Free thinkers for generations have criticised the masses for being materialistic, self-indulgent and willfully ignorant. It is now worse than it has been in the history of this "civilisation", but it's been deteriorating for a very long time. People keep prioritising (their perception of) what other people think of them over doing the right thing: being honest, having principles, having conscience, etc., and the result of this is that things get worse: people become more dissatisfied, more depressed, more lost, more violent, more selfish. The reason we have collectively given up our honesty, principles and conscience is because we were deceived into thinking it didn't really matter. People thought that to survive in this dog-eat-dog world we had to bend the rules, and this is the message which has been passed down through recent generations.
We couldn't detect (and still can't) personal negative consequences for living in such an immoral unconscious way. Rather, people saw clearly negative consequences for possessing these righteous characteristics, and positive consequences for possessing negative characteristics, but this is because we have been disregarding all things immaterial. In the earthly physicality, the conscious have always been abused by the unconscious and amoral, and examples of this are made known to the masses for the purposes of keeping them in line. Physical considerations slowly became the entirety of considerations.
We had been coaxed into a materialistic worldview which purposely ignores all the known sources of true and lasting fulfillment and happiness for human beings on earth: purpose, understanding of God, community, family, culture, etc.. Without these we are lost souls on this earth; alone, pointless, with the unrequested "gift" of an unknown amount of time here - wherever this is, to do with who knows what, and to carry on doing who knows what until finally pointless existence is over and we reenter the infinitely empty lifeless void. How much accumulating of physical possessions would be enough for one to overcome such a desperate situation? And who's selling?
"The world of today, in its mad career towards the unknown - which it is too ready to confound with the unknowable, whenever the problem eludes the grasp of the physicist - is rapidly progressing on the reverse, material plane of spirituality. It has now become a vast arena - a true valley of discord and of eternal strife - a necropolis, wherein lie buried the highest and the most holy aspirations of our Spirit-Soul. That soul becomes with every new generation more paralyzed and atrophied." H.P. Blavatsky, 1888.
... "I was running into the social disease of our modern life: cowardice and pathological fear of a strong personality or strong ideas. Dale Carnegie has codified and commercialized this creeping disease as "how to win friends and influence people," which boils down, in essence, to the principle of having no personality or strong feelings or ideas and becoming passive and empty so that the other fellow can display HIS ideas and personality. But he, too, is trying to get "popular" by being passive and dispassionate, so that the result is like two dead batteries: no current. Such human robots are suited to enslavement by a 1984-type society, but not to a bold, free society of men." George Rockwell, 1967.
You were created unique and magnificent in your own way, and surgically removing parts of you so that you more closely resemble those around you is not the way to personal empowerment. We are not here to "fit in", to synchronise with others. We are here to grow up, get over our egos, really take responsibility and come together with others to create a community of happiness, cooperation, peace and prosperity. When you dare to be true to yourself, doors will open for you and the entire world will benefit.