Overall reductionistic images have resulted in a disparity between the goals of the corporate community and individual purpose. People lack a global context from which to see their own experience as significant, resulting in a gap between individual engagement and a corporate thrust. Viewed from a limited framework, present-day individual commitment is not experienced as as meaningful.
Local structures which reinforce the individual's sense of having meaningful social roles have collapsed creating a separation of social functions. The loss of the family's historical roles, the loss of significance of the local church, and loss of community at the neighbourhood level have all examples of the failure of local structures. The individual's understanding of the self is thus unrelated to the world around it; such shallow self-image and symbols are inadequate to express the full meaning of life. Individuals tend to cling to a belief in the basic insignificance of life in order to maintain such a reduced, private world view; they are then left without social directions or goals resulting in prevention of effective commitment.