Posted by 
At a time when humanity is now both empowered by a blizzard of information and stunned by its effect, we seem to have come to an inflection point. Our genetic composition allows us to learn from experience in an orderly manner.
See fire. Touch fire. Fire hurt. No touch fire. No hurt.
And when there is no precedence for current experiences, we trigger a fail-safe model by which to frame reality… question everything (for survival).
See fire. Fire shine brighter than usual. Think fire sent by Communists. Run from fire. Now eat cold dinner.
The cumulative effect of multiple, concurrent, high impact memes (deep recession, housing crisis, banking collapse, two simultaneous wars, global war on terrorism, global warming, impending epidemics, shifting demographic majorities, rising tensions between two primary religious systems, degraded education system, nuclear proliferation, bioterrorism, rising socialism, rising fascism, the rise of China, etc.) basically creates a systemic brown-out across the social networks with which we pledge of allegance and from which we borrow elements with which to construct our own self-identity.
“When hopes and dreams are loose in the streets, it is well for the timid to lock doors , shutter windows and lie low until the wrath has passed. For there is often a monstrous incongruity between the hopes, however noble and tender, and the actions that follows them. It is as if ivied maidens and garlanded youths were to herald the four horsemen of the apocalypse.
Eric Hoffer, 1951 – “The True Believer – Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements”
P.11
And p.12
“People who see their lives as irremediably spoiled cannot find a worth-while purpose in self-advancement…Their innermost craving is for a new life – a rebirth – or failing this, a chance to acquire new elements of pride, confidence, hope, a sense of purpose and worth by an identification with a holy cause. An active mass movement offers them opportunities for both…” [ Is this Mr. Gore?]
and P. 13
“ It is true that in the early adherents of a mass movement there are also adventurers who join in the hope that that the movement will give a spin to their wheel of fortune and whirl them to fame and power.”