We live in a world of dopamine-driven, doom-scrolling, emotional incontinence and performative, manufactured outrage.

Worse, the social media echo chamber amplifies and accelerates the outrage like a Hendrix howl of feedback. Round and round it goes until it explodes onto the street as mindless protest, riot or murder.

James Marriott has an insightful column in/on today’s Times –  Why elitism is key to democracy’s survival – which addresses exactly the point.

Is the anti-obesity drug a breakthrough or a breakdown?

Matthew Syed in yesterday’s Sunday Times…

But after the flicker of delight, I felt a worm of disquiet. For I can’t help thinking that many obese people could lose weight by eating less and exercising more. They don’t have a medical condition; they lack resolve. I don’t mean those with serious thyroid or other conditions — I am talking about people who can’t manage to do what they know, deep inside, is in their best interests.

For what does it do to a person to subcontract a matter of volition to a pharmacological intervention, thus bypassing the will? What does it do to our sense of agency, perhaps our sense of self? These consequences may not show up in the side-effects listed in a clinical trial — but they are serious, nonetheless.

There’s also an interesting parallel from the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Read the full article, here.

Photo by Michael Payne on Unsplash