There are a lot of reasons to worry for the long term survival of the West. From concerns of impending economic collapse, the whittling away of the rule of law, the breakdown of social trust, rampant uncontrolled feminist ideology to the demographic demise of our identity, but one that troubles me the most is the general decline in our cultural standards. The degeneracy of our current popular culture its effects on all the people in the industrialized world.
What does it mean to be a cultural degenerate? For me it can be simply summed up as forsaking traditional ideas and values that made for a strong society and replacing them with ideas and values that provide short term immediate gratification. Even if this means making choices that result in greater personal misery in the long run, these decisions are often “easier” to make at the time and even promoted by the powers that be.
Such ideas as maintaining one’s virginity until marriage have been replaced by the socially acceptable idea of “playing the field” until one finds the right one. I and so many of my generation were taken in by the idea. That we could irresponsibly play around in our young adulthood until we had our fill and then settle down to the domestic married life. The reality couldn’t be farther from the truth. In the wake of my years of poor choices were countless emotional scars on myself and those I was involved with, a degrading of my ideals and breakdown of the personal boundaries of others.
Yes, I am a degenerate, but so are we all in some way or another. It’s hardly surprising growing up when and how I did. Without a father around, with friends from similarly broken homes, we all consumed voraciously the degenerate cultural filth of Hollywood and the rest of the mainstream media. Our ideas of what was normal and what could work as healthy human interactions were based in popular culture mindset that ignored the basic truths of human nature. Things have only gotten worse since then.
Degeneracy can take many forms. Accepting the use of drugs that weaken the will and destroy initiative, allowing for promiscuous behavior, over indulging in pleasure while forsaking duty or more constructive endeavors, allowing one’s mind to be dominated by bad ways of thinking that lead away from truth, a lack of respect for the sacred, embracing rebellion against the virtuous and so many others. Whatever form it takes it most likely was accelerated by the cultural revolution of the sixties and seventies and is now again being push forward by the new wave of cultural deconstruction.
One must ask “Why now? What is pushing this?”I would say the answer is most likely to be found in four parts.
- The natural consequences of deviant behavior have been removed or mitigated by society.
- Many forms of degeneracy have been normalized and even given positive social value.
- The traditional institutions that supported healthy culture have been undermined, co-opted or destroyed.
- The average person without healthy social consequences and good cultural reinforcement will tend to fall into degeneracy on their own.
Further questions of what makes these things possible could include all sorts of explanations from cultural decadence to negative influences from circles in the elite.
While this framework may not be the best approach to explaining what has happened to our society I will use it to explore this phenomena. My goal is to make a separate post for each of four causes above giving what I believe to be the how and the why, then to follow up with a conclusion post. My idea right now is for each post to begin with one or more personal anecdotal experiences to illustrate the idea and then delve into the current state of things in our society.
If all goes well, I’ll do one or more post a weak and by the end of it perhaps have a better understanding of this situation.
Thanks for reading.
hereticsofthemodernage 