The pursuit of happiness has been the engine propelling change, shifts, and progress of culture since the dawn of time. We should be fulfilled more than our ancestors because we are building on their achievements. Society has never had massive and sudden shifts as of now. We are connected more, thanks to technological advancements and media dominance. The current labor force is more skilled and knowledgeable than our predecessors. Industrial production, division of labor, large-scale farming, and education are far more pronounced than in the past. At what cost have these achievements been actualized? Why is there increased inhumane behaviors after so much progress?
Modern culture is feeding our physiological needs at the expense of the need for belonging and self-actualization. Despite international connectedness through the internet, we are more separated than our fathers. We spend long hours at work, in traffic, or on our phones.
In the United States, families spend 6 hours together per week. In Kenya, get-together culture is fading, especially in the urban areas. We meet at burials, weddings, or ruracio (traditional wedding). Culture is pushing us to the American way. Modern culture demands long working hours to afford physiological needs (food, shelter, clothing). It is demanding extra hours to afford a little luxury for convenience. The average person works more hours to get what our fathers could afford in fewer hours.
Despite putting in hours of work, and increased working and money-making opportunities, chances of becoming financially independent are low. The wealth gap in recent times is wider than at any other time. Half of the world’s wealth belongs to the richest one percent.
The middle class is the engine of wealth creation. They make the rich people wealthy, widening the gap between the rich and the poor. The wealthy control the means of production and pass the baton generationally. Modern culture has created working opportunities that limit people’s financial growth to a certain level. It is very possible to work thirty years of your life and retire with nothing. According to a survey of Kenyans, only 29 percent of Kenyans are ready to retire. The rest, poverty waits for them on the other side.
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People consume more in modern culture than in saving. Consumerism is widely celebrated, especially in the middle class. This could be the reason many are not saving for retirement. Modern culture has ways to make a man spend. Whether through advertisements or friends, the culture will find a way to get your hard-earned money. The popularity of sugar, salt, and sugar is not a coincidence.
Scientists have spent hours studying foods that make humans spend. They go further to design the perfect combination to make the food tastier. Marketers design posters and videos that lure you into eating what they want. A lot of food the modern culture proposes is designed to satisfy the mind’s craving more than our health. Although spinach and beans are healthy, most of us would rather go for fries, and a bottle of Coca-Cola. Modern culture wants people to spend as much as they work.
Media dominance goes without saying. It is one of the greatest sources of cultural inspiration, if not the greatest. 67.1 percent of the world’s population uses the internet. Social media is overtaking Television as the source of news and entertainment. The social media modus operandi is designed to satisfy human physiological needs at the expense of belonging and self-actualization needs.
The average person spends time on social media for entertainment and admiration of celebrities. Across all social media, celebrities and influencers promote money, power, and lust. They lure many to think sex, money, and power equal success, and many people have fallen into this trap.
The movies, music, and fashion are conditioning the man’s brain to believe a woman is an object for sex. A majority of men pursue power and money to get a woman. The woman on the other hand is conditioned to believe dressing lustfully is the only way to get money and power. None of the most influential people on social media advocate for modesty because it isn’t a physiological need.
The best metric to gauge happiness is examining how much we love one another. You will value other people if you value yourself first. Modern culture has new problems coming off as a reaction to what it has been promoting. People who cannot get what the culture demands are devising dangerous ways to get what they want even at the cost of other human beings.
We would rather sell drugs to other people to get what culture demands. We have developed the most addictive and destructive drugs in our laboratories. Governments compete with one another to develop the most destructive weapons. When we look at our fellow human beings, we are seeing a heart, kidney or breast that could be used for ritual practices.
We are more civilized than we were 3,000 years ago. Our houses, clothing, roads and food are better than what our ancestors had. Provided you live in this era, culture demands you live according to what it promotes. We can easily access the tools that make humans fulfilled.
Our proximity to one another is better now than any other time. We should be happier than our ancestors but the culture will never allow it. The culture will continue separating you from others and call it work, it is designed to widen the wealth gap, it will have you focus on money, power and sex or force you to become brutal. The modern culture seeks to control people by leveraging on physiological needs which are the most powerful in controlling human behavior.
Modern culture is never designed to make you happy. We could be the saddest generation of all time despite the developments. We have the same needs for happiness as our fathers but the culture has designed fiercer ways of making us sad.
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