Escaping societal needs by floating

Nature

Individuals escape from the needs of society by refusing to make any in depth social commitments. The individual floats from one shallow commitment to another or dreams about the past or the future. All demands for concrete engagement in the present are left unmet.

Incidence

Primary group covenants between people, like marriage, have become sequential contracts and have lost their profundity. The process of getting married and raising a family has turned from a life's work to a frantic search for sexual satisfaction, financial security or release from guilt about the quality of life of one's children. Elders, adults and children have become disconnected from each other's life styles; and care for others has become a peripheral concern. Communities are no longer geographically oriented but are oriented towards work or leisure-time, further creating tensions in basic group relationships. Emotional and spiritual support systems have been eroded by this fragmentation of covenants.

Claim

People of the twentieth century aware of the chaotic state of the world and feeling insecure about their own future create illusions of meaning which demean their lives and their work. Rather than have a vocation which is continually risking new directions, discovering new depth to social roles and facilitating more human responses from others, people enslave themselves to these illusions.