

Anxiety is defined as a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease about something with an uncertain outcome. General anxiety levels seem have drastically shot up over the last two centuries, synchronous with radical transformations in our social reality. Briefly examining two seminal historical events of the 18th century is key here in understanding the possible link between anxiety, especially identity anxiety, and rapid social change.
Both phenomena radically reworked our primordial ties or fixed identities and more stable social patterns of organisation and biased individualism over community and competition or standing out over cooperation.
Fast forward to the current era of smart phones, the pressure to construct and establish one’s unique identity in a social reality:
Brands aid in the construction and expression of identity in a rapidly changing world. But, do they have to change more fundamentally to aid the arrest of currently increasing levels of general anxiety across the world?