I see the meaning crisis as a function of increased neoteny. Parents provide meaning for children, elders provide meaning for adults. We don’t have village elders and everyone is getting more child-like as they get wealthier.
Huh, I think I agree with lots of components of this, but somehow they’re linked together in a way that seems shaky to me, or like it’s jumping too far too quickly.
Like, yes there’s increased neoteny, and yes there’s increased wealth, but it’s another leap to say that wealth makes people more neotenous. [More likely, from my models, there’s another thing that is causing both, like the increased size and specialization of society. People have to learn longer / have more subservient roles to fit into larger, more complicated organizations, and those larger, more complicated organizations are better at producing goods and services / serving as ‘parents’ for much longer. More peace leads to less trauma which leads to less ‘growing up fast.’]
I see the meaning crisis as a function of increased neoteny. Parents provide meaning for children, elders provide meaning for adults. We don’t have village elders and everyone is getting more child-like as they get wealthier.
Huh, I think I agree with lots of components of this, but somehow they’re linked together in a way that seems shaky to me, or like it’s jumping too far too quickly.
Like, yes there’s increased neoteny, and yes there’s increased wealth, but it’s another leap to say that wealth makes people more neotenous. [More likely, from my models, there’s another thing that is causing both, like the increased size and specialization of society. People have to learn longer / have more subservient roles to fit into larger, more complicated organizations, and those larger, more complicated organizations are better at producing goods and services / serving as ‘parents’ for much longer. More peace leads to less trauma which leads to less ‘growing up fast.’]