David McElroy

It was just a few minutes after 11 p.m. when I put Lucy’s leash on her and we headed outside for our late-night walk.

Before I even got outside, I heard unexpected noise. It sounded like people laughing. They were loud. I felt annoyed.

When I opened the front door and stepped outside with Lucy, I realized that my young next-door neighbor had a group of people over. I don’t know how many. I saw at least six extra cars.

They were at the back of the house — possibly in the back yard right next to mine — and they were loud enough that I could hear them talking and laughing all the way to the street in front of our houses. I felt mildly angry.

“He shouldn’t be having this kind of loud party this late,” I thought, “especially on a weeknight.”

As I silently walked down the street with Lucy, I kept hearing their laughter. And then it hit me why I felt angry.

They were happy. I’m not. And I felt jealous of them.

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This society is rapidly becoming a place where I no longer want to live — and it’s happening far more quickly than I expected.

It’s hard for me to be certain whether the world is the problem or if it’s really just me. Maybe what we’re going through is normal and I simply hate “the new normal.” (I detest that phrase.) Maybe I would deal with it better if it weren’t for my childhood programming.

I’m sure it’s some of both. But wherever the specifics lie, I’m feeling overwhelmed and so are lots of others. Maybe you’re feeling a bit of the same. Or maybe there’s some feeling in your gut that you’re trying to ignore.

In 1970, the futurist Alvin Toffler published a book called “Future Shock,” which he described as a psychological state of individuals and entire societies — who are experiencing “too much change in too short a period of time.”

The world was already changing quickly, but it’s accelerated. What‘s worse, it feels as though we’re passengers in a car being driven by a madman — and the madman is gunning the engine as he steers us all off the edge of a cliff.

If you’re not terrified, you’re not paying attention.

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Whatever perceived consensus might have once existed in this country about the sort of place “we” wanted it to be is now gone.

There was a broad mythical narrative that a large majority basically bought into — and most of those people were white. Because black and brown people didn’t have political power and were vastly underrepresented in media, the perception existed that the mainstream white culture was “the American culture.”

This broad white culture was seen by most as what the country “ought to be.”

Although there was vigorous competition within that white culture for power and control, the cultural consensus was fairly well accepted. Other groups were considered tiny players in the political and social sense.

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