Bear with me on this one, because the ideas are not fully formed yet. But here goes.

The problem with the modern world is that it is boring. This is largely a good thing. Generations before ours have worked hard at making life as boring as they could, and future generations will work to make things more banal than we can even imagine today.

We have done this by eliminating danger. War, disease, starvation, drought… all of these are a pale shadow of their former selves, demoted from apocalyptic to manageable to thoroughly managed. At least in the modern world.

We live longer, better lives than any humans before us. That’s an achievement so massive that it is impossible to overstate. But it leaves us with an unmet need.

Nature makes a virtue of necessity, and we evolved in a very dangerous environment. The plains of the Serengeti have a plethora of highly skilled predators and fierce prey. So way back in the early days of homo sapiens, those genes that gave people a thirst for danger and risk were moderately selected for.

But only moderately. After all, too much of that and you stand a very low risk of surviving to breed offspring. But somehow, no amount of progress as a civilization can entirely snuff out that need for danger, excitement, and adventure.

This need is particularly out of place in modern dull society. But human needs never go unfulfilled for very long, even (or perhaps especially) the completely unconscious ones we can’t even recognize let consciously fulfill.

Thus, there is a conflict between the world how it is for the modern human living in a modern society and the world how we need it to be. Simply put, actual life is too boring for us. And yet we are civilized humans and therefore hardly about to actively introduce danger into our lives.

The modern human resolves this conflict via a layer of delusion about the world. We imagine the world to be more exciting and dangerous and above all more thrilling place than it really is, and that satiates this need. Our delusional structures are custom-fitted to be exactly as much danger as we need without said danger demanding we disrupt our safe, sane, modern lives.

This is the exact reason why people continue to believe that crime is on the rise despite the irrefutable fact that the exact opposite is true.

This is why people fixate on problems which are the most frightening and exciting instead of the ones most likely to actually impact their lives.

This is why all stories must contain conflict in order to be interesting.

And this is why the human mind has been invented spirits, demons, ghosts, goblins, vampires, and other imaginary dangers since the dawn of civilization.

We simply cannot face how boring life really is.

No two people’s delusional dangers will be exactly the same. For one person it might be belief in the supernatural. For another it might be believing that the country is going downhill and any day now, society will collapse. For yet another person, it might be getting a thrill out of reading true crime stories.

That’s the thing about the modern world. The media (and ourselves) generate content to fulfill this need and the catch is, it’s not entirely illusory. There is always that tiny infusion of fact to make it seem “real” without it being as boring as if it actually represented object reality.

The perfect exemplar for this is reality television. These shows pretend to represent reality, but everyone knows that they are either scripted or practically scripted. And why? Because the producers of the show know that reality is boring and that people want conflict and drama.

And they are certainly not going to leave that up to chance.

And yet, people buy into them. The hint of reality makes the almost entirely synthetic narrative more compelling. We know it doesn’t represent reality – but it sure does make the shows more “realistic”.

For the most part, these are harmless delusions. On a day to day basis, they do no harm and make people feel better in a way that helps society function.

But when you look at the larger picture, worrying possibilities appear. Belief in the Red Menace put the entire world at risk for decades. Belief in the prevalence of crime and terrorism leads people to surrender important rights in order to feel safe from illusory enemies. The Internet’s need for outrage ruins people’s lives every single day.

And all because we prefer world views which excite us over boring, mundane reality.

Don’t ask me for a solution, because I am not sure there is one. Slay one illusion, another will take its place. There will always be a market for danger in the shadows. There will always be a need for dangers that seem real enough to believe in, but only enough for the story to make our lives more exiting, not enough to be really REALLY real and hence demand immediate action.

That is why there is always a market for an apocalypse. Whether it’s spiritual, cultural, or environmental, people love to think that it is all going to end in their lifetimes. I mean, what could be more exciting than that?

But not like…. right now. Sometime soon, sure. Just not right now. Because we have things to do.

How do you solve a problem like that? We are certainly not about to introduce real danger into our lives just so that we can get our thrills. Instead, we forward stories of objectively terrible things to one another then wonder why.

The solution probably begins with acknowledging that everyone, from the most crazed adrenaline junkie all the way down to little old ladies playing mah-jong, need danger and risk, and most importantly, that this need can lead us to believe things that are just plain not true, and do things to protect ourselves from dangers that do not exist.

It’s okay to believe in ghosts. It’s not okay to spend all your money on anti-ghosting your house when you have a family to support. It’s really that simple.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.