Well, remember that study with rats and the cocaine water?
When given a pleasant enrichment, opportunities to play and socialize, rats ignore the cocaine water.
In a barren environment with either too much or too little stimulation, and no socialization, rats seek out artificial stimulation.
Iâm not going to blame the internet, television, video games, or fast food. Addiction to these things - the constant need for that dopamine hit - is a symptom of our society.
Inhuman built environments - sprawl suburbia, factory-like schools, office parks, malls, stroads, highways, dead-after-5pm âbusiness districtsâ, all dependent on being isolated from the world in your car. No variety, no landmarks, no centers, no gathering places, no mixing of uses, no continuity of human experience, just âpoint a to point b and to hell with whatâs in between.â
Car dependency - required to participate in society because of our inhuman built environments; youâre disconnected from your senses, sense of space and place, from other people. You need the car to go to work to pay for the car. If your car dies you can lose your job, you canât run errands or take the kids to school. Because of car dependency you start to get a kind of Stockholm Syndrome, disliking anything which might make your use of a car more difficult or costly (road diets, higher taxes to pay for transit, etc.)
Social stratification and isolation - a byproduct of suburbanization and car dependency. Everyone where you live is likely of the same racial groups, educational achievement and income level. And even though redlining is technically illegal now, this means a de facto segregation continues. You canât identify with people you never meet or see. If youâre part of the social outgroup, opportunities to meet people or do things are curtailed.
Itâs extremely limiting for people who canât, donât, or donât want to drive. Children, teens under 16, disabled folks and the elderly are shut out of participation in society because of car dependency, and if you choose not to drive for personal reasons, you have to pay more to live somewhere thatâs got good transit / walkable neighborhoods. That means a good 20-40 years of your life effectively forced to stay home.*
If your car / license is taken away as punishment, same deal.
Bad architecture. Cheap tilt-up big-box stores, blank walls for blocks (see: Jan Gehlâs scale of pedestrian interest); hostile shapes, inhuman scales, lack of decoration or richness of materials, everything driven down to minimize costs and increase disposability instead of building to last or thinking of a building having a life beyond its initial use; buildings as sculptures instead of good neighbors, monuments to ego instead of community, that flinch away from the street instead of engaging with it.
Late capitalism. I mean, if jobs were disappearing, university out of reach, health care a potential cause of bankruptcy, rent skyrocketing, wouldnât you be too stressed to do anything else? My first reaction is not âHey, let me escape this stress into an environment where my individuality is actively suppressed, I get yelled at all day, have to do chores, and get sent into active war zones with bombs and bullets whizzing towards me.â
Honestly, if you want to encourage people to go into public service, you have to create a society worth defending, where people feel that they have a real voice, that society has their back, and they have an investment in the outcomes. And in the case of soldiers, the circumspection not to put peopleâs lives at risk or to harm innocents for bad causes.
vaporwave
yousharknotpass
jacobvanloon
