THERE’S SOMETHING ROTTEN WITHIN THE WEST

There is something rotten within the West that is feeding a black hole of corruption at its heart and creating unstoppable decay.

For all its shiny innovations and services tempting buyers and users to endlessly buy into endless materialism and hedonism, there's something at its core eating away at its former attachment to grounded realities.

Those who run the systems of the West, the so-called movers and shakers, the great and the good, have taken the hapless populations there to a place far from the roots that once stabilised them in a shared reality. Through endlessly encouraging selfish individualism based upon greed-driven materialism and hedonism at the expense of the previous simpler cohesion of spirit, competition, not cooperation became king.

The rise of such champions of this new and ever-rising level of division and competition between citizens of western nations, Reagan and Thatcher along with a new school of economic theory saw a sea change in western culture. Some called it ‘The Me Generation’ where a growing narcissism began to grow and solidarity of spirit faltered and in the following decades as good as died.

Now, many decades on we see the ultimate outcomes of the new trend toward ultimate individualism and reliance on money and ownership rather than togetherness and fellowship. The drive for individual gain far surpasses any thought of solidarity, the West has largely been atomised to the extent where each unit demands things be done the way they want and that their particular way of life be awarded total respect as unique and special. In itself this latter demand may seem modest and ideal, however, when pitted against all others in a spirit of division it is highly corrosive.

The West has fragmented socially into increasing numbers of pieces all demanding their way, quite logically adhering to the spirit of unbridled competition heralded as the ultimate good by Reagan, Thatcher and others. We have reached the point where there is hardly any cohesion among the populations of the West just at the moment when its political elites, due to the pandemic, are attempting to enforce it on them. The resulting furore of resistance is obvious to see in the rising tide of protest against this enforcement.

Populations of hugely self-interested and narcissistic martinets have been created across the West who are demanding their freedom and “rights” be seen as the highest priority. They pit themselves in suspicious sovereignty against all others in a melee of spiteful difference and division where unity has become a pipe dream.

Adding and underlying the divisive character of life in the West is the decay of integrity whereby the drive toward materialist riches has totally overcome the sense of integrity and dignity that went before. This is not to say that everyone in the West has become a criminal or semi-criminal, taking advantage of loopholes to enrich themselves or escape required payments but the trend has been very much in that direction over the last half-century. The political scandals that have prevailed over this time period along with the fraudsters at the top of corporate enterprises, have helped to create the pervasively amoral atmosphere now prevalent in the West.

Western elites through their endless lies, PR campaigns and all-pervasive propaganda through their systems of governance propagated through a slavish mass media have provided a loathsome example to their populations. Using whatever deceptions were available to them to instigate regime change wars of mass murder and destruction they have caused ever-increasing levels of cynicism and decay along with the warrantless fears they instil to have their way. Levels of amorality and acceptance of illegality and unethical behaviour in the name of democracy and freedom have corrupted most aspects of what could be called the western way of life.

Other regions of the world also have their problems, I would not deny it. However, we do not see the level of decay prevalent in the West where the aggressive individualism, selfishness and greed-driven exploitation of others without conscience of the U.S. culture has spread far and wide. Its love affair with fantasy and license have also served to corrode values that once underpinned western societies with a foundation to stand on. Of course some of those values felt stultifying to some and with growing affluence were overthrown and in many cases no doubt correctly. But the trend has been to overthrow almost everything except that which adds hedonistic pleasure, provides an anarchic freedom or asserts the individual right to absolute respect no matter what.

Those in the West, who are conditioned still to be willing to be led by the nose by their elites, are told that those not like them need changing. That systems of governance in the West are the supreme ideal and that the freedoms they enjoy to the limit must be delivered, by violence or subversion where necessary to all others suffering their lack. To their credit less and less of those in western populations are accepting this asserted superiority of the West and black and white framing of others as ‘authoritarian’. However, it is likely the majority of those within western populations in what they have been conditioned to regard as their ideal state support such assertions.

Those that western politicians call ‘authoritarian’ nations are in fact largely and simply more traditional and more securely grounded societies where unity and solidarity have not at all decayed to the extent they have in the West. They are societies where the value of strong and steady leadership is admired, desired and largely supported, where unity of spirit as a nation has not atrophied to the shadow of its former state as seen in the West. The value of working together, knowing that there is immense benefit in cooperating to ensure mutual survival, stability and prospects for a better life, is perceived there as a common good. Unity of purpose is not unknown in such states, solidarity is perceived as a strong positive and individuality is not seen as the be-all and end-all of existence. Naturally there are restrictions to individual liberties in such societies and some, the excessively ambitious, criminal and artistic communities will rebel against them. However, it is my contention that the vast majority in such societies see the benefits that come from long-held core values that underpin the stability and forward progress they enjoy together.

For the western elites to want to undermine that which is solid in other countries in comparison with their own societies on the premise that their anarchic systems of divisive individualism are universal rights is criminally wrong. It is based on a corrosive myopia of delusionary thought and narcissistic self-regard where true self-analysis or assessment no longer exists. They wish to create an entire world of eternally divided competitive forces on an individual, political and corporate level which will outdo bedlam and Babel combined. Such a world will have no prospect of coming to agreements for the benefit of all in face of increasing threats to all humanity. The striving for individual gain, both on the individual and national level will prevail. Wars will break out constantly to preserve and gain access to shrinking resources where ultra-competitive forces both within societies and as expressed through their leaderships demand their superior interests be made to prevail.

At either end of any spectrum of human activity extremes exist which are detrimental to the human spirit and prospects for an ideal existence to be experienced by all. Neither the total freedom sought by those such as the USA or the total control sought by those such as the DPRK, North Korea can bring anything approaching an ideal society. The answer lies somewhere in between and most certainly includes a high degree of tolerance for diversity.

It is highly ironic that in the West where diversity is lauded to extremes and almost everything has become allowable (including a high degree of social and political criminality at times) that those societies which are culturally and politically different are somehow too diverse and must be made to conform to western systems and aggressively made to conform where they resist.

The West has many virtues, among them its inventiveness and entrepreneurial skills which can benefit the world enormously. However, in my opinion, at least, the exporting of its culture, the western liberal values, which its leaders extol, is an extremely toxic export which nations such as Russia, China, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and many others correctly see as extremely dangerous and highly detrimental to their much-valued stability, unity, solidarity of spirit and long-held, much trusted traditional/cultural values.

The West is not the Best. Only certain political elites have convinced themselves of this along with a substantial portion of their populations. The exceptionalism and sense of superiority they feel is quite unwarranted when closer examination of the devastating levels of division and decay within their societies is undertaken. When such a clear-sighted observation takes place it soon becomes clear that those in the West need to cast off their rose-tinted spectacles and self-rewarding, shallow belief in their superiority and see the true decay that lives among them and grows more rotten by the day.