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The West's Deepening Cultural Crisis
an article in The Futurist by Richard Eckersley
(our site's article review)
The author runs down a litany of depressing cultural symptoms, including increasing drug abuse, alcohol abuse, rampant violence, widespread depressive illness, increasing suicides, eating disorder increases, mental illness increases, crime out of control, etc. There is also disaffection, disillusion and discontent. Trying to blame them on unemployment (which is low), poverty, child abuse and family breakdown won’t cut it, says Eckersley. See The Index Of Leading Cultural Indicators.
Children's basic emotional and social skills are dropping in over 40 indicators—they're more nervous, irritable, sulky, moody, depressed, lonely, impulsive and disobedient
It’s more fundamental, he says: It’s a failure of Western culture. Our lifestyles are failing to give us much besides material goods. There’s not much meaning, belonging, connectedness and purpose in our lives. People need to have something to believe in and live for.
Our lifestyles are failing to give us much besides material goods—there’s not much meaning, belonging, connectedness, or purpose in our lives
True spirituality can never be the product of conformity and respect for/fear of authority—if it isn’t a product of finding oneself, it isn’t real
(As we said, there's little meaning, belonging, connectedness and purpose in our lives. People need to have something to believe in and live for. MCs can furnish all this equally well for adherents of either organized religion or private spiritual experience, as well as New Agers, agnostics, atheists, or whatever. MCs aren’t about religion. They’re about the opportunity to experience family unity, community unity, and human unity in a context of shared benevolent human values, Third Wave lifestyle enhancement of communications, parenting, connectivity, and relationships, and acting on the human wisdom mankind has accumulated rather than living partially-to-wholly dysfunctional lifestyles as if knowledge was something to sit and think about rather than apply. See Why Register for an MC?.)
Registering for MC search and match
Eckersley says that since our lives are meaningless, we’ve entered an era of pathological self-preoccupation in our looks, careers, sex lives, personal development, health, fitness, etc. And when these fail we wallow in cults, fanatical nationalism, religious fundamentalism, crime, etc. “How can we know what to do if we don’t know what we believe in and where we want to go?”
Additionally, the media doesn’t unite us—it divides us and cheapens our existence and warps our thinking via polarizing sound bytes, conflict exaggeration and sensationalism. It fails to pass on to us a realistic, consistent, coherent worldview, heightens our anxieties and fears and intimidates us by depicting the world as full of turmoil, violence, exploitation, and hate. It debases our values and fuels dissatisfaction by promoting superficiality, cynicism, materialism and self-indulgence. It even erodes our self-esteem and sense of self-worth by showering us with images of glamorous people who seem more exciting, successful and powerful than we are. It debases our kids values as well.
The media erodes our self-esteem and sense of self-worth by showering us with images of glamorous people who seem more exciting, successful and powerful than we are
Finally, he says that science—even though it helped get us into this mess—can be the main source of knowledge and understanding that we need to remake our culture. This is Third Wave thinking, as well as Enlightenment thinking. The sociological and parenting knowledge on this website contains the scientifically-backed wisdom needed to remake our culture one family at a time, using no politics, programs, social engineering, or government interference.