Quote: Cultures impart order and meaning to our lives. It is important that they do this in ways that meet human needs and reflect social realities. Modern Western culture, with its focus on materialism and individualism, does neither of these things. This amounts to a form of cultural fraudulence, an extreme consequence of which is an existential despair that leads to suicide.

The good news is that some recent research suggests we are waking up to this fraud and reacting against its influence. Many of us are uncomfortably aware of the gap between our values and lifestyles, between what we believe and how we live; more of us are exploring ways to close that gap and to live lives that express our values more clearly. We are trying to be more genuinely autonomous.

What makes our times so confusing, and research findings often contradictory or ambiguous, is that we are seeing parallel processes of cultural decay and renewal, a titanic struggle as old ways of thinking about ourselves fail, and new ways of being human strive for definition and acceptance. But this is another story. unquote


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what an interesting article!! I had to print it, all 8 pages of it for my suicide folder. thank you Lara and in my humble opinion this also applies to so many facets of our society. We hear Robyn Williams on NPR here also but I missed this program.