The seven curses of modern society

What makes life miserable in this world and in these times are seven curses emanating from the devil and which cause all the poverty, social injustice, chaos, wars, and social conflicts. These are leadership without principles, education without character-building, business without social conscience, development without care for the environment, competence without character, religion without spirituality, and management without respect for workers' dignity.

Leadership without principles is exemplified by the likes of Adolf Hitler of Germany, Benito Mussolini of Italy, Josef Stalin of Russia, Saddam Hussein of Iraq, Mao Tse Tung of China, Pol Pot of Cambodia, Idi Amin of Uganda, Muamar al Qaddafi of Libya, Vladimir Putin of Russia, Omar Al-Bashir of Sudan, Kim Jong Il of North Korea, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, and Sayed Al Khamenei of Iran.

These despots, tyrants, and dictators were charged with the killing, massacre, and persecution of political enemies and blatant defiance of the dignity, human rights, and freedom of their own people.

The second bane of humanity is education without character building, building too much competence and too little character.

The third is business without social conscience which are shown by multi-billionaires who do not hesitate to steal, to kill, to cheat, and to commit all kinds of illegal and unethical practices. Those who do not have second thoughts when they destroy the environment just to amass wealth, to cheat on taxes just to maximize profits. These businessmen are the ones corrupting the government, including the executive, the legislative, and the judiciary just to promote their own selfish agenda and gain profits at the expense of the people and the country.

The fourth is economic and infra development without regard for the negative impacts on the environment. They ravish the forests and pollute the waters, ruin the flora and fauna and cause massive destruction of the natural habitat. They do not care at all in the mighty name of profits and financial aggrandizement.

The fifth is competence without character. People who build their technical skills, their mastery of all top-of-the-line technology and innovations, all focused on amassing knowledge and skills but neglecting the values, character, attitude, and relationships among people. There is too much focus on building competence and too much neglect on ethics, good manners, respect, and good relations.

The sixth is religion without spirituality. Most of the religious leaders today are too focused on recruiting adherents and attracting more followers, rather than living the tenets of their faith, living the teachings of God, and exemplifying what modern scribes and Pharisees would rather preach about and pontificate on. Worse, there are too many religious leaders who are in it for the money, for the prestige, and for the power and popularity.

The last is management without respect for the workers' rights and dignity. Many employers today look at their people as mere resources to be used, abused, overused, and misused. Some do not pay the correct wages, make some illegal and unauthorized deductions, bust workers' unions, sexually harass women and men, insult the lowly employees, exploit them and even oppress their own personnel.

Many employers do not care if the working conditions are unsafe and hazardous to health, safety, and security of people. Many employers violate labor laws and social legislations, do not respect security of tenure, and disregard the need for humane conditions at work.

The causes of unhappiness and misery, conflict, and clashes in society are the greed, the covetousness, and the lack of care and compassion among those who have more resources, more power, more influence, and more connections. The bane of human society are politicians without principles, educators without character, businessmen without conscience, entrepreneurs who do not care for the environment, highly-competent technocrats without business ethics, religious leaders who are too fixated on temporal and secular conveniences, and corporate executives and managers who do not have a basic respect for their employee's human dignity and human rights.

The bottom line is the root cause of human unhappiness is the evil hearts and minds of other men.