by Brett Stevens on December 26, 2012

At this point in history, it’s disingenuous to equivocate at all: the West is plummeting downward. In both Europe and the USA, governments are overspending on direct citizen stimulus as a means to wealth transfer. Long-term problems are unpopular and they are ignored. Art, culture, etc. have become trash.

The death-signs are obvious. The more they appear, the more people go into denial. In order to justify their participation, they claim that the system is thriving, and in fact has never been better. This backward reasoning allows them to “prove” the validity of the system by their participation in it.

However, the cold sweat of doubt rests heavily on our foreheads. Even if we cook up a whole bunch of computer models to explain away the economy, use pluralism to justify avoiding long-term problems, and invoke relativism to claim that our “art” and “culture” are valid, a simple problem stares us in the face.

Daily life in the West is hell.

People keep hoping we won’t mention this because it stares us in the face. We have options and know how to do better, and yet, we do not. The West is grinding itself into oblivion in part because daily life is so ugly and emotionally poisonous that people are disconnecting and becoming revengeful.

Think about your interactions with people on a daily basis. Do they attempt to act honorably, be helpful or even just not be a hindrance? No: their agenda is to act in such a way that makes them feel good about themselves, which includes pushing you around and then pretending they’re innocent. They enjoy exercising authority on others, or having a reason to go first in line (think of all the “proud moms”), and generally, slaving away for their egos, without a care for the consequences to society at large, nature or the human endeavor.

Actions speak louder than words. Think about what people do, and how it contrasts to what they say. They talk about good intentions, but what this boils down to is token acts like sending money to poor people so that they feel justified in acting selfishly the rest of the time. Do they show care for your possessions, or their own? What about for nature? Everything is a means to an end, and the end is themselves.

What about what they do for fun? If everyone’s having fun, why are they always strung out? At the recycling center, I see the cars pull up (awkwardly, parked selfishly, people checking watches to remind the rest of us that they’re important and in a hurry) and dump load after load of wine bottles. Who has time to drink all of that? At at least $10 a bottle, it’s not cheap either. But it’s how they make it through.

They spend too many hours at the office. I’m not sure it can be called working, what they do, since it’s more a rote process than actual mental labor. But they’re always there, obsessively, even. Do they develop any important activities outside of this? Not really; there’s not enough time to do anything impressive, so they have “hobbies,” including, apparently, drinking. They are creatures of function.

Modern people also get nervous when there isn’t constant noise or distraction. If left alone, they have no idea what to do with themselves. They rely on the radio, TV or other people to fill their heads with chatter and push out those dark thoughts or empty moments. Much like the wine, they rely on it because too much clarity is an enemy. How does that reflect any kind of health?

And communication — we should communicate honestly, we all agree. But none do. When confronted with a logical argument, they construct little evasions. Either take part of the concept for the whole, redefine a word, leave out some information, or build up a division between false extremes. They aren’t arguing for a point, they’re arguing to get off the hook. All they want to do is introduce doubt, conclude the truth can’t be known, and go about doing whatever they were doing before.

Countless examples exist and in isolation, none are important. That is how we are fooled: “oh, it’s just a little thing.” But people steering their carts recklessly at grocery stores, like they want to hit you in the legs, or inventing nonsense tasks to excel at on the job, or driving too slow or too fast just to prove they’re in control; these all add up. They add up to a consistent pattern of the same behavior in different contexts.

Yes, the stench of death is on the breeze. It’s sad, because so much good has gone into this, but the majority no longer care. They think they are islands, and society isn’t needed for them to pursue their selfish ends, fetishes, drama, and/or parasitism. This death is easily reversible, but for all the political arguments against it, none are more than wordplay.

The real argument is that individual people do not want to change their behavior. Even though it is bad behavior, and doesn’t make them content or pleased with life, they claim they are “happy” and are militant against change. They’re taking the rest of us for a ride. For the pretense of these individuals, we all must ride the corpse down.

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