Are you experiencing a crisis of meaning? (Part 1)
Why are so many of us feeling disconnected and disoriented?
It’s no stretch of the truth to say there is a crisis of meaning in today’s society. People feel more disoriented, disconnected, anxious, and pulled-every-which-way than ever before. And more of us seem to be arguing and disagreeing with one another.
While the Covid-19 pandemic has certainly exacerbated the problem, there are deeper, underlying causes that go back decades, and even further.
These have led to a meaning crisis in society where many of us find ourselves increasingly lost and confused, as if the ground under our feet seems to be constantly shifting and falling away.
What’s going on? What are we to do?
How did we get into this state anyway?
Many of us have a feeling of being trapped by our circumstances, not being fully in control, within a perplexing and constantly changing world. Nothing seems permanent anymore. And the Covid pandemic has only compounded this feeling.
There is a sense of loss of community cohesion, absence of social empathy, and lack of intimate connection. Some of us have even become disconnected from our own families and friends. Trust seems to be in short supply.
But we actually want the opposite!
We desire connection. It’s who we are as human beings. We are social creatures through and through. We long for a greater sense of belonging and connectedness with others—introverts and extroverts alike.
But it’s not happening. Why is that the case now?
Social malaise
Why is there so much private and social angst when the world is, overall, growing economically and exploding technologically?
Material consumption has never been greater. We have more stuff, more things to do, more distractions than ever, yet there is increasing anxiety everywhere. And it’s not just because of Covid-19.
Isn’t the world supposed to be getting better? Shouldn’t we be super happy by now?
That was the promise of modernism—the scientific, industrial, and information revolution of the past couple hundred years.
Modernism was supposed to usher in a golden age of harmony and plenty. Humanity was meant to be on a trajectory of ever greater progress towards happiness and fulfillment.
That is certainly the myth of modernity—one the world fully bought into. But myths are not true in and of themselves, though they do point to general truths. Modernity did improve material abundance overall, help increase average life span, and lift many out of crushing poverty.
So if modernity has achieved much of its myth, why are so many of us feeling lost, left out, disconnected, and vulnerable? Worried about the present and scared about the future?
A historical view
At Greater Meaning, we’ve thought long and hard about the crisis of meaning and the underlying causes of alienation and social isolation that exist today. And we’ve come up with some explanations.
That’s what this Insight on Purpose is about—trying to make sense of what’s happening now within a historical context of social, political, and economic change.
Hopefully, by identifying some of the causes of our anxiety and distress, we can point to some ways out of our current crisis.
Let’s start at WWII
Looking back, we can see World War II as a major inflection point in recent history that clearly separates an older, more traditional worldview from today’s mentality. That’s a long time ago, about 75 years.
While historical trends are by nature deep and vast, World War II can be seen as a pivotal moment that began the transition from the modern to the postmodern world. And the postmodern world is what is becoming dominant now.
So, let’s go back to the years immediately following World War II as a starting point for making sense of today’s world.
Emergence of a postmodern perspective
Postmodernism is an overarching term to describe the socio-cultural worldview that began to appear in the 1940s and 50s during a time when modernism was glorifying in some of its greatest achievements—namely, the widespread adoption of radio and TV, the harnessing of nuclear energy, the invention of digital computers, the discovery of DNA, and landing men on the moon later in the 60’s.
All cool stuff, considering just 150 or so years ago most of us were keeping warm by huddling around wood and coal-fired fireplaces, while our life expectancy was a mere 40 years in the West and 30-35 years elsewhere.
Modernism represented an enormous advance for humankind in many ways. It came to prominence in the 1700s during the so-called European Enlightenment.
The result was massive historical change, including the application of the scientific method to all human affairs, the industrial revolution, the rise of the nation-state, the establishment of the notion of basic human rights, religious tolerance, the spread of democracy, and the capitalist, market-based economy. Together these changes ushered in a period of unparalleled prosperity for some, but certainly not all.
Such great successes had their dark sides too, particularly in relation to imperialism and colonialism, the curse of slavery, and the means to wage war more effectively.
The benefits of modernism were by no means distributed equally. Much suffering was to be had along the way. Racism, patriarchy, and class strife was rampant. Old institutions and values that supported entrenched interests persisted.
Reinterpreting what it means to be human
While the modern worldview saw its zenith in the immediate post-war years, the rumblings of an emerging crisis in Western civilization were at hand. That crisis had everything to do with a fundamental interpretation of who we are as human beings and our place in the world. And those rumblings were to break out everywhere during the tumultuous 60’s and 70’s, not just in North America, but in Europe and elsewhere.
Suddenly, civil rights mattered, not just human rights—and not just for white people, but for everyone. Women’s liberation and the quest for gender equality became dominant. Sexual orientation was increasingly decriminalized. Democracy spread more widely around the world. People began to understand the impact that our way of living was having on the environment. Our dear Mother Earth, upon which we ultimately rely for our physical sustenance and spiritual solace, was understood to be at risk. Change was happening everywhere you looked.
What was occurring during that time was the start of a reinterpretation of what it means to be a human being living in a radically more complex, multicultural world. That complexity was not just technological. It had to do with the complexity of the economy, the proliferation of new and innovative products and services that the world had never seen, the huge infrastructure buildout of our cities and regions, the increasing interdependence of nations, and the emergence of new social conventions and lifestyles.
Along the way, there were many battles to be fought. Civil rights. Women’s rights. Sexual rights. Disability rights. Animal rights. Even simply the right to be who we are, without judgement or censure by society, were at play.
The social revolutions of the post-war years revealed the depth of prejudice and unfairness in society. And it’s a battle that continues to be fought, such as with Black Lives Matter and the fight for Indigenous rights.
The economic upheaval of neoliberalism
There was an additional shift that occurred during those decades of social upheaval. This was a movement against the so-called “welfare state” economy, which had been created in response to the Great Depression of the 1930’s. At the time it was understood that active government intervention and oversight of the economy had beneficial economic and social outcomes for all. But a rising counter-movement to “welfare state capitalism” saw its realization in the Reagan-Thatcher economic agenda known as neoliberalism.
This “economic revolution,” which harked back to laissez-faire economics of the 19th Century, believed in an economy with minimal government oversight and protections. It supported deregulation and allowed unfettered movement of capital, people, and goods globally. Meaningful national boundaries, at least economically, began to disintegrate.
In the short space of a generation, national economies became bit players in a rapidly expanding globalized economy. Local rules gave way to an increasingly unlimited movement of money, technology, intellectual property, and production capacity. Countries around the world opened up their borders to international trade, China most notably, but India, Brazil, and most other nations also, to greater or lesser extents.
Added to this was the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, which began the disintegration of the Cold War consensus that had held much of the West closely bound together.
The result was more social upheaval, but now on an economic and political scale, rather than just a cultural one. Literally hundreds of millions of Chinese peasants became urban industrial workers, entrepreneurs, government functionaries, and capitalists in the span of a couple of generations. Similar changes happened elsewhere in the world, and continue to do so.
Closer to home in the West, millions of workers in traditional manufacturing sectors lost their jobs, had to be retrained, or entered the less well-paid service sector. The economic impacts of globalization did not hit everyone equally. For some, the new global economy greatly increased wealth and prosperity. But for many others, it caused increasing anguish, anxiety, and uncertainty.
The final upheaval: Personal computing comes of age
In addition to the socio-political upheaval of the 60’s and 70’s, and the neoliberal economic upheaval of the 80’s and 90’s, there was yet another upheaval that had its infancy in the 1980’s but really came of age in the 2000’s and 2010’s—the personal computer revolution.
Suddenly, individuals had more digital firepower than anything that came before. Mobile smartphones, coupled with large-scale adoption of the Internet, set the stage for a transformation of the economic and social fabric of society. And this revolution, only a generation old, continues to unfold and perplex society.
It began at the end of World War II with the first generation of digital computers, but they were extremely large, bulky, expensive, and difficult to use. But by the 21st Century, they had evolved into exceptionally small, enormously powerful, easy to use, and (relatively) inexpensive computers that you could hold in your hand and take anywhere.
This third upheaval has radically changed the way we engage ourselves with the world, communicate, find information, shop, and connect to services and other people in an ever-expanding array of online activities.
But the digital revolution is not just the Internet. It also includes a host of new and emerging applications for computers, such as digital automation, artificial intelligence, augmented and virtual reality, quantum computing, drones, robotics, and self-driving automobiles.
This third upheaval has radically changed the way we engage ourselves with the world, communicate, find information, shop, and connect to services and other people in an ever-expanding array of online activities.
But the digital revolution is not just the Internet. It also includes a host of new and emerging applications for computers, such as digital automation, artificial intelligence, augmented and virtual reality, quantum computing, drones, robotics, and self-driving automobiles.
Other technologies such as biotech, nano-tech, and clean-tech promise to continue the disruption that goes hand-in-hand with the opening of new opportunities. New discoveries and inventions continue apace, and that points to the next upheaval.
The bottom line? Rapid change and disruption are not going away, but will only accelerate.
Socially untethered
Together, these three historical megatrends—the social upheaval of the 60’s and 70’s, the economic globalization of the 80’s and 90’s, and the technology revolution of the 2000’s and 10’s―have resulted in huge disruption to the fabric of society, to the unseen, underlying social glue that holds us together, and which helps us make sense of our lives.
During these decades, change of all kinds accelerated, leaving many of us somewhat shell-shocked by the enormity of it all. Social cohesion began to unravel in numerous unseen and often unnoticed ways.
Part of this unravelling was trust in the very institutions that civil society relied upon―traditional media, the church, the legal system, academia, unions, political parties, the government with all its innumerable components from the local library and policing, to federal agencies managing our security and health, and international agencies setting global standards. All have become somehow removed, alienated, from our individual realities. Experts became suspect.
In the midst of the confusion, we withheld our trust and faith. Slowly, yet suddenly, we found ourselves increasingly alone and disconnected while simultaneously being more connected than ever via the internet and social media, and more inundated with news, information and entertainment.
The result has become this strange morphic reality where we seem to float from one distraction to the next in a never-ending search for our true selves, our essential foundations. Our individual and communal anxiety has burst open, while we simultaneously attempt to maintain a veneer of control and harmony.
And the solution?
We are told daily, via a thousand images and messages, that if we only buy this, have that, think this way, support that, do this, then we’ll be happy.
We are repeatedly provoked to replace being with having in order to find meaning in our postmodern lives. Just give me another jolt of something, anything. I don’t care. Caffeine! Calories! Eye candy! TikTok! Alcohol! Drugs! Likes! Upvotes! Next day delivery!
Whatever it takes to make me feel alive and good about myself.
The crisis of meaning
No, consumption and consumerism are not the answer, and we know that. But they are not the problem either, only a symptom of the underlying uneasiness in society today.
We’ve somehow become detached from our essence. Some of us only a little, as we drift sideways across the social, economic, and technological landscape.
But for many others, we’re deeply adrift in an unknown reality without the stability of the past for comfort and connection, and often little real hope for a positive future.
Friedrich Nietzsche, the colossal 19th-century existentialist philosopher, captured the essence of this disconnect from the past when he declared “God is dead.”
What did he mean by such a controversial statement? He meant that the meaning in life that traditional religious institutions had provided for millennia were no longer there in the ways they used to be, to provide the sure footing and direction in life they once offered.
Neitzche was one of the first to show how humanity had somehow been cast adrift from its moorings. In many ways, that was liberating. But it also generated and continues to generate, confusion and uncertainty.
That traditional sure-footing is even more absent today as we confront the triple disruptions of cultural evolution, globalization, and technological innovation while searching for new touchpoints and better ways to understand ourselves and our place in the world.
We want to make sense of this ever-evolving world we now find ourselves in.
~ William Koty, Co-Founder, Greater Meaning
Watch for Part 2 - Are you experiencing a crisis of meaning? - coming next week!
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