Human beings react to various stimuli. Society similarly churns about in the ocean of stimuli from the single person, to the group, and on up.
By your suggestion can I assume that you are of the mind that 'man lives in a bubble, and nothing external changes the mind'?
I find the direction you are going in interesting, but first I have to take issue with a point you made.
But now we enter a new period where there is an increase in negative stimuli, and decrease in the age it is aquired (en masse, via easily absorbed entertainment)
This is a misrepresentation of reality in my view. Please tell me when in recorded history there was even a close ratio of good to bad stimuli? There is absolutely no such thing as "the good old days"; that's selective memory as viewed through the mind of a nostalgic old person. In every period you can name, bad stimuli outweighed the good (usually in the form of fanaticism and targeted misinformation to control the masses) The only difference today is the sheer magnitude of stimuli society is exposed to is exponentially greater than in the past due to the technical wonders of the digital age and the hunger for media consumption in the information age. I'd say if anything, the ratio of good stimuli is actually closer to the much larger bad stimuli today more than any other time.
There were no videogames in the middle ages, nor comic books, nor hip hop or heavy metal, nor TV or movies. Yet easily some of recorded history's worst mass atrocities were committed in the years between 900 and 1300. That was the enlightened period when forms of inflicting torture on people were devised that I could never fathom using on actual people even after having played Manhunt and its sequel, and when medicine women had to be afraid of being burned alive while tied to a stake if they were too good at their profession. I don't think they had Max Payne 3 back then. That's just one period in history.
This comment was edited on Aug 20, 2012, 20:52.
“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”
- Mahatma Gandhi