 Let's talk about four theories of politics and culture. This might seem a little bit on the abstract side, but the goal is to give you a little bit of background that will help you make sense of the news and the world around you, and all of these theories are interesting on their own. This isn't about any particular news story or one side of a news story, but just about helping you make sense of the world, which is what this channel is all about. There are four ideas to cover. Information overload, change fatigue, stealth democracy, and generational cycles. First, information overload. So what is it? Well, duh, it's too much information. You might not remember if you're under the age of 30, but there was once a world where you couldn't look up anything you wanted to know at the drop of a hat from wherever you were standing, and we had to accept just not knowing random trivia. Now there's an obligation to know everything because it's possible, and there's no cost to copy information or include people on communications so everyone gets sprayed with a fire hose of emails all day. Studies have said that we deal with 34 gigabytes of information or 100,000 words every day, which is up 350% since 1980. Maybe we don't consciously process all of that, but it's still hitting our brains. People also multitask more. Studies have shown that 98% of people overestimate their brain's performance when they're multitasking. When we deal with this much information and our brains can't process anymore, we make worse decisions and more mistakes, we have a harder time making decisions at all, and we have more trouble controlling our emotion. Just think about people in their cars at the end of a long day at work. So how does this impact politics? Well, if people can't keep up with all the information out there, they end up missing a lot, or what they know is totally random and often just ends up confirming what they already believe, and when they're dealing with new things, they get more emotional and more overwhelmed more quickly. So, number one, people are overloaded with information and it's hurting their ability to make decisions. Second, change fatigue. What is it? Again, you can kind of figure this one out from the name. It just means being so overwhelmed by change that you become totally passive or even start fighting change. Everyone agrees the world is changing very quickly, and some argue that this pace of change leads to anxiety and alienation. Surprise! This is super depressing, so of course it comes from a German philosopher. How does this impact politics? Well, people deal with change in every aspect of their life, personal and political, and if they get overwhelmed and start feeling fatigue with change, there's the risk that they stop actively trying to understand how the world's changing or just fight all new change just so they can have a second to take a breath. So number two, people are tired of constant change, which makes them shut down. Number three, stealth democracy. So what is this? Because it sounds cool. It's not actually that cool, but it sounds cool. People want their government to work efficiently and fairly, but they also wanted to work behind the scenes. There's been in-depth research with voters on how they want politics and government to function, as opposed to just focusing on what they want the government to do, and those researchers found that people don't actually want necessarily more control over the government because they think they don't actually know enough to run it. People just want representatives who do the work of running the government for them most of the time, but at the same time listen to them on those weird occasions when they have an opinion. Most people only really care about two or three issues in depth because they don't have time to know that much more about anything else. Even more important, people really care whether or not their elected representatives are getting any unfair advantages out of their jobs. Even minor corruption on the order of a free lunch here and there will really piss people off. People are tribal animals, and in yolden days, if you screwed over the whole tribe, you'd all get eaten by a lion. So the theory is this might be a law of behavior. Evidence that this is how people actually think is in how people are incredibly angry at government and politics, but yet a huge percentage of them don't vote, and of the people who do vote, the majority don't do anything more than that. This same research shows that the more people know about how politics works with horse training and compromises and lots of messy details and arguments, the less people like politicians and government. You can pick your metaphor here. Horse trading, making sausage, getting half a loaf. You kind of get the impression that people who come up with metaphors are always hungry, but basically everyone likes government less the more they see of it. And because everyone assumes that just like them, everyone's reasonable because of course they're the reasonable ones. They assume that if there are big arguments, it's all because special interests are being selfish or hijacking democracy. The reality is no one can really define exactly what a special interest is. So for example, if a dairy farmer wants changes to regulations to keep from going on to business, is he just a regular guy or is he special interest? People can disagree and often do and still mean well, but that's not necessarily how people see it when asked about how democracy should function. So how does this impact politics? Well, if people want the outcomes for a democracy, but don't want to actually see any of it or they'll lose faith in how democracy functions, then they'll tend to like leaders who promise to just fix everything without getting into the details. And if they want a government that's really focused on not giving itself any special advantage, then they're going to be really attracted to people who promise to just clean everything up. It doesn't necessarily mean there aren't real problems with our government and our politics that people are mad about, but people might also have unrealistic ideals about what can be accomplished. So number three, people want an honest government to resolve all issues without having to manage things themselves. Fourth, generational cycles. So what is this? Well, the theory is there are specific differences between generations and the different generations go through cycles which affect society where institutions get filled up and solidified and then are torn down or collapsed and then new ones are built in their place. Hey man, wheels within wheels, man. We're all connected, bro. You may have already heard of a lot of the different generations that have been labeled in the 20th century, like baby boomers, generation Xers, millennials, and then what everyone's decided apparently to call the people after millennials, Generation Z, which is not original at all. This theory gets a lot of criticism because people vary a lot as individuals and there are lots of contradictions between people of the same age. However, if you take it seriously, the second part of this theory is if there are differences between the generations there's also cycles that come from generation to generation because each generation grows up in the world built by the previous ones. People react to the world they grow up in. So a generation that grows up surrounded by a lot of chaos will focus on building institutions and structures whereas a generation that grows up with lots of structure will rebel and want to tear those structures down so people can be freer and express themselves. Both tendencies are necessary. You end up cycling from structure to chaos to structure again throughout the generations. How does this impact politics? Something that right now we're in the last phases of tearing down old institutions and the coming generations will end up rebuilding them into something new and better, the way that the greatest generation rebuild a lot of institutions after World War II. If that's true it's the reason to be hopeful about the future but it also makes it sound like right now is going to suck a lot as things continue to crumble and be torn down. So number four, history goes from generations building things up to tearing them back down for something new and we're a tearing down phase. In conclusion, information overload, change fatigue, stealth democracy and generational cycles may be able to spot these themes behind some of the news stories you see now or at least all the news coming your direction will make a little more sense. And there you have it.