The narratives will collapse before we do
Our world is a disaster, but people are learning.
Many predict an impending collapse of Western nations. Nothing is working as it used to. Everything seems to be in decline.
Our descent manifests itself in many areas but is especially visible with three fads distorting our societies.
Enforced diversity has seized the minds of decision makers resulting in quotas and triggering a decline in competency.
An obsession with climate change is equally harmful with policies leading to deindustrialization and poverty.
Socialism is embraced throughout the West despite its track record in destroying freedoms and collapsing economies.
Everything feels like it has been infiltrated by activists who do not represent the views of normal people.
We are aware of the damage. It depresses us. It seems unstoppable.
And yet we sense a change in the air. While these policies do much harm, the narratives behind them are being challenged more and more. This offers some hope.
The big three
As reality intrudes the naivety behind many sacred cows is exposed. The emperor is naked and his supporters look equally naked. The narratives driving their fantasies are failing.
The big three issues common in the West illustrate why people are noticing.
Diversity and immigration
The promotion of diversity as a strength is a consequence of blank slate thinking, a belief disparate populations are substantially the same with most observable differences due to environment only.
This is at odds with what we observe, the significant range in ability and proficiency between distinct groups that becomes apparent when we interact. So artificial variety is sold as a positive in an attempt to downplay the homogeneity that gets better results.
The consequence of this is quotas, where arbitrary rules are enforced to ensure a diverse outcome.
This destroys competency even if we ignore the potential for conflict when foreigners are imported in large numbers.
The main effect of pushing this absurd policy seems to be the rise of ethnic awareness among those who must step aside to accommodate it. How could it not? When people are excluded because of their ethnicity it becomes important to them.
This is not what advocates of diversity intended but is already happening.
Climate
Climate and energy policy is based on anti-scientific magical thinking. With the current emphasis on carbon dioxide we are told a tiny portion of our atmosphere is responsible for most of the future changes that will cause widespread harm. There is no evidence for such claims.
The reality of climate is different from the narrative. It is resilient, as many things are. Our obsession is arrogance. A belief we matter more than we do.
Intellectuals are prone to get lost in their theories of how the world ought to work. Activists then latch on to their utopian ideas to gain some sense of meaning in their lives.
Society also has people lacking conscience who will profit from anything no matter how much damage it causes. Combining these two, dreamers with schemers, is often lethal. Seemingly opposing forces, left-wing activists and capitalist profiteers, can cooperate even if they embrace distinct beliefs.
As many memes remind us, if you have corporate sponsorship you are not the resistance. This is precisely what we see.
Narratives begin to collapse as we witness ruthless corporations promote feelgood nonsense about climate while fleecing taxpayers in the background. Many are noticing.
And the effects of suicidal climate goals are difficult to hide. Every closed factory or power station kills another element of credibility.
Socialism
Socialism is based on the idea an educated elite can make decisions for us all while simultaneously conditioning us to be better versions of ourselves. It ignores all of history and everything we have learned of human psychology to embrace a literal fantasy utopia that no one has even come close to realizing.
Nothing sums up the bankruptcy of our intellectuals more than their inability to reject this failed ideology.
But it also shows us the Anglo-Saxon instinct to restrict others’ control over us is the only way to counter it.
It teaches us of the wisdom of documents like Magna Carta or the Bill of Rights, designed to constrain the powerful regardless of their motives, ambitions or mental state. Rare moments of historical sanity that remind us what effective countermeasures can look like.
It would seem this lesson must be relearned every few generations. But we are learning it. Real life is reminding us why we must limit government and its agents no matter how inconvenient.
Bad ideas are inevitable. It is the ability of activists and the powerful to enact them many are now waking up to as narratives visibly fail.
Collapsing narratives, the end is nigh
A lot is being done to Western nations. It is easy to despair. But the emerging result is a hardening of attitudes as bad ideas meet consequences.
Some generalized conclusions already circulate as we learn to question damaging policies.
Put us first, not imported foreigners and certainly not abstractions like diversity.
Cheap reliable energy is a necessity to remain viable nations. We need more of it not less.
Let the market do its thing and stop interfering. Whatever issues we have a centralized bureaucratic system ran by incompetents won’t fix it.
As awareness spreads it helps us confront the real problem, namely clowns enacting policies based on magical thinking. Democracies are really managed by narratives not force. The problem is narratives have to be plausible and many of ours are not.
The corrective to our malaise then is reality, not extremism or some new philosophy.
Letting reality assert itself then observing and ultimately drawing sensible conclusions from the deleterious effects of diversity, climate policy and collectivist ideology. None of it works. The ideas have been found wanting and new ones will take their place.
But we are still here. As depressing as it all seems, the narratives holding it all together will collapse long before we do.
'The reality of climate is different from the narrative. It is resilient, as many things are. Our obsession is arrogance. A belief we matter more than we do. Intellectuals are prone to get lost in their theories of how the world ought to work. Activists then latch on to their utopian ideas to gain some sense of meaning in their lives. Society also has people lacking conscience who will profit from anything no matter how much damage it causes. Combining these two, dreamers with schemers, is often lethal.'
A pretty good nutshell, right there. Ideologues plus opportunists.
“And yet we sense a change in the air.”
You are a hopeless optimist. However, the (sane) world needs such optimism. As usual, an excellently written missive. Now for the pessimist view from myself.
No disagreement with your premises, but my fear is that the realization that is upon us may come too late to make much of a difference in the final outcome. How many generations have come into existence since this madness has taken hold? I count three plus—including “Boomers”, of which I am one. Soon there will be no generations left to educate and inform those remaining of how things once were in our society—much less lead. It’s not for nothing that the ancient Chinese developed “execution of the three generations” as a form of extreme punishment.
The importing of non-Western, third world peoples as well as genetically induced “spiteful mutants” will soon represent the majority of the populace, at least here in the U.S. (if not already). These people have little ability to understand, nor thrive in a first world technological, capitalistic society as we once aspired to as a nation. This seems the fate of Western democracies as I now view them—to decline to a level of their (new) population’s innate ability and behavior proclivities.