On these Blogger pages we explore TOPICS in our desire to respond to Jesus' call to walk with Him in our world as his missionary disciples empowered by the Holy Spirit to bring to humanity the Good News of the Father's love manifested and given in Jesus, the Divine Mercy. G.S.
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Why are Western societies disintegrating?
Why is Western civilization falling apart?
What is happening in America may provide a key.
A friend recently wrote about being disturbed at seeing all kinds of misbehaviour in public in the U.S.A. and asked me what I thought, and whether it might be an exaggerated response. I believe such persons are having normal human reactions to abnormal human and social situations and happenings. In this blog, I will write as if addressing myself to you.
In fact, seeing all that you
do see, it would be abnormal to take it all in as if there was
nothing wrong. The social disintegration happening all over the
Earth is, I believe, the primary cause of suicides; especially
among the young who are not yet fully developed and therefore ill
equipped to deal with all these complex currents and pressures in
life. So, why are our societies sinking into savagery?
1. A first factor would be Godlessness, which
will cause the disintegration of any society, and I believe that
is one of the many factors at work in all that you abhor in the
society around you. When human beings turn away from God our Creator, by the same token, we refuse his protection, guidance, inspiration, and help. We choose to be on our won. Unfortunately, while God behaves "like a gentleman" and respects our decisions, those entities identified as "demons" or "rebellious angels" are not so respectful, principled, or kind. They rather employ all manner of lies, deceptions, manipulations, and deceits in their disruptive behaviour and frantic activity "from the shadows" in pursuit of our destruction. The response demons like best from us is our naive refusal to believe they exist, because they thrive best by their "covert operations" in the "shadows and in the dark".
2. A second factor is the lack of civility. When
kids have kids of their own, they may not be parents to carefully
attend to their children and form them into decent human beings.
It also happens as adults become parents but live lives entirely
focused on their work, either because of the "new slavery"
offering them the carrot of promotion, advancement, and raises in
salary and benefits, but requiring them to neglect marriage and
family more and more; or because they have to work more to make
ends meet, perhaps to maintain an unrealistically high standard of
living. Whichever way or for whatever reason it happens,
successful and even less successful people may neglect their
spouse, children, and home life; resulting in poorly formed
children who are "raised" more by the law of the jungle at work
wherever they go, at school, in their neighbourhood, and on the
street.
3. A third factor is alcohol and drugs. People who remain
addicted to alcohol or drugs for an extended period do sink into various
forms of depravity and irrational behaviour; as a result of being under the influence, but also in criminal acts they may engage in as they try to obtain money for more drugs. It is also one of the
causes of homelessness as well as the disintegration of
neighbourhoods, cities, states, and nations into savagery.
4. A fourth factor would be what began with WW II.
When Western nations came together to send soldiers to Europe,
Africa, and the Pacific theatres of war, they did so with a sense
of moral superiority; that we were better than the Axis coalition
of dictator-led nations, because we understood that we were
defending innocent nations against warlike invaders. However,
moral superiority is difficult to maintain, and it is rarely
unpolluted by baser motivations. This assumed moral superiority
has made the U.S.A. an even worse bully nation than they were
before towards their neighbours to the south.
The mostly American decision to carpet bomb German cities was not doubt a desperate if deliberate decision to try to accelerate an end to the war, by accepting the risk of wiping out much of the civilian population and help turn the German nation against its leader, Hitler. The accelerated development of the atomic bomb, also a mostly American decision to drop two on Japan, was similarly motivated to accelerate an end to the war, by accepting the risk of wiping out much of the civilian population and help turn the population of Japan against its obstinate leader, the emperor.
However, there is great risk when a nation sets itself up on a pedestal of moral superiority. that risk, among others, is that it may cease to be self-critical and think that everything it thinks and does is automatically morally superior. This may explain in part why the U.S.A. has gone on a continuous rampage throughout the world to topple governments it didn't like and support its multinational companies that exploit other nations for their resources, pollute the earth, water, and air, and leave local populations sick, dying, unable to feed themselves. The "American Empire" has become as bad or worse than the "British Empire" ever was.
This national stance of the U.S.A. since WW II has had a profound
effect on its population in terms of soldiers killed or wounded,
and the unresolved veterans' affairs issues in the States
testifies to this. Many veterans have had psychological troubles
leading often to various addictions and harm to or breakdown of
marriages and families. In turn, the children carry heavy issues
and may spend the rest of their lives trying to cope. There is also the unfortunate result in a nation having a commonly held conviction that "we can do no wrong" and that "American interests" are good for everyone, but often, they're not.
5. A fifth factor follows on the fourth in the
artificial prosperity created by the rapid industrialization of
the States during WW II to produce the equipment needed to achieve
victory in the war. This created the monster known as the
military-industrial complex, which today keeps growing the
American military and exports weapons and equipment of violence
around the world. With a growing military, America needs to keep
finding theatres of war in which to expend these resources; so
that more can be produced, making more profits. Of course,
justification is needed to "sell" these "military actions" at
home; so even outright lies will work, such as the fiction of
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which never existed. Before
Iraq was invaded, Saddam was a dictator, but he kept the "crazies"
in line. Once he was gone, those factions turned on the Christians
and almost wiped them out. Soon there will be no Catholics left in
one of the cradles of the Christian faith, the Chaldean Catholic
Church, where they speak Aramaic as Jesus did. It can't possibly
go well with a nation at home that exports massive quantities of
weapons around the world so that local bullies can blow each other
up, as well as innocent bystanders, instead of fighting with clubs
or knives.
6. A sixth factor in the disintegration of America would be the effects of this artificial prosperity on the general population. Americans never had it so good as they did in the decades after the war. The '50's and early '60's were a time of rapid growth, better salaries, women working, improved standards of living, and a new period of leisure and life, including the creation of the "teenager" years. These evolving conditions were exploited to the max by marketing and a naive population was exploited through the artificial creation of irrational "needs" requiring ever more money, more frantic seeking after ever higher salaries, and so on.
7. A seventh factor was that this became the ideal
medium or soil for the springing up of all kinds of weeds, pardon
the pun. Parents caught up with their work, careers, and salaries
began to neglect their children, or to properly raise and form
them. In turn, kids found their way into clics with the inevitable
bullying, or worse, into gangs focused on all kinds of
misbehaviour or even crime. People no longer prioritized or worked
on their marital relations, ending in divorce and family
breakdown, with all their destructive effects on everyone.
8. An eighth factor also emerged from this growing
mess in the form of the "sexual revolution". Some of the "hippie
movement" was innocent, but it also favoured experimenting with
sex, alcohol, and drugs. Many lives were disrupted and not all of
these experiments turned out well.
9. A ninth factor would be ways in which several of the above interacted with one another to become more destructive of lives, marriages, and families.
10. A tenth factor would be how the exponential
growth in the consumption of various drugs created a "demand"
which led to the creation of drug cartels due to the increasingly
lucrative "market" for drugs. This in turn led the States to
declare its "war on drugs". Among the casualties have been those who have been blackmailed to comply or seduced to take money in order to turn a blind eye or destroy evidence and other criminal acts. There are innumerable destructive effects of so much power and money generated by addictions.
11. An eleventh factor would be the perversion of
American politics due in part to the control of lobbyists paid by
multinational corporations, with the result that it is all to
often no longer government by the people but by the rich and
powerful. The rigidity of the American democracy as a republic
with only two political parties makes it impossible for other
views to gain ground, with the resulting frustration, anger, and
the craziness that has embarrassingly become a spectacle to the
world.
12. Many of these have in turn created a twelfth factor,
which is the war against God and religion. The ACLU is on a
rampage against any and every hint of religion or God, and they
have succeeded in banning God, prayer, the Bible, and religion
from the schools and, increasingly, from other public places. The
result is dramatically clear in the mass shootings in schools. As
some people say, God is a gentleman, and, being told to get out of
the schools, He does, but his protection goes with Him. In the
resulting moral and spiritual vacuum, all manner of evil and
darkness swoop in.
13. A thirteenth factor follows, the war on life. Never in the history of humankind has there been such a war on the unborn, which has gone hand in hand with the sexual revolution. Not only have we discarded God our Creator's plan and design for our human life and happiness, and carelessly engage in uncontrolled, undisciplined sex, but we have gone further and declared war on the innocent unborn. It is a much worse slaughter of the innocents than what happened in Bethlehem at the time of Jesus' birth, and all that innocent blood cries out to God from the Earth, like the blood of Abel murdered by his brother Cain. It cannot possibly go well with a society that has become genocidal in the slaughter of its own offspring.
14. A fourteenth factor also follows on what has gone
before in the current war on humanity itself, on human nature, on
marriage, and on gender. It began in the late '60's with a new
lobby to advance the cause of homosexuals. They pushed it so far
as to succeed in changing public attitudes on homosexuality and
even further to win same-sex civil unions, which they want to call
marriage, but which religions refuse to call marriage. That wasn't
enough for them; so, they went after our common understanding of
what it means to be human, to be male or female. There's no
telling how far that will go, but you are right to think that it
is as bad as or perhaps may become worse than Sodom and Gomorrah.
15. As if that wasn't enough to thoroughly destroy human society in
the States, consider as a fifteenth factor the
enslavement of African natives kidnapped and sold in the States for
generations. Then followed the Civil War precisely over this issue, which defeated the South
and in principle freed the slaves. However, overnight very little
changed in their lives. Some of them found ways to become
prosperous - the "carpet baggers" - many of whom moved north into
the states of the "Union". In the South, however, they remained as
repressed and threatened with death as when they were slaves;
until the civil non-violent revolt of the late '50's which began
with Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on the bus in
Alabama. That led to all kinds of upheaval in the various States
as people were forced to give up some of their prejudice and stop
the outright criminal behaviour of lynchings, beatings, rapes of
blacks by whites and other atrocities.
16. A sixteenth factor would be America's option for
"law and order" which puts so many people in prison, more per
population than anywhere in the world, I think. All too often,
prison becomes a "school for crime" where petty criminals get
their "Bachelors, Masters, and Ph.D. in crime". They can be
absorbed by gangs that thrive both in and out of jail. Because the
focus is far more on punishment and revenge than on corrections,
so little money is spent on correctional approaches that they are
no so effective and mistakes are made when violent offenders are
paroled as should never be. Some societies do take a truly
correctional approach to crime and they have remarkable results.
17. A seventeenth factor would be the perversion of
the American justice system by several factors: the rabid
profit-mongering lawyers and legal firms out to grab as much
profit as they can from human misery, with little or no regard for
human dignity, or the value of human life, and certainly not for
any dimension of philanthropy. The lawyers put pressure on the
system and it reacts with prosecutors determined to put the
accused in jail, whether or not they are truly guilty. Political
leaders are concerned with re-election, and they want the public
to at least have the impression that they are doing their jobs.
18. An eighteenth factor would be the perversion of the American health and medical system. By turning it over to private enterprise, the focus has shifted to profitability, and the more it focuses on the rich and powerful, the more profitable it becomes. To hell with everybody else. Catholic hospitals are among the few that take in people and treat them, whether or not they can pay. Now the sexual and gender ideology lobbies have declared war on Catholic hospitals in the States for their own ends.
19. A nineteenth factor, which may actually be the
first and most pervasive, would be the way that American
capitalism has undermined its own democracy. A number of films
have tried to demonstrate this theme. Capitalist interests, the
rich and powerful, don't like religion because they see it as an
obstacle on their path to more power and wealth. With their money
and power, they exploit the legal system and the courts and have
succeeded in turning the thinking and values of "the founding
fathers" upside down. One example is that the signers of the
Constitution wanted citizens to be free to practice their
religion, which for them was primarily Christianity. Today, they
have succeeded in turning the Constitution into grounds for
establishing a society "free FROM religion". It is a perversion
that can only be explained as coming straight from hell.
20. A twentieth factor, would be the exponentially expanding global plague of pornography on virtually all platforms and media. Those unscrupulous exploiters who exploit the innocent and the naive are aggressively going after children, adolescents, young adults, and older people caught in the frustration of their workplace rat race or having difficulties in their marriage or family life or simply lonely. Sadly, even a single look at or use of pornography threatens to set a person on a course of addictive behaviour. Many who start don't know how to stop or simply can't stop, no matter how hard they try. In such cases, they literally need the help of others to get off that merry-go-round and be accountable.
Warning: There are undoubtedly many other factors at work in a complex society which either improve or threaten, or worse, further disrupt human lives and society as a whole.
Conclusion: Is it any wonder, then, that with all these factors converging and impacting on one another and affecting individuals, families, and societies all all levels; that this process could result in anything other than social disintegration? That is perhaps why Jesus came not to reform any social institutions but rather to address Himself to each human person as a person; because only a human person can change for the better, with God's help.
So, I repeat, your discomfort and concern at the aberrations you see and hear around you are normal human reactions to abnormal human behaviours and situations.
For one reason or another, America has been a fertile ground for
all these factors, perhaps more than in any other country.
Unfortunately, many of these factors are at work worldwide, in
varying degrees. Elsewhere, there are also radical violent groups
who even have control of countries, such as the radical violent
Hindus who now control the government in India, causing or encouraging lots of
persecutions of Christians, bombings, and killings.
Lord God, our Creator, have mercy on your human children.
On these Blogger pages we explore TOPICS in our desire to respond to Jesus' call to walk with Him in our world as his missionary disciples empowered by the Holy Spirit to bring to humanity the Good News of the Father's love manifested and given in Jesus, the Divine Mercy. G.S.
© 2006-2023 All rights reserved Fr. Gilles Surprenant, Associate Priest of Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montreal QC
© 2006-2023 Tous droits réservés Abbé Gilles Surprenant, Prêtre Associé de Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montréal QC
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