Why Modern Life Feels Hollow

The hidden consequences of aimless progress

Do you get the sense that modern life is hollow?

We spend our youth in classrooms to absorb information we will seldom use, and graduate with paper credentials rather than impactful skills and knowledge. Then, with our hollow childhood and preserved naivety about the world, we are thrust into modern adulthood, defined by uninspiring work to buy crap we don't need while struggling to afford what we do need. In our spare moments, our leisure time is often dedicated to ‘life admin’ rather than relaxation, along with a looming sense of dread that Monday is always around the corner. Left yearning for something, anything, that can soothe or distract us from the monotony of modern life, we turn to escapism – endless scrolling, binge-watching TV, levelling up in video games, retail therapy or substances. And the grand finale? A pension that will barely cover the cost of cat food along with care home bingo nights and the occasional family visit. 

Is this the pinnacle of humanity? I hope not. I am not saying everything is terrible, but to borrow a phrase from sociologist Max Weber, the modern world feels disenchanted. I can’t speak for the world as a whole of course, I am referring here to the so-called ‘West’ (because I live in it).

We have advanced materially but seem to have lost the ‘soulful’ dimension of life in the process. I liken it to the Game of Thrones TV show – a promising start that veered off course, leaving us unsatisfied and questioning what went wrong. Just as the show strayed from its source material, we've strayed from living in a way that aligns with our true nature. 

And there are signs to support this intuition. We are observing a widespread decline in mental and physical wellbeing, life satisfaction has stagnated despite material progression, and our trust in institutions, and even each other is diminishing, leading to polarisation. 

If you’ve searched for answers to our predicament like I have, you’ve likely encountered the carousel of finger-pointing. Depending on who you ask, the fault lies with ‘government’, ‘politics’, ‘capitalism’, ‘socialism’, ‘immigration’, ‘social media’, ‘young generations’, ‘old generations’, it goes on. The complexity of the problem and its felt impact on our day-to-day lives makes us desperate to find some justice. 

But swinging for the fences won’t work. It hasn’t worked. Don’t get me wrong, there is merit in some of these accusations. But my view is that they’re symptoms of a wider system issue. If we want to be rid of our problem, we need precision, we need to address the root cause of the problem. The most appropriate starting point to uncover it is by asking a neglected question; why have we built the modern world to be this way? 

Yes, there are a million possible answers but only one stands out to me; the worldview of modernity. 

How we've built our world mirrors our beliefs, attitudes, and values. We've created a disenchanted world because, as modern people, we've lost our sense of wonder and magic. We use the lens of efficiency and utility, not meaning and beauty. 

A quick historical context tells us why this has happened.

---

The Modernity worldview dominates today because it replaced the one of religion. This shift happened during key historical periods such as the Renaissance (14th to 17th century), Reformation (16th century) and Scientific Revolution (15th to 18th century). Each period introduced a crucial element that moved us further from divine authority.

• The Renaissance sparked a newfound interest in human potential and curiosity.

• The Reformation challenged the Catholic Church's influence by promoting diverse interpretations of the scriptures.

• The Scientific Revolution shifted our focus to empirical observation and rational thinking to explain the natural world.

These ideas fertilised and created a major shift in thinking - the belief that we could understand and navigate life without needing divine intervention. 

Humanism ideals from Classical Antiquity were revived, such as human potential, reason, and ethics. Additionally, secularism grew stronger as religion played a smaller role in matters of state and everyday life. With these new frameworks of modernity, the goals of life changed with it. 

Our beliefs, decisions and actions were no longer focused on the objective of earning your spot in heaven or another eternal paradise. Without this ‘next place’ or the need to adhere to religious protocols, we immersed ourselves more in the present. Particularly since life appears much shorter when eternity is off the table. Life’s objective became the maximisation of the human experience. 

It's not that people with the past religious worldview didn't strive to live fulfilling lives, but under the modern humanism worldview, there's a greater emphasis on the present because life doesn't posit meaning beyond death. There’s a greater incentive to ‘live like there’s no tomorrow’. And there is no better way to do this than the idea of ‘progress’ (I’m sure you’ve heard of it). If followed, the path of progress promises the ULTIMATE experience; a Utopia. Paradise now rather than paradise later.

And it didn’t take much convincing to embrace it, each feat of progress modernised us and reaffirmed our belief in it. Why wouldn’t we? What was slow, became fast. What was heavy, became light. What was hard, became easy. And then, even faster, lighter and easier! Better became even better. Progress is now as unconscious an expectation as breathing. 

But progress is a process, a means to an end, not the end itself. But we’re so caught up in all our progress that we can’t tell the difference anymore. This is because the flaw of modernity is its absence of a real objective.

Let me explain.

The shift to humanism and scientific rationality diminished the transcendent objectives of life, those that resonate profoundly and inspire high levels of commitment. As mentioned, one such objective was that of divine and spiritual belief. Another was biological survival – securing food, water, shelter, and ultimately, reproduction. While we haven’t freed ourselves from these biological restraints, we can meet them trivially thanks to our progress in science and technology (the reproduction part is still on you). These needs no longer consume most of our time, energy and thought. In modern Western life, they feel like side quests.

So again, the weight of meaning in modernity shifts even more to the immersions in the present. As we don’t simply cease to exist without a grand objective to guide us, we have instead reverted to our factory settings; pursuing immediate comforts and pleasures. 

This is where utopia enters the fold. It appears to save us from this hedonic aimlessness. After all, who doesn’t want a future society that has reached perfection with characteristics such as improved healthcare, pristine environments, high-level education, reduced crime, bountiful resources and equality? 

But if you rub your eyes and look again, you’ll notice that utopia is just a hyper-version of our present desires. It’s just a way to immerse ourselves even more in the now. Another problem is that utopia isn't clear, it can’t be unless we suddenly agree on the definition of a perfect society. But the illusion remains because an objective, even an unclear one, is better than admitting that you don’t have one at all. It gives society a reason to roll out of bed in the morning. 

---

So why is immersion in the present problematic?

It’s not. The issue is that our progress, which we’re infatuated by, serves no real goal. Because of this, we unintentionally enact progress for the sake of progress. This is just blind optimisation, everything must be ‘better, faster, cheaper’ for no reason beyond the profit of the endeavour. We’ve transformed every aspect of life, including ourselves, into mechanistic components in the instrument of progress. Our education, entertainment, architecture, food systems, economic systems, work, relationships… they’ve all deteriorated because of our aimless progress. This is the root cause of our disenchantment.

And we willingly comply, not only because we don’t see the illusions of utopia, but optimisation also serves our self-interests extremely well. Dating apps can replace the complicated courtship dance with swipes and texts, processed foods offer quick, tasty meals, and the food itself can even be substituted with supplements. We don’t even suffer boredom as we can endlessly stimulate ourselves in the digital world. 

But this cold hard optimisation of our lives is disenchanting because it neglects the holistic aspect of existence; walks in nature, conversation, beautiful architecture, creativity, community, I could go on. It also misses the mark on the biological front. Courtship rituals aren't just for romance; they are about sexual selection. Our craving for food isn't about indulging in taste; it’s about nutrition. Our need for social connection isn't about accumulating likes and followers; it’s about fostering cohesion to optimise survival.

We are living unfaithfully to our biological heritage and what is truly meaningful and purposeful to us because the modern system doesn’t serve us. It serves progress (for the sake of progress).

Society in modernity operates like a fragmented game board where every player is free to pursue their separate interests. Each person or group optimises for their own gains, and the broader system reflects.

Now, for many people, modern life is a cycle of monotony and a deprivation of meaning. But for the system of progress, it's nothing but green cells in its spreadsheet of better, faster, cheaper. A complete misalignment.

The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently - David Graeber

We play along with our self-destruction because modern life is ‘just the way things are’. As children, what reason did we have to question this way of life if everyone around us behaved this way? But herein lies the secret; modernity is held together by belief. Nothing else. It’s a silly trait of ours, to think that social constructs are objective truths. We don’t question why the modern world is the way it is because we struggle to imagine that another way of life is even possible.

We must remind ourselves of our ancestor’s profound discovery; the world doesn’t have to be as it is, we possess the ability to sculpt it. 

Modernity has bestowed upon us comforts and conveniences that are hard to dismiss. Yet, beneath this veneer lies a glaring issue—our lives lack a deeper purpose, a guiding star if you will. In our relentless quest to optimise the human experience, we’ve squeezed out the very elements that make it meaningful, leaving us in a world that feels more like a machine than a home. The irony is as tragic as it is absurd.

This is why I view the chaos in politics, immigration, social media, and economics as symptoms of a deeper void, not the disease itself. We like to point fingers at the system and the powerful, but the truth is, we’re too distracted by our own trivial pursuits to truly care. We lack a shared mission, a higher calling, and in that vacuum, we’ve lost our ability to unite and demand better. When people share a common purpose, any threat to it is intolerable—but without it, apathy reigns.

The disenchantment we feel is a wake-up call. What we need now isn’t merely more progress, but a new objective for it to serve. A purpose that gives direction to our advancements, compelling enough to drive us to build a world that aligns both our physical and existential needs. I’m not sure if this calls for a revival of divine belief or if it’s something new altogether. But I am certain that we need to start the conversation, to strip away the illusions we’ve accepted as truth.

That’s the first step to our enchantment.