A society does not “become” controlled. It gives up control.
Look around you, how many of your peers are concerned with what goes on around them that actually will have a major impact on their lives. You need only to go to the store to pick up soap or shoes and see where most peoples priorities lie. Stand in a check out line and see that everything around us caters to celebrities and nonsense and not actual issues.
We have to get off of the “monetary” system and get on some sort of semi “morality” system. I don’t mean one of those crazy right wing “fear whatever deity you may” things but something that rewards people who take care of their kids, help society, help each other, instead of only rewarding those who aqcuire the most monetary “wealth”.
Part of the problem lies in peoples inane need to “keep up with the jones’s”, big suv belies big suv, mcmansion belies mcmansion. Does an executive of a pharmecutical company need a 7 figure salary with compensation or should he have the morals to say, I only need 85,000 a year, let the employees have the rest.
It’s not so much that poverty is bad for us, but the fact that too much emphasis is placed on “being monetarily” rich.
Just try and be a decent person, shit will fall into place and if not, at least you never gave up who you are to get where you are.