by system failure





It seems that the time has come, and actually, the process is already taking place. People start to abandon a culture that has dominated the West, especially during the last decades, based on extreme individualism.





The reason? Simply because the fake prosperity it had promised, dramatically collapses, revealing its true nature and mission: serve the wealthiest 1% against the majority of the people. The corresponding propaganda in favor of this culture collapses too, simply because millions of people, even in the West, experience directly the worsening of their living standards, due to this culture.





As clinical psychologist, Bruce E. Levine concluded recently:





Ayn Rand removed Americans’ guilt for being selfish and uncaring about anyone except themselves. Not only did Rand make it “moral” for the wealthy not to pay their fair share of taxes, she “liberated” millions of other Americans from caring about the suffering of others, even the suffering of their own children. The good news is that I’ve seen ex-Rand fans grasp the damage that Rand’s philosophy has done to their lives and to then exorcize it from their psyche. Can the United States as a nation do the same thing?









Of course it's not only a matter of the United States. The Randian "philosophy" has dominated the entire West in previous decades, affecting the minds of entire generations. Corporate media propaganda reinforced this culture of extreme individualism, for obvious reasons.





The Millennials represent a generation that has been completely raised with this culture. This has one big advantage and one big disadvantage.





The big advantage, is that when the central system of values in societies becomes inefficient for the vast majority, people feel the need to replace it, discover another system that will liberate them from this cultural totalitarianism, in order to survive and build a better future. The big disadvantage, is that having born and raised inside this totalitarianism, they have not even the slightest idea of how and what will replace it.





This situation explains greatly why the leftist leaders in the motherlands of neoliberalism start to attract the youth. Bernie Sanders in the US and Jeremy Corbyn in the UK gather around them massive audiences of young people, who actually start to discover things that were not considered a utopia, but a natural obligation by the state, two or three decades ago: free healthcare, free education, social state, etc.





And probably this is a natural process. When a previous culture has penetrated in every aspect of everyday life to such an extent, even in the way we think and act, you can't build a brand new alternative in no time. You start by searching the previous lost values and fight for them. And if you win, then you can move forward to improve them and make them work better and better in the real life, for all the people.





The good news is that the establishment which supports this dying culture of Randianism has run out of tricks, as it seems. The bad news is that its socio-economic expression, neoliberalism, becomes more and more authoritarian in its effort to survive. We already see it: fast-track austerity and destruction of the social state, fast-track privatizations, sado-monetarism, monstrous growth of the banking and corporate power, reinforcement of the police state and repression, brutal neo-colonization in various forms.





Time is running out. We have to get rid of the evil and obsolete Randianism, return to the priceless humanitarian values. The sooner, the better. We may save the planet and ourselves, after all ...





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