We moved from locally connected to globally isolated. Community was once enforced by proximity. Now it is optional, and therefore gone. You don’t ask a neighbor for help when you can pay someone online. You don’t show up to town hall when your feed is louder. You live among people who could die next to you without being noticed.
Disconnection didn’t happen. It was produced. It’s profitable. It scales. It protects systems that benefit when people become consumers of interaction rather than participants in community.
Principle
When things get too easy, people stop needing each other.
Application
Modern systems are built to remove friction. Friction is where people used to fit. Most tools and systems in the modern economy are designed to remove people’s dependence on you, which collapses relationships to identity tribalism.
Now, you're designed out, hyper-connetced and all alone. Every time a system becomes smoother, a person becomes unnecessary.
You don’t fix this by doing more. You fix it by understanding this:
- If the system works without you, then it was built to ignore you.
- If you can leave and nothing changes, then the structure has no dependency tree.
- If every role you play has a backup, you’re not in a system. You’re in a simulation of one.
This is not about re-inserting yourself. It’s about recognizing that belonging is not a vibe. It is a structural dependency.
Limit / Cost
This will make you smaller. Slower. Harder to reach. You’ll fall out of sync with people optimizing for noise.