We live in an increasingly anxious and depressed society, subject to unprecedented psychic misery at a time of unprecedented prosperity. The psychologist Martin Seligman explains this paradox with two parallel forces, which he calls 'the waxing of the individual and the waning of the commons'. On the one hand, we have the breakdown of traditional family structures, of belief in God, and of nationalism—the things in which we have historically found a sense of purpose that transcends the self. As these collective myths break down, the void has been filled by the rise of extreme individualism.
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