My point is, technological complexity tends to create tasks that no one feels like doing, and the people who get excited about tech are insulated from those tasks. This goes back to the subject of elite overproduction. Too many people see themselves as the designers and beneficiaries of amazing new technologies, and not enough people are willing to do the increasingly fiddly grunt work.
From Ran Prieur’s 074.
This is an incredibly key point that techno-optimists consistently ignore. They believe that social problems are simply another type of technical problems that they can solve by applying the same mindset they use in engineering, as if there was such a thing as a social architect, but it simply isn't the case. If no one believes in your vision, if no one wants to do the grunt work necessary to make it come into reality, then it simply won't happen.
In a sense the entire project of civilization is about getting people to work for its growth without their full consent. Either through overt physical coercion, or through removing options, or through brainwashing, or many other techniques. But this can only work for so long.
I think Ran Prieur is very correct when he points out that motivation is one of the most, if not the most, fundamental component of societal collapse. As he mentions above the paragraph I just quoted:
I continue to think that motivation is the number one factor in collapse. A society collapses when not enough people feel like doing the stuff that holds it together, and too many people feel like doing stuff that breaks it down.
I'd say that we can sense the motivational collapse coming in many areas:
The abundance of media—movies, videos, books, even songs—which is skeptical of our modern world. Like seriously how many movies are about the problems of our system and advanced technology versus its celebration?
That more and more people struggle with motivation to do things for the system, such as in school or at work. Everyone seems to have ADHD these days, or needs to read self-help to get anything done.
On the other side, there are more and more conversations about ways to earn money outside of the typical pathways, and those alternative lifestyles are more viable than ever thanks to the internet. This means that people are less and less accepting of the so-called "normal" of the modern world and are more aware of better alternatives
An increasingly small number of people know how to fix the technology that we're utterly reliant upon. Not just the obviously complicated ones like computers and cars, but also even our plumbing, electrical infrastructure, etc.
Related to the term 'elite overproduction' that Ran Prieur mentions, Joseph Schumpeter had this idea of the intellectual class, which would constitute one of the major factors of the demise of capitalism. This fall would be the result of the considerable successes of capitalism, because that system would create so much wealth that a significant portion of the population would have enough free time to educate itself and others about the problems of our world, not just the local ones but also across the globe and throughout time for instance. On top of that, the lack of fulfilling work, or simply work because of technological shifts, will compound with the intellectual class into a climate of critique about our society, protests and dissatisfaction, which will eventually undermine our system.
While my explanation of Schumpeter's idea of the intellectual class might be somewhat inaccurate or overly simplistic, I think the broad trend of our system undermining itself through its intellectuals comes across to me as very accurate. Everyone wants to be the smart guy in the room, especially if they can attack the system that way, but ultimately very few people have what it takes to create any meaningful change.