The 2,000,000-Microsecond-Old Man

In the industrialised world, our attention spans, both individually and collectively, are becoming ever shorter. I will outline the factors contributing to this relatively recent phenomenon, especially the role of digital media, and link this to Jung’s critique of our “monotheism of consciousness.” I will then elaborate some of the resulting dangers due to our failure, again individually and collectively, to deal with long-term problems such as extreme wealth inequality, forced migration, climate breakdown and biodiversity loss.