People adopt various defense mechanisms to survive in the modern society with constant competition and hierarchy. It’s hard to lower the bar and let people into your boundaries. As you enter society, you start filtering out who you want to keep close to and with whom you want to keep your distance. Even more so, with the integration of the internet and media, genuine connections between individuals are hard to maintain.
Thus, modern society has become a challenging period in which the word ‘connections’ has become a form of power implying that you gain the power to influence your friends or, so to say, followers in the context of media. However, love is too complex to be defined as connections or power, and it has a propensity to heal people who modern society’s shallow connections have hurt.
Modern society lacks love and kindness. People started ruining the rules of love and kindness. The lines between genuine kindness and self-interested kindness became too vague. The idea of genuine delivery of love and kindness fades as kindness is shown more for self-interest. The problem with self-interested kindness is that it’s hard to distinguish from genuine kindness, making oneself afraid of trusting someone’s acts of kindness. In disbelief and distrust, how can love flow in authenticity? How can we genuinely form connections based on love?
What happens with love disguised with self-interest and ego? It may result in feelings of betrayal or dishonesty by the person who once thought the love and kindness were genuine. And as a result, it shuts that person’s heart, heightens the wall, and limits the flow of love they could give each other. They become afraid of giving love and receiving love. They become guarded against people who give love because, behind that kindness and love, there could be a selfish purpose behind it. Could this have been the fault of modern society? Will there be a way of recovering genuine love and kindness?
Like the saying ‘treat people with kindness,’ loving and kindness can influence an individual’s thinking, behaviors, and life. There is so much power to love that can both negatively and positively shape individuals. Many hateful words can destroy someone’s life, acts of service can make someone’s day, or physical touch can wound or mend depending on how it is delivered. Humans are fragile, like glass; they can break in hurtful love and broken pieces are hardly put together.