Is modern era comfortable, but empty?

[Thumpalumpacus]

Nowadays most of our necessities are satisfied, and there is a lot of entertainment available, nowadays pretty much 24/7 thanks to our phones.

Entertainment comes in many forms, many if not most of which aren't vectored through our phones. I get entertainment and satisfaction from playing my guitar, or going on a hike, for instance. Where and what we choose to entertain ourselves with is a personal decision, so it's fair to point out, I think, that many folks who feel empty from modern entertainment might wish to reappraise their choices in that aspect.

Work is another factor that comes into play, since we spend most of our day, and perhaps life, working usually meaningless jobs.

No argument there, many of us are stuck in empty careers. The trick is to find fulfillment aside from labor, perhaps?

Add to that an education that only exists to brainwash us, and teach us a lot of meaningless things.

That depends on what and how one chooses to find education, though, doesn't it? If you're talking about public schooling, sure, you'd be right. But that is not the only education we can or should receive. I read up on things that interest me, for instance, things that aren't taught in schools. I listen to other people and their experiences and hope to glean some education that way. I observe the world and how it works, and that too is educational assuming I draw useful conclusions. There are many different avenues for education aside from factory-schooling.

I think this environment has made us forget what is of most importance in life, and stops us from exploring ourselves, and the world around us. There is more to life than this.

Now I am not romanticizing the past. I know there was a lot of awful stuff around. But those who managed to live (and not be slaves), many lived very fulfilling and adventurous lives, achieved great things. And I think that living through hardships leads to a more fulfilling life and wisdom than scrolling through Tik Tok or Instagram.

Social media is to entertainment what cotton-candy is to healthy eating. But some folks, they just like eating candy, and hate vegetables.

Many examples can be mentioned. Writers such as Dante Alighieri, Miguel de Cervantes, scientists such as Galileo, artists such as Da Vinci, philosophers such as Spinoza, and the list goes.

And that's where self-education and interests come into play. We can choose to read them, we can choose to play a video game, we can choose to learn a musical instrument and write songs, we can choose to take up sport, whatever. The cool thing about modern tech is that it opens up these avenues for us that were much harder to arrive at even in my youth only a scant forty years ago. Nowadays, if I want to learn how to play death metal on my guitar, or understand the equations for gravity, or read Spinoza, I can log on and search it out rather easily, in most cases.

Nowadays too many institutions control how we live, the state and companies together dictate how we live, how we socialize, how we think, where we work, where we live, etc.

Institutional control has been a thig since loooooooong before the arrival of smart tech. Whether we allow it to control how we think, how we socialize, or where we work or live is a different matter, and much more dependent on the individual, I think.

Yes modern medicine and anestesia is nice. But there must be more to life than the avoidance of pain (which in some cases is still not possible nowadays).

Of course. And nothing's stopping you.