Hazards of Modern Living
Modern living is a living both very comfortable and very tiring, both at the same time. This can be very easily analyzed when we study the life of middle class modern family.
With ever so many modern mechanical gadgets the housewife of today finds her household work much easier and faster than her counterpart of yesteryear. Within a very short span of time she is able to do the entire household chores and then, she is in a position to devote her time to other activities of her interest. So such so good but, in the bargain she loses out on the effort and exercise she could have got if she did all this work manually. This problem gets still further compounded if the housewife is also a working woman. Yes, then the advantage of mechanical gadgets are helpful but look at her plight early in the morning when she has also to go to the office in time. With so much work load she herself becomes a machine and inspite of all the gadgets at her disposal she gets no respite from rushing all the time. She becomes more like a robot doing all the work at home and at office or work place like a machine. She here also loses out on the finer aspects of family life like love, care and the like as, she has no time for these frivolities. Thus, the woman who was once a picture of care has lost that sheen of the finer qualities of womanhood. She is now a machine with no feelings, no time, no special interests, she is all the time as if shunting between the home and the office.
So much for the change in the life of a woman, the man also who always had to work outside the home may now be earning a handsome pay packet but, by allowing the wife to work outside the home is now not at the receiving end any more. He gets the minimum that she can give and is losing out on the love and care she used to once shower on him, when she had the time to do so. Now, as the woman is stepping into the man’s shoes, she is and just has to become hardened like him as, she has no time to pamper him. Thus in the so-called modern style of living the man is also a loser, he is losing out on the emotional touch he got before the bug of modernity stung the family.
As for the children in the modern scheme of things I feel are the greatest losers in the family. They do go to the best of schools as, the family can well afford it, they play the best of games, have the most modern friends, but they grow in an environment which is completely bereft of love affection and all delicate emotions as, there is no time in any body’s schedule to engage in the show of love and interest. They do not get the feel of their mother’s loving caress nor their father’s joining the game being played. Since these children are completely losing out on the finer feelings of life and human existence, they are also in turn developing into more of robots that work simply mechanically. This results in the children having no attachments, no emotions which the humans are gifted with, and which feelings develop only with the required circumstances.
These children developing in the modern nuclear families are also bereft of the pampering of the grandparents. The loving and interesting stories of the grandmother and jumping and frisking with the grandfather are a missing entity in this modern world.
Thus, modern living though very rewarding and satisfying has resulted in a complete loss of human values, human emotions and human attitudes. It is these qualities that separate the human being from other living beings, and, if we have lost these qualities, I daresay we are not faring any better than the lower species of life. The hazards of modern living are so great that, they have resulted in destroying the very basic fabric of family life and loosened the bonds of the family of which we were very proud in the past. There is undoubtedly a tremendous growth in the financial status of families but it has simultaneously resulted in an absolute loss of humanness of the family members. It is now for us to decide if this modern living is better and more comfortable than the life style gone by.
