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I really think that half the reason we are seeing so much agitation in the world is just old-fashioned boredom. Not the "There's nothing to do around here" kind of Saturday-afternoon layabout boredom, but a spiritual ennui that is a direct result of material surfeit.

All the bridges have been built. All the mountains have been climbed. All the challenges have been met and overcome, and in the minds of some, that leaves our world with nothing to do, no reason to go on. So they either invent "causes" or start movements that will tear it all down so they can start over.

It's no surprise that the anarchist movement has re-emerged, and that generations in Europe and even here in the United States are turning their backs on historical notions of "success." We call them "slackers" and "Gen Y" and a host of other disparaging names, but they reflect the emptiness that defines the post-modern world.

Something will move in to fill the void. Nature abhorreth a vacuum.

[I really think that half the reason we are seeing so much agitation in the world is just old-fashioned boredom. Not the "There's nothing to do around here" kind of Saturday-afternoon layabout boredom, but a spiritual ennui that is a direct result of material surfeit.]

Hysteria is big business in the media. First they create it, then they report it. The more people that get drawn into the hysteria, the more advertising in the midst of hysteria costs, the more money is made.

Hysteria is personal for the social bubble clicks in the elite echelon ranks of the rich and famous. They strive to attain some sense of self worth. In their own minds, self worth is the measure of what your social bubble colleagues think of you. If you are Alec Baldwin, it is important that Martin Sheen think you are making a difference in the world. This makes Alec feel good.

Hysteria is a tool for politicians. The more hysteria there is, the more justification for legislation, the more important they are, the more their face is on TV, the more spots they will get in the history books. Hysteria gives them an opportunity to react with media sound bytes.

Oddly, all three of these groups work in unison to feed to and off of each other. The rest of America seems to just let the hysteria become everyday life and absorbs it as fact after hearing the same crap enough. A few (like those posting and reading hear) challenge the fodder and educate themselves by exploring alternate information sources.

Agreed. People NEED stress, NEED something to fight. Lacking maurading hoards, crop failures, elusive game, hypo/hyper-thermia, etc. they must find challenges and opponents from ... instant cash from ATMs, quality cheap food delivered, controlled atmospheres, clean water, ... there just isn't anything to get worked up about. Everything is perfect. Even our poor are fat, watch cable TV, and have air conditioners. Faced with the great evils of secondhand smoke, trans-fats, etc. and working gruelling 40-hour weeks, we barely live to our what, 90s?

The challenges are gone. The height of civilization has been reached. Bored silly, we need SOMETHING to rail against, view as life-threatening, hate, oppose, worry about.

Interesting how some fiction captures the concept well:

Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from. Which is why the Matrix was redesigned to this: the peak of your civilization.
- Agent Smith, _The_Matrix_

and while I can't find the quote offhand, H2G2 notes that future medical science reaches the point where all injuries and diseases are eradicated, boring everyone to the point that artifically induced injuries are provided to motivate people again.

You have nailed it on the head. Back a few years ago, I got into a minor disagreement with my vegetarian nephew. He was telling me how evil it was to eat meat. I explained one of the reasons he and so many of his generation have gone that way is because it's trendy and is an easy lifestyle in America. No problem going to the local supermarket and buying boca burgers and other easily prepared stuff. It's simple to live out these kinds of beliefs when one does not have to waste time on surviving like so many poor in this world that would be grateful to have any food, whether animal or vegetable. These newfound beliefs of so many are a product of a culture that has a lot of time on its hands.

Well said.

In the same vein:

"At the same time we have, ironically, come to fear the world around us as never before. In the absence of real risks, we invent new and often quite fanciful ones. The better off in our society, who have the least to really worry about, are most prone to this novel neurosis of our age – fearing instant death from the contents of their dinner plates, unless chosen with obsessive care, and 'unacceptable' physical decline from failure to follow every faddist trend recommended by their personal fitness trainers. We fear that our children are constantly in danger from strangers – despite the fact that the vast majority of child abuse occurs within the family – and feel compelled to ensure their safe arrival at school by transporting them in people carriers – while at the same time decrying the depletion of fossil fuels and 'unacceptable' levels of environmental pollution – and we wonder why our children are getting fat. In this constant state of irrational fretfulness we start lose our faith in anything which looks like science – preferring to put our faith in the 'Emperor's Clothes' of homeopathic and other forms of 'complementary' medicine, while withdrawing children from rational and safe vaccination programs aimed at preventing an epidemic of measles following irresponsible scare mongering in our newspapers."

"Our flight from rationality is evidenced in other panics which currently preoccupy us. The development of biotechnology, for example, which holds real promise for the eradication of famine in much less fortunate parts of our planet, is resisted by the fit and well-fed for fear that we shall release Frankenstein's monster – despite the fact that Americans having been eating this stuff for over a decade without a single ill-effect. As the extremists among them plan their activist campaigns using mobile phones, they see no irony in trying to convince us all that the aerials and masts which facilitate such coordinated action will fry our brains – and particularly our children's brains – again despite the absence of any real evidence for such beliefs. They are the same people that once argued that steam trains would asphyxiate all their passengers if they travelled at more than thirty miles per hour, and that dangerous electricity could leak from uncovered light fittings. The trouble now is that people believe them."

"It is in the context of this post-rational era that the notion of 'lifestyle correctness', founded largely on narcissistic health ideals, has come to shape the direction of people's lives in ways which once characterised the power of formal religions. In place of faith in the creeds and tenets of the established church, we now follow slavishly the equally false promises of the health promotion professions – those who would have us believe that if we lead the 'good' life we will have unending life and beauty."

In Praise of Bad Habits