“What civilization is is 6 billion people trying to make themselves happy by standing on each other’s shoulders and kicking each other’s teeth in. It’s not a pleasant situation. And yet you can stand back and look at this planet and see that we have the money, the power, the medical understanding, the scientific know-how, the love, and the community to produce a kind of human paradise.” - Terence McKenna
>McKenna saw modern culture as a sort of engine detached from the interests of the individual and serving the manipulative, power-focused agendas of various institutions and wealthy individuals.
That said there are quite a variety of cultures out there that you can choose to be part of. I'm currently in a yoga culture area and maybe as a counterpoint to "demanding never ending work weeks and 24/7 attention to work" I've hung a bit with landlord types who have bought a house, do it up buy another etc. If anything they tend to suffer from the opposite problem of not being very occupied much of the time. Plus awkward tenants - nothing's perfect.