Transition from a human context

From Contexts of Optimal Growth in Childhood by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

One of the least noticed changes in the last hundred years or so has been a transition from a human context ruled by face-to-face interactions and the weight of public opinion to an anonymous social context ruled by abstract laws and institutional rules. In the past, entire communities exercised selective pressures on individual behavior; now much of what we do goes on unobserved and unjedged by others. Of course, this means that we are relieved of the weight of conformity that pressed so heavily on face-to-face communities; on the other hand, we are also unable to effectively influence behavior that conflicts with the common good.