Essays on Education and Individual Decision Making

The striking signs of confusional breakdown we see around us – the spreading use of drugs, the rise of mysticism, the recurrent outbreaks of vandalism and undirected violence, the politics of nihilism and nostalgia, the sick apathy of millions – can all be understood better by recognizing their relationship to future shock. These forms of social irrationality may well reflect the deterioration of individual decision-making under conditions of environmental overstimulation. Psychophysiologists studying the impact of change on various organisms have shown that successful adaptation can occur only when the level of stimulation – the amount of change and novelty in the environment – is neither too low nor too high. "The central nervous system of a higher animal," says Professor D. E. Berlyne of the University of Toronto, "is designed to cope with environments that produce a certain rate of ... stimulation ... It will naturally not perform at its best in an environment that overstresses or overloads it." He makes the same point about environments that understimulate it ...»