The American De-Evolution: How Industrialized Education, Medicine, and Food Structures Our World

In the second episode of The Evolved Podcast, we question if we are measuring human evolution by the wrong standards. This episode challenges conventional beliefs by questioning the pursuit of material wealth and its impact on our physical and spiritual health. Using the United States as a benchmark, we expose the gap between technological advancement and true human progress, with a critical examination of the present day American healthcare and education systems.

Moving into history's influence on today's economic and societal systems, we dissect the effects of the 1910 Flexner Report on medical education, revealing how storied industrialists like Rockefeller and Carnegie shaped a petrochemical-dominated healthcare industry. Furthermore, we trace the American education system's roots back to the 18th-century Prussian model, designed to create compliant workers for the industrial age. The examination illustrates how little we actually know about the fundamental infrastructure of the institutions we depend on in our everyday lives. 

Finally, we propose a shift inward, advocating for self-awareness and mindfulness as routes to authentic happiness and balance. By moving away from external achievements and digital distractions, we can align our lives with our true passions instead of profit-driven pursuits. 

This conversation invites you to participate in a journey toward evolving consciousness, urging community support and engagement to achieve meaningful change and a brighter future. Join us as we ignite this movement, highlighting the power of truth, acceptance, and compassion in our destined evolution of consciousness.

Topics Include:

Artificial Intelligence 
Self-Improvement
Education System
Consciousness
Evolution
Personal Finance
Healthcare System
Universal Laws

Transcript

Speaker 00: 0:00

Hello everyone, and welcome to the second episode of Manhattan Prophet Podcast. I am Manhattan Prophet. As a reminder, I'm here to ensure that all knowledge I give you finds meaning and a practical place in your everyday lives. It's only through properly digesting knowledge, in this case of ourselves and the world around us, that we see things clearly enough to break old patterns of behavior and begin a new path forward to a heightened state of consciousness. Something is cracking beneath the surface of our collective awareness. We feel it in our bodies, in our strained conversations, and the strange ache of disconnection that hums beneath even our happiest moments. It's as if the stories we've inherited about who we are, what we must become, and what it means to live well is coming undone. And maybe, just maybe, that unraveling is the invitation not to panic, not to cling tighter, but to ask better questions, to consider that the systems we've trusted may not be failing us, that may have never served us to begin with. We were shaped not just by parents or peers, but by invisible scripts, scripts written by systems that predate our birth, reinforced through culture, education, advertising, and policy. These narratives taught us early on that value is tied to output, that worth must be earned, and that survival hinges on fitting in. And so, without realizing it, we began to contort ourselves to match these expectations. We silence parts of who we are to remain acceptable, employable, and desirable. From the moment we open our eyes, we are nudged into a rhythm, not of our choosing. A rhythm designed to reward productivity over presence, obedience, over originality and conformity over inner truth. The system doesn't ask who you are. It tells you what you need to be in order to survive. We wake up each day and march into the world, convinced that giving away the best hours of our daylight to labor is normal, that it's the only way to live. We build our lives around work, schedule our children into parallel institutions, and accept the accumulation of money as our highest aim. In fact, many are led to believe that the system is not just optimal, but the very purpose of life itself. Some people call it freedom. But something feels off, deep inside. Many of us sense it. At what point do we stop and say, wait, something doesn't feel right to me. Who will be the first to raise their hand? See, when we ignore what actually matters, mental health, physical well-being, family, mortality rates, we lose ourselves. When we don't know whether we're using money as a tool or being used by our own appetites and fear, when we hijack our consciousness to chase the symbols of success, the cars, the homes, the cosmetic procedures, the influencer lifestyle. We are actively destroying ourselves. We're not evolving, not consciously, not spiritually. In fact, in many, many ways, we are spiraling. So I ask again, when do we demand the veil to be lifted? When do we lift it for ourselves? When do we finally recognize the illusion of the external world, the deception hiding in plain sight? See, it's about the compass and the engine that directs our action, not the overt action itself. Because if this is how we measure our progress as follower counts and square footage, as capital accumulation, then let this be the moment we ask, what caused us to accept this so blindly? What caused us to sell our health, our balance, our peace for this artificial version of life? And how do we stop the runaway train of deception, of decay, before it impacts more lives? The good news is we can shift course. We can pause. We can reassess. We can smell the proverbial roses. We can decide whether we want our children to inherit the same mistakes, the same way of life and mindset. This is where free will enters the conversation. This is where we reclaim sovereignty by choosing awareness, by thinking optimistically, by thinking consciously about what comes next, by learning from what came before. This way of living, repetitive, externalized, hollow, has become the root of nearly all of our collective suffering. The disconnection isn't just in our routines. It's in the values we internalize, the truths we never question. We have come to worship external hierarchies, money, power, status, beauty, as if they were gods. But is there really a difference between what we worship and what we give our full time and energy to? Is it not the same? This singular obsession with the external has turned parasitic. It feeds off our senses, hijacks our attention, and silences our inner being. Our crisis is not political. It is not economic. It is the crisis of consciousness. an inability to experience the truth of who and what we are, and to see that same truth in others. Mass media and technology reveal how tightly we've woven into a global fabric of thought and feeling. Every shift, every invention, idea, or moment of insight ripples across this field. History's greatest minds, Pythagoras, Kepler, Da Vinci, Tesla, Einstein, all brushed against this mystery, that we are one consciousness, expressing itself in many forms. And yet, despite the whispers of these brilliant minds, we built systems that taught us otherwise. Systems that told us we were separate, limited, and defined by what we produce, not what we are. This was no accident. Education systems built on industrial models reinforced compartmentalized thinking. Bureaucracies trained us to silence our inner knowing. Schools became pipelines, not into wisdom, but into productivity. We were taught what to think, not how to think. We memorized facts instead of cultivating understanding. We internalized rules rather than exploring truths. The soul was left out of the equation. Even our professional culture, down to the clothes we wear and how we speak, has been shaped by industrial ideologies. The suit and tie, now synonymous with respectability, originated from a desire to impose uniformity, discipline, and class-based status in factory and office settings. The standard nine-to-five workday, business etiquette, and hierarchical office architecture were all born out of an industrial system designed not to honor human potential, but to maximize control, predictability, and efficiency. We weren't just trained to work. We were trained to appear a certain way while doing it. In many ways, we became costumes of ourselves, tailored for productivity rather than authenticity. And so we arrive here, in a world that excels at producing wealth but struggles to produce meaning, in a culture that knows how to accelerate but has forgotten how to pause, in bodies that are constantly simulated but barely at peace. But deep within, something stirs. That stirring is the call of a memory, an ancient echo reminding us that our wholeness was never meant to be outsourced, that life is not a race to be run but a mystery to be lived. If we are to reclaim our humanity, we must begin by seeing clearly the systems that shaped us. We must trace the blueprint of separation back to its origins and gently, bravely begin to reimagine. Let's now look at the foundational corruption seeded by none other than the man who sold the United States of America, John D. Rockefeller. In our history books, he's portrayed as a revolutionary industrialist who reshaped the American landscape through innovation and hard work, But a closer inspection reveals a different story, one of calculated control, systemic overhaul, and long-lasting influence over public health and education. In 1909, when natural and herbal medicine was the norm in America, Rockefeller pivoted from his oil empire into the pharmaceutical industry by acquiring a German pharmaceutical company. He saw an opportunity. If medicine could be standardized and chemically manufactured, it could be patented and profited from. Soon after, he used his philanthropic arms, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Foundation, to fund the infamous Flexner Report of 1910. This report, commissioned by the American Medical Association, claimed to evaluate and improve the quality of medical education. But in reality, it discredited effective natural therapies, homeopathy, herbalism, vibration therapy, and nutrition-based healing, labeling them quackery. It centralized medical licensing under allopathic, drug-based treatment models. Rockefeller and Carnegie then funneled money into compliant medical schools with one stipulation. They teach a chemical and surgery-based approach to medicine. Nutrition, preventative care, and vibrational therapies were systematically removed from the curriculum. The media, also influenced by Rockefeller interests, helped demonize alternative therapies, shifting public perception. And with control over both the supply of petroleum-based pharmaceuticals and the education of doctors, Rockefeller ensured a natural healing would be marginalized for generations. The corruption didn't stop with medicine. Rockefeller also created the General Education Board, which poured $130 million into shaping public education. His advisor, Frederick T. Gates, once chillingly remarked, and I quote, "...we shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning." of whom we have an ample supply, end quote. Even as early as 1914, the National Education Association warned of this influence, stating that foundations like Carnegie and Rockefeller were attempted to control the direction of state institutions and strip away academic freedom. The purpose of education, once intended to cultivate wisdom, was hijacked to create obedient, compartmentalized workers to fuel an industrial economy. This context is essential to understanding the broader metrics of evolution we discuss now, because the very institutions we once trusted were re-engineered to serve systems of power and profit, not people. So where are we in our evolutionary journey? What measures do we use to define our progress? For generations, we've been taught to measure human progress through the lens of industrial priorities, productivity, output, economic growth. These are legacies of the Industrial Revolution, which ushered in not just machines and markets, but a worldview where human beings became instruments of labor and capital, not consciousness, was placed at the center of evolution. In this model, we assess progress with metrics like GDP, technological innovation, urban expansion, and labor efficiency. These indicators were designed to serve industrial capitalism, not human fulfillment. The ideal person in the system isn't one who is wise, compassionate, or whole, It's one who is obedient, efficient, and monetizable. We've been conditioned to equate advancement with expansion, more speed, more productivity, more accumulation, regardless of the human or ecological cost. But this is not evolution. This is industrial escalation, and it's time we name it for what it is. This accelerated pace of life, this worship of scale, output, and speed didn't arise by Meanwhile, capitalist enterprises pushed for mass production, standardization, and consumer dependency, embedding these values into every institution, from schools to the workplace to the media. Growth became the holy grail, and the health of the human spirit was a mere afterthought. The state and corporate machine together ensured that industrial and financial expansion not human flourishing remained the top priority. GDP became the definitive benchmark of national success, even though it does not account for mental health, environmental degradation, or inequality. In 1971, economist Milton Friedman famously declared that a corporation's only social responsibility is to increase its profits. This philosophy was adopted widely across corporate America, codifying profit maximization as the highest good. Simultaneously, the U.S. government invested billions into highways and defense, but underfunded public health and social programs. For instance, in 2022, military spending reached $877 billion, more than 10 times the budget for the Department of Health and Human Services. These decisions reflect the systemic prioritization, power, and production over people and well-being. By 2023, Americans worked more hours per year that any other industrialized country, except South Korea, an average of 1,811 hours annually, while reporting some of the highest levels of stress, anxiety, and burnout. The system itself promotes output at the cost of humanity. And as this momentum compounded over decades, it created the illusion that to slow down, to question, or to opt out was to fail, never questioning whose true interests This was serving. Was it the corporate or was it the human? If we turn to data, we see the truth. Technological advancement has far outpaced human well-being. Despite high U.S. spending, Americans experience worse health outcomes than their peers around the world. For example, life expectancy at birth in the U.S. was 77 years in 2020, three years lower than the OECD average. In 2020, the infant mortality rate in the U.S. was 5.5 deaths per 1,000 live births, the highest rate of all the countries in the OECD analysis. In contrast, Norway recorded just 1.6 deaths per 1,000 live births. The U.S. obesity rate is nearly double the OECD average. In 2020, three out of 10 U.S. adults reported being diagnosed with two or more chronic conditions, such as asthma, cancer, depression, diabetes, heart disease, or hypertension. Mental disorders are also widespread. The World Health Organization, or the WHO, estimates that one in eight people globally live with a mental disorder, with anxiety and depression being the most common. Globally, one out of every four people will experience mental illness at some point in their lives, and over 350 million people currently suffer from depression. Maternal mortality, infant deaths, suicide, These are not metrics of an evolved society. And then there's a financial picture. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, by the third quarter of 2024, housing debt in the U.S. had ballooned to almost $13 trillion, while non-housing debt skyrocketed to almost $5 trillion. For comparison, a decade earlier, those numbers stood at $8.5 trillion and $3 trillion, respectively. Consumer credit card debt also reached unprecedented levels. As of the third quarter of 2024, Americans carried a total credit card balance of over $1.1 trillion, the highest since the Fed began tracking in 1999. These figures reflect a population weighed down by financial strain, working endlessly to service debt under the illusion of prosperity. Fiscal health, far from being a beacon of hope, reveals a deeper systemic dysfunction. where freedom is promised but servitude is delivered. We built a system that promises freedom but delivers bondage. We are slowly discovering that a myriad of chronic health problems stem from the practices of greedy agricultural conglomerates that mass produce genetically modified organisms, GMOs. They now legally own and patent. These GMO products were created not for the benefit of human health, but to withstand the devastating effects of glyphosate-based pesticides, chemicals originally manufactured by petrochemical companies that were annihilating crops alongside pests. So they modified the crops, patented the seeds, and continued to sell both the pesticide and the supposed solution. Today, over 280 million pounds of glyphosate are dumped onto U.S. crops annually. Glyphosate is classified as a carcinogen by the World Health Organization. Studies have linked glyphosate exposure to a host of serious health issues, including non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, liver and kidney damage, endocrine disruption, and reproductive harm. Emerging research also suggests that it may contribute to neurological disorders, such as autism and Alzheimer's disease, as well as gastrointestinal conditions like celiac disease and leaky gut syndrome. All of these... Not surprisingly are chronic conditions widely felt by large swaths of the current population. Glyphosate's widespread presence in everyday food products, soil, and even rainwater poses a silent but pervasive threat to long-term public health. According to the Environmental Working Group, 80-90% of popular wheat-based products on grocery store shelves such as Cheerios, Nature Valley Bars, and Goldfish are contaminated with glyphosate. Even more staggering is that 85 to 100% of U.S. corn and soy crops are genetically modified. These are known facts, and yet we feed these foods to our children daily. The cold, hard truth is we have been unknowingly poisoning ourselves and our loved ones because our institutions, those responsible for safeguarding public health, have prioritized profit, over the wellbeing of the human being, why then do we continue down this path? Well, because we've been trained to, conditioned, indoctrinated to believe that this is the way of life, that there's no other way, that the values of the capitalist system transcend the health of the human being. So here's the invitation. Let this moment be the inflection point. Let it be the time we finally acknowledge that we are not here to dominate one another or conquer the planet, but to evolve beyond systems built solely on extraction and control. Let it be the time we see clearly that the metrics we've trusted to define human success have failed to nourish the human soul. The next phase of evolution must not be one of industrial superiority or global dominance, but of inner expansion, of raising consciousness, of remembering the sacredness of life. of aligning our outer worlds with the truths we carry within. Because until we shift from conquest to care, from competition to collaboration, we will remain fragmented, both externally and within ourselves. And so it is not just a new world we must build, but a new way of seeing, a new way of being. So ask yourself now, what part of your being have you placed on pause to fit into someone else's story? And what would it feel like to begin again, rooted in truth, fueled by balance, and aligned with the deepest rhythm of who you truly are? Before we go forward, we must understand the deeper order behind all things, the sacred geometry of the universe and the rhythms that bind it. Nature doesn't operate on ambition, conquest, or profit. It unfolds through patterns, spirals, and harmony. The golden ratio for the and fractal designs appear not only in flowers, galaxies, and seashells, but also in our DNA and the branching of our lungs. The same elegant patterns found in sunflower seeds and hurricanes shape our very existence. In every atom and organism, the universe expresses a principle of efficient, balanced growth. Everything alive, from diatoms to galaxies, emerges from a blueprint that favors what is sustainable, beautiful, and efficient. This is the original infrastructure. This is the sacred template. And so when we align ourselves with these cosmic rhythms, choosing cooperation over domination, flow over force, reverence over exploitation, we don't just become healthier. We come home. We find ourselves in harmony with life itself, no longer opposing the very system we were born to thrive within. We've lost this knowledge. buried beneath the rubble of industrial ambition and digital distraction. But it has never stopped singing to us, through intuition, through awe, through stillness. And now we remember. But let's take this even further, because it's not just about waking up to what's wrong. It's about reimagining what true human evolution should look like. We must evolve not merely as producers or consumers, but as integrated beings, spiritual, emotional, intellectual, and physical, who live in harmony with ourselves, each other, and the planet. True evolution is not about building faster machines or colonizing other planets before we've learned to live ethically on this one. It's about cultivating empathy, restoring balance, and realigning with the natural rhythms of life. It's about valuing stillness as much as speed, intuition as much as intellect, and collaboration above competition. We should be measuring evolutionary success not by GDP or GDP per capita, but by the reduction in loneliness, the increase in communal trust, the betterment of our collective health, and the restoration of natural ecosystems. We should look to how many people feel a sense of purpose, not just employment. We should ask how safe children feel in their homes, how much laughter echoes through the halls of school, and how much of our food is grown with care instead of chemicals. In a truly evolved society, science and spirit would not be enemies, but partners. Our ancient wisdom complements modern discovery. Education would awaken curiosity, not suppress it. Health would be a measure of vitality, not managed decline. Leaders would be stewards, not rulers, who look to extract value out of those they're meant to protect. And just as our inner lives must evolve, so must our outer structures. the way we work, gather, and present ourselves. While tailored garments, formal etiquette, and structured meeting spaces long predate the Industrial Revolution, it was this era that crystallized them into rigid norms across modern professional life. Suits, time clocks, boardrooms, and job titles became instruments of uniformity, designed to standardize not only our labor, but our very sense of self. The industrial system focused on output and efficiency, didn't just train us to work. It trained us to suppress our individuality in service of production. The aesthetics of professionalism, the tie, a blazer, the cubicle, did not arise from human creativity or freedom, but from a need to impose control, hierarchy, and predictability. Our identities became streamlined. Our expressions flattened. To evolve consciously means to examine even these inherited symbols and ask, do they serve our growth? Do they shrink our spirit? This is not utopian idealism. This is grounded realism. If we are willing to question our current trajectory and recalibrate toward what actually sustains life, joy, and peace. The misunderstanding of human evolution is perhaps our greatest collective blind spot, but it also holds the greatest potential because once seen cannot be unseen. Once felt, it cannot be unfelt. So here is the invitation. Let this moment be the inflection point. Let it be the time we finally acknowledge that we are not here to dominate one another or conquer the planet, but to evolve beyond systems built solely on extraction and control. Let it be the time we see clearly that the metrics we've trusted to define human success have failed us. The next phase of evolution must not be one of industrial superiority or global dominance, but of inner expansion, of raising consciousness, of remembering the sacredness of life, of aligning our outer world with the truths we carry within. Because until we shift from conquest to care, from competition to communion, we will remain fragmented. And so, it is not just a new world we must build, but a new way of seeing, a new way of being. Who knows? It might even be better. As you continue listening to the Manhattan Prophet Podcast, I'm going to unveil the true nature of the world that exists right under your nose. I'm going to analyze with you, out in the open, the systems at play here and the ways we can grow together and evolve. I'm going to provide you with real-world ways to touch higher levels of consciousness and understanding through truth and knowledge. Episodes are updated weekly. If you believe and want to change your world for the better and support this evolution of consciousness, please show me. by following and sharing this podcast with those you love and leaving a review. If you enjoyed our time today, please donate on Buy Me a Coffee, linked in the show notes below. Until next week, let's level up and master your universe.