Section Two — Why Are Modern People Becoming Increasingly Miserable?

Section Two

Why Are Modern People Becoming Increasingly Miserable?

— The Collapse of Human Relationship Systems After Industrial Civilization

Many people believe that modern humanity is living in the happiest era in history.

We possess:

From a material perspective, humanity appears more successful than ever before.

And yet, another reality has become increasingly impossible to ignore:

The psychological condition of modern people is deteriorating on a massive scale.

More and more people are:

On the surface, these appear to be psychological problems.

But at a deeper level, the real issue is this:

The development of human civilization has far outpaced the evolution of relationship civilization.

Industrial civilization, capitalism, the internet, and AI have dramatically increased humanity’s ability to reshape the external world.

But humanity still has not truly learned:

And so, a strange contradiction has emerged:

Humanity has become increasingly skilled at creating tools, while becoming increasingly incapable of understanding human beings.

We have built skyscrapers, but struggle to build stable families.

We possess global communication systems, but increasingly fail to communicate deeply with one another.

We have more informational freedom than any civilization before us, yet many people barely understand themselves.

We educate children to compete, but rarely teach them how to love.

Inside many families, the dominant dynamics are not:

Instead, they are:

Many parents do not truly understand their children.

Instead, children are often treated as:

As a result, many children learn an invisible lesson very early in life:

“I must suppress my true self in order to be loved.”

This is one of the deepest tragedies of modern relationship civilization.

Because when a person loses the right to authentically be themselves during childhood, that person may later grow into an adult who:

Many adults appear grown on the outside.

But internally, they are still trapped as the child who was never truly respected.

And so, suffering begins reproducing itself across generations.

A child raised through humiliation may later humiliate others.

A child raised through control may later use control to sustain relationships.

A person who has never truly experienced love may struggle to understand what love actually means.

As a result, society falls into a hidden civilizational cycle:

pain reproduces pain; control reproduces control; trauma reproduces trauma.

And this is precisely the problem the Family Civilization Project seeks to confront.

Because I increasingly believe:

The true level of civilization is not measured only by technology or wealth.

It is measured by:

If a civilization:

but still cannot help millions of children grow up happily, cannot stop families from destroying one another, and cannot allow ordinary people to experience dignity, respect, and love—

then that civilization remains incomplete.

The Family Civilization Project is therefore not merely about improving family relationships.

Its deeper goal is:

to help humanity evolve from a civilization centered on tools, toward a civilization centered on human relationships.

Because a truly great civilization should not only make human beings more efficient.

It should also help human beings live more meaningful, loving, and genuinely happy lives.