First I would express my view that the prevalent academic-materialist bias has resulted in large numbers grossly underestimating the value of common sense and intuition - which are very helpful in assessing complex circumstances.
The quickest evolutionary genetic trait was the lactose tolerance gene which took 7,000 years. Now with the human and technological world turned inside out and upside down it appears rather evident that some of the behaviors such as the Christian No Mask Madness - for which to my knowledge is historical unprecedented and really pretty unusual or abnormal - are a result of these pressures - people acting out their evolutionary stressors so to speak. For instance, one analysis of the decline in religious affiliation of the younger generation stated you cannot understand it unless you understand the rise of the conservative leaders in Christianity. As I recall something like 25% of the younger generation found the extremism - as in the anti-gay Christian extremism offensive. However my point is that it was the rise of the LGBT community (likely a product of environmental stress in my views as well) that that produced the hostile reaction of the Christian leaders because it threatened their world view - and biological predispositions in this line of argument (which kicked in the ingroup-outgroup syndrome - igniting hostile reaction) I believe this does illustrate physiological undercurrents born of biological predispositions as it were. That so many transgenders are killed throughout the world indicates clearly the existence of biological-physiological predispositions.
A World Turned Upside Down and Inside Out
Since roughly World War I, everything in the human environment has changed. In his book, The Saturated Self, the psychologist Kenneth Gergen lays out how all of the physical, the physiological, the psychological, the sexual, the transportation, technological, the community make-up, the speed and volume of communication and information, the social, and the religious environment has undergone radical change and very profound, pervasive, and revolutionary developments. In less than 100 years - which is an eye-blink in "evolutionary time" the entire human environment and world has changed - completely and totally.
In transportation we have gone from railroads and horses to
automobiles, airplanes, then jet airplanes, as well as super-trains. In
communities we have gone from the “traditional ethnically segregated
communities” to “collage communities" with intermixed ethnic groups within thee collage communities each of which have somewhat
varying customs and behaviors - this increasing the complexity (making coping more difficult) . There was the Women’s Revolution. There has been
a Sexual Revolution with the advent of birth control. There was also, unfortunately
a revolution in divorce possibly partly from the radical change in women’s
roles and their relationship to men. The world has also undergone some severe
political upheavals with many monarchies being eliminated only as recently as WWI.
But nowhere except in communication has the world undergone a complete upheaval and revolutionary change. We went from the telegraph to the telephone to radio to TV and then there was the “internet” with Facebook, twitter, and other social media. The amount of information a person is exposed to - and must process in one way or another, since perceptions lead automatically, minimally, to unconscious processing - has increased exponentially. From personal experience I know for a fact that the amount of information and stimuli available and accessed in today's society is immensely more abundant than the 1960's when I grew up. Gergen wrote The Saturated Self before the arrival of social media – Facebook, Twitter, and on.
Many psychologists state that the innovation of social media is a very major change for society. Twenge argues that social media, with the very real issue of cyber-bullying has led to an increase in suicide. Haidt states that social media is especially difficult for females who - while boys tend to have group activities with internet gaming, females only have social media with the downside of exposure to social rejection or even cyber-bullying. Gergen argues that the increased complexity as well as the intensity of the environment would likely cause personalities to develop a multiplicity of roles (pastiche personalities) to cope with the kind of load that society now imposes.
My impression from political FB groups is that many are in the groups to debate and discussion for some is completely out of the question. As one psychologists observed, FB makes it much easier to attack due to the anonymity factor. On a recent post on my page about a relatively neutral medical article about how children can convey and transmit the corona virus, three Trump followers posted highly emotional reactions talking about "lies" and rhetoric like that. Things like that never happened in 1960, to the best of my memory. It would seem likely that if this is true, that might explain some of the apparent increased emotional intensity of politics at times - though Trump has without question contributed a significant influence in that aspect with his extremism and highly charged rhetoric.
Comparing Apples To Apples
Since spirituality and spiritual-psychic experiences are a special area of interest to me, I of course researched the historical “record” and documented. When you compare "documented spiritual-psychic" experiences in the past two thousand years to contemporary "documented experiences" since World War I, there is no comparison. The difference is literally night and day. And I did study and methodically research psychic and spiritual literature in an effort to grasp and understand the forces at work in spirituality and psychic phenomena. I should not that in the case of the Oracle of Delphi, since it was such an epicenter for ancient Greek spiritual and religious beliefs, philosophers did reside at Delphi and if anything of record had occurred it definitely would have been recorded. The dramatic and undeniable huge difference in spiritual-psychic experiences is pivotal in my argument that human consciousness is “struggling” to adopt and cope with massive changes.
In the Old Testament, as well as the semi-documented illustrations from the Oracle of Delphi, and the handful of "reasonable" predictions from Nostradamus, any objective analysis would leaf to the conclusion that - in the larger view - the last two thousand tears are in truth, vert poor, vague, and ambiguous compared to the modern "psychics."
Most of the "Oracles" of Delphi, like Nostradamus's quatrains were ambiguous and lent themselves to various interpretations. A typical prophecy might be the Delphic Oracle concerning the fate of Messenia. The ancient Greek Messenians, during a long series of wars and battles with the Spartans, went to the Oracle of Delphi to get a favorable omen. The Pythian priestess prophesied: “When the he-goat drinks Neda’s swirling water, I have abandoned Messene; destruction comes.” (p148 note-only source) The Messenians were, of course, terrified that a he-goat might come near the river Neda. In a twist of fate, there is a wild fig tree named "olynthe," which in Messenian vernacular is also called “he-goat.” The Messenian prophet, Theokles, discovered to his horror a wild fig tree that had grown over the river Neda and whose leaves had touched the water, and realized that the Delphic Oracle was coming true. Historically it is true that Sparta did, in fact, end up defeating Messenia.
Theresa Caputo in my mind
pretty much puts the last two thousand years to shame by herself. She doesn’t
have any earth-shaking illustration but she is consistent – and, in the end,
that is what science is all about. If you give a value of one chance in ten to
each piece of information Theresa Caputo comes up with only ten correct pieces
of information, you would end up with odds of 1 in ten billion. Further if you
figure she made 100 mistakes for every ten pieces of correct information then,
mathematically, the odds become one in 100 million. My guess is that Theresa
Caputo has come up with at least thirty pieces of information. There is nothing
like Theresa Caputo, Edgar Cayce, or even the poorly documented Jeane Dixon in
documented spiritual or psychic history. (Here is a link to a brief summary of scientific evidence for psychic experiences
https://www.spirittruthandmeaning.com/research-into-psychic-phenomenon
)
In any case, it would seem likely, in light of the fact that the environment has changed and the “psychic” expressions are so striking compared to ancient illustrations, that human consciousness may be struggling with adjusting and adopting to the contemporary burden of the environment. When I talked with a biology PhD she said that the human species is still evolving. I can only comment that it would be ironic, indeed, if spirituality turned out to be psychology’s best hope for adjusting and adopting to the environment. In the end it would seem an inescapable conclusion that the modern environment puts a serious burden on human consciousness, which should receive serious consideration by psychologists.
The problem human change is that one doesn't snap ones fingers and people change right away. Evolution, itself, takes place over the course of millions of years. The time span since WWI (about 1915) until now is roughly just over a hundred years. In a hundred years, everything in the human environment has changed: the relationship between a man and a woman has changed both both sexually and also altered with the drastic rise in divorce; socially, there is a radical change in the ethnic structure and and evolution to "collage" neighborhoods; transportation has been revolutionized and people are no much more mobile than they had been; communication has revolutionized a hundredfold if not a thousand-fold, going from telephone to radio to TV to Facebook, Twitter, and social media; but, with revolution of the internet, most of all the amount of information processed by the human brain - there are just massive amounts of information available now.
Spirituality in the Modern World
Seeing as “spirituality” in modern society, has, from time to time, been a thorny problem for psychology – and in the end for human consciousness - it is possible that the “spirituality” problem could be compounded tenfold in contemporary society. There may be several reasons. In Biological Evolution Of Religious Mind And Behavior, Jay R. Feierman, an author and a retired university professor, stated unequivocally, “There is a very good reason why religion’s evolution needs to be understood scientifically at this time in history. Currently the world is dangerously divided on the basis of religion. (p.64) From my research and overview of a very fragmented society when it comes to both spirituality and religion, it appears evident that psychology's approach has indeed resulted in division within society.
The Issue of the Materialist Bias in Mainstream Psychology
While Jungian psychology, logotherapy (based on Frankl), as well as much of existential and positive psychology have serious spiritual themes, the emergence of "mainstream psychology" with its pronounced Materialist bias, mainstream psychology has a somewhat obvious antipathy and antagonism toward spirituality, that has, in my view, forced some rather evident psychological changes. People have believed in spirit and spirituality for literally tens and tens of thousands of years. Shamanism is known to have emerged by at least the paleolithic age. So, it would seem highly likely that there are nonconscious processes in the human mind and brain that are dedicated to spirituality-meaning processing of information.
Yet, the "norms" of psychology, due mainly to psychologists' preoccupation with the "transcendental" aspect of spirituality or spiritual-psychic experiences, are that spirituality and religious beliefs are "superstitious nonsense" or illusion." (link to an essay-blog on How Psychology has screwed up spirituality: https://www.spirittruthandmeaning.com/how-psychology-got-spirituality-and-religious-beliefs-pretty-s... ) The repressive norms and totally materialistic beliefs on orthodox psychology would be a burden on any nonconscious spiritual processes in the human brain.
It crossed my mind that in light of James Kennedy's "exploratory study" which showed women tend to be more "receptive to spirituality and "transcendent spiritual experiences" that the repressive psychological norms could possibly be fouling up those processes which as religious studies have shown to be heavily involved in processes involved in meaning - which could possibly be an explanation for the catastrophic 70 % rise in the suicides of young female college students. I should mention in passing that there is a study which establishes that there is a correlation between high suicide and countries which have low religiosity rates.
And in recent history there has been a dramatic decline of affiliation of the younger generation with organized religion. Only TWO percent of English under 24 are affiliated with the Anglican church, which is THE church in England. The 2017 PRRI study shows a similar trend in the American younger generation, though the break in groups of the PRRI study was 29 not 24 which could explain the higher affiliation of the young in America ( https://www.prri.org/research/american-religious-landscape-christian-religiously-unaffiliated/ ) In any case, thousands and thousands of churches will be closing thir doors in ten or fifteen years - when the money runs out.An article about church attendance and church closings states: "Every year more than 4000 churches close their doors compared to just over 1000 new church starts!" ( http://www.churchleadership.org/apps/articles/default.asp?articleid=42346 ) In ten to fifteen years it gets much worse and most religous leaders are talking about a "post-Christian" 'Western Civilization.'