Being a person who not only diddles away time playing various Video Games, and divulging in the endlessly diverse storytelling found in the many acts of the film industry, I find myself at odds with the Age of Man that God(or whomever) has decided to through me into against my will.
To come to terms with the immense and unbeatable din of concepts, ideas, people, societies, industrialization, politics, etc, ad nauseum, to infinity and beyond, I use these simplistic auditory and ocular means of entertainment to contain myself. If I abandoned this buffer, this distraction, the uncontrollable current of the world would pour itself into me through the books, internet, research, etc, that I would compulsorily driven to pick up and read.
As it is, I find myself allured and bedazzled by books, scientific findings, random internet searches. I still cannot help myself, even when in the middle of the expertly crafted Fallout 4, a thought may cross my head, and I pour through my volumes to quench it.
The point you wonder? As you are assaulted by my driveling, disinterested by my foray into my private little world, baffled as to why I begin speaking only of myself, despite the grabbing title. Well, its quite simple, through my findings, I have noticed something. Something which I would all of those who would just as soon disregard my article in return for the enjoyment of a video, or game, to take but a brief moment of your life to consider. I have come across a term used by many in the scientific fields, a term which has been discussed in great depths between researchers upon the vast and varied Usenet, a term who's meaning has been butchered by mainstream science so thoroughly as to be unrecognizable: Anthropocene.
Arguably, the dubbed Antropocene Age's origins can be traced back to the dawn of the Scientific Revolution. Specifically, the invention of the mass transmission of electricity. Electricity solved much of man's problems. Firstly, man could now furnish himself endlessly with far better tools and machines to craft products. Man could power entire cities, where people could live together in more and more numerous numbers, separated from the far more dangerous life humans faced as little as a few centuries before. The mainstream Scientific view is that the Antropocene Age starts somewhere around the end of the second World War. The argument here is that after this particular point, Mankind's technological advance made such a rapid leap forward as to leave in the dust by sheer magnitude the technological advances of the previous generations. Personally, I view the gradual occurrence of the Anthropocene Age as the more valid means for its inception. This being because the gradual shifts in society and human behavior, as well as earlier technologies that led to the grand bit of technology we now experience, all finds itself under the umbrella of Anthropocene development.
One of the major changes made by the Anthropocene Age is life expectancy. The average human being now lives from around 70-85 years of age. Before the twentieth century: 45-50 years was the average life expectancy(some would argue lower). This increase in life expectancy led to a drastic increase in population size, the Earth now at over 7.2 Billion people, versus a little over 1.5 billion just before the twentieth century. In the coming decades, we are looking at an approximate 10-11 billion people. A total of 3% of the world's landmass(including Antarctica and the north pole) is covered in urban development. That means that 5,908,197 square miles of the earth is completely covered by cities.
So what does all of this mean? Well, in my humble opinion, the greatest disaster mankind has ever faced, to explain in full:
Its no mystery, city folk are quite numb to the world. Caught in their spheres of activity, fed whatever information they can cull from news, magazines, and a limited internet(I am a purveyor of using the deep web and the Usenet, if you use it, you know how much you are missing), bereft of many practical skills, and desensitized by video games, sports, and other entertainment("Give them Bread and Circuses"-Cicero) In Tokyo, the gaming epidemic has become so pervasive and nigh destructive that Mothers have to bring their adult game-addicted children food to make sure they feed themselves. Children as young as twelve and thirteen are so devoid of self confidence, self-awareness, or self-knowledge, that they feel they need to starve themselves to look like runway models, not to mention that these same girls feel the need to dress in said fashion, and their parents let them do both(In the Britain and the US). The education of our generation is also sabotaged, children are taught here in Britain advanced mathematics and English, and yet, cannot compute the arithmetical measure of quantities, nor draft an adequate essay(the same is happening in the USA with the common core education system).
Widespread research shows that Humans are actually devolving through the inculcation into our recently adopted lifestyle(aside from the epidemic of people walking off of and into things whilst texting), in many cases, a decrease in actual brain power and/or function by as much as 8%. Many people were recorded as having numbed emotional and intellectual capabilities due to this loss. Many I have conversed with in the field of Psychology(which I have a Masters degree in myself) who have been in the field a good forty-fifty years have noticed a loss of cognitive reasoning in the current generation of patients, as compared to the previous generations served. This lack of cognitive capability inhibits the capable operation of problem solving, contextual reasoning, thought process, and the understanding of non-pattern based concepts(irony, sarcasm, sadness and other emotions, etc) Another fact that many Psychologists fear is the rise in dependency on Psychiatric Medication. Over thirty percent of adults in the EU, over forty percent of adults in the UK, and far more than fifty percent of adults in the US are taking high-level psychiatric medication. The effects of these types of psychiatric medication include everything from advanced changes in behavior and emotional reaction(violence and depression in many cases) to physical reactions to some of these medications. It is speculated amongst many in the field that the rise in Psychotic and violent behavior in the US(mass shootings, riots, protests, attacks on police) is due to the unprecedented rise in the use of Psychiatrics, and can be directly correlated to the use of these medications.
In conclusion, the persisted aid to the downfall of Man through the actions taken by us during the Anthropocene Age is undeniable. We are destroying our planet(not through global climate change, but urban development:
http://www.isciencetimes.com/articles/6040/20130911/global-cooling-arctic-ice-cap-60-photo.htm), destroying our minds, destroying our future generations, and slowly but surely nearing our own end.