Contemporary Culture

Contemporary culture is built upon competition. Consequently people are educated to believe that in order to live successful lives they must be better than their predecessors. In order to be better, people must be educated in the right institutions, in the right subjects and must achieve excellence, according to society's criteria of excellence. Today, excellence is the only way to set a person apart from the rest of society. The idea of being unique is excelling in the philosophies of historical thinkers, rather than one's own particular ideologies. Accordingly, people ask themselves if excellence, according to society's image of excellence, will give value to their lives, if they will truly be successful in society's terms of success if they prove to have more knowledge than others. Although the answer to such a question is unique for everyone, successfully outwitting another does not make someone's life successful. No one can gauge a person's accomplishments on his or her ability to make others feel inferior. Success can only be measured through a person's ability to make moral decisions without allowing society's influences shape those decisions. According to Rousseau, allowing the advancements of civilization to render one's accomplishments successful is a failure to that person. Likewise, Wordsworth explains that success is not something that can be learned; rather, it is something one must experience alone in man's natural state. Wordsworth's reverence towards nature in the following passage reflects the way life should be lived and the way contemporary culture cannot know the true meaning of a good life without taking a step back and realizing how vast and amazing the world is, and how small man is in comparison:

These beauteous forms,

Through a long absence, have not been to me

As is a landscape to a blind man's eye: 25

But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din

Of towns and cities, I have owed to them

In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,

Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;

And passing even into my purer mind, 30

With tranquil