In the first quarter of 2021 alone, the technology company Apple made more money than the annual GDP of 135 countries; its market valuation was higher than the GDP of Italy, Brazil, Canada, South Korea and Russia.

Here was an existence, brand new to our species, that was defined by tightly controlled routines, bounded by regular shifts and rewarded with regular pay. Individual workers became easily replaceable parts in a massive machine.

Today, when we’re still so young we’ve barely had the chance to register we’re alive, we’re pushed into an education system... See more

This ordinary-day ache is a first world problem. That’s not a way to blithely demean it; it is the point. Most of us, in the West, are not mentally ill. We’re not going to go the doctor complaining of our dull, yearning ache. It’s not going to show up in official health statistics. But it’s there. From a distance it looks as if we, the people of... See more

We’re programmed to want to feel as if our existence is important, even essential. For millions of years, it likely would have been. But in the modern West, how often do we feel indispensable? And why is this? For the psychologist Professor Michael Tomasello, ”one of the most robust findings in all the social sciences is that cooperation becomes... See more