Man’s collective mastery of nature, moreover—even if we could ignore the mounting evidence that this too is largely an illusion—can hardly be expected to confer a sense of confidence and well-being when it coexists with centralizing forces that have deprived individuals of any mastery over the concrete, immediate conditions of their existence. The collective control allegedly conferred by science is an abstraction that has little resonance in every-/day life. Scientific technology has made life more secure in many ways, but its destructive side, most dramatically revealed by the development of nuclear weapons, adds to the feeling of insecurity that derives from the individual’s diminishing control over his immediate surroundings. […] The structure of modern experience gives […] far more encouragement to a sense of helplessness, victimization, cynicism, and despair.

— Christopher Lasch, The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics (1991), pp. 385–86