I continue the excellent series of videos by Professor Phil Hanlon centred around ‘What’s next for the health of society’ from his Afternow website.
‘In this video Phil Hanlon explores in more depth what ‘modernity’ is and why it has created current levels of ‘dis-ease’ in the modern world.
Modernity has brought many benefits (including technological improvements, material comfort, modern medicine and health care etc), but the downside includes the ‘dis-eases’ rehearsed in the earlier videos.
The mindset that created modernity has led to the rise of a number of ‘isms’ that afflict society: economism; materialism; individualism; and consumerism.
Phil explores the symbolic power of contemporary consumer culture, which encourages us to want what we don’t need and never tire of the pursuit of more and more ‘stuff’. This keeps us trapped on a hedonic treadmill, in the relentless pursuit of short-term pleasure at the expense of longer-term well-being.
There is little evidence that the majority of people are responding to the dis-eases of modernity by embracing a new wave of change. Instead, we observe denial, resistance or, at best, passive adaptation.
We might be able to ignore of deny the effects of modern dis-eases but there are other threats that we will not be able to ignore because of their massive potential effects on our lives.’
