Social scientists and other social theorists like Emile Durkheim and Rene Girard teach us we have entered into the 3rd, and final, stage of culture. That stage is nihilism – meaninglessness.
The first two stages are 1) shame and then 2) shamelessness.
When considering seemingly unexplainable, confusing, and frankly depressing and / or scary behaviors we see around us like mob violence, child grooming, breakdown of families, racial crimes, terrorism, mass shootings, and even more benign things like drops in birth rates, rampant social media addiction, skyrocketing clinical depression, the collapse in manners, and young men dropping out of society, these are all symptoms of nihilism. Framing these things for what they often are is helpful in creating a positive future.
It does no good to live in a state of denial.
What do we do about this?
Re-create culture on a small scale, preferably both top and bottom-down, but definitely starting now with each of us getting together on a local level to socialize amongst like-minded people.
It would have been very helpful for me to know we were in this stage and how to handle it when I was younger.
I’m afraid many young people are in this position.
To create culture again is the goal.
