People have not changed at all. They have not become neither more evil nor more kind.

It is undeniably true though, that people have become less physically violent. This is very important, and it’s a wonderful development. As a society, we have become more civil.

But on the individual level, new outlets for externalized aggression are found. Violence used to serve as an outlet, family, too. There’s still a lot of violence, both physical and emotional, in families, but as we became more isolated from each other as a society, the Internet and group tribalism replaced family as an outlet for violence. The widening gap between democrats and republicans is a good illustration of that. Social justice warriors and third wave feminism, also. There is so much hatred and intolerance for “intolerant” people that only those drunk on their “tolerance” cannot see it. So instead of real wars, we just wage wars online, we wage cultural wars now. We are just as self-righteous and self-aggrandizing as ever before, ego must have someone to hate, someone to feel superior to, otherwise it can’t survive, hence we see the shifting focus on word policing and virtue signaling in our society. Trigger warnings, the inflation of terms like “racist”, “sexist”, “hate crime”, all of that. People are becoming much more intolerant to those who are not like them and don’t share their values and views, including, among other things, the importance of tolerance. We are living in the age of cultural segregation. This is the main outlet for externalized aggression.

On the other hand, if the individual’s aggression is not externalized, it must be internalized, so it manifests as depression and anxiety. So along with the compartmentalization of our society and the trends outline before, we see what have been described as a depression epidemic, as well as studies that show that the younger generation of people is more anxious than ever before. Some call a mental health crisis. These two things are related, they are just each other’s reflections.

Being isolated from each other is not good for society. We need more compassion, more understanding, less blame, less hatred and less shaming. Being exposed to all sorts of people with different views is good for society, group tribalism promotes echo chambers, intolerance and hatred. And that includes people who are happy, “tolerant”, and “mindful”. They need to take a good look at themselves and see how they are being cruel and callous to those who need love and support the most.