Before the industrial revolution, humanity’s relationship with labor, nature, and autonomy was markedly different. Most people lived in rural areas, their lives intertwined with the rhythms of nature. Families often worked together, and individuals were their own bosses, answering primarily to the dictates of the seasons and their immediate communities. Children grew up in these settings, learning independence and self-reliance from a young age.
However, the industrial revolution brought seismic changes. It pulled people from the countryside into urban centers, where factory work replaced self-directed labor. No longer were individuals answering to nature or their internal sense of purpose or even their own internal clocks; they now responded to the demands of factory owners, time clocks, and industrial schedules. The infringement on personal freedom became normalized, woven into the fabric of industrial society. This shift created a hierarchical structure, with a few “lead dogs” at the top designing systems to consolidate power and wealth, while the masses toiled to maintain the machinery of their overlords’ ambitions.
The industrial revolution reorganized labor, laying the groundwork for systems of concentrated economic power that dominate the modern world today. The mechanization of production enabled unprecedented accumulation of wealth, which, in turn, translated into political influence. Those who controlled the factories, railroads, and later, financial institutions became the architects of society, shaping laws and norms to serve their interests. This concentration of power created a feedback loop: economic dominance enabled political control, which reinforced economic systems designed to perpetuate inequality.
Concentrated Power and Compromised Reality
The industrial revolutionâs legacy is a world dominated by concentrated economic power, which inevitably drives political power. Wealth becomes a tool to shape laws, control narratives, and dictate the trajectory of society. This concentration distorts reality itself, creating what can be described as a “compromised reality,” where the priorities of the powerful are presented as universal truths.
Economic systems are portrayed as immutable laws of nature, obscuring the fact that they are human constructs. Capitalism, for instance, is often defended as the pinnacle of human progress, despite its deep flaws. It incentivizes greed, rewards exploitation, and justifies the commodification of everythingâfrom natural resources to human lives. This framework ensures that those at the top remain there, while the masses are conditioned to accept their subordinate roles as inevitable.
This compromised reality infiltrates every aspect of life. Education systems prioritize conformity over creativity, training individuals to fit into predetermined roles rather than question the status quo. Healthcare becomes a commodity, as do the patients themselves. Even personal relationships are shaped by the demands of an economic system that values productivity over connection. In such a world, dissent becomes not just inconvenient but dangerous, as it threatens to expose the artificiality of the systemâs foundations.
Psychiatry as the Handmaiden of Industrial Society
The birth of psychiatry coincided with the rise of industrial capitalism, and the two have been intertwined ever since. Our systems have been so consistently damaging that a branch of âmedicineâ has developed to treat those afflicted by what might be termed âindustrial sickness.â Psychiatry, under the guise of science, developed frameworks to identify and manage individuals who deviated from the norms established by industrial society. It helps those broken by our systems to better tolerate them. At the same time, mental health professionals are as powerless as anyone else to change the dysfunctional systems.
By labeling these deviations as mental illnesses, psychiatry helped to neutralize threats to the system. The individual was no longer a person with legitimate grievances but a patient requiring treatment. In that way, psychiatry sides with the oppressors while helping the oppressed better endure their oppression.
Take, for example, the rise of diagnoses like “neurasthenia” in the 19th century, often referred to as “Americanitis.” This condition was attributed to the stresses of modern life, including the relentless pace of industrial work. Rather than questioning the system that caused such widespread suffering, the focus was placed on “fixing” the individual. Rest cures, sanitariums, and later, medications became the prescribed solutions. The message was clear: the problem was not the machine but the human cog that refused to function as intended.
This trend continues today. Modern psychiatry, heavily influenced by pharmaceutical companies, often prioritizes medication over addressing root causes. Depression, anxiety, and burnoutâconditions that are often reasonable responses to dehumanizing work environments or social isolationâare medicalized and treated as personal failings. The broader societal structures that perpetuate these issues remain unchallenged, their architects shielded by a system that shifts blame onto the individual.
The Dehumanizing Effect of Industrialization
Industrial society’s demand for efficiency and productivity strips individuals of their humanity. Workers become resources, valued only for their output. This commodification extends beyond the workplace, infiltrating education, healthcare, and even personal relationships. Children are raised not to explore their intrinsic worth and individual capabilities, but to fit into preordained roles that serve the larger machine.
The infringement on personal freedom is accepted as “just the way it is,” but this way is designed to perpetuate inequality. A few at the top wield power, creating systems that ensure their dominance while the masses struggle to find meaning within a framework that devalues their existence.
This concentration of power distorts reality itself, creating a “compromised reality” where the priorities of the powerful are presented as universal truths. Economic systems are portrayed as natural laws, rather than human constructs that could be reimagined. The relentless pursuit of profit is justified at the expense of human well-being and ecological balance. In such a world, dissent becomes not just inconvenient but dangerous, as it threatens to expose the artificiality of the system’s foundations.
Psychiatry, as a handmaiden to this system, plays a crucial role in maintaining the status quo. By diagnosing and treating individuals in isolation, it obscures the collective nature of human suffering under industrialist, capitalist systems of concentrated power. It pathologizes those who falter, ensuring that the machine’s functioning is never impeded by widespread dissent.
Human Adaptation and the Disruption of Industrialization
Chimpanzees have been shown to evolve traits that help them thrive in their specific local habitats. If humans remained in the same habitat for lifetimes and generations, so too would human communities adapt over time to their local environments. These adaptations can manifest in countless ways: physical traits, cultural practices, and social structures that align with the demands of the land and climate. For example, in isolated environments, these adaptations include specialized diets, survival skills, and community bonds that are finely tuned to the natural world around them.
Consider the Inuit of the Arctic regions. Historically, their diet, largely devoid of vegetables, was made up of fish, marine mammals, and other animal products. While this may seem limiting to an outsider, it was perfectly suited to the environment. Over generations, they adapted to survive and even thrive in conditions that would seem inhospitable to most other cultures. This deep-rooted relationship with the landâwhere food, shelter, and community life are intricately connectedârepresents a form of localized evolution. It is not just survival but an intricate dance with nature, where every element of their lives has evolved to fit the environment.
Or the Bajau people in Southeast Asia who evolved to develop fantastic free-diving abilities in part supported by larger spleens. They can stay underwater for extended periods because their larger spleens store more oxygenated blood that yours and mine do.
However, the rise of industrialization and the capitalist-driven job market has pulled people away from their traditional environments, severing the deep connection between humans and the land. As people move from rural areas to urban centers, they leave behind the localized adaptations that allowed their ancestors to thrive. The pursuit of economic opportunities often forces individuals to adapt to environments that are foreign to them, sometimes within a matter of months or years, instead of the gradual, generational process that occurs when communities remain in place. This disruption has wide-reaching consequences, not just in terms of physical survival but in the very ways that people relate to one another and the world around them.
The Psychological and Social Costs of Forced Mobility
This forced uprooting and relocation often leaves individuals struggling to adapt to environments that do not suit their innate needs. Itâs no wonder that mental health issues, such as depression and anxiety, are on the rise in societies where people are disconnected from the land and each other. It also short-changes the natural progress of evolution.
Without the grounding that comes from living in a stable, familiar environmentâwhere community bonds and cultural practices have evolved to fit the needs of the peopleâindividuals are left adrift, unable to thrive in ways that their ancestors once did. Psychiatry, instead of addressing these systemic issues, often frames these struggles as individual pathologies, overlooking the broader forces at play.
In modern industrial society, the need for efficiency and productivity often overrides the need for stability and connection. As a result, individuals are uprooted and relocated by job markets that demand mobility. Families and communities are scattered, and the deep, evolutionary relationship between humans and their environment is broken. What once may have been meaningful exchanges are now merely transactions. The emotional and psychological toll of this disconnection is profound, but it is often ignored or pathologized as a personal failing rather than a response to a broken system.
Reclaiming Humanity from the Machine
To effectively address crises of mental health, inequality, and environmental degradation, we need to confront the dehumanizing effects of industrial society and its concentrated power structures. This requires a paradigm shift, one that values autonomy, community, and sustainability over profit and control. Psychiatry must move away from its role as an enforcer of conformity and instead embrace a holistic understanding of human well-beingâone that considers the social, economic, and environmental contexts of suffering.
We need to challenge the systems that commodify our existence, reclaiming our humanity from the clutches of a system designed to mechanically strip it away. A society built on cooperation, mutual aid, and decentralized power offers a path forwardâone where individuals are not mere cogs in a machine but valued members of a thriving, interconnected whole.
If we can return to a more localized way of lifeâwhere communities are self-sustaining, rooted in the land, and structured in ways that prioritize connection over efficiencyâwe may begin to heal the deep wounds inflicted by industrialization. By fostering environments where people are not uprooted and disconnected, we can allow individuals to adapt in a natural, healthy way, as their ancestors did. By rejecting the compromised reality imposed upon us, we can begin to imagine a world where humanity thrivesânot as servants of a machine, but as stewards of a shared and meaningful existence. And that way, we can leave a better place for those to come.
For Marx, capitalism was the product of the economic base of the social system which produced the superstructure of social relations and intellectual activity, like a plant grows out of a seed. This was always a peculiar idea because the whole social structure is an accumulation of our physical and psychological activities, a mere exfoliation, so the human life system of body and consciousness was the obvious base of human civilization and all social accumulations which condition and influence and impact the human relations therefore causing an evolution in human relations for example the ownership of farmland and the possibility of exploiting the less fortunate to do the work. Money was itself a system representing newly evolved social relations of the buyer and the seller, which implies the project of accumulating capital, or wealth, and this accumulation of capital and wealth obviously reflects the underlying socially conditioned psychology that produced it, for why accumulate wealth rather then have a commonwealth as many ancient societies around the world had? Even in some of the largest South American city settlements of native American cultures there is evidence of a hierarchical city being abandoned for more commonwealth kind of settlements, and commonwealth is a much better term for this basic principle of a society working together and pooling and sharing social resources. So it seems early societies reflected unique social historical developments that flowered in many different ways, as many ways as they were distinct societies, and capitalism which is based on authority and power has one obvious advantage in terms of proliferation, and that is at the end of the day, those societies which pursued the power to dominate groups inwardl and neighbouring societies outwardly are likely to succeed over those societies and peoples who are not pursuing such domination, so it seems intrinsic in the process of social evolution that some kind of authoritarian or all dominating system would evolve.
But as consciousness evolves, including the consciousness of the devistation of the Earth and our lives by domination, power and greed, then there is already within that consciousness the seed of a new society, and there is a new consciousness emerging – this being not a beliief or theory but observed fact – and there is not within it the ability to have authority in matters pertaining to truth because the new consciousness is based on direct perception and understanding of life which despite the deluded prejudice of intellectuals is a far sharper and more superior in efficating cognition then any amount of theorization or book learning which is tied to a social way of cognition that if you examine it, is really just group think. All science, philosophy, religion etc is forms of social group think – the new consciousness is meditative and comes upon the truth directly, and there is no disagreement within the field of perception, only intellection. We never disagree over whether or not the sun is in the sky – we just look, and this is the clarity of perception. The new consciousness understands that the word or thought is not the thing and abandons the latter therethrough abandoning the inward tyranny of social history, so this really does show the weaknesses of approaching the human problem through the mere consequences of our conscious life activities like capitalism or psychiatry rather then starting from what every conscious human life actually is, which is yourself. This is the way of perception and understanding: this is the way of meditation, and it is not something you practice – it is something that takes place as a product of a true understanding of life, which is to say consciousness, which is to say yourself. And unfortunately one cannot prove this to an intellectual intellectually. The intellectual, who is a slave to social group think, has to discover it themselves through their own enquiry, rather then wait around for the whole of society to settle debates as is the immature court jester machinations of academia and other dying and ossified, meaningless and impotent modes of social action.
And I never even saw that I could see this shit. It’s what happens when you give up seeking reality in books and theorization and start seeking it through perception and direct enquiry, including into the facts, the research and the data but not as windows into truth but as markers of the state of human understanding and apprehension of what is. I think language will be radicalized by this new consciousness, and the scientific mind must learn the poetic mind and vice versa, because then their penetration will be infinitely wider.
Gordon bennet, I never knew that either. I’d better shut up or I will drive myself to drink. I’m glad it’s a sunny morning. I have the dentist later, can someone psychically remind me when it’s 3 p.m. UK time please. Have a nice day.
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I like your ideas about commonwealth. And group think. And again, I find myself in general agreement with much of your comment. Thanks, No-One.
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Returning to a more localized way of life might help ease the alienation caused by excessive industrialization/globalization, but it’s important to keep in mind that you can’t remake human nature.
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I couldn’t quite figure out the connection between psychiatry and mechanization. But it’s a very important article from a philosophical perspective. From this philosophical perspective, psychiatry will have a very important place in the new world order (one world state). Efforts to label everyone as ‘mentally ill’ will become very common. Those who oppose the system may be labeled as ‘mentally ill’. (This is actually widely used today. But it will peak in the new world order) Very powerful psychiatric drugs will be produced that will instantly shock people (cause brain damage). (There are examples of these today, but they are affecting slowly.) These drugs will be administered to those who oppose the system. Psychiatry will have authoritarian power in the one world state. And these things will happen. But now people will call them conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories have a strange habit of coming true. Many theories that were considered conspiracy theories came true. But people also called them coincidences. đ
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It seems to me human nature is /has been being âremadeâ by the environment weâve established for ourselvesâan increasingly loveless environment driven by the pursuit of profit. This loveless, profit-driven environment of human creation now represent the conditions under which humanity evolves, the conditions to which humans adapt, the conditions shaping individual and societal behavior and development.
Is profit a natural motivation or a natural evolutionary force? Selfishness might be part of human nature, but our systems reward it and encourage it to where the profit motive is our collective driver. A different driver could have been chosen, one recognizing and harnessing a better part of human nature.
We are evolving to adapt to a world in which the profit motive is a shaper and influencer of human behavior and development. Would we be different if systemically motivated by something other than the selfishness of the profit motif? Are we sure this is somehow destined to be our evolutionary path?
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Exactly sir. Thank you for releiving the pressure in my lungs. The spell checker is a fascist!
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If so, George Carlin seems correct in saying that humanity is merely an evolutionary âcul-de-sac.â As he said it: âWeâre going away. Pack your shit, folks. Weâre going away.â
Maybe if the better parts of human nature arenât strong enough to stand up against the machinery of todayâs governing systemsâsystems none of us here today envisioned or establishedâweâre destined to perish as a race of selfish, loveless brats helplessly following a tradition of selfishness.
Maybe itâs by natureâs design that a race of selfish, loveless brats extinguishes itself? Maybe the universe has a way of cleansing itself of âbad actorsâ?
As Deming said, âLearning isnât compulsory, neither is survival.â
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Itâs really not that complicated. Humans have always been and will always be a mixture of good and bad, meaning the tension between greed and altruism will always exist to one extent or another.
Some people believe in equality of opportunity while others believe in equality of outcome. What makes you think you have the right to tell others what to believe?
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I think people who think alike should live together and suffer or celebrate the consequences. Birds of a feather naturally flock together. Iâm not trying to tell anyone what to think beyond encouraging the means by which they can think for themselves. And allow evolution to resume its natural course.
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What is evolution’s natural course?
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It seems to me human-imposed systems of control and motivation have upended natureâs systems of control and motivation. A person now works to accumulate human tokensâmoneyâas opposed to natural rewards we really needâfood, shelter, community, etc. one could claim that this unnatural development is what nature somehow âintendedâ but I would disagree. Money doesnât grow on trees.
If this was destined to happen by natureâs design, then it seems equally determined that humanity will either learn better from it and change or else perish as a species because they didnât.
Our human-made systems are unsustainable. To survive, we need to learn sustainability from nature, not from the economy we created. Itâs natural sustainability that we need, not economic âsustainability.â
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Eliminating money wouldn’t address the underlying issues of greed, inequality and mismanagement. When used responsibly it plays an important role in facilitating the exchange of essential goods and services. The key is using it ethically.
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Different forms of government come and go. The best thing to aim for is personal sovereignty.
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Knowing that all humans make mistakes, it seems forms of government elevating single human beings to positions of concentrated power allows individual human mistakes to have national, even global impact. Maybe itâs time for these types of government to go so something better can come?
When we hear politicians speak of what the âAmerican peopleâ want (or what the people of âthe great state of xâ want), for example, doesnât this terminology itself imply that the individuals composing their constituencies want the same thing (and should, to some degree, think the same way and share the same values)? Are the assumptions underlying this concept of unity and the resulting constructs and terminology valid?
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Is there something wrong with hundreds of millions of people–even if tasked with national unity–who are unable to agree on something (or anything)? Or, might there be something wrong with governing systems asserting or expecting that hundreds of millions of individuals could be or should be (or are) unified in agreement about something (or anything)?
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Psychological distress affects people from all walks of life regardless of their political beliefs. I think it best not to politicize such a deeply personal matter.
Does this mean I condone corrupt governments? Not at all.
I think most people would agree on supportive environments that encourage freedom of thought regarding their personal wellbeing, something I believe is the cornerstone of every person’s “mental” health.
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I agree that our systems leave us politicizing too much. But thatâs a (dys)function of our political systemâs impact on personal decisions and lives.
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By our current systems, when half of the population wants x and the other half wants not x (a binary solution nobody might really want, incidentally), the âbestâ solution is to compromise. Itâs led to another sense of âcompromised realityâ (aside from the idea in the blog).
For the sake of unity, we get middle-of-the-road solutions. Nobody learns the result from taking either tine of the fork in the road, so we donât know the consequences we may have learned from. We learn only the results of a compromise, the results of nobody getting their way.
A brilliant man named David Michehl once likened the accumulated result of this arrangement to smearing a thick layer of Velveeta cheese across the whole country and calling it national freedom. A really good analogy.
Rather than compromising, we might be better off breaking into smaller cooperative units, each living as they see fit. This might be preferable to fighting with our next door neighbors about how it should be for all of us, knowing full well that reasonable people can disagree about how it should be.
By allowing autonomy to flocks of a feather, we can learn something from our diversity, grow, and allow evolution to get a foothold.
Forgive me if I seem overexcited about this (and related) topics. Given whatâs at stake, I feel like people are too often underexcited about it. If I go too far, I apologize.
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“Rather than compromising, we might be better off breaking into smaller cooperative units, each living as they see fit.”
Humans already come from smaller cooperative units; they’re called families.
Life is a series of compromises no matter where or how you live meaning no one gets everything they want in life.
A quick look at world history shows the tragic results of extreme political positions which usually result in extreme psychological trauma that can last generations.
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There are more and more people choosing to create communities that live off the grid and/or share resources like communes. Homesteads are becoming more popular. It’s nice to know.
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I agree with Birdsong. You can’t change human nature. Nature itself is both beautiful and brutal. It is a struggle to survive for all animals.
If you study anthropology you will see that war for revenge, resources and land has always existed. It has just gotten worse with the industrial revolution. Money brings out the worst in lots of people and money has been around way before the industrial revolution. I agree with Birdsong that really only have control over yourself. We can only hope to have a positive influence over others by treating them with respect and dignity.
Anyway, that’s my view.
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Thank you, Sabrina.
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Iâm not suggesting that I can change human nature. But the environment we create can and has âchangedâ or impacted the course of, human development. Humanity could be smarter about how to develop systems that work with nature, including human nature, instead of harnessing the worst parts of human nature, thereby trashing the natural environment of the world, as well as the environment in which humans develop and live.
Or are we thinking that our systems of exploitation and oppression are good for nature?
Is it human nature to leave a campsite trashed? Wouldnât an affirmative answer suggest then that, being part of human nature, all humans trash campsitesâwhich isnât true?
We need to take control away from the campsite trashers, or trashed campsites will become (have become?) the norm under which we live and develop.
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You’re absolutely right that war over revenge, resources, and land has existed for as long as humanity has. Is that to say it must always be that way? The industrial revolutionâand more importantly, the rise of modern financial systemsâsupercharged these conflicts. Take, for example, the Dutch East India Company and the birth of the modern stock market. Before its creation, a merchant who lost a ship to storms or piracy could be financially ruined. The stock market solved this “problem” by allowing investors to spread their risk across multiple ships, ensuring profits even if some ships were lost.
But what about the sailors who went down with those ships? What about the people in colonized lands who suffered at the hands of these ventures? The system didn’t care. Collateral damage. They were paid in money, and that was supposed to be enough. This shift in thinkingâwhere human lives became mere line items in a ledgerâwas a defining moment in the evolution of capitalism. It wasnât just about securing resources anymore; it wasn’t about fair trade; it was about optimizing profit, no matter the human cost.
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how can anyone know what “human nature” is? all you can find out is how people behaved under certain conditions. all human actions are conditioned by many kinds of forces and every type of decision is overdetermined. it’d be a useless and baseless exercise to speculate on a universal human essence.
what people usually accept as the trans-historical and thus “natural” human character is actually the prominent character of our era: the selfish, ambitious and ruthless tradesman. they are reflecting the glorified character traits of our times into all the past and future eras to build a kind of a myth, but it is a banal myth. this myth is a sign of how impoverished our imagination has become.
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Very well put Ahmet, it’s nice to hear. We encounter the traumatized and distorted underlying nature only partially because it’sobscured, and what we do see in the nature is instincts and emotions that are co-opted, perverted and destroyed by trauma which includes it’s traumatic adaptation to a modern social process that has destroyed the whole Earth and children’s future. It was right to raise the problem of human nature though because the individualistic/egoic conditioning has turned it into a frightened, confused, angry and dangerous thing, as the world about us proves. It is nice to see the clarity of your perception here.
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If human nature would consist of a trait/feature/something that is common to all human beings, it would be hard to identify. But is it true that everyone who lives wants to be satisfied in life?
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No matter how people are living, they have a right to know accurate information about the medications they are prescribed.
The psychiatric profession does not provide anyone with accurate information about the âmedicationsâ they prescribe.
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Thank you for your very excellent article. This statement, “even personal relationships are shaped by the demands of an economic system that values productivity over connection,” is very interesting and insightful. I am wondering if you could give an example of such a personal relationship? Thanks very much.
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Thanks, Maureen. There was a time when what made a potential mate attractive were abilities and skills to provide in a more natural environment. The ability to grow crops, make clothes, build shelter, etc.
What is attractive in todayâs world is the ability to make money. Itâs not uncommon for people to marry for money. Does that impact natural selection and evolution?
There may come a day, after the high-tech world comes crashing down, that this variety of skills will again be the important ones.
There are countless ways money and economic pressures shape our relationships, often in ways we donât even realize. Friendships and family bonds can be strained when financial disparities create unspoken tensionsâlike when one person canât afford to join in on expensive outings or vacations, and others interpret their absence as disinterest.
Romantic relationships, too, are often influenced by financial concerns, whether it’s the stress of shared debt, differences in spending habits, or the pressure to âprovideâ in a way that aligns with traditional economic roles. Can you afford to date?
Even the simple act of choosing a career can mean sacrificing time with loved ones because our worth is so often tied to productivity rather than connection.
Beyond the personal level, social interactions are shaped by economic status in subtle but powerful ways. People tend to form relationships within their economic class, and those outside of it may feel like they donât belong.
Have you ever noticed how conversations change depending on who can afford what? Or how financial security can mean the difference between being seen as âresponsibleâ or âstruggling,â even when work ethic and effort are the same.
Are these examples adequate?
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Or, while mommy and daddy are busy making enough money to make ends meet, outsourcing the raising of their children to day care providersâmissing out on life while earning a livingâtheyâre enduring a daily grind where they have little agency. When they get home, they might not be the same people they would be had they spent the day doing work that was self-directed, more fulfilling, meaningful work directly benefitting them and their community.
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