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How Progress Leads to a Mental Health Crisis
Technology means trading personhood for productivity
Human beings are social creatures.
As social creatures, one of the most important factors in our mental well-being is the quality of our connection with others.
The bad news is that if you aren’t careful, technology can subtly erode the quality of your relationships. It leaves you with the appearance of connection without the fulfillment of community.
What is technology?
One of the best definitions of technology I’ve ever heard is that is an advancement that trades personhood for productivity.
For example, one person with a spreadsheet has the computational potential of dozens of people doing arithmetic. This is how we often think of the benefits of technology, it allows us to get more done with the resources we have.
The downside of technology
Technology is good overall, but everything comes with trade-offs. The danger comes in when you turn a blind eye to the consequences of progress and ignore the second-order consequences of technology.
Let’s consider money as an example.
