Degeneration and monetization

Ebru DURMUŞ- Sociologist

The economy is one of the most important factors that determines the living standards that affect a person's life. It defines individuals' cultural development, physical and mental health, and educational standards. The strength of a country's economy progresses in parallel with the strength of its financial markets. If your currency is valuable, you earn what you deserve, live in prosperity, and are not dependent on the outside world.

Our country is experiencing a major economic crisis. While this crisis has changed the economic state of society, it has also caused significant changes in working life, lifestyles, and preferences. By keeping all expenditures to a minimum, it has effectively ended social life. Individuals are using the largest share of their monthly expenses for essential needs such as food, education, clothing, communication, transportation, and health, and at this point, even these have been cut back. For this reason, the quality of life, which was already low, has completely collapsed, leading to the breakdown of family structures and individuals isolating themselves at home. Living does not just mean eating and breathing. People did not come into this world to live below the hunger threshold. We are in times when the era of working just to fill one's stomach has long since ended. Furthermore, when we lower the level of education to the bottom, instill a culture of obedience, and add a literature of gratitude on top of it, people forget what a quality life means and begin to shame and target the segment that desires a quality life. This is another factor that increases degeneration. Along with this, it is seen that different values emerge in place of human relations and human values in this context. A new value system, where material relationships are the determining factor, is beginning to replace the human value system. Another element that triggers this is the degenerated social media.

The influence of social media and popular culture: Everyone's desire to put in little and gain much has made them forget the true importance and purpose of social media. The ambition to make easy money has pushed some people toward unethical and immoral paths. Especially in recent days, we have also seen this ambition evolve into money laundering attempts. These channels have increasingly turned from a place where people simply share their lives into popular marketing arenas. The popularity of the concept of being an 'influencer' has caused many people to turn to this field with the ambition of making easy money.

Countries with strong economies invest in technology, art, and science. They allocate budgets for R&D studies for new product development and production. In this context, we should not reduce the economy to concepts like inflation and current account deficit in a narrow sense, but evaluate it from a broader perspective. For example, the systems and society that have been corrupted by the individuality and lack of merit brought about by the economic crisis are of great importance. In this context, the rule of law has been undermined, justice has become personalized, and the judiciary has been corrupted and rendered unable to make independent decisions. The bureaucracy has become a field that acts entirely according to political directives. Most importantly, education has regressed so much during this period that university graduates have become unaware of the departments they studied.

As a result, with the rise of a culture focused on consumption and material gain in Turkey in recent years, society's values and priorities have begun to change; the increase in economic uncertainties and the deepening of income inequality have pushed individuals to seek to earn more money. Social media and popular culture have fueled the ambition for money among young people by spreading the perception of rapid enrichment and luxury consumption. With the weakening of the traditional family structure, individuals' search for self-expression and status display has come to the fore. This situation has strengthened the illusion that happiness and health in society are equal to material prosperity, paving the way for the formation of a monetarist society. In this context, our goal should not just be to lower inflation. Improvement in the economy cannot become permanent without addressing our real problems. Those who hold political power should not ignore the social dimension caused by the economic crisis alongside the economic dimension in their analyses of the economic crisis.