"Max Weber’s “Iron Cage” describes rationalization as the increasing organization of society around efficiency, rules, calculability, and predictability. Modern institutions (schools, workplaces, governments, algorithms) become more standardized and bureaucratic, creating stable but highly controlled systems that can limit individuality and spontaneity.
Existentialism, on the other hand, argues that meaning is not given by systems but created through individual freedom, choice, and lived experience. It values uncertainty and unpredictability as essential for authenticity and personal meaning."