A year or so ago, I was working on my undergraduate thesis project in deep RL, I had been working on the project for 8-9 months at the time. Due to covid, lack of support and computational resources from the university, I was behind, and making progress was difficult.
Shortly after I submitted the thesis, I felt an eerie disillusionment with the absurdity of the middle class, and whatever we are all doing, the pretentiousness, how we are all stuck in our own little bubbles where we find ways to feel special and 'serious' about things, how we focus and advertise the niche-ness of our field, and how we all advertise our lives in social media and so on.
Sam Esmail put it greatly in the first episode of Mr. Robot in Elliot's monologue on what in society disappoints him so much [1] and concludes that the reason is that we are all cowards, we are looking to be sedated. Which is absolutely true, capitalism feeds on that, bought something?, bam dopamine rush, got a promotion to the same shitty position but with more responsibilities ? congratulations, another dopamine rush. Buying overpriced sushi and eating it with that chopstick skill you have mastered, another rush. Sharing our lives on the internet bam rush, and you know what, of course we need to share pictures with our friends, it's the contract, we scratch each other's back here, and the funny thing is, it is never enough, and it will never be enough [2].
Deep down, we all know that the world is utter shit, but living in these bubbles allows us to pretend that it is not so bad, because that is easier, it allows us to live with the situation instead of taking the roads and demanding that things change, if anything, why should we demand a change if "it's working for us", if whatever we have gives us a dose big enough to forget but small enough to function? Heck, even if we start fixing the world, Machiavelli argues that given the opportunity, the middle class will bring it back [3], because the new state of affairs will not enable that kind of detachment.
The problem with this disillusionment is that you aren't willing to be sedated, not anymore, you realize how shit the world is, how everyone is pretending and is unwilling to accept it that we are not in control of anything.
But what the f do I know. All I can say is that I have seen and experienced the 'Michael Scott' behaviour from the people the author mentions, but again, I live in my own little bubble.
[1] https://soundcloud.com/flibber/mr-robot-101-elliots-monologu...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_adaptation
[3] In "il prince", when a new prince conquers a region with the help of aristocrats, if he changes the norm, he needs to squash any chance of future opposition as the previous norm worked for the aristocrats and they will try to revert back.
Edit:
I must have hit some nerves. Sorry for telling the silent part out loud, Michael.