Have We Become Unwired from What Matters?

An examination of how contemporary reward-driven culture has led to cognitive unwiring — weakening our capacity for ethical reasoning, abstract thought, and societal responsibility.

I’m starting to wonder if people truly care anymore — not care in the shallow, performative sense, but care in the way human beings were designed to care: ethically, morally, spiritually, and intellectually.

Because what I observe today is not a lack of capacity — but a profound unwiring of that capacity.

We are naturally wired for depth. Every civilization that built anything of meaning — from Greek inquiry to Islamic cosmology — began with a mind that could see beyond the body, beyond ingredients, beyond routines, beyond results. The human being is architecturally designed for abstraction, reflection, consequence, and collective moral vision.

But something has happened.

Somewhere between consumerism, dopamine culture, and the endless churn of “content,” an entire population has become unwired from its innate architecture — uncoiled from the depth that once defined us.

Today, people respond immediately to posts about skin care, body healing, physical health, even emotional self-soothing.
But the moment the topic shifts to philosophy, societal ethics, deep thinking, cultural responsibility, neuroplasticity, cosmology, or moral structure — silence.

What does this mean?

It means the modern mind can no longer track beyond the first layer of reality.
It means our attention has collapsed inward — not toward introspection, but toward maintenance.
The “self-care” culture has turned people into managers of their own nervous systems but not architects of their own consciousness.

We know everything about ingredients.
We know nothing about inner principles.
We know how to repair the skin barrier.
But not the moral barrier.
We can recite Qur’anic verses, quote hadiths, post about historical tragedies — but we cannot sustain a conversation about the structure those teachings demand we embody.

This is not natural.
This is not human limitation.
This is cultural conditioning — a systematic narrowing of thought until only the body remains legible.

If a society cannot think beyond what goes on its skin, how can it challenge cultural poisoning?
How can it recognize manipulation?
How can it protect itself from ideological decay?
How can it build anything?
How can it revolt against anything?
How can it even sense that something is wrong?

A population that only responds to the body becomes a population separated from the soul.

We have not lost our wiring — but we have allowed it to atrophy.

The truth is:
People can think deeply.
People are wired for it.
But depth is a muscle, and we have stopped lifting anything heavier than lifestyle content.
We have become accustomed to low-stakes thinking because it demands nothing of us — no moral courage, no accountability, no transformation, no consequence.

And yet… this is precisely what our moment in history requires.
Not more body routines.
Not more self-soothing.
But the re-coiling of the human mind back into its natural orientation — a mind capable of seeing, questioning, resisting, building, and upholding meaning.

Because if we remain unwired, the world will continue to shape us.
If we rewire — we will shape the world.