The Unbearable Insignificance of Being

How population growth, inflation of knowledge, the pace of change, globalization make us feel small

By growing population, larger masses are reduced to insignificance. Imagine that, in the early days, humans lived in small groups: 20–30 people, with social hierarchy — chieftains, shamans, hunters, elderly, etc. By encountering another group, two groups had to merge, often violently — one of the chieftains had to relinquish his position, since there could be only one. Then that bigger group merged with another group, and so on, and so forth. In a very large society, masses of people have no significance and/or control over their circumstances, endeavors, lives. Everything is decided for them. They’re just there to fulfill the quota.

Nowadays, in modern societies, we are all specialists: the generalists like Leonardo da Vinci don’t exist anymore. If they do exist, they’re not very successful.

Consider this: how many painters were there in Leonardo’s time? We may never know the exact number, but probably a lot fewer than they are today, by the order of magnitude.

This seriously calls into question a lot of things, among others our educational system. If one of the purposes of education is to prepare students for life, how it can possibly do so if education institutions themselves cannot keep up?

Also, with inflation of knowledge comes the lack of structure. With so much data floating around, it’s hard to distinguish important facts from the fluff. And no one has time to go through all of that.

Enter job market. The list of requirements for each position out there is getting longer and more specific, with no end in sight. You have a computer science degree, but no frameworks experience? Sorry recent graduate, we can’t hire you. By the time you acquire framework knowledge, the current frameworks may no longer be in fashion.

Resource planning is yet another problem. How can anyone do this efficiently, without possibly knowing what project requirements are going to be in the very near future? It’s all guesswork, at best.

As if the aforementioned factors aren’t enough to overwhelm anyone, globalization adds another level of difficulty. West already outsourced all production to China and elsewhere, leaving tens of millions of their own citizens unemployed or underemployed. A similar thing is happening with white-collar jobs, too. All remote jobs are sourced from an international labor pool, with low cost being a primary driver. That leaves very little choice for “domestic” people: they either had to accept low wages in order to be competitive, or find another employment. What would happen when there’s no suitable employment available for everyone?

As humans, the need for certainty and stability is hard-wired. We all seek safety and security, along with belonging and being valued as a member of a group. It’s hard to build a house if the ground constantly shakes.

The factors mentioned above are making our lives harder. We feel small, insignificant, like cogs in the machine. Humans are not meant to be cogs.

As a society and humanity as a whole, we’d have to figure out the ways to make our lives “whole” again. Compartmentalization and specialization aren’t a solution: it leaves us alienated, wanting, and ultimately unhappy. In order to realize our human potential, we need to abandon the current “cog in the machine” model and figure out different model(s) that will be better suited for us. Otherwise, we’d be just another failed evolutionary experiment.

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