"On the one hand, life is made infinitely easy for the personality in that stimulations, interests, uses of time and consciousness are offered to it from all sides. They carry the person as if in a stream, and one needs hardly to swim for oneself"

Modern society surrounds the individual with a constant flow of stimuli, entertainment, and demands on attention. Experiences, stimuli, and prescribed ways to use one's time come at people from all directions, through news, entertainment, social obligations, work requirements, and the incessant pulse of urban life. The result is that life's basic structure, rhythm, and even one’s consciousness seem predetermined, composed for each individual by society as a whole. The person is absorbed into a collective movement, a stream, that dictates where to focus attention, when to act, and how to interpret experiences. Rather than requiring an individual to forge paths, devise purposes, or invent routines, social life now provides these ready-made.

There is an undeniable ease in this situation. Much like a swimmer floating along a strong current, the individual does not face the labor of self-direction, of constantly questioning where to go next or what to do. Choices may appear abundant, but much of them are guided, filtered, or nudged by cultural norms, technology, and institutional structures. To keep busy, to be entertained, to find engagement, or even to cultivate ambitions, one often needs only to accept what is already being offered, to consent to the menu of options set forth by the external world.

However, embedded in Simmel’s observation is a note of caution about this passivity. The ease that relieves people from the burden of choosing meaning, shaping values, or struggling with existential questions may also rob life of individuality and authentic self-direction. The comforts of being carried by the current risk the loss of autonomy, reflection, and self-created purpose. What might seem liberating is simultaneously constraining, for just as a swimmer adrift is relinquishing agency over direction, so too does the individual swept along by modern life risk becoming passive, shaped by forces outside oneself.