There are two things that we can all agree on. We all want to be happier. We all would rather live in a world of higher consciousness than a world of lower consciousness (if for the only reason that we would be happier because of it.)
This begs the question, "How does nurture (The environment we live in, in this case societal structure, and opposed to nature) affect the likelihood of achieving higher levels of consciousness or of living in a world of higher consciousness (meaning other people have higher consciousness)?
Consciousness is gained by understanding yourself better. Some societies enhance the likelihood of knowing yourself better by increasing the amount of time people spend doing activities in which people are more likely to contemplate their own desires and motivations. For example, a society in which people are under the constant fear of mere survival, they are less likely to focus on internal desires of their soul (see Maslows hierarchy of needs). Compare this to a society in which there is no threat of death from lack of basic necessities. They spend more time getting to know themselves (better learning how to make themselves happy).
Similarly, a person who spends more time working to fulfill some external motivation (like almost every job does) will have less time to improve their own consciousness or learn the methods of making themselves happier.
A society in which people are reinforced to work towards superficial, material goals will also leave them with less energy and time to work towards more intrinsic conscious goals.
We live in a society in which every year we have less time, and our financial resources become less abundant on average. This is purely a result of monopoly capitalism. It is an inevitable effect. When you play monopoly, one person wins and everyone else gets less and less as time goes on. Our society, through our media increases the likelihood that people will spend their time on superficial pursuits. Technological advances on average have brought very few people more time or more security.  |