In this case, I’m referring to the notion that we all make minor sacrifices in our daily interactions in service of a “greater good” for everyone.
“Following the rules” would be a simplified version of what I’m talking about, I suppose. But also keeping an awareness/attitude about "How will my choices affect the people around me in this moment? “Common courtesy”, “situational awareness”, etc…
I don’t know that it’s a “new” phenomenon by any means, I just seem to have an increasing (subjective) awareness of it’s decline of late.
The reason we are seeing a version of Idiocracy in action is due partly to us no longer being able to keep up with the excess of information and partly to mindless inhibition of education.
First, there is a lot of information to cram into the heads of children and there needs to be a reform and streamlining of education in general, if we are to keep up with our status of development. Unfortunately our civilization as a whole has reached a centurial gap between its forefront and its general body. Most of our capitals, which are supposed to be shining beacons of our achievements, are instead living museums of our evolution. The outer husks are nothing more than tribal huts made of mud, barely rediscovering the wheel and fire.
Second, cuts are being made heavily and exhaustingly poor in the department of education on a global scale more or less, and the focus on forefront performance causes everything else to degrade rapidly. Whether cultural, religious, economical or plain idiotic, restrictions are being added one after the other and create a vacuum that simply disrupt the well being of our society.
Education needs to be comprehensive in order to be effective in every facet available. Ours currently isn’t.
Just wait until the technology singularity occurs, when there is simply too much shit, too much info, too much tech, for any human to understand anything without the aid of AI. And then we’ll be left in the dust with events moving too quickly for us to process at all, as if we have a say in it anyway.