Is modern civilization a boon or a bane? That is a question with no clear cut answers. For a small (and increasing) fraction of humans, it is a boon: we no longer have to worry about our next meal, life expectancy is higher, infant mortality is exception rather than the norm, epidemics are rare and we have leisure time for spiritual upliftment through science, music or yoga.
For others, it is not clear. Studies suggest that life for farmers in industrial societies is worse than the life of a hunter gatherer in pre agriculatural societies. Apart from farmers, low level workers too lead a subsistence level existence. Poor conditions of workers has given rise to communism and related philosophies.
Conditions of animals is significantly worse. Billions of animals lead a wretched existence for the consumption of humans. Humans are currently not concerned about them. But then a few decades ago, slavery was supposed to be okay.
A distinguishing characterstic of modern civilization is lack of authenticity. In the modern civilization, the link between origin of a resource and its consumption involves several stages and this provides an opportunity for actors with selfish means to make money at the expense of the consumers of the resource.
Consider food. Unless you buy local produce, the fruits and veggies that you consume are treated with chemicals to keep them fresh. Frozen fruits/veggies or juices are worse. Milk too is contaminated because cows are treated with chemicals to maximize their milk output. Sames goes for meat.
Even water comes to not from fresh streams, or wells, but from all types of sources, treated with variety of chemicals to make it potable. While it becomes potable according to the approved norms, it loses of many of its nutrients and does continue to containg many harmful constituents.
Not only are the processed foods and waters not as good as their state in the nature, they are advertised as being very good and nutritious by the companies backing them. Thus, we see compelling ads of milk, without a word about harmful chemicals modern milk contains, and mineral water ads seem to suggest that our water is coming straight from a stream in Himalayas.
Similar is the case with news. Each channel seems to have their financial masters connected to some political masters, and hence news related to political personalities, is, well, politicized. Combine that with heavy social media campaigns of political parties, and we are not sure how much does our perception of political personalities is real and how much is just an illusion, shaped by social media. The trend is every exacerbated by the presence of outright fake news.
Our TVs are filled with ads of products which promise to make us healthier and fairer. They tell us what is socially acceptable and what is not. They tell us what soap to use and how to take care of our dental health. Their aunthenticity is supreme becaause some popular TV star takes a lot of money and says that the concerned product is very good.
How we come to this, and what to do about it? The problem is that the cycle between the source of resource and the consumer consists of many stages and people controlling the intermediate stages are driven by their desire to become rich. A thinking man should try to do research on various messages being fed to him and try to establish the authenticity of the message.