Honestly, It's Probably the Phones
We&#x27;re biological creatures evolved to be outside, to interact with the physical world and real people.<p>It&#x27;s easily replicable. Go out for some more walks, plan more visits with friends, do some wood craft, gardening or whatever else physical. Your mood will instantly improve, reliably. Because this is your natural state.<p>At the same time, we also have the built-in tendency to optimize for convenience. That too is perfectly natural. Hence we fully embrace all technology but forget about the cost: drifting ever further away from our very being. We&#x27;re our own enemy. A common example here on HN would be the excitement regarding working from home. I get it, I love it too. But let&#x27;s not dismiss that this further tilts things into a flat, isolated, touchless society. You want it, but it&#x27;s still really bad for you.<p>Further, as conscious creatures we&#x27;re not designed to process the information avalanche of the modern age. We process more of it in a day than somebody did in an entire lifetime 2 centuries ago. Likewise we&#x27;re not designed for the current speed of change.<p>And finally, we&#x27;re social creatures but not designed for it at a scale of millions or billions of people. We cannot empathize with the culture, politics and differences of that scale.