Posted on July 21, 2025

I grew up in a world where discipline wasn’t a punishment; it was a principle. You stood when spoken to. You listened when someone wiser spoke. Your word was your bond, and if you failed, you took it quietly, stoically, with the genuine intention to do better next time.

Now, I look around and struggle to reconcile the landscape of today with the values I was raised on. I don’t say this with arrogance, but with a kind of baffled sorrow. It feels as though we’re living through a vast social experiment—one that began with noble intentions but is now rapidly unraveling into a nightmare. A world once grounded in shared responsibility and quiet strength now groans under the weight of curated vulnerability, performance-led morality, and the tyranny of the perpetually offended.

Take social media—LinkedIn, for example. A platform that once served as a space for professional exchange has become a theatre of virtue signalling. I recently posed a simple question: "What is resilience? How is it cultivated? How can it be applied in the workplace?" Seven impressions. No responses. Yet, posts detailing someone waking at 5 am, chugging three cups of coffee, answering 50 emails, and meticulously documenting their ‘power morning’ ritual often garner hundreds of thousands of likes and shares, sometimes reaching millions of users.

We reward bravado. We ignore reflection.

This isn’t evolution. It’s performance.

And this performative aspect isn’t confined to digital platforms; it seeps into how we govern ourselves. Increasingly, our legislation is shaped not by careful deliberation or grounded research but by social outrage. A single viral incident can spark sweeping changes, with proposed laws sometimes emerging within weeks or even days of a major public outcry—often bypassing the traditional months or years of committee review and public debate. Laws are drafted as knee-jerk reactions to vocal minorities who equate disagreement with harm. But governance by outcry is not democracy—it’s mob rule with hashtags.

Historian Neil Postman warned, "People will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think."

We see this now in how we interpret history. The British Empire—a deeply complex and, yes, flawed institution by today’s standards—is often dismissed in simplistic terms: oppressive, colonial, evil. But to condemn it solely by modern metrics is to miss the point entirely.

"To condemn the Empire by modern standards is like blaming a steam engine for not being electric. Understand the time. Respect the scale. Learn—don’t erase."
—As a wise person once said.

When viewed within its historical context, the British Empire was one of the most legally structured and administratively sophisticated systems the world has known. According to historian Niall Ferguson, it was British governance that laid the foundations for modern democracy, railway infrastructure, and judicial systems across continents. It wasn’t perfect—but few empires in history have demonstrated such efforts at legalism and reform.

We live in an era of chronological arrogance, where many assume moral superiority over their ancestors without ever facing the trials they endured. The Industrial Revolution, the World Wars, rebuilding from the ashes—these were not curated moments. They were acts of resilience, backbone, and duty.

But ask yourself: could today’s society survive another Blitz?

We coddle instead of confront. We cancel instead of challenge. And we’ve built a new kind of glass house—one where no one dares throw a stone, lest their entire identity shatter under scrutiny.

We teach young men that ambition is dangerous, that stoicism is toxic, that tradition is a relic. Meanwhile, statistics indicate a rising trend in anxiety and depression among young men in certain demographics—suggesting that perhaps these new narratives aren’t entirely serving their well-being. Without those very qualities—ambition, stoicism, tradition—we wouldn’t have survived the 20th century. We wouldn’t have had soldiers who held the line. Engineers who built bridges. Fathers who kept their families together through poverty, war, and loss.

I grew up with men who didn’t shout about their trauma. They carried it quietly—not because they were repressed, but because they knew that life often demands more from you than your comfort.

And now? We’re told to scream at every slight, share every emotion, and treat discomfort as violence.

So yes, I’m appalled. But I’m also intrigued. Intrigued by how quickly we’ve traded truth for trend, backbone for applause, and what that signals for our collective future.

There is a better way. A quieter, firmer path.

It begins with refusing to perform. With reclaiming substance. With demanding more of ourselves than curated vulnerability and applause-chasing virtue.

Because a society that cannot build, cannot endure.

And endurance, after all, is the only proof of wisdom.