Oh, I’d be the last to argue that modernity is psychologically healthy (and I’ve got the fancy shrink and wall of carefully selected prescription anxiolytics to prove it), I just find it ironic that the ‘feelings of powerlessness’/‘actual powerlessness’ ratio of modernity is so high, even though the value of ‘actual powerlessness’ in modern societies is so low. This affirms the theory that we are churning out really significant ‘feelings of powerlessness’ numbers, faster than we are lowering ‘actual powerlessness’; but it’s always struck me as sort of interesting.
People have long been sucking up to imaginary deities, and just plain drinking themselves shitfaced at every opportunity, but for most of that time they’ve also been subject to what we would think of as harrowing levels of powerlessness(rightsless subjects of god king/one bad harvest away from famine, infant mortality in the 30+ percent range, some trivial little infection could be the death of you, etc, etc, etc.)
