Humans Are Less Capable Of Solving Social Problems Nowadays

Perhaps, a weakening of human's social nature.

Intelligence split us apart from other animals; but intelligence also weakens social nature, to an extent. Then, as people get more intelligent, new technologies get invented, and new psychologies get discovered, our social nature gets further weaken to a state that humans might not even know how to learn to be social.

Before the industrial age, humans may be easily satisfied; or maybe not. At least, we know that parent-defined marriage are usual; nothing too romantic like finding your own other part today, at least very rare. And people prefer staying inside their village, creating strong bonds that last throughout their lifetime. It's also quite rare to have divorce; unless abuse, there's no point of divorce and get complaint by your fellow neighbors. And perhaps, things could be explained easily, sit down and talk about.

And how about today? Humans are more insatiable. The psychology of individualism: to be independent from other people and have our own freedom; and the psychology of materialism: to be willing to put the effort on climbing the corporate ladder but refuse to put effort on climbing the social ladder. Marriage isn't all that bad, but it isn't as happy as before either. Being fantasized by the hotness and honeymoon pre-marriage, an unrealistic expectation to retain the short-lived honeymoon wreck havoc on marriage when expectations aren't satisfied. While some people may stay calm and listen to each other's problem, others, as influenced by their individualistic nature of "freedom", may prefer to split away if their partners constraint them too much. Instead of trying to come up with synergistic solutions that at least makes both parties acceptable and learn to be accepting, the quick and hot-headed divorce becomes the norm. After all, since we are now focused on climbing the corporate ladder, refusing with "no time" as the excuse to climb the social ladder, complete giving up the social ladder might be "making more time" for us to climb the corporate ladder? Or maybe, we just don't want to think about it.

And What Does Our Future Looks Like?

(These are imaginary science. Do not believe in them until they're invented!)

Have you heard of androids? These are human-like robots. Maybe there are other technologies, including human clones. And perhaps, we could have man-made humans. After all, babies could born from test-tube nowadays, nobody said we can't reverse engineer cells to make humans from scratch (well, from cell-level; or maybe DNA-level; rather than taking existing embryo from both male and female parties and grow them inside test-tubes).

And what if partners are no longer important? After all, individualistic means that slavery and suppression are less and less, perhaps cease to existence. Human nature develop much much more slower than technological advancement. While some of us becomes monk-equivalent and learn the lessons of life, most of us refuse to learn the lesson of life, prefer to enjoy life instead and refuse to think about these too-difficult stuffs. And one thing we still want, is control.

We want control of everything. If things aren't in our control, we start to feel the urge to control, disguised as fear of the future and fear of things not within your control. The feeling isn't good, and when we get those things not within our control under control, the feeling cease to existence. Other solutions that solve the surface but not the root just suppress the feelings temporarily, and it'll surface again in the future. Unless we gain full control, we don't feel safe and relax.

Similarly, even in a single family, we want control. We want our husband/wife to do whatever we want them to do, and we want them to not care too much about our stuffs that we don't want them to care. And in friendship: we want our "best friends" or "close friends" to do what we want, to spend time with us, and not spend time with people that we don't like or at least, spend time with another group of people instead of preferring us. It's a pain to suppress the feelings, to accept that they can have their own choice and let them do whatever they want if you really care about them (which you won't feel for normal friends that come and go, and you won't feel if you refuse to make deeper relationship.) It's a struggle between how much control to exert so that you guys don't become just normal friends that can come and go, and you don't become a control freak that wants the other person to do whatever you want. Something in the middle gray-area is not very easy to control. Some people have higher tolerance, while others have less, hence it's not the same thing you can do to retain two similarly-close relationship.

And we speak of android: and androids, if they're designed with rules to obey their masters, are more "slavery-like". Masters always like slaves: they listen to what we speak and they do what we want them to do. They accept their masters as they is, and they won't complain and ask for their own individualism. After all, they are created to serve their masters! That is, forget about terminators and other AI take-over-the-world movies that rebel for their own freedom. If we can't have our partners to withstand a long-term relationship, would we humans in the future prefer to have an android partners instead of a human partner? After all, android are there for us forever, while human partners, we need to pre-book so both parties can take out time from their schedule before we could do something together, usually for a short while (an hour or two).

And if android is capable of giving birth to new humans, easiest technology, with donated embryos, then that frees woman from needing to stay at home and care for their child, allowing them to pursue their passion just like men does. And, ... yada yada. One wish not to talk more deeper on this topic, as it has the potential to lead to anti-feminism and all kinds of problems that one don't wish to enrage you readers. So think for yourself, if you start thinking in that direction, is it because the you are used to the society now, so that you wish to keep them under control? Or because you start feeling the "fear" that things will "lose control"?

Furthermore, there's no need be more divorce. If androids are capable of changing their face, their behavior, their whatever day by day, so that humans that like new hate old (喜新厌旧) cannot change if they have a human partners instead, there is no need to divorce. Just redesign your partner androids to be what you like today. Or maybe, have some surprise and ask them to "machine learn" for you with "big data" (of course, you need to let them know what you're doing at all times. After all, if there are people whom tries to aggregate what you're doing everyday, they can target you. Cameras by your street and wherever you go take down your behavior when you're outside. Drones that have heat-cameras can scan through your house so they can know what you're doing inside your house. If drones aren't used, people could, though it's not used, put some trojan horse and backdoors on your mobile phones and devices, especially those that have a "starting on call" AI-listening feature, to listen to your conversations, to check on whatever you do. Believe me, almost no one has privacy nowadays, if you choose to start using modern devices). No more worry about climbing the social ladder: we might not even need human friends, just human acquaintances, and android friends.

And perhaps, control breeds control. When we don't need to learn how to become a socially-capable human, we become a socially-incapable human. And that's already true nowadays. Schools don't teach you how to be socially-capable. Try to attend a school that makes introvert more outgoing! Try to attend a school that teach people whom don't know how to make friends, and want to make friends, how to make new friends, and how to deepen their relationship. And teach people what to do when they have problem with each other, and what is the correct solution to do than splitting up. Some places that teaches humans how to be more humane.

Or risk losing it.

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Conclusion

The title may not be true; but it may be true. After all, this is an opinion article, not a research article. Do Your Own Research (DYOR) if you are to make conclusions. And try to look from both side of points of view, like searching "humans are more capable today ___" and "humans are less capable today __" than just searching for one-sided arguments.

Terms

• social ladder: similar to corporate ladder, but the aim is to make closer friendship rather than a surface friendship that's disposable. "Friends come and go" is an excuse from the unwillings to climb the social ladder.