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The fear of insignificance causes people to try to remain relevant by continuously posting on social media.

The "fake it until you make it" culture is rife with inauthenticity.

The internet has exacerbated the performative nature of our lives.

Comedian Marc Maron recently chastised fellow comedian Bill Maher with what he deemed "desperate chasing of relevance," and this notion captured for me something that I've observed in sessions with patients.

In The Fear of Insignificance: Searching for Meaning in the Twenty-First Century, psychoanalyst Carlo Strenger discusses the dread of being invisible — or, egads, merely "ordinary" rather than extraordinary humans — against a cultural backdrop that worships fame, wealth, optimizing, and "maxxing." Because the ideals promoted by our infotainment-based society are inherently unreachable, most of us are "doomed to fail or fall short," a condition that places us on hamster wheels of continual desperation to remain relevant while retaining the facade of looking calm, cool, and collected.

Strenger notes that pop-spirituality and self-help, including the dynamic that Ron Purser decries in his brilliant book McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality, have replaced religion as our primary coping mechanism and that this replacement ultimately exacerbates our anxiety rather than ameliorating it. Neither our society’s spiritual ideals, nor material ideals, nor reputational ideals are ever attainable, which keeps all of us on hamster wheels chasing relevance, including the celebrities, artists, billionaires and gurus we most admire. Strenger believes that human beings carry a deep need "to matter, make a difference, and feel a........

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