Isolation must decrease empathy for others. Being around the same group of other people a lot increases your empathy for them, which makes it harder to hurt them. We don’t have that failsafe anymore.

For what it’s worth, I agree with you.

But I still don’t want to live with my narcissistic MAGA parents, so…evidently things have gone really far sideways and it’ll be hard to rebuild that social fabric.

Thanks. Talking about this stuff has been getting me weird looks from other people. Modern civilization is so ingrained that people haven’t thought to recognize the water they’re swimming in, and forget that the lifestyle we have today is less than 200 years old, and that’s it’s all escalating in an unsustainable way….

I had the realization last night as I was struggling to do the dishes and fold my laundry that it is evolutionarily unnatural for humans to have so much stuff to take care of. Like, we spent most of our existence as humans living in highly mobile bands with the bare necessities for survival plus ceremonial items.

It’s no wonder that I don’t want to spend time thinking about what I’m going to wear every morning and that I’m happy to wear the same comfortable outfit every day. Most humans in history had like a single outfit with optional modifications for weather and ceremony.

It’s no wonder that I get overwhelmed with a ton of food in my fridge and that most of it ends up going bad because I can’t eat it all. I’m supposed to be cooking what’s immediately available and sharing that food with my band members so there are no leftovers.

It’s no wonder that I don’t want to scrub toilets or vacuum. My brain evolved to have a one or two room tent or wooden structure to maintain.

It’s no wonder that I don’t want to sit in a box all day and stare at a box that has shapes and colors on it, looking for meaning. I would rather listen to my friends tell stories and spend my days fixing a few tools as needed and finding food. I want to find meaning in relationships, in other people, not in screens and complex organizations.

I could go on.

I’d love to learn how many people have cancelled their connection to Amazon in the last two months. I keep hearing stories of people doing it, across many social media platforms.