We're conditioned or indoctrinated into this life by the people who were indoctrinated into it before us. The mega rich ensure their dominance by playing with our self-images while feeding us rhetoric designed to demoralize those who aren't lucky enough to strike it rich or be born into established wealth strongholds.
Those in power are pitting us against each other as a distraction while they sit on thrones built from our blood, sweat, and tears. Any discourse against the system gets shut down by the powerful and those who buy into their propaganda. Take for example the oil companies who back in the 50s knew the shit they sold polluted the air but carried on making profits while successfully waging a disinformation campaign to obfuscate the issue to keep collecting revenues regardless of the harm it caused to the Earth and the population.
We can go on and on.