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Chris Ryan's avatar

Interesting, but I wonder if a lot of your critique would be resolved by looking at other meanings of the word, "shock." You seem to limit yourself to something being "shocking," whereas I've always interpreted "Future Shock" to be more akin to "being in shock," which aligns quite well with the numbness you decry. A state of shock is triggered by events too sudden and overwhelming to process: a car accident, a bomb going off, a sudden death of a loved one. I think a good bit of our numbness is due to being oversaturated with immediate news from all over the world (no need to wait for Walter Cronkite to tell it "the way it is" at 6pm), assurances of impending doom (melting ice caps, extinction of pollinators, aquifers running dry, lunatics and fools being elected). We are in a state of future shock because too much is going too wrong too quickly, leading many of us to wonder if there's any future at all.

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Steve Meyer's avatar

“We are all just prisoners here of our own device.” - Eagles, ‘Hotel California’

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