THE 21ST CENTURY

Sir,

I am a normal guy with my whole life ahead of me, but to me I am a human being who’s confined by a broken century. By broken century I mean this fabricated society around me, where luck determines rights and one person’s fortune depends on another’s inequality. This is the era of capitalism, competition and industrial revolution. The era where profit comes first before corruption and everything is counterfeit production.

In these times, we reward ignorance and sacrifice integrity for acceptance. We willfully destroy the environment and glorify idiocy over real intelligence. Welcome to the 21st century, the century of Instagram and Facebook. In this century you will be ignored for your morals yet worshipped for your looks. Selfishness is portrayed as strength and kindness is mistaken for weakness. Real virtues like honour have become irrelevant and people are now defined by their financial prosperity.

But does having the best make us the best? Or does it make us robotic culture clones? And are we truly free if we can’t spend a full day without the applications on our smartphones? Do schools really teach us how to think? Are degrees desired for education or validation? Perhaps they are there to teach us to conform to authority and to prepare us for a broken system.
Are religions and nationalities real? Should they really be taken seriously? After all they are just human constructs, so why do we fight over them? Why do ideas make people forget their humanity? All we are is humanity. And so a person’s quality of life should not be determined by their skin colour or ethnicity.  

Why is kicking a ball around a field worshipped by millions when starving children get little or no recognition? Why are possessions more of a concern than climate change and animal extinction? Why is pop culture and entertainment prioritised over world injustice and hunger? Why are celebrities seen as role models for selling corrupt messages? Why do we make stupid people famous for being vulgar? What is it that we care about now? Status, image, titles, perceived value? What if these are illusions and famous people are just people?

Why do we keep fracking, industrialising, and burning fossil fuels? That’s false innovation. Rapid unsustainable infinite growth on a finite planet is impossible. It will lead us to the collapse of civilization.
If you haven’t noticed the problem, then you haven’t been paying attention. We need to wake up because as a species, we are not headed in the right direction. Is it true that humans are intelligent? Or are we ignorant? Can anybody hear me? Is honesty really a virtue if nobody wants to hear the truth? It makes no sense to me. This is the 21st century yet there’s still famine, poverty and war. Why should we work for a system which makes the selfish rich and the selfless poor? Success depends on who you know not what you know. The majority are being exploited. This is the reality of everyday.

The patrons of society bathe in greed while the common people slave away. Can anyone see it? We are living a lie. We are part of a game but we don’t realise it. Some people win but most people lose because this system only benefits a few. It’s lagging and dysfunctional. Capitalism rewards the wrong people; prosperity isn’t earned anymore. It is a privilege dependent on exploiting the poor. These are the symptoms of a failing system. This broken century needs to be fixed.

Baphatse George Dhladhla

Post your comment

Your name:

Your e-mail address:

Add your comments:

Please enter the code you see in the image:

Image:

Code: