There is this saying ‘people are not islands’ to mean people are interconnected with each other. The literal sense being applied by the last decade and by extension the last semicentennial is weird. The EU is a federation and any country can leave, but I still think Brexit was a mistake.
I consider these associations of QOL improvements with mythical characteristics attempts of narrative control, with which religious leaders could exert power over new developments. My assumption is that previously, organised religions were powerful and agile enough in their narrative that those new development could be held in control of the religion, but with the beginning of exponential and distributed knowledge production they were kinda outnumbered and became as weird as they are today. I have no motivation or sources to back this up, though.
That sounds like the story of those Christians who were afraid of lightning rods because it might interfere with their God’s ability to punish people by lightning.