Causes of Polarization: Technology-Driven Anxiety

The global economy is increasingly oriented and based on digital innovation and technology under the guise of solving human problems. However, greater screen use is known to lead to social isolation and mechanical jobs are devoid of challenge and meaning.

Screen use also obliterates the difference between work and rest, causing burnout and further emotional disruption such as addiction to social media. Furthermore, digital technology spurs governments to apply increasing control over citizens’ lives, and causes corporations to harvest our screen attention for gain, both diminishing individuals’ choice and autonomy.

This paradigm ignores innate human needs described in a previous post. The resulting high anxiety in the population, often free-floating, provides a ripe field for manipulators to draw on. These high emotional states can be easily directed towards any single goal that relieves the anxiety, including simplified political solutions and conspiracies. The fixation on quick and singular answers contributes to polarization.

This drive for an increasingly technological economy is also an accepted assumption for healthy economies by elites and the global network mentioned earlier. Again, this approach is disconnected from the needs of local populations. It is also a product of highly left brained thinking among elites.

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Read our next post in the series: Causes of Polarzation: Safetyism, Screens, and the End of Free Play for Children.