by Roger Bourke White Jr., copyright June 2014
For purposes of Post-Snap, forecasting what people think about can be divided into two broad categories: heart thinking and head thinking.
Heart thinking is emotional and instinctive thinking. It's easy, fast and very comfortable to do. We all do a lot of instinctive thinking, and we're happy when we can. Instinctive thinking is created by evolution to handle common problems that have faced an organism and its ancestors for thousands or millions of generations. An extreme example is the vision system, that has been experimented on through trillions of generations -- starting long before there were humans. A less extreme and more modern example is tribal thinking -- Us versus Them thinking. Instinctive thinking takes a long time to develop, so the most recent environment that human instinctive thinking is well adapted for is the Neolithic Village environment -- the Stone Age. That basic framework has been embellished a bit by the hundred or so generations of Agricultural Age living much of humanity has experienced and just a touch by the Industrial Age environment -- that's been with us fifteen generations at most.
Head thinking is learned thinking. It's not warm, not fuzzy, and a lot of work to acquire. But head thinking can deal with all kinds of situations that instinctive thinking hasn't a clue how to handle. A couple of examples of head thinking are learning to drive a car and operate a smart phone. An important subset of learned thinking is analytical thinking -- learning how to analyze a situation before deciding what course of action to take.
Living in the civilized human environment requires a mix of heart thinking and head thinking -- instinctive and analytic thinking, as I will usually call them. The art of civilized thinking consists of two parts: a) learning how to think analytically, as in, learning how to use that style quickly and comfortably when the situation calls for it. This is sometimes called learning how to learn. b) learning how to mix analytic and instinctive thinking to find good solutions to real world problems. This is wisdom.
Another thinking feature we humans have picked up from the wide variety of environments we lived in as Neolithics is thinking adaptability. Humans can live from the Arctic to the tropics and our thinking adapts well to whatever local conditions are.
This adapting happens so well, humans don't even think about it. This is called taking something for granted. It works well because it speeds up thinking. Going outside on a winter night in the tropics? Just do it. Going outside on a winter night in the arctic? Don't forget to bundle up! But this adaptability thinking only works well when what is taken for granted matches the conditions that actually exist around the person. I call these conditions harsh reality.
If the harsh reality around a person changes and their adaptive thinking hasn't caught up on the change, the person is being delusional. Most of the time this is a minor problem because it is quickly fixed by experiencing harsh reality and when that happens adaptive thinking quickly changes. Most of the time... but there can be times when that feedback doesn't happen. The most tragic is when a leader is protected from harsh reality by sycophants and as a result makes expensive choices for his followers -- expensive as in having them experience a preventable hardship or full-fledged disaster.
Another time this kind of delusion shows up is when a person or community is getting wealth out of thin air. Three examples of this are aboriginal people who are given money to replace access to their traditional hunting and fishing grounds, chronic welfare recipients, and citizens of countries where most of the wealth comes from extracting a natural resource, such as pumping oil in the Middle East and Russia. For these people money comes from putting up with government bureaucratic grief. That leads to a distinctly different world view on the part of community members and bureaucrats compared to communities where widespread manufacturing and commerce is the source of wealth.
Where this delusion problem will come up in the Post-Snap environment is that the cyber infrastructure will be doing most of the manufacturing and service work. This means that humans will be getting much of their material goods and services from thin air as far as they are concerned, much like resource-rich communities of today. They will adapt to this condition and take it for granted. At the emotional level this manna from cyber heaven will not be considered any kind of miracle any more than food stamps are considered a miracle by food stamp recipients today.
The general effect of increasing abundance on human thinking is to liberate emotional thinking. One example: Following through on romantic love was a silly notion in Shakespeare's time -- Romeo and Juliet was as real as Star Trek is today. Thanks to the Industrial Revolution romantic love as a basis for marriage has become quite feasible in many developed cultures. (And... it is taken for granted in those cultures. <grin>)
As the harsh reality of working for basic living necessities recedes, working for heart-felt causes becomes more and more feasible.
So in the Post-Snap world many humans will be able to "let their heart be their guide" much more so than today. Which means, yes, our lives will become more movie-like.
With these concepts as a basis, lets look at what humans will be thinking about.
The heart of thinking change Post-Snap is the change in harsh reality: People will not have to work for a living because cybers are working for a living. They can, but they won't have to. Mixed in with this is the second big reality: The increased diversity in how to live that prosperity offers. Given this potent mix, here are some changes I see coming.
More and more people will let their heart be their guide -- they have no reason not to. This means that "lazy thinking" by today's standards will become standard. Urban legend will thrive and people will join causes because it feels good to do so. This means things such as saving puppies, kittens and kids will loom larger in people's thinking. So will atoning for the sins of ancestors, helping distant poor people, saving distant rainforests and similar heart-strings-tugging causes. Another kind of thinking that will thrive is taking cheap shots in what are percieved as Us versus Them situations. The stories of worker abuse that are a staple of Mother Jones are an example of this happening today.
One thinking style that will suffer is tolerance. Tolerance is a learned style of thinking. Globalization calls for it when humans are doing most of the coordinating. But when cybers are doing most of the coordinating, provincialism will become more common and tolerant thinking will become a hard-earned accomplishment.
Immigrating to find a better job opportunity is the backbone of a lot of tolerant thinking. The immigrant is forced to discover that there are a lot of right ways to do things. If lots of people in a community don't have to move to find a better job, the culture drifts towards contemporary Appalachian Moutain Culture with its rich belief in mythologies and strong Us versus Them thinking.
People love to tell other people what to do and what is right. Since harsh reality won't contradict the opinion makers, this instinct can intensify. This means that urban legends will flourish as justifications for why the busybodies can prescribe the way they do. Because of the diversity of lifestyles possible, moralizing will consume a lot of human time and attention in Post-Snap. The expensive side of this will be when the moralizers use exile as a tool to enforce their opinions of what is right and wrong. A contemporary example is the huge prison population in the US (a modern form of exile) spawned by the strong opinions on right and wrong drug use.
Exile is expensive in its own right. It is triply so because it is disenfranchising. The disenfranchisement and huge expense this moralizing-plus-exile causes will still be with us Post-Snap. This means that gangs, smuggling, corruption and violence will still be with us.
It is a human instinct to worry. Material prosperity and social security will be taken for granted, so people's worry instinct will have to look elsewhere, and it will. A fairly benine example from today: This instinct is at the root of enjoying horror and slasher movies. A much more costly example: This instinct is at the root of many over-the-top "Save the children" prescriptions and programs we live with today.
As pointed out in the section above. Us versus Them thinking will be alive and well, which means prescription and disenfranchisement will also thrive, as in, "Those people are strange... and they aren't doing things the right way!" This means we shouldn't expect crime to diminish. But much more than today, what is considered criminal will be irrelevant to the harsh reality of surviving. Much crime will be about what would be considered trivial issues in any "work for a living" environment. Example: Forty years ago kids could ride in cars the same as adults do. Now laws are being broken when that happens. Now to be legal lots of elaborate seating is required. And in some places residents are clamoring for similar laws for pets riding in cars.
Expect even more of this over-the-top busybodiness and panicking in the Post-Snap world, "Hey! It's saving the children and we can afford it!" Also expect that because of the diversity of lifestyles possible, moral panics will consume a lot of human attention.
A traditional religions are supported by faith, a kind of instinctive thinking, so there is no reason for them to wither in the face of Post-Snap reality. They will continue strong, in particular those that mix in a lot of entertainment, Us versus Them thinking (exclusiveness), or personal self-expression will continue to find strong support.
In addition, if religion is defined as a mix of faith, ritual and sacrifice, this will be a time when plenty of new religions spring up. If a formal announcement that it is starting is not considered an essential element for being a religion, new religions spring up constantly. One of the most visible to spring up in my lifetime is the passenger screening at airports. I call it Worshiping at the Altar of the Holy Metal Detector and its priesthood is the TSA. It's a religion because of how much of its function depends on the faith of the passengers. If what people are saying and thinking determines how well something works, its a faith. (Your car starting when you turn the key is an example of the opposite: fact. That happens no matter what you think or say.) If people are going through lots of inconvenient procedures to support their faith, those are rituals. If people are spending lots of extra time and money to support the faith, that's sacrifice. The passenger screening side of airport security is a religion; a strongly supported one.
Another contemporary movement with lots of religious elements is the green movement. The root faith is that the world is going to hell in a handbasket because of human activity. For many greens the personal sacrifice prism is used to decide which solutions are helpful. Example: factory farming, which reduces the resources used to make food, is considered an affront, not a helpful solution. This choice of prism means those solutions chosen as correct by greenies are rituals, not cost-effective solutions. And when they are advocating support for billion dollar solutions that sound good to instinctive thinking, such as the cost ineffective windmills and solar panels of the early 2010's, it's more faith in action. In sum, the green movement acts like a religion.
In the 2010's health, nutrition, personal motivation, and child raising are topics which support a lot of instinct-oriented advice giving. These are modern religions. As the Snap happens and human society gets more and more divorced from the producing and servicing harsh realities, many new flavors of religions will spring up, and these existing ones are likely to grow stronger -- people will pay even more attention to urban legend than they do today.