So there it is then : Sir Charles Lyell and Adolf Hitler joined at the intellectual hip.
Both responded uneasily to the plenitude of plenitudes that scientific and economic advances brought to people living in the Victorian Era.
My forthcoming biography "The OTHER Manhattan Project" celebrates the 75 years since Dr Dawson birthed Antibiotics in Manhattan on October 16th 1940. This project was more from Venus than Mars, more Emma Lazarus than Gordon Gekko. Defying governments, defying Allied/Axis eugenics, even defying the team's physical disabilities. But in the end, Manhattan beaconed the right of EVERYONE to receive life-saving penicillin out to a world tired, huddled and wretched.
Showing posts with label plentiphobia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label plentiphobia. Show all posts
Monday, July 7, 2014
Thursday, July 3, 2014
Plentiphobia : fear of being overwhelmed by plenitude
"Too much information".
Humans are easily overwhelmed - temporarily - by too much.
Too much choice, too many people on a crowded street, too much choice of new clothes in a story - on and on.
They recover by retreating into places with much less choices and decisions - usually their own home.
But , starting in the 1870s , almost all of us in the educated urbanized middle class western world - all the time and everywhere - felt overwhelmed by too many new scientific discoveries , too many new immigrants, too many new imports, too much too much.
The un-coordinated activities of modernization/ globalization had produced the mother of all plenitudes and humanity reacted with a strong case of plentiphobia.
Humans are easily overwhelmed - temporarily - by too much.
Too much choice, too many people on a crowded street, too much choice of new clothes in a story - on and on.
They recover by retreating into places with much less choices and decisions - usually their own home.
But , starting in the 1870s , almost all of us in the educated urbanized middle class western world - all the time and everywhere - felt overwhelmed by too many new scientific discoveries , too many new immigrants, too many new imports, too much too much.
The un-coordinated activities of modernization/ globalization had produced the mother of all plenitudes and humanity reacted with a strong case of plentiphobia.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)