You are so welcome, Caroline. What strikes me out of this comment is how so many of us did indeed sell our souls to exploitative capitalism. However, to be fair, I don't think many of us-my generation or my parents- understood at the time, as so many of us do not (and I think this is worth its own article) understood just precisely how evil this was at the time. The heady fifties (at least for white folks) a time of unprecedented economic growth, the sales pitch of get get get, have have have- all driven by a genuinely evil pressure to acquire as a way to feel superior, which goes to your point, sold my parents and perhaps yours too on the idea that if we can demonstrate that we can HAVE, then that means we are superior. There is a superb BBC documentary of a few years back which does an excellent job of outlining where and how the marketing and PR behemoths that we now have got their start. They have morphed into the truly, truly ugly online manipulation and monetization of eyeballs and wallets beginning with Freud:

The Century of the Self from the BBC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s

If you want to understand the underpinnings of how on earth we got here, that is an excellent place you can begin. A good friend got that in my face some years ago and I was stunned. I was also deeply, richly, and righteously fucking embarrassed that I was ever so easily manipulated to want the so-called "have to haves" of the fashion industry each fall, which of course translates out into having to have any other damned thing from a skin cream which costs more than your kids' college tuition and does fuck-all for your face to a pricey car that fucks the environment.

Any kind of genuine evolution towards understanding who and what we are, along with a greater understanding of how patriarchal values drive profit over humanity and which have cost us our precious earth and much of her inhabitants as well as our quality of life begins with understanding that we have two huge human addictions: the need to be right (and you be wrong) and the need to be superior. I wrote a piece on this recently. Understand those, you understand racism, consumerism, war, everything. EVERYTHING. While that can sound terribly simplistic, the truth is that we could whittle down our collective bullshit the world over to those two basic and very ugly human compulsions. Kids kill each other over Michael Jordan sneakers. People go bankrupt emotionally over filters to look pretty. You get it, Caroline.

The problem comes when we- irrespective of generations, because the Zucerburgs and Musks and Bezos are just as evil as any of the robber barons before them-and all their grubbing acolytes cannot see what they have created. Interestingly, the famed, and once-magnificent Esalen Institute along the Big Sur of the California Coast, was once a haven for advanced spirituality. I read where a number of the Silicon Valley billionaires who have made their money twisting the world into pretzels for profit and undermining society (that would be all the social media sites where hate is the family value) took the place over and are trying to pay penance. Too late, sparky. And notably., the worst among them aren't there trying to meditate away what they did.

The world is full of "grasping, entitled people, etc" Caroline because they were sold the notion that to be rich was to be better than, above the hoi polloi, and that to have a vacay home in SA and all the rest somehow made them one of the gods. At some level they are well aware that this is a lie, but that spark for too many lies buried beneath the rotting bodies of people who have been exploited so that they can be rich.

Rant over. You might want to watch that documentary where you can find a few minutes at a shot. It's a fine education in that way that the BBC does such a superb job with documentaries. The gift for you is that it might help put things into perspective as well as give you a whole new set of competent talking points. You will not win the war with your family. However, you might be able to put a spin on your own experience which releases you in some fundamental ways, as well as better engage with others around you. Education is THE answer, Caroline. Those of us who cannot see, who choose not to see what is difficult but at the same time, freeing, stay in prison. They will die in a ditch to be right.

You and I, and others, can choose to do the hard work of taking responsibility. Of course the high road is a hard road. That's the whole point. And it's worth it.