The Wasteland of Modern Culture
Imagine a society where nothing is sacred, nothing permanent, and nothing worth suffering for. A culture where relationships, commitments, and even people are disposable—tossed aside like last year’s phone or a pair of old shoes. That’s where we are now. Welcome to the wasteland we built with our own hands.
We live in a world of abundance, yet it’s never been so empty. Relationships dissolve like sugar in water. Commitments are made with crossed fingers, ready to be broken when something shinier comes along. The word “covenant” has lost its weight. Marriage vows—once a sacred bond of shared purpose and sacrifice—are now just ceremonial filler for Instagram stories. And when the ceremony’s over, we return to a culture of me first, of easy exits, of endless options.
What happens when everything is replaceable? When even people are disposable? We get this: a society wandering aimlessly through the fog, unsure of what it stands for, unsure of what it values. Blind to the fact that it’s suffocating on its own fumes.
The Death of the Covenant
There was a time when the words spoken in a marriage meant something. For better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health. These weren’t just poetic flourishes—they were promises, weighted with the understanding that life is unpredictable, and the point is to endure it together.
Today, those vows are little more than background noise. Marriage itself has been deconstructed, dissected, and replaced with open relationships, serial divorces, and casual cohabitation. What was once a binding contract is now a loose arrangement, built on the assumption that “forever” only lasts as long as it’s convenient.
Some argue this is progress. That we’ve evolved past outdated institutions and oppressive traditions. But let’s call it what it is: avoidance. Avoidance of accountability. Avoidance of sacrifice. Avoidance of discomfort. Because building something real—whether it’s a marriage, a family, a skill or a meaningful life—takes work. It takes resilience. And resilience is in short supply these days.
Throwaway People, Throwaway Culture
We’ve built a culture that treats everything as disposable, and we wonder why nothing feels valuable anymore. Relationships, like consumer goods, are judged by their utility. Does this person make me happy? Do they meet my needs? If not, swipe left, move on, try again with someone else. The moment something requires effort or compromise, it’s easier to just start over.
This isn’t freedom—it’s infantilism. It’s a refusal to grapple with the hard truth that anything worth having comes at a cost. Love isn’t just a feeling; it’s a choice, made daily, through hard times and good. But that kind of commitment doesn’t sell. It doesn’t fit into a culture obsessed with instant gratification and self-fulfillment.
The result? A generation of fractured families, broken homes, and kids raised in “untested configurations” that serve the needs of adults more than the well-being of children. We’ve turned parenthood into a social experiment, with the next generation paying the price for our inability to commit.
The Industry of Dysfunction
And when this culture of disposability inevitably breeds dysfunction? There’s no shortage of people ready to profit from it. Therapists, pharmaceutical companies, self-help gurus—they’re all lined up, cash registers ringing, ready to sell you validation and quick fixes. Anxious because your life feels meaningless? Here’s a pill for that. Depressed because your relationships keep falling apart? Let’s spend $200 an hour talking about how that makes you feel.
The system doesn’t want you to heal. Healing means independence, and independence isn’t profitable. The goal isn’t to fix you—it’s to keep you coming back, endlessly chasing a resolution that never quite arrives. Therapy sessions that circle the same traumas, medications that mask symptoms instead of addressing causes, social theories that justify dysfunction instead of solving it—all of it keeps the cash flowing while you stay stuck.
Even the culture itself reinforces this loop. We’re told to “prioritize self-care” while being sold products and services designed to make us feel more broken and confused than we already are. It’s an industry of dysfunction, built on the exploitation of human pain. And the more fragmented our relationships and lives become, the more customers this system creates.
Walking in Circles
The saddest part? Most people don’t even see the game for what it is. They wander through the fog, convinced they’re free, playing brilliant jazz even though they don’t understand the basics. They think they’re improvising a masterpiece, but it’s just noise—chaotic, dissonant, aimless. And the culture applauds, calling it progress, calling it liberation.
But freedom without structure is just chaos. Without a foundation—without values, principles, or a shared sense of purpose—people are left adrift, clutching at anything to give their lives meaning. And when they can’t find it, they blame the system, the world, the patriarchy, anything but themselves.
This is the reality of our so-called “progress.” A culture that dismantles its own foundations, replaces them with nothing, and then wonders why everything feels empty. A society that celebrates its own decay, mistaking aimlessness for freedom and dysfunction for individuality.
The Way Out
So, what’s the solution? It starts with a brutal acknowledgment: we did this to ourselves. We tore down what was sacred—marriage, family, commitment, community, shared identity—because it was hard, because it demanded more from us than we were willing to give. And in its place, we built a culture of disposability, where nothing is permanent and nothing is real.
Rebuilding starts with rejecting the lies. The lie that love is just a feeling with an expiry date. The lie that relationships are supposed to be a cake walk. The lie that freedom means living without responsibility. It starts with reclaiming the values we’ve discarded: discipline, sacrifice, accountability, and the understanding that some things—like marriage and family—are bigger than ourselves.
It won’t be easy. It won’t be quick. But it’s necessary. Because if we keep wandering through this fog, if we keep celebrating this aimless, transactional existence, we’ll lose more than just our culture. We’ll lose ourselves.
The choice is ours: keep walking in circles, blind to the destruction around us, or wake up, face the hard truths, and start rebuilding what we’ve lost. The fog is thick, but the path out is there—for those brave enough to take it.