Disconnection Is the Root of All Evil (in Tech and Beyond)

In engineering, we often seek root causes. Yet we rarely dig deep enough. We investigate system failures, team misalignments, poor metrics, but stop short of confronting what may be the most pervasive failure of all: disconnection from reality.

This disconnection, subtle yet devastating, is more than a pattern. It is a pathology. It affects our work, our organisations, our societies. It rots software from the inside. It breaks teams. It dissolves trust.

The Illusion of Connection

Modern life is built upon illusions of connection. Messaging apps replace conversations. Dashboards replace dialogue. Likes replace relationships. We consume food we do not cook, depend on services we do not understand, and design systems for people we no longer meet. We live in a world where convenience has replaced consequence.

Underneath it all, there is fear of effort, of responsibility, of discomfort. Many now avoid learning to drive, cooking for others, or facing the physical world. They shelter behind automation, consume from behind glass, and claim moral superiority while others clean their streets, deliver their goods, and build the systems they rely on.

Technologists reflect this trend with painful clarity. A generation of engineers builds apps for lives they do not live. They optimise workflows they do not understand. They speak of performance without feeling the impact of delay. They confuse data with empathy and velocity with value.

Two Case Studies in Indifference

First, a mobile application used daily in physical retail. Its poor performance (30s to process a payment, 15s to list items) cost field sales teams 25% of their working day. The data showed it. The users reported it. And yet, the cloud SaaS team responsible ignored it.

Second, a warehouse management system used by over 3,500 workers. A severe bug forced thousands to abandon family time over the weekend to unblock delayed shipments. The engineering team, nearly 80 strong, remained silent. There was no urgency, no sense of guilt, no ownership.

Both teams had access to reality. They simply refused to connect to it. When finally confronted, they reacted not with curiosity but with defensiveness. Tantrums, accusations, deflection. Emotional regression, not leadership.

What Disconnection Destroys

Disconnection breaks three core assets: empathy, accountability, and trust. But more broadly, it signals the disappearance of any cohesive system of values.

Empathy allows engineers to serve. Accountability ensures they improve. Trust makes collaboration possible. Without these, software becomes hollow. Teams lose meaning. Quality becomes negotiable. Craft disappears. And when these values collapse, they do not do so in isolation. They vanish alongside the cultural frameworks that once supported them.

One of the most revealing signs, from an evolutionary psychology perspective, is the rise of grievance-based ideologies. These belief systems offer belonging without responsibility, identity without contribution. They demand emotional safety yet deny the discomfort that comes with real values. Their success is not surprising: they are less constraining, more seductive, and ultimately corrosive.

The absence of values does not result in stagnation. It results in decay. Products become fragile. Systems fail silently. Leaders grow cynical. And worst of all, customers pay the price.

The Kobayashi Maru of Leadership

This is not a problem we can solve with empathy workshops or culture decks. It is the Kobayashi Maru, a scenario made famous in Star Trek, where cadets face an unwinnable simulation designed to test their character, not their success rate. The only way out is to redefine the rules.

We must force reality back into our systems. The good news: disconnection is not inevitable. With the right levers, it can be reversed.

Evolutionary psychology offers a dramatic insight: individuals do not need to believe in a value system to benefit from it or support their group. Belief is not required, only behaviour. Participation alone sustains the structure. In this light, rituals and constraints serve a higher purpose. "Fake it to make it" is not an insult to authenticity. It is a proven path to reconnection and growth.

Five Tactical Interventions

1. Enforced Field Exposure
   Require engineers to spend time where their software operates. Put them in the warehouse. In the retail space. On the customer support line. Let them witness what breaks and whom it hurts.
2. Rituals That Simulate Empathy
   Daily standups, planning sessions, demos, and retrospectives may feel routine, but they create rhythm. Repetition builds reflection. Even without belief, rituals produce awareness. Small gestures matter like standing up, even when remote, restores a degree of presence. Turning on your video is not only a sign of respect. It makes you as exposed as others. These micro-rituals subtly rebuild the social fabric.
3. Data That Tells Human Stories
   Translate bugs into hours lost. Translate delays into missed sales. Translate outages into ruined weekends. Make the numbers impossible to ignore. Frame data as consequence, not abstraction. And question engineers who consistently display a lack of empathy. Not out of personal judgment, but because such behaviour falls below any standard of professional excellence. Excellence requires alignment not only with technical goals, but with the human cost of failure.
4. Reinforced Expectations Through Job Security
   Empathy may be a virtue, but delivery is a contract. And delivery includes support, quality, resilience, and top-notch user experience. They are the core dimensions of engineering excellence. When teams ignore impact, they breach that contract. Clear expectations, tied to job outcomes, ensure that indifference has consequences.
5. Emotional Fitness as a Professional Skill
   Feedback, maturity, resilience, these must become standard competencies. When tantrums replace reasoning, progress halts. Emotional fragility must not become a protected trait. Years of 'positive education' and excessive tolerance toward attitudes over outcomes have failed to deliver responsible, resilient professionals. Studies show that overly permissive environments often reduce accountability and foster entitlement. In a workplace, this translates into engineers who expect emotional accommodation while neglecting ownership. That is not growth. That is regression disguised as empathy.

Not Everyone Will Return

Some disconnections are too deep. Some individuals will never engage. That is acceptable. The goal is not universal transformation. The goal is to create an environment where reality matters, where contribution means consequence, and where disconnection becomes the anomaly, not the norm.

In fact, it does not matter if some engineers continue to experience disconnection as their primary reality, perceiving the real world as abstract or intangible. What matters is that they remain within the loop. Maintaining this reversed perception is sustainable, so long as the structures around them reinforce the right habits and behaviours. Progress does not demand immediate belief. It demands consistent participation. Trying, even without full understanding, is what keeps the connection alive.

Craft and the Return to Reality

Craftsmanship demands immersion. It thrives on feedback. It matures through repetition. The best engineers do not build from afar. They live in the world their software shapes.

To lead today is to bring others back into contact with what matters. One small truth at a time. One habit. One connection. Not through inspiration, but through structure.

This is not a call for idealism. It is a call for engineering. Systems degrade when their creators lose touch. Let us fix that.

Because no one should be allowed to build for the world if they remain disconnected from it.

The illusion of connection is easy to build. Reality is harder. But only one of them delivers value that lasts.