 Why are we all so unhappy all the time? Western civilization is an unhappy civilization Technologically advanced, but it failed in the most basic undertaking Making its members happy. We are not happy. Is it because we don't have enough money? No, we have more money than ever. We have more gadgets than ever We go through more bodies than ever via sex, casual sex. I mean affluence Everything is at our disposal and our fingertips and yet we are not happy. Is it because we don't spend enough time with Sam Vaknin? Could be the explanation, but I tend to doubt it My name is Sam Vaknin, and I'm the author of Malignant self-love narcissism revisited and of course a professor of psychology I will never let you forget this, never ever I'm gonna make you marginally more unhappy in this lecture. You have my word on it Because I'm going to discuss the reasons for unhappiness Why are we unhappy? We are all profoundly unhappy and a growing minority of us are clinically depressed anxious mentally ill Something like one-third to two-fifth of a population had been diagnosed with anxiety and depression following COVID-19 But that figure is simply a revelation of an underlying situation People avoided reporting or self-reporting their condition until the pandemic had struck So about half of us are mentally ill and all of us are Existentially and profoundly sad This astounding outcome of human history can be traced back to four One two three four pernicious wrong turns Number one agriculture number two Urbanization number three growth orientation number four the adversarial organizational principle Let me unpack and deconstruct each and every one of these start with agriculture Agriculture was the harbinger and antecedent of the rape of earth Yes, you heard me right the rape of earth of earth think about plowing What is plowing? So when you take this sharp implement known as a plow and you thrust it into the innocent unsuspecting soil how symbolic a metaphor of rape You're using sheer muscle power men mainly males Harnessed natural resources Unsustainably the rape of earth had begun in earnest with agriculture Climate change is a direct consequence of agriculture for example cattle raising Agriculture created surplus produce and This surplus produce Freed the majority of the population from either to communal hunting and gathering Let me explain this a Small group of people Right now about two percent in the United States a small group of people Create enough food for the other 98 percent So these 98 percent don't have to work to generate to create to grow their own food So now they're free There's a new concept leisure What to do with leisure well You provide services to each other you trade in goods and commodities and all kinds of manufacturing manufacturer goods industry devices entertainment Academic pursuits all these are the outcome of agriculture surplus produce surplus food Equals freedom and freedom equals civilization we no longer have to hunt and gather In order to survive But hunting and gathering was a communal activity the glue that held tribes clans Families and later societies together in the absence of these communal activities We started to drift apart to drift apart Disintegrate and get atomized. We lost each other I'm not advocating going back to hunting and gathering. I strongly suspect that I would be a very poor hunter well Good predator, but a poor hunter. So That's not what I'm advocating. Of course sustainable agriculture is a good thing But we failed we failed to establish communal alternatives we failed to create social institutions that would prevail that have would have longevity and Resilience and so we fell apart Agriculture gave rise to an addiction to economic growth Economic growth is an overriding value economic growth at any cost human cost environmental cost psychological cost social cost consumerism and economics where the efforts inculcating tools where the mythology of Capitalism and Western civilization the twin mythologies consumerism and Market economics or free market economics this addiction to economic growth This sacrifice of everything that is human everything that is that makes us a species a sui generis This sacrifice is coming back to want us Our chicken proverbial chicken a home to roost and so if we don't if we don't change the mindset of Economic growth as the only benchmark yardstick and standard For progress if we don't realize that progress is about being happy Not about owning material goods if we don't exit this death cult because it's a death cult a civilization that Sacrifices human beings in order to further production of material goods is a death cult when we value in Animate objects of a people It's a death cult and we are all members of this death cult and we celebrate in week We worship in this cult. We have shrines called shopping malls We have prayers prayer books and catechisms known as advertising marketing And so it's a religion consumerism is a religion Phonitious insidious phenomenon that had taken over our minds and hearts. It all started week with agriculture Agriculture also led to the emergence of institutions such as the patriarchy men dominating and enslaving women slavery and Agriculture gave rise to cities cities are not natural They are not normal cities are pathological sick amalgamations cities slavery patriarchy go together and they are unnatural arrangements with grave social and psychological outcomes. We are unhappy because we live in cities We are unhappy because there's war between the genders and we are unhappy because many of us majority actually are still Literally and figuratively enslaved Finally as a species We had opted for conflict rather than harmony and justice We conjured up adversarial combative systems and conflict-based science The science was a way to back up The culture of adversity and conflict for example evolution The theory of evolution is a conflict-based theory survival of the fittest. It's a jungle out there We're all apes Free market economics is an adversarial system winners and losers zero-sum gains Trump's world so If you put all these together if you take into account agriculture urbanization cities growth orientation sacrificing everything on the altar of economic growth and the adversarial conflict-based organizational principle of society and science You would understand why we are at the place that we are why we are so profoundly So profoundly desolate despondent desperate Disappointed this foric and dysfunction What can we do about all this? Agriculture had led to industry in the industry had led to services and the consumption of utterly unnecessary material goods We can and should reverse this we should put humans above production humans above material goods Urbanization we should break cities apart. It's doable with the power of computers With the digital world allows us to break cities apart sub-sub-abs Sub-abs started this trend in the 1950s and 60s, but it didn't go far enough We need to break apart this unnatural sick pathologize in infested effected abrogates and conglomerates of humans upon humans upon humans that we call cities We need to let go and forgo of urbanization. It's sick We need we need to create a new form of economics Which takes into account happiness welfare long-term sustainability the environment it's already starting in places like the Netherlands and And Finally, we need to give up on most if not all Western values Because Western values are sick majority of them not all of them of course freedom is great for example But many Western values we've gone the wrong way. We have exaggerated. We had right radicalized We became fundamentalists. We became fundamentalists of the Western religion Exactly like Baslam fundamentalists or Jewish fundamentalists or Christian fundamentalists fundamentalism is bad for your health and we have fundamentalists of Western value in Academy mainly, but not only there. We need to stop this. It's taking us to a bad place Ask any woman who can't find a partner ask any men who can't establish a family Ask any person who doesn't have friends Shockingly a huge percentage of the population don't have a single good friend study show It's not working the West the idea of the West Mr. Ferguson is not working We need to supplant it we need to replace it with something a bit more holistic a bit more human a Bit more down to size and down to earth literally earth We need to do it now. We need to do it now Covid-19 is a wake-up call Climate change is a wake-up call. It's our chance It's our chance to wake up from this nightmare that we had inflicted upon ourselves If we don't take it will be trapped trapped forever in this world of lucid dreaming And we will never emerge like an inception the movie Do we want? Do we want that? Is this the future that we envision for our children and grandchildren a dystopian world where everyone is out on his own in a modern urban jungle Where material goods are far more important than any number of people where viruses rather just nature fights back Drowns us kills us with all the weapons at its disposal because make no mistake about it Nature will fight us We had become a threat not only to ourselves, but to the universe at large We will not be allowed to continue. We will not be allowed to subsist and persist If we if we do not change course Now it's already almost too late