Contemporary thinking is king.
As a tribe of humans we all tend to fall in line with our fellow members overall thoughts and beliefs. It’s our ancestral survival mechanism housed in the mind developed over many thousands of years. If our thinking matches the mass thinking, it’s a safety in numbers thing.
After all, if everyone is doing it, they can’t be wrong….can they?
Well…..maybe not.
Even though, yes, the accepted normal thinking base has kept us alive and able to lead a reasonable life. What it has also done has put up untrue red flags and fear opinions that have stunted potential progress.
True that we have crossed the seas, climbed the mountains, and flew to the moon. But current thinking has also poured bad waters on common opinion and almost wrecked our potential before it has even started.
We get there with some things in the end, but at the start we kill plenty else off through the thinking of the day.
Let’s catch a train and I’ll show you.
The Mind of Fear.
Have you heard of the Bullet Train?
It is perfectly named. These Shinkansen super fast Japanese trains travel at up to 320 km/h and have been in operation since the 1960’s. More impressive is that Japan now wants to go one step further. The Maglev Train is in development that has the potential to cross the country at a phenomenal 600 km/h.
A far cry from the early days of train travel in the 1800’s.
Where the concept of mega quick trains appears exciting, back in the pioneering days thinking on the street was far from thrilled. In fact, it was in sheer panic.
The earliest trains were open to the air and even though barely going above 20mph, the belief was that passengers would suffocate at that ‘high’ speed. Roll on slightly to the 1860’s and the Victorian era and the advent of covered carriages. Problem solved?
Quite the opposite. A new fear filled belief took hold called, ‘Railway Madness’.
This condition was a mental anxiety caused by the movement of the train over the tracks with the motion causing a quick onset of hysteria. Having read everyday newspapers that revealed growing instances of this lunatic reaction, the public of the day soon contended that train travel would turn you mad.
The only thing crazy about this is how crazy it seems to us today with our 100+ mph trains.
But, that’s how current thinking spreads into wider minds and creates narratives that aren’t real.
But, it wasn’t just the Victorians, we have always practised this.
Bad for the eyes and the mind.
The humble television, as normal in our homes as any device there has ever been.
So much so that in 2016 there were an estimated 2 billion TV sets across the world. And that was 10 years ago!! We’ve loved our TV’s from the very start, Er, well, not quite so.
In the 1960’s General Electric released a small batch of faulty sets. They emitted the wrong type of radiation and needed a simple fix to solve which occurred not long after the problem was identified. Too late for some. Before checking the situation and remedy, officials warned people not to sit too close to the TV screen as it was likely to cause eye sight damage.
Of course, it was a current thinking fear projection and wasn’t true.
But have you heard of this advice or even been told it by a parent or teacher at school? There you go, a myth that still persists to this day though was never medically diagnosed. TV set sales fell for a while due to this and even today we sit our TV away from us (though that’s also partly due to them being so huge and have to go on a wall).
Current fear mentality can hang around. It can even prevent progress pretty damn quick.
Heard of the Y2K bug?
Nearing the end of 1999 it was everywhere and on everyone’s lips!
Computer meltdown.
As the last Century closed, the use of computers was surging.
In 1999 in just the space of a few years global home computer sales had hit 213 million. It was an epic rise by over 50% on the previous year. The market was surging and computers were the future. Until the future threatened to kill them off. At least in some people’s minds.
The media picked up on a little known issue whereby to save memory space computers only recognised the last two digits of a year. As 2000 fast approached and millions of people were using their computers daily, fears grew what might happen.
These worries became growing alarm became a global cyber bug that had planes falling from skies and banks systems failing with our money stuck in them.
Current thinking had met current use. And current crazed minds.
A basic extra update was added to safeguard, but guess what? Nothing at all went wrong.
You see, that’s us. Current beliefs and minds can scaremonger. From witches burned at the stake to the Luddites who destroyed new textile machines. From microwave meals frying us inside to MTV killing off radio, we press the worry button and pass it on.
So let this be a proper warning to you. Current thinking today will be the same as it was hundreds of years ago, It will find fault, find flaws. find death and destruction, find how it will fail, and find it’s way into the mass psyche to plant negative seeds of thought.
Don’t let it find you!
Whatever you want to do, use, create, or enjoy….don’t let modern mentality kill your fun or dream.
Photo attribution – free to use under Pixabay Content License by TyliJura and geralt.
References – ashley.collie.medium.com – sixty years on television sets.
Whatculture.com – everyday inventions that caused widespread panic.
Britannica.com – the Y2K bug.
Wired.com – half of us own a PC.
