to mention the IQ test created at the beginning of the last century. Football player Lionel Messi has an outstanding gaming intelligence, which allows him to analyze in a split second where each of the two dozen players will move and where the ball will fly, but it is unlikely that he will be able to prove Vieta’s theorem. A brilliant mathematician may be completely devoid of the ability to understand the feelings of the people around him. He may have five patents for inventions in the IT field, but he will not be able to light a fire in the forest without an axe, newspaper, gasoline and matches. Can we say that he is a degenerate? No, he was just used to buying ready-made coals with lighter fluid in the store. Likewise, progress has weaned us from archery.

The fact that the story about the degeneration of humanity is somewhat far-fetched can be judged by its gender aspect. In television studios you will never hear that women are degrading, otherwise a terrible scandal will arise. But the degeneration of men is a popular topic.

Australian anthropologist Peter McAllister writes in his book Mantropology: The Science of the Inadequacy of the Modern Male: “If you’re reading this, you, or the guy you bought her for, are the worst man ever. No ifs. No "buts". The worst, period." Publicist Tony Parsons responds with surprise: “The worst? In what sense? Less empathetic? Less smart? Less capable of filling out a VAT refund form or bringing a woman to vaginal orgasm? No, McAllister means that we are the weakest of men. The weakest spiritually? Morally? No, he wants to say that we are physically weak. The good old Neanderthals were tougher, faster, stronger than the modern gentleman - sterilized, low fat. The physical decline of men is the central theme of McAllister's book." But why then are sports clubs sold out in the evenings? Does a rare world record in sports last for at least a couple of years? And would a Neanderthal help a child learn physics, sell seventeen wagons of crushed stone, go to a hypermarket for groceries and negotiate with the right people to renovate his dacha?

McAlister studied the fossilized footprints of an Australian aboriginal who lived 20 thousand years ago, and by some miracle came to the conclusion: he ran after a kangaroo almost as fast as Usain Bolt at the London Olympics. And female newspaper columnists between 40 and 60 years old who have not experienced happiness in love are very fond of judging men by their ability to grab a kangaroo’s butt. “Poor, pathetic creatures, these modern men,” writes Liz Jones in the Mail on Sunday. - What weaklings. What dummies." Any Western columnist who writes about women with the same disgust will be immediately accused of sexism and lose his job.

In the orphanages of Russia in the 2000s, the largest number of social orphans per capita in the world languished. But it wasn’t the alcoholics and drug addicts of the 1990s who rented them there. Record statistics took shape back in the 1980s, when social assistance to mothers was quite decent, and the builders of socialism, boasting of their decency, fiercely condemned long-haired informals. The informals grew up and took half a million orphans into their families, although all that was left of the social system were ruins. You need to look at any process from different angles, and not let different rubbish into your brain without checking.

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Watch your hands

One of the main arguments for degeneration lies in our supposedly ever-decreasing IQ. But the publication of tables with IQ data by country and era is shocking . If Wilhelm Stern introduced the concept of “IQ” in 1912, how were modern scientists able to assess the abilities of a Victorian Englishman?

It seems that many researchers are simply tailoring the data to produce the results they want. And the situation is conducive to this - research based on AI and “big data” is in fashion. For example, they decided to show that poor ecology affects the brain even in the womb. The IQ of children 4-6 years old born in the most polluted regions of the United States was two points lower than that of their peers in cities with better ecology. Scientists at Lancaster University surveyed 18,000 young Britons to come to similar conclusions: children with mental retardation are more likely to live in areas with polluted air. What does this mean? About the connection between ecology and intelligence? About the need to support the “climate lobby”? Or is it about the fact that wealthy families, capable of giving their children better early development, settle, oddly enough, away from waste incineration plants?

Research showing that greenhouse gases impair our memory, concentration and decision-making is inexpensive. As well as the fact that red meat, dairy products, tobacco and alcohol, even in very moderate doses, will turn you into a degenerate. Tell that to Hemingway, Sinatra or Sir Winston Churchill . Tell this to the Soviet military instructors who taught the Viet Cong to fly MiGs during the Vietnam War. They will remember that in the first weeks and months the future pilot was simply fattened (with the same red meat, cottage cheese and wine) so that metabolic processes would give the brain at least some “fuel” for assimilating not the most simple knowledge.

According to a number of studies, we have been becoming more stupid since the 1970s. Bernt Bratsberg and Ole Rozheberg from the Norwegian Center for Economic Research Ragnar Frisch took the time to analyze the IQ test results of more than 700 thousand people to reach this fundamental conclusion. But if you delve even knee-deep into their research, it turns out that those born in 1976 had an average IQ of 99.5 points, and those born in 1989 had an average IQ of 99.4 points. An impressive picture of the degradation of humanity, which, as we see, does not go beyond the scope of statistical error.

But even if the difference were 10-15 points, there would still be no reason to talk seriously about degeneration. The result depends on the specifics of the cities (it could be, for example, a university or mining city) in which the research was conducted, and on the “quality” of the volunteers participating in the experiment. For example, Norwegian citizens of the same year of birth could graduate from high school in Oslo, or they could complete three grades in Mozambique or Senegal. Doesn't this affect their ability to solve geometry puzzles from the test?

Degeneration is a global threat to our main value - posterity. This is a topic that interests everyone, but without an alarmist element it is dead. You cannot gain media attention by declaring that in five years humanity will not go hungry. It's obvious. It’s another matter if a smart scientist calculated that in five years we will still be starving.

Personality degradation: main causes

Among the causes of degradation, there are different ones, but without exception, they cause harm to humans.

You should have an idea of the causes of degradation and their main components:

1. Loneliness, loss of loved ones

. The state of degradation is more common among lonely people. Death, distance from loved ones, loss of mutual understanding with friends, lack of blood relatives nearby are among the possible causes of loneliness. A person suffers from not being able to share his emotions. He feels that he is not in demand, and the feeling of uselessness for people and society as a whole increases. Based on this, a reluctance to live and take care of oneself makes itself felt. Loneliness provokes depression and suicidal tendencies.

2. Social isolation

. Personal regression is possible in a situation where a person is excluded from society. Deprivation of work, retirement, and a person sees himself cut off from a life in which there was significance for him. Day after day I had to follow a routine and reckon with time - in connection with work, family, and communication with colleagues, although forced, gave life a feeling of fullness and meaning.

3. Dismissal

– as if revealing empty horizons, prompting you to give an explanation for your existence. The usual way of life is disrupted, and along with it, the attitude towards oneself. Family is a means of feeling your own importance, no matter how it is expressed: preparing meals or participating in a conversation when your opinion is taken into account. If family members ignore a person or are absent, without attention and support, there is a prerequisite for degradation.

4. Laziness and apathy. Regression can begin due to laziness, a banal refusal to perform basic actions. This is expressed as avoidance of duties that require effort or responsibility.

As an employee, he can create the appearance of a process in the workplace, but carry all his thoughts home, and upon arriving from work, completely ignore all matters vying for attention.

5. It would seem that the need for pleasure to go out into the world, into nature, or another reason would prompt a person to show all sorts of activity. But such a person is also too lazy to do anything nice for himself. His experience extends beyond drinking alcohol with fast food in front of the TV. Mental development is supported by watching television programs that do not provide spiritual or intellectual food. Relaxation with indulgence in bad habits can be partly useful - in very small doses to eliminate overwork.

6. Low self-esteem

, guilt. Any person is not immune from repeated defeat in the personal and professional spheres. At the same time, self-esteem suffers, faith in oneself and in one’s luck disappears. Some people are motivated by failure, while others are irrevocably discouraged. A person does not stop blaming himself, he is not able to start something new, getting down to business, to become motivated, but only continues to dwell on the past with its mistakes.

The famous psychologist Abraham Maslow preferred to consider human degradation in the form of stages:

Refusal of responsibility for one's own life. The individual occupies the position of a follower in relations with people, allows decisions to be made instead of himself, and does not realize the importance of his own personality, the strength of his will.
The need for development and respect is not felt. Only physiological needs are a priority.
The personality loses the perception of the multidimensionality of phenomena: people become friends or strangers for him; things are “black” or “white”.
Feelings of guilt predominate. A person becomes overly self-critical and considers himself guilty of things that do not depend on him.
Dependence on stereotypes: a person adheres to rules created by himself, which he is not able to rethink.

Alcoholism and drug addiction should be separately mentioned as causes of degradation. These diseases fetter a person’s will, as a result of which they have a fatal impact on his fate.