Covid is revealing the breakdown in solidarity and cohesion in the West.
Selfishness, greed and the sole promotion of the individual and his or her “rights” to the exclusion of almost all else and especially of social responsibility is tearing western nations apart.
At a time when the risks to all of us are growing and cohesion among people in all societies is becoming an absolute necessity, it has been eroded to such an extent in the West that the very fabric of society has been undermined.
Where exactly is the West headed? What kind of anarchic and utterly destabilized future can emerge from such a narcissistic, solely self-interested terminally neurotic society of hyper-sensitive souls have? Dwelling constantly on what divides them, annoys them, frustrates them and their ambitions and creates fervent desires to tear things down and further divide themselves from others, isolating themselves in ghettos of group-thought ideology and political fixed-mindedness, all invites western societies to be constantly at war with themselves.
Devoted to the idea that all viewpoints are equal and that none should be denied creates only a fog of delusion where reality retreats and any bedrock of tradition corrodes. Stability and a sure path through mazes of delusion are obscured beyond recognition, only an unsureness and constant confusion take their place. Relationships are becoming infinitely complicated by myriad do’s and don’t’s as each individual demands to be a universe unto themselves, deserving the right to total respect no matter what his or her behaviour may be.
Where can community spirit, nationhood or solidarity be found among this new vast horde of navel-gazers who have been groomed to see all others as competition in a brutal race to be top dog? What kind of unity will be possible, especially when existential threats face an entire population? The answer is almost certainly, none. If such threats are encountered in future we can see the reaction of many to the Covid virus as an example of what to expect.
Those in the West have been long cosseted in a fantasy world of continual materialist frenzy where an environment safe for spending and consuming has been created while more than half the rest of the world starves. A vacuum chamber of hothouse creatures has been carefully manufactured where they can be drained of their money while others drain the global south of its resources. War keeps the pot boiling and the continual creation of an enemy “over there". Orwell, if he were here now, would surely grimace and nod in recognition.
No one should in their right mind ever desire a totalitarian, fascistic state where all control is held at the centre, however, western societies have set in motion behaviours and mentalities that have the potential to be ultimately just as lethal. It should be possible to maintain the traditional foundations of humanity honed over the millennia while creating the space for the required level of human freedom to satisfy most of us. We can see societies in Eurasia where such an attempt is being made. These societies however are under attack from western political elites as less this, that or the other than their own which they laud as superior.
The blindness to solid reality and the promotion of ever more fantasy and magical thinking within western societies was first born in the USA and much of the social disease now being spread still emanates from there. The end station of this growing madness is surely clear, societies where solid reality and stability are extremely distant memories where each individual demands their own views as right and their rights above all others requiring utmost respect. This anarchy of selfishness is at the heart of the western disease, a disease having a kinship to Covid resembling as it does an ever-growing virus of wildly celebrated unreality and delusion, all demanding to be recognised as real by ever-growing numbers.
This is the social crisis being created now in the West, one that will lead inevitably and inexorably to a living hell of terminal division, grotesque irresponsibility and a fatal, tragic miasma of unreality.
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