Something is Wrong With Our Society

What if we built a new one?

[NOTE TO READERS: The is part 1 of a series of essays that will outline the frame of a new society, how we get there from here, and how it can and will defeat the current evil infecting The West. This is a PLAN of action, but it will require PEOPLE of action. Subscribe for free. As the list grows, I'll publish additional parts of the plan. Unsubscribe at any time. Part 2 posts when we reach 50 subscribers.]

Something is Wrong With Our Current Society

The current society founded on personal freedom, Christianity and capitalism has degenerated into one fueled by narcissism, nihilism and crony capitalism (or corporatism). Our age devalues masculine virtues and discourages feminine virtues.

Look around and we can all see that Responsibility, Accountability, Honesty and Leadership are draining away. The types of selfish love we pursue grow stronger while our bonds to family, community and God grow weaker.

Our war on men and masculinity has made men unproductive, unsober and unhappy, which in turn has made women less appealing, less loyal and less happy.

We’ve dismantled the extended family. And the nuclear family. We’ve dismantled multi-generational homes. We’ve dismantled a neighborhood full of adults who know each other and keep a collective eye on the kids. We’ve eliminated community life that doesn’t require a car. We’ve eliminated the Elks Lodge, Moose Lodge, the local sewing circle and beautification committee. We’ve eliminated shared expressions of values. We’ve eliminated high holy days and communal feasts. We’ve eliminated stories shared between generations. We’ve derided the ideal of motherhood, vilified the ideal of fatherhood, and chained ourselves to a treadmill of credentialization, of pleasure maximization, of effective barrenness and sterilization. Is this sexual utopia? Well, as the New York Times comment section sighs wistfully, one at least can take comfort that some young people, somewhere, are having orgies. (Tara Thieke)

What if we built a new one? A new society founded on different principles, more in balance, and designed for the age we live in?

The Age of Enlightenment is Dying.

We’re living in a world long past the peak of the Age of Reason. As defined by the New World Encyclopedia:

“The Enlightenment advocated reason as a means to establishing an authoritative system of aesthetics, ethics, government, and even religion, which would allow human beings to obtain objective truth about the whole of reality.”

In other words, the balance between Reason and Structured Spirituality was changed. But did that make us happier?

Reason and intellectual pursuits have increased our knowledge, created magnificent abundance and improved our surroundings. In fact, we live in a world of physical ease and comfort that our ancestors could not have conceived. But are we happier? There seems to be an inverse relationship between our technological progress and our mental health.

Ages don’t really end. They fade into the next age. They are usually a response to, and often a reaction to, the previous period. The Abrahamic religions didn’t replace the pagan religions so much as rise above them, reaching for something more personal and intimate, while still retaining elements of the superstitions and pagan concepts they subsumed. A new age still contains elements of the previous age and often owes much to it.

The Age of Enlightenment came out of a profoundly religious and superstitious period. But it didn’t end religion and superstition. When Nietzsche wrote that “God is Dead,” it was a declaration and a warning. God, and the spiritual need didn’t die. The old concepts of God faded. Science ruled. It didn’t stop the killing and the evil. It didn’t increase the kindness and the good.

From a spiritual standpoint the idea was that a better understanding of the material world would increase our well being. Did that happen? If you knew in detail how your house was built would it make you happier? It might increase your appreciation for the place you live in, but would it increase your mental health? What if our spiritual and mental health is based on more than just knowledge and understanding? Reason explained a lot of the material world but it hasn’t increased meaning, gratitude, and emotional well being.

Physical comfort increases. Technology advances. So does ennui, depression, and isolation. People are living longer, doing more, experiencing more, but does that create peace of mind, a sense of fulfillment and meaning-- both during our lifetimes and when we near the end?

Why Do Things Feel Like They’ve Gotten Worse Recently?

The Age of Enlightenment reached it’s apex in the modern world as we experience it today with its trade-offs. We got more technological improvements, greater physical comfort and protection, additional free time, and more choices. In return that allowed us to experience less physical suffering, tedium, manual labor and ignorance.

We’ve increased our specialization, personal autonomy, access to knowledge and the pleasures of our five senses, but we’ve decreased our ability to discern, to sacrifice, to appreciate, and to avoid existentialist dread.

Human beings are built to live in and experience the physical world and yet today most spend the majority of their lives removed from it. As technological advancements more and more made their physical and mental attributes less and less necessary, men and masculinity have come under attack as obsolete, outdated and unnecessary.

But that has been followed by a similar and growing attack on women and femininity. As the central role of masculinity has been demoted, so too has the vital role of femininity. These two elements (yin and yang) need each other. They are as much in opposition as they are in sync. They are the proverbial chicken and egg.

One of the signature results of the Age of Reason has been the ever increasing focus on and prioritization of the individual and their autonomy. The right of the individual to “decide” and to “choose” has been steadily elevated and now stands morally supreme to the needs of the group or society.

The modern world has opened up a million choices and our zeitgeist has responded at every step by insisting that it is a moral good for us to try, to do, to consume, to experience, to know. The argument is that it was immoral for people to be limited by rule or custom in the past, a time that was stifling, life denying and soul crushing. The old rules and customs were created to control people and freedom is the highest moral order!

Yet, in the world we have created, where the door to every candy shop is open, large numbers of people make decisions that end up stifling, crushing or destroying their souls. Maybe those rules and customs from the past were created to help people control themselves? Perhaps there was more wisdom (much more!) in our customs, manners, ceremonies, rites, social rhythms and prayers than we’d care to admit.

We gained so much of value during the current age but we lost a great deal of value too and we are shockingly ignorant and unappreciative of both. The real and corporeal have been placed at the center of our public lives, while the spiritual and intangible have been relegated to the periphery.

A Great Turning is Possible

Just as the Age of Reason enveloped the Age of Superstition, now we need a new Age to envelope our Enlightenment. We need a new Age that builds on reason and enlightenment but adding back the mystical, numinous, and transcendental to the public sphere. An Age that elevates the masculine and feminine, that places a higher premium on obligation, honor, beauty and nobility.

The fact is that material wealth has improved our outer lives but not our inner lives. Can we build a society that does both? I believe we can and I’ve thought in some detail about how to structure it, grow it within today’s dominate culture, and keep it flexible and open enough to survive. There’s a lot from the present and past that we can draw from.