Shock of the present: living in a world with no history or future

Do you have the feeling that time is not enough for you? Do you feel like a fire extinguisher who has to continually deal with unexpected and presumed emergencies? Can't see your future? Do you think that almost everything has been invented and that there is still very little to do again? Do you think that no future time can overcome the present and that we have reached the maximum of our abilities?

If so, it is likely that you are suffering from a phenomenon as common as it is unknown: the "shock of the present". Due to the completely new relationship that we have developed with time - on a social and personal level - we live in a moment that escapes us faster and faster as we lose the connection with the future and the past.

What is the shock of the present?

The shock of the present is an idea developed by Douglas Rushkoff, a professor at the University of New York. He describes it as a potentially burdensome and even paralyzing state of mind in which we get stuck in the present, losing many of the points of connection with the future and the past.

The shock of the present, however, does not lead us to a Zen state, but rather plunges us into a kind of mental chaos. “It makes us exist in a distracted present where peripheral forces are magnified […] Our ability to make a plan and follow it is disrupted by a large number of external factors. Instead of finding a steady path in the here and now, we end up reacting in an improvised way to all the assaults that arise during the day, ” says Rushkoff.

However, the shock of the present does not depend solely on technology - although this has contributed a lot - but rather it is a state that has established itself on a social level and has ended up penetrating many of us. It is a way of facing reality with such a presentist approach that it ends up short-sighted.

“Our company has been redirected to the present. Everything is shown live, in real time, and is always connected. It is not simply an acceleration of things, therefore our lifestyle and our technologies have accelerated at the rate at which we try to do things. Rather, it's a diminution of everything that's not happening now - and the onslaught of everything that's supposed to be happening, ” Rushkoff explains.

The psychological consequences of the shock of the present

Rushkoff refers to the different ways in which the shock of the present manifests itself in our lives. Once established, this phenomenon not only changes our habits and behaviors, but also dangerously alters the dynamics of our thinking.

• Narrative collapse

This is the triumph of immediacy over precision, a phenomenon that is perfectly found in the news of the media, but which has also spread to different levels and leads us to make numerous mistakes and inaccuracies in everyday life. It is the triumph of approximation over precision.

Indeed, narrative collapse is the final blow to intelligent and complex speeches as we are unable to follow its logic or simply do not have enough time to reflect. Instead, we prioritize simplistic solutions, which lead to a brutal loss of the richness and complexity that characterize all the phenomena we are exposed to.

• Digifrenia

The technology that allows us to be in different places at the same time and helps us take on different identities has developed digifrenia, which is a confused state of mind caused by having too many identities active in parallel.

These identities are often disconnected from each other, so we make a huge effort every day to get out of one role and into the other. The constant change of identity puts us under enormous stress with harmful consequences for health.

• Fractalnoia

It is the tendency to look for meaning in a frozen present, without taking into account the logical sequences of cause and effect. This phenomenon is largely due to the large amount of information we are exposed to and the need to respond instantly, so as not to have time to follow the plot over time or develop a thoughtful, forward-looking response.

But when there is no linear time, when we lose the connection with the past and the future, it is impossible for us to make sense of what is happening to us, so the causes and effects collapse. We are then left in a chaotic world, where we have no choice but to respond blindly.

• Apocalypto

As society has lost faith in its ability to solve global crises and problems because it is unable to find "head and tail" in the situation we live in, our desire to get out of the presentist maze makes us fantasize about apocalyptic endings. In this way, many people find it easier to imagine an apocalypse of epic proportions than to think about what we will do next month or year.

The shock of the present, therefore, unleashes a deeply catastrophic thought that envelops us in pessimism and leads us to imagine the worst tragedies around the corner. Immersed in a state of learned helplessness , without understanding how we got to this point and without knowing how to get out of it assertively, we just have to fantasize about apocalyptic endings.

In this way, we end up being people who react to what happens, without reflecting too much on the causes because we don't want to look to the past and without stopping to think about the consequences of our actions, because we don't have time to project ourselves into the future.

Due to the shock of the present, every reaction becomes a black hole of unwanted possibilities and consequences. Thus we end up being suggestible and manipulable objects that move according to the way the winds of presentism blow, forgetting that we must be the captains of our life, that we must be the wind and not the flag.

Source:

Rushkoff, D. (2013)  Present shock . New York: Penguin Group.