The human senses, autism, and morality. Part 1 of 2.

 For the first time in human history, our modern environment is now selecting for numbness in our six senses. Those who have the dullest senses thrive best in our overstimulated environment, and can blissfully block out the unaesthetic world that humanity has created. Those who pay attention to their senses are at a disadvantage as they find themselves overwhelmed by an ugly, ill-designed dystopia. 

Nothing could be in greater contrast to the tuning of our DNA. Every second of the past three and a half billion years has inexorably pressed our trillions of ancestors towards the opposite goal: A maximal sensitivity to their environment. 

Natural man is both a prey animal and a predator, adapted to live or die according to the sensitivity of his hearing, acuity of his eyes, nuance of his touch, and discrimination of his smell. 

But industrial society is designed with machines in mind, not men. It’s full of blaring sounds and glaring lights, thrown around without thought or reason. 

Worse, modern man often cannot tolerate himself, so he seeks distractions. 

Distraction via overloaded senses. 

This dulls the senses further so that he needs more extreme lights or sounds to achieve the level of stimulation, like a porn addict seeking harder and harder core porn. 

The result is a downward spiral towards absolute dullness. 

Sound is the most blaring example. Hordes of people seek out live music or night clubs, where noise levels are on average 100 decibels, which is literally 100,000 times louder than a normal conversation. One hundred decibels is exactly 1000x greater than the threshold of permanent hearing damage. And modern man subjects himself to this voluntarily. 

But the damage to the ears is just the tip of the iceberg. Neurologically, we are training ourselves to actively ignore our senses. The greater effect is not the falling acuity of our senses in themselves, but in the focus of our attention.

The man who still values his sense, as all our ancestors did, is at best, weird. Those who refuse to ignore their senses at all are called autistic. 

Those who pay attention to their senses are at best considered to be weird, if not autistic. 

I believe that all this is related to numbness of our gut. 

The more basal, archaic parts of our brain process our senses. We share that processing in common with reptiles, fish, and every other vertebrate animal. This basic sensory processing is also where our unconscious ‘gut feeling’ or instinct originates. 

In my next article I’ll elaborate on how our gut feeling is tied to morality and what the Bible calls ‘original sin’.