Modern Life: The Plague Upon Us!

Modern Life Smackdown, part 4 of 4, final part

One last and final tango in rubbishing modern life

The times are a-changing faster than ever before at a rate like none other witnessed in the history of humankind. And so, in our world of ever-quickening change, our identity and social status have come to depend on victories over others or holding power over others by physical, moral, or intellectual means. Comparisons and competition reign supreme, don't they?

Lack of mutual trust issues has set off unpredictable behavioural arrogances among people in our society. Politically, economically, technologically, and environmentally, our communities have created illusions of permanence, material gains, and an uber-expensive, showy lifestyle that assaults common sense and courtesy.

Making false promises and constantly offending each other has become very common among the general public. Snappish friends, ill-mannered and grumpy relatives, and crotchety strangers are a dime a dozen in this day and age. The worst of the lot found in the cities.

Manners maketh the man (and maketh the woman, naturally). But it seems to me that such things hold no meaning anymore. People are rude these days, and they are everywhere. As if it's trendy to take it out on the world, be uncivil, and feel annoyed and frustrated at the drop of a hat. Rude behaviour is nothing new, but it is spreading like a disease spiralling out of control. Am I overreacting? But isn’t it natural to ask why rude behaviour is on the rise? A fair question to ask; don’t you think?

Whatever we feel or understand today about our ideologies, beliefs, and convictions, take a complete U-turn tomorrow! That's human nature, I suppose. As to where humanity is going, I’m a little on the fence.

Modern Life and Other Derelictions

Faster time to market new products, efficient rollouts, competitiveness, hyperventilating managers constantly urge their workforce to work faster. Much used, reused, abused ad infinitum, especially in the information technology (IT) circles, terms such as ‘DISRUPTION’; ‘FLEXIBLE’; ‘AGILE’; ‘IMMERSIVE’; ‘INNOVATIVE’. These are the latest supply of buzzwords for the digitally transformative modern era of today.

Self-styled tech-driven Agents-of-Change have cropped up suddenly. They have fashioned themselves into business thinkers, digital nomads, technopreneurs, and whatnot. These so-called change agents constantly fetishize about getting ‘exponential’ or ‘massive transformative’ change in the transitional market economies of augmented reality and free-market gig economy built atop the riches of the IT revolution. Humans think high of themselves and how. Getting away with overpowering other people’s sense of mindfulness is nothing but hara-kiri.

These self-assumed reformers parley their opinions skilfully well, so well that they come across as the pre-eminent knowers of everything that information and technology stand for, for instance, on how to stay a step forward than other competitors. But very often, their actions do not reflect their true intent, which is to gain ‘competitive advantage’ either by hook or by crook. That’s human nature, I suppose. If they are so hell-bent upon wrecking profits over their perceived competitors, then nothing can stop these new-age change champions from claiming their pound of flesh.

One does not wish to be a weak point or a sceptic in the chain that holds our collective human culture or argue about which could be better: Modern Life or Traditional Life. Unarguably, Modern Life wins, hands down, and in the hubbub of contemporary life, Traditional Life has more or less vanished. But with modernity or post-modernity for that matter comes heavy reprisals, and that’s why I reason that if we could bring some of the finest tried and tested elements of Traditional Life into Modern Life, wouldn’t it be great for humanity? How about being traditionally modern? Arguably, this is a good point and one worth dwelling on. Maybe it is typically 'normal' of us human beings to want to have the best of both worlds, but the question is - Are we progressing/evolving in the true sense of the term? I hope the answer is positive, but the sceptic in me doubts it. If, however, we are progressing, then Modern and Traditional Life have to be taken into account for all human lives to live in peace. I may have a crap sense of direction as far as knowing what would be ultimately good for humanity, but I presume you know better than me. Also, one does have the right to discuss the difficulties we face today.

Lastly, I am no productivity sceptic, never been one. But sometimes, it helps to be one, to be on the safer side of things. Sustained long-term economic growth comes at a price, often at the cost of burning Earth’s resources and adding tons of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. I am not a scene-stealing, gritty, and dashing spy agent like James Bond 007 to raise the stakes higher and higher and have it all fixed at the end, just like magic. Though at one time, my ultimate fantasy was to go as far as I could go in life, now it seems less so.

Contemporary interpretations suggest that we live in a so-called ‘modern society’ that embraces a philosophy of what we can term meritocracy: the one that emphasizes job-oriented identity, career-centric ideals, what we do, how much salary we earn, hero-worshipping larger-than-life personalities, and … blah, blah, blah. And not to speak of the herd mentality trap that affects almost every one of us.

We humans indeed are at heart a peaceful species corrupted by the society in which we live. On a personal level, there is no such thing as an entirely modern society. Maybe, anatomically we may have evolved to be 'modern,' but culturally, are we yet? Some of us are not. We need an objective step back to view us as Homo Sapiens defined as modern. We assert many things: we are a highly adaptive tool-using species, the most intelligent, and all that brouhaha. For all that excited critical fuss and reaction to our greatness on this planet, I would say it is just the transcendental cosmic passing of the brief history of time we got lucky to be inhabiting and started calling ourselves modern.

Thanks to our common ancestor Homo Erectus from whom anatomically advanced Homo Sapiens have emerged, we are what we are today: modern or far less modern than we would like to think.

So can we truly believe we are slowly learning in the true spirit to be modern? Let us hope so. We still have much learning to do anyway about how to be 'truly modern' before we can pat our backs to be the distinguished species of the fast-degrading planet Earth. On an optimistic note, Godspeed on our journey.

The End.

By Arindam Moulick

End of Part 4 of 4