I wonder if there’s known ideas on how to protect the quality of discourse on here from this type of intrusion :<

Network effects be damned, we should all be a little more willing to pay to be part of platforms hosting digital communities or at least contribute in some way to the infrastructure.

It’s also interesting for me because it’s a small slice of insight into the cultural consciousness of people’s perceptions of the trajectory of technology and its ills & promises at the time. It may sound like I’m exaggerating how long ago this was, but it really does feel like 2015 onwards was a large disruption from the expected status quo in the West in both good and bad ways. Not just in politics (Cambridge analytica?)but also in the way the general public perceived the technology industry and the nature of the kind of force it is at large in society.

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It seems quite rational a response to the decisions taken by a larger neighboring nation’s state unexpectedly increasing hostility.

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Second, looking through the binary lens of 'creation' or 'destruction' is reductive. Plenty of anthropological, sociological and historical evidence seem to suggest that as a species we are capable of being organized in many different arrangements. I acknowledge that marriage 'feels' like a more straightforward institution to enforce with clear benefits to individuals, but I would suggest that you strongly consider that it too has sharp limitations, including aspects of oppression or suppression (e.g. for the more naturally promiscuous) historically.

In general while the assertions and influence of the postmodern project are a mixed bag. They've led to overt widespread cynicism and loss of meaning for many in our time, but they've also brought with them an invaluable tearing down of assumptions that would otherwise be treated as unquestioned narratives of reality. [2] I would hope that awareness of such realities won't lead us down disarray but to an embrace of the fact that there is great diversity in the way we live, and that fixed constructs such as marriage might no longer be capable of solely accommodating that, but might instead co-exist among other arrangements and notions that can.

Thirdly, I would suggest looking into 'metamodernism' which we seem to be slowly beginning to enter. One description you might consistently hear of it is that it's described as if it's an "oscillation" between aspects of modernism and postmodernism. - In other words, an answer to postmodernism's shortcomings and negative effects, while still not abandoning its realizations. [3] [4]

[1] https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/p/postmodernism [2] https://qz.com/1388555/everyone-hates-postmodernism-but-that... [3] https://thesideview.co/journal/what-is-metamodernism-and-why... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamodernism

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For Heidegger, perhaps you would find this overview (and related videos) interesting for some context: https://youtu.be/eDAyhsZ-Gs4

Different takes to make sense of complex phenomena happen in many fields. It's not a co-incidence that it is especially as such in the realm of our culture where challenging existing interpretations is common place.

>Conjectures about what the driving forces of society are a dime a dozen, but any useful means of verifying and comparing them seems far out of our reach.

Indeed it is difficult, but I would highly suggest not being too empirically minded about abstract concepts like these. What conceptual frameworks and methods are useful in one field (e.g. quantification and measurements in the sciences) do not carry over to another necessarily. Human societal structures and phenomena are complex and would be more difficult to make sense of were it not for useful works like these.

>So, why all this study of the Heideggers, the Lacans, the Derridas. What does it really contribute to humanity?

One answer is tradition given these are thinkers part of significant and established schools of thought, and another is that there simply are contemporary scholars that find value in furthering and fleshing out the (usually dense) systems of thought and frameworks. Modern psychology for example has come about from philosophical and psychoanalysis frameworks, some of which are still explored and furthered alongside empirical investigations.

I might be mistaken, but it feels as if your post fails to wrap itself around the idea that not all human knowledge need not be something that contributes to practical or immediate assistance to humans or their productivity. And that instead, sometimes, it can be simply related towards the pursuit and sake of knowledge itself.