SOCIAL
- Geographic atomization of our friends and family; disruption of traditional, localized, robust and long-lasting social structures
- Tyranny of markets and data: pressure to measure success only in financial, or otherwise quantifiable, ways.
- Pressure to have our lives and relationships conform to manipulative, manufactured fantasies
- Pressure to analyze, regulate, control, mitigate risk of, and optimize every aspect of our, and our children's behavior
- Cynicism when it comes to individual freedom, agency and enfranchisement
- Cynicism and mockery regarding faith and religion
- The loss of humor, "gray zones", mystery; cultivation of narcissism and "outrage"
Ultimately: our
inability to formulate a positive, normative goal for ourselves and our families in the current social environment
TECHNOLOGY
- Pressure to constantly engage machines and screens (smartphones, TV's, work computers etc.);
- The dependency on machines to make non-trivial decisions for us
- Fragmentation of our focus due to media; the lack of "quality time" to consider topics in depth
- Loss of our power to fantasize and create, replaced by one-way consumption of ‘ready-made’ images, headlines etc.
- Hindering of our ability to judge veracity, or value, due to lack of context or quality indicators in electronic information
- The recording and archiving of all activity, causing a constant anxiety about how we are, will be, or could be perceived
- Anxiety caused by tech’s ability to reach (manipulate, and/or even destroy) any human being at any time
- Idolization of machines; devaluation of our bodies and minds
Ultimately: our increasing
vulnerability versus “our” machines; not just physically, but also psychologically
WORK
- Decoupling of our work from anything physically (or even intellectually) tangible; alienation from the product of our work
- The cynical, group view on the "meaninglessness" and undesirability of modern work
Ultimately: the falling away of work as one, if not the, main
source of meaning in our lives
