Is the Irony of Our Highly Individualized Society That We’re Too Comfortable to Create Radical New Philosophies?

I’ve been reflecting on how thinkers like Kant, Hegel, and Marx didn’t just critique existing systems—they redefined them. Kant introduced the categorical imperative, Marx created an entire ideology that reshaped nations, and thinkers like Hegel restructured how we understand history and reality itself. These ideas radically changed how societies think. But when I look around today, it seems like we’ve hit a point where new, world-altering ideas are few and far between.

Here’s the irony: in our supposedly highly individualized, autonomous society—where freedom, self-expression, and independence are supposed to be at their peak—we aren’t seeing radical new philosophies emerge in the same way. Instead, we seem to be stuck in a cycle of refining, critiquing, and dissecting old systems. It’s like we’ve gotten so comfortable, so cushioned by our material wealth and technological advancements, that we no longer feel the urgency to completely disrupt the status quo like Kant or Marx did.

Is it possible that the very freedoms and comforts we enjoy have actually stifled the kind of thinking that produces world-changing ideas? It’s as though the more freedom we gain, the less driven we are to create something entirely new. In a time when we should be the most free to create, we seem to be stuck in a state of intellectual stasis, content with existing structures.

Is this just the nature of progress? Or are we too comfortable to truly challenge and reinvent the foundations of society?