How to Burn the Church of the Perpetually Offended

Dismantling and Exposing Society's Losers' Last Refuge

I like to call it “The Great Crowd Derangement” but it is really just the dusk of Western intellectualism, where the once-luminous path of reason is now shadowed by the silhouettes of emotional folly. Most of the great American experiment in culture and thought seems to have succumbed to a grotesque carnival where the juvenile and the mercenary dance in a grotesque embrace.

What passes for culture today makes me weep; it's not culture but a parade of egos, a marketplace where the soul is sold for the next fleeting distraction. Our descent into this intellectual void was not just foreseen but screamed from the rooftops by the likes of Lapham, Berman, and Kaplan, who watched, aghast, as democracy didn't just falter but faceplanted into the mud of its own contradictions.

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The prophetic visions of science fiction, from the book-burning societies of Fahrenheit 451 to the post-apocalyptic monasticism in A Canticle for Leibowitz, were not just tales to chill the spine but warnings, now manifest. They showed us a world where the populace, doped on trivialities, marches to the tune of an oligarchy that deals in distraction and division.

Aldous Huxley gave us Brave New World, and here we stand, on the brink of that very reality, where pleasure is the opiate, and critical thinking is the heresy. Arthur Koestler, with a grim nod to history, likened our trajectory to that of Rome's fall, predicting an America not of free citizens but of soulless automata, each playing their part in a decaying, corrupt tableau where self-interest reigns supreme.

These luminaries might not have predicted the exact flavor of our current cultural malaise—the grotesque masquerade of critical race theory, the woke dogmas enshrined as new religion, the psychological pandemics, or the confusion sown in the name of identity—but they caught the scent of rot. They saw the decline, the drift towards a moral wilderness where anarchy wears the mask of freedom, and where every individual's truth is equally valid, rendering truth itself obsolete.

We are witnessing the so-called progressive evolution of society, where critical race theory and the woke movement are heralded as steps towards equity but are, in reality, catalysts for a profound societal fragmentation. These ideologies, rather than fostering an environment of learning and mutual understanding, are sowing seeds of perpetual grievance and division.

The infiltration of these theories into educational systems is not enlightenment but a descent into intellectual barbarism. What's being taught isn't a nuanced understanding of history or social dynamics but a binary worldview where complexity is flattened into oppressor versus oppressed. This approach doesn't educate; it indoctrinates, turning educational institutions into factories of what could be described, adapting Berman's term, as intellectual disempowerment.

The rise in mental health issues, particularly among the youth, isn't coincidental. When society peddles the narrative that one's identity or worth hinges on ever-shifting, subjective interpretations of oppression or privilege, it cultivates not just confusion but an existential crisis. The increase in suicide rates and the burgeoning cases of gender dysphoria among younger demographics can be seen as symptoms of a deeper malaise: a society that has lost its grounding in any objective truth or shared moral framework.

This movement claims to fight for justice but instead erodes the very foundations on which true justice stands—universal ethical norms and the notion of a common humanity. By prioritizing subjective “lived experiences” over objective analysis, these ideologies push individuals into echo chambers of their own feelings, where every personal discomfort is inflated into systemic oppression.

Moreover, the elevation of issues like gender dysphoria to national priorities often overshadows broader, more prevalent health concerns affecting larger segments of the population. This focus shift isn't merely a reordering of priorities but reflects a broader societal trend towards identity politics, where the loudest or most novel identities garner disproportionate attention and resources, often at the expense of comprehensive, inclusive policy-making.

In this climate, the global elite and political legislators either champion these causes out of genuine belief or political expediency, not realizing or perhaps not caring that they contribute to a culture where emotional reasoning trumps empirical evidence, and where personal belief systems are weaponized in political discourse. This is not democratization; it's the fragmentation of democratic dialogue into a cacophony of personal truths, each clamoring for supremacy, leaving society more divided, more anxious, and less capable of addressing its real, structural issues.

The rapid infiltration of these ideologies into the fabric of Western institutional life is not just a shift in cultural winds but a tempest, uprooting centuries of established norms and practices. This movement, cloaked in the guise of social justice, does not democratize but rather tyrannizes the discourse, imposing a rigid orthodoxy where dissent is not just unwelcome but punishable.

The phenomenon where a parent seeks consent from an infant to perform basic care, as absurd as it sounds, is but a microcosm of the larger, ludicrous landscape where rationality is sacrificed at the altar of hyper-sensitivity. Here, we see education reduced to echo chambers where only approved narratives echo. Professors, once revered, are now at the mercy of the mob, their academic freedom traded for the fleeting approval of those they are meant to educate.

This woke insurgence, with its inverse racism and cancel culture, has not only found a home but has become the governing ethos in sectors that shape policy and public opinion. This shift has been swift, largely because it preys on guilt and fear rather than reason and debate. Political parties, in their quest for moral high ground or simply survival, engage in what can only be described as ideological purges, attempting to silence opposition under the guise of cleansing society of its past sins.

The assault on meritocracy under the pretext of leveling the playing field is particularly paradoxical. While claiming to fight for equality, these movements often advocate for equality of outcome over equality of opportunity, a stance that inherently contradicts the principles of merit and individual effort. This demand for uniform outcomes regardless of input or capability not only demotivates but also devalues genuine achievement.

The comparison to Rome isn't just poetic; it's cautionary. Like Rome, where the decline was marked not just by external pressures but internal decay, our society faces a similar risk of collapse from within. The mental virus of our age isn't superstition in the classical sense but a dogmatic adherence to narratives that shun complexity for simplicity, facts for feelings.

Leon Festinger's concept of deindividuation explains much of what we see: individuals losing themselves in the collective fervor, where personal identity is submerged under group identity, leading to behaviors that, in isolation, would be considered irrational or harmful. This loss of self in the crowd not only erodes personal responsibility but also the very notion of individual rights and freedoms, which are foundational to any democratic society.

As we witness this, the sane among us might indeed watch with a mix of incredulity and concern, recognizing that this isn't progress but regression, not enlightenment but a new form of darkness where the light of reason is not just dimmed but deliberately extinguished.

This pervasive embrace of deindividuation by both public and private sectors not only fosters an environment ripe for antisocial behavior but actively encourages a detachment from personal responsibility and critical thinking. This societal shift towards embracing collective identity over individual rationality has led to instances where absurdity becomes normalized, such as the claim that biological men can undergo pregnancy, showcasing how far the detachment from empirical reality has gone.

The entropy Dr. Nasrallah speaks of isn't just a physical or organizational decay but a moral and intellectual one. In this context, the Covid-19 “crisis” acted not just as a health emergency but as a catalyst for social entropy, exacerbating existing fractures within society. The fear and uncertainty propagated by incessant media coverage, coupled with governmental missteps, did not just challenge public health but assaulted the very fabric of social cohesion.

The resulting chaos from these events has not been random but directed by the underlying currents of deindividuation. As individuals merge into mobs, both physical and digital, they reflect the darker, unaddressed aspects of our societal psyche. These mobs, demanding conformity in thought and action, mirror the chaos sown by those in power, who, through either incompetence or design, perpetuate systems that destabilize societal norms.

Bertrand Russell's observation on collective passions finds a grim validation in today's woke movements, where groupthink not only stifles individual thought but actively seeks to dismantle the structures that allow for dissent or diversity of opinion. This new radical Left, cloaked in the garb of progressivism, has indeed become the mirror image of the dogmatic rigidity it claims to oppose, enforcing a secular orthodoxy with the zeal of religious fundamentalists.

Charles Taylor's “exclusivist humanism” perfectly captures this paradox where the claim of universalism is wielded to exclude any worldview that does not align with its narrow definitions. This is not the broadening of human understanding or rights but the narrowing of acceptable thought, leading to a cultural landscape where only the secular, the material, and the politically expedient are deemed valid.

This cultural schizophrenia leaves individuals and society grappling with an identity crisis, torn between the materialistic allure of modern life and a profound, unaddressed spiritual void. The result is a populace that's technically connected yet emotionally and morally adrift, seeking meaning in causes that often lead to further division rather than unity.

Nelson Mandela's “society in chains” metaphor resonates deeply here, suggesting that true freedom, including the freedom to engage in democratic processes, requires a populace not just free from external oppression but internally liberated from ignorance and irrationality.

For democracy to thrive, or even survive, in the 21st century, there must indeed be a return to foundational moral and spiritual values that transcend partisan lines and speak to a universal human experience. This renaissance would not be a step backward but a necessary recalibration to navigate the complexities of modern existence with wisdom drawn from the well of human tradition and ethics.

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