When Culture Died

Where did we go wrong?

This is not a world to be proud of. We are intelligent creatures, innovative and empathetic, yet we have manifested an anti-civilisation of violence, corruption and stupidity.

We’ve had our moments of brilliance. But recently we seem to be shifting away from genius and towards an unproductive, puerile, greed infested culture.

We can fly safely into space but thousands die every day on the roads. Talent TV shows attract more votes than general elections. Our prisons are overflowing with the poor, but those who sell out our futures, who cost us trillions and destroy the fabric of society, walk free.

Our culture is rotten to the core.

We have the technology we need to fix hunger, poverty, environmental degradation, and energy shortages, but we don’t have the social will to do so.

We could be so much more. Children are born full of wonder and excitement, but the world is shallow and selfish, and their passion is squandered. How many kids want to be astronauts, and grow up to be accountants instead?

Imagine, if all the people working in banks, accountancy, tax, retail, politics, worked instead in science, technology, engineering, trades, art, education, or the care industry. What effect on our productivity and quality of life could this have, if millions of people stopped wasting their lives in meaningless paper-pushing number-shuffling wage-slavery and instead actually contributed to society?

What if everyone’s mission was not to accumulate, but to add value and improve the quality of everyone’s lives…? The irony is that this would also benefit them individually – if everyone’s focus was improving society, we would all benefit from the results.

But our society is built around the monetary system – a system where everything has a price. In a system where accumulation is the goal, it was only a matter of time before everything was monetised. And now we are rapidly approaching that conclusion. (Remember when the police were there to protect us?)

This monetisation poisons everything it touches. Since the ad agencies of the 1940s decided they needed to make consumerism a way of life, our culture has been degrading. We used to have respect for each other. We used to have respect for ourselves, taking pride in what we did. We used to respect the smart, but now we have Miley Cyrus.

And for what? All so we could make a few bankers materially rich?

It’s time we took society back from the parasites; the greedy; the corrupt; and build a culture we can be proud of; a world of empathy, equality, and social progress.