Vampires On Main St. How Aggro-Profit Companies Drained The Social Landscape And Rewired YOUR BRAIN!

Photo: Benh LIEU SONG, Flickr

Joseph Schumpeter Loved Going To The Opera Too, You Know:

Sometimes when an era change gives us the opportunity to do something in a more frictionless way, it’s a great thing.

Other times, there’s a little too much emphasis on the second half of Schumpeter’s “Creative Destruction.”

Beyond zombie malls leaving social dead zones after getting “Amazoned,” unexpected facets of daily life take a hit, too.

But if you catch those collateral trade-offs early, they turn into surprising opportunities for meaningful wins.

To that end, several teams have investigated the increasing societal contagion of “NETFLIX ATE MY BABY!”…

The Short Answer:

• Convenience and de-frictionizing can affect your life in ways that are so diffuse or slow that you barely even notice.
• Back before so many things became digitized, there was a lot more focused-effort exerted in every part of life.
• Two university teams studied good old-fashioned “getting out of the house” to see if it actually had any benefits.
• They looked at very detailed data on ~5400 UK residents, avg. ages 40-50 spanning 12 years.
• These subjects had data-collection of every type done, including fancy genetic aging-clock tests.
• The results showed that people who went out to cultural-events at least 1x/month were biologically-younger and more cognitively-healthy than those who didn’t.
• Their physiological-age on the DNA-clocks ran 4% slower and was a total of 3 years younger than the non-goers.
• They also had a 49% lower risk of developing full-blown Dementia and a 50-70% lower risk for Pre-Dementia (MCI).
• The results held strongest for those who went to live events where they were observers.
• Similar but weaker results held for those who did arts & culture-based activities at home like music, drawing, painting, etc.
• Going to movies had the weakest effects.
• Each bracket-increase of cultural-activity resulted in a 31-day lower biological age, up to a limit of about 1-2x/month.
• These results still held when controlled for things like income, etc.
• The likely-culprit for them was just simply more & different exercise for the brain.
• This is very similar to the list of things you can do to avoid Dementia, where avoiding reduced education at younger ages is right near the top.
• Think of any brain-circuit skill, right down to the smallest one that might be used in going to a live-event, and it’s probably getting that “exercise”.
• What’s interesting about the low-exercise environment is what caused it.
• Corporate efforts to monetize public squares led to things like early movie theaters and department stores.
• But in order to maximize profit, any uniqueness, Design, interest, or detail was slowly chiseled out of them after their initial glory around 1912-1930s.
• This created spaces so generic and disposable, that when Amazon killed malls and Netflix killed movie theaters, there wasn’t much left to miss.
• And those are the things that made it so easy to just stay home, use a screen, and miss-out on all those brain-circuits you barely even noticed.
• In a way, but not “ALL CAPITALISM BAD!”-way, profit-maxmizing corporations made it super-easy to become isolated to the point where you age faster and risk Dementia much more.
• William Gibson talked about something like this in his novel, “Pattern Recognition”, where something original gets turned into a derivative so many times by successive operators, that it eventually loses all meaning & character.
• The movie, “The Incredibles II” also discusses a world where both that factor and the endless race for lower-friction commerce and ultimate convenience produce people who are isolated and just shells of their potential selves.

Read on to find out the details…

Virtual Insanity. Public Meetups Get Transformed Into 5G Packets:

So for the longest-time, people used to actually get out of their houses.

They would call each other on phones. Touch-tone if they were fancy, dial-up if they weren’t.

Then they’d set-up a meet to go out hang-out at the mall, see a movie, or even go to a concert or museum!

But the wonder of The World Wide Web and high-speed data gave us every convenience. Pushed out to the edges of the network.

And that’s not all good. Because not only do I pine for the days of prank-calling 1-800-HOOKERSRUS with Ron Burgundy on a rotary phone,

The real-world experience didn’t just shift.

It stealthily degraded into a bad knockoff of “Lost in Translation”.

Photo: Quino Al, Unsplash

ELSA Full-Spectrum Health Data Unearths Culture’s Hidden Benefits:

So in two studies, teams from UCL in the UK and IST in Japan looked at about 5400 total UK subjects, average-aged 40 to 50.

These subjects were tested for a variety of health-metrics for about 11.25 years.

They were evaluated on all different kinds of metrics like BMI, Grip-strength, Walking speed, Bloodwork, and most-interestingly of all, DNA-Based Aging-Clocks.

Neither of the studies found rotary-phones or overdue Blockbuster rentals.

But what they did find is that people who regularly went out to cultural events of any type were biologically-younger and healthier than those who didn’t.

Photo: Vlah Dumitru, Unsplash

The Live Show Is A Better Time-Machine Than Joe Satriani’s Album:

How good were the results?

Those who went to cultural events at least monthly vs. those who didn’t at all, showed the following benefits:

1) Their genetic-clocks ran slower by at-least 4%
2) Their physiological age was 3 years younger than their calendar-based age
3) Adults who went every few months had a 49% reduced risk of developing Dementia
4) People who engaged in events in mid/late life had a 50-70% lower risk of Pre-Dementia (MCI)
5) These numbers held most strongly for people who went to events as observers not participants.
6) People who did their own cultural-activities at home like singing, music, art, etc. oddly had less strong results
7) Subjects who went to movies had small improvements compared to those who went to events that were more live in nature
8) Each step up in cultural engagement resulted in an additional 31-day reduction in physiological age
9) Those who regularly went to cultural evens also had improved verbal-fluency.
10) A variety of cultural-based habits also turned-out to have stronger effects than just one
11) These results held even after adjusting for income, employment, and pre-existing conditions

Maybe Dementia Avoidance Factors Are What Really Hold The Key?:

So what the hell could be going on here?

The study didn’t speculate as to why. But there’s an interesting key from the list of things someone can do to avoid Dementia.

Lack of education, especially at a young age.

There is a chance that all this live-situation cultural-immersion isn’t just entertainment.

It’s actually the “stealth health” version of Brain Exercise!

Photo: Omar Flores, Unsplash

Here Are A Few Brain-Circuits That Live Events Might Activate:

Here are a few things real-life cultural events do that might fit that bill:

1) Uncompressed, high-bandwidth atmospheric sound in a unique physical space
1a) One that is changing with the people in it
2) Visual & cultural-immersion releases dopamine and reduces inflammation
3) Many different brain-circuits are recruited at in-person events, like
3a) Executive function
3b) Pattern-recognition
3c) Emotional evaluation
3d) Selective focus
3e) Spatial-tracking of people & objects
3e) Increased demands on attention-centers
3f) Narrative interpretation & forecasting
3g) Spatial-mapping through visual & auditory signals
3h) Auditory-localization of different sound-sources
3i) Anticipating and managing uncertainty & risk in the performers
3j) Recalculating timing & tempos that vary unpredictably
3k) Discerning high-bandwidth information that doesn’t normally arrive via TV, smartphone, or computer
3l) Subconscious guessing at how the art/performance is even accomplished
3j) Planning, time-tracking, navigation, improvisation, and social-cue-mapping of everywhere you go
4) For many events, the experience is multi-sensory instead of just visual
5) Dealing with some component of risk and The Unknown during the whole trip

So you can see even that small list shows a lot that might not be going-on in your living room with Netflix.

Even if you have the most high-resolution entertainment setup known to man.

Photo: Ethan Hansen, Unsplash

Malls Stole Town Centers, Then Committed Suicide By Profit-Maxxing:

The slow slide of public squares in the US shows how reactivating these circuits matters and takes effort.

Because William Gibson might argue malls had stolen Main Street and relocated it into a low-friction cake of white tile and shotcrete.

But then the mall got the same treatment Netflix gave to Blockbuster. A rug-pull, courtesy of e-commerce and Amazon.

There was at-least some amount of social-gathering at malls, but it was much weaker and less-enriching than walking around a unique regional shopping-district downtown.

That place had a lot more interest, variety, friction, and low-level risk than any homogenized logo-collage that could just as easily be in Syosset or Des Moines.

So Gibson’s “Tommy Hilfiger Event Horizon”-idea shows how by the time malls were replaced by a screen, people barely even noticed.

The derivative had become so increasingly-bland, it was that much easier to lose the last, most sterile version of an Old World Plaza and Passeggiata.

-The things we’ve just been arguing that live-events give back to you.

Photo: Antonio Ristallo, Unsplash

Forget Madrid! Just Get Yourself Back Out There With This Handy List:

Recharging those sleepy circuits doesn’t mean you have to move to Siena, Madrid, Strasbourg, or even spend a fortune.

You just need a practical, low-cost plan for getting some quality cultural-friction back into your life.

So here are a few resources for that (local links if you’re not looking for Big Cities):

1. Live Theatre & Performing Arts
• Big City Anchor, TodayTix: Discounted theater tickets.
• Local Discovery Link, Find Local Theatre Rush & Pay-What-You-Can Nights.
2. Classical Music, Conservatories & Standing Room
• National Anchor, National Association of Schools of Music Directory: Index of college music programs.
• Big City Anchor, GroupMuse: Not just Classical music.
• Local Discovery Link, Find Local Conservatory & University Recitals.
• Standing-Room Discovery Link, Find Regional Symphony Rush & Standing Room.
3. Museums, Galleries & Late Nights
• National Anchor, ArtNet: Galleries by zip/city.
• Local Discovery Link, Find Free Museum Days & Pay-What-You-Wish Hours.
• Gallery Walks Link, Find Local First-Friday & Neighborhood Gallery Walks.
4. Independent Cinema & Outdoor Screenings
• National Anchor, Art House Convergence Member Directory: Index of independent, non-profit community cinemas.
• Local Discovery Link, Find Independent & Repertory Cinemas.
• Local Discovery Link, Find Free Park, Outdoor, & Municipal Screenings.
5. Misc. Events Of Other Types
• National Anchor, EventBrite: Any event you can imagine, really. A to Z!
• National Anchor, Good Ole’ Meetup.com: Meet strangers and argue over specific topics in specific places!
• Local Discovery Link, Find Local Public Library Events & Lectures.
• National Anchor, LocalHarvest Farmer’s markets by city/zip.

Photo: Mike Von, Unsplash

BTW, It’s Okay To Walk-Out On Pretentious, Boring, Dreck:

One small note for your new list.

Although you should give new & different things a fair try and not reject them out-of-hand.

You’re not obligated to put-up with bad or tiresome Art after that fair try.

A lot of “Art” can really end-up as snobbery or pretense for “The In-Crowd” that allegedly “gets” it.

Your job is to get your brain some new exercise, not engage in forced-consensus over some Brand Name.

Leave joyfully once something becomes taxing.

Photo: Darren Halstead, Unsplash

The Financial Architects of Infinite Erasure, From Palace To Plastic:

With that in-hand, let’s revisit some important ideas in a ~new way.

One of the earliest department-stores was The Galeries Lafayette in Paris, where the building itself and its free roof deck were all part of the destination.

So were the 19th century’s gorgeous shopping-arcades. With their Neoclassical and Victorian decoration, terraced-levels, and full-length skylights like The Westminster Arcade in Providence.

But financial-engineering in America eroded every single bit of character into nothing; all in the name of maximum-profit.

There, you end-up in a giant vending-machine so generic it almost questions your very existence outside of being a financial input “copper-top”.

The same thing happened with the movie-palaces of the 1930s.

Early 20th-century Americans started out with a European palace for a quarter, and finished the century with decay, synthetic carpet, and droning fluorescent transformers for $25; courtesy of Netflix.

All of which results in it being easy for you to slide into physical and mental isolation. One uninspired-space at a time.

Photo: Kaleb Kloppe, Flickr

Photo: Toàn Văn, Pexels

How To Not Disappear Completely. Cognitive Exercise As “Self”-Defense:

I admit it. Sometimes, this could read like a wingnut had too many THC gummies and dictated a manifesto.

But stand in a light gray cube farm with nobody in it.

Or look around a mall or multiplex at off-peak hours.

Feel that eerie disorientation. You could be anywhere in the country without a single clue where.

Without people, the buildings evaporate because their form and style never told anyone’s story to begin with.

The crowd was the only thing making them interesting; masking the fact that these spaces were always dead.

Radio City Music Hall and Chicago’s Union Station remain monuments whether anyone is in them or not.

Photo: Mark König, Unsplash

One Of The Few Life-Preservers That Isn’t Bright Orange:

The secret of this whole article is not that these are some nerdbot studies with highbrow hand-waving around them.

It’s a life-preserver being thrown right at you.

A longer, healthier life, BY THREE YEARS!

A significantly-higher chance of “keeping your marbles” into old age and possibly enjoying your wisdom and experience.

-All from something you thought was basically-invisible, right up until today.

Okay; unless you’re one of those crunchy people who already get a bit too much “culture” already.

Those people have different problems, like overdosing on tofu, yogurt, & granola.

BONUS! The Screenslaver Nails The White-Box-Erosion Of Real Life:

But since most people don’t, I’ll leave you with one more key reference from a character discussing “The world that’s been pulled over your eyes.”

References & Links:

• Sources: UCL | MedicalXPress
• Source Studies:
  •InnoAging – Does leisure activity matter for epigenetic aging? Analyses of arts engagement and physical activity in the UK Household Longitudinal Study
  •J.EpidemCommHealth – Cultural engagement and physiological ageing: a fixed-effects analysis