Paradocracy

Some of the notable consequences of a low-trust and divisive society are that people will take less interest in going out of their way for each other, they’ll care less about what good they can provide to instead focus on what (and how much more) they can each take for themselves (by whatever means, underhanded or otherwise); they’ll view their work as “just a job”, they’ll likewise view their contemporaries as merely “doing their jobs”, and they’ll view the customers, the clients, et al., as the obstacles to their paychecks; they’ll be more reluctant to assume risk, to have patience, to make sacrifice, to invest into the uncertainty, to bear and raise children into such a fickle, frightening and feckless society — a society tilting progressively in favor of disruptive and exploitative types, and their children who consequently learn and adapt to this lifestyle, regardless of its longterm sustainability. 

This is especially true where that society has already been stripped of principles and standards, of dignity and honor, of the concept of community; where they are lacking so many of the essentials of civilization — meaningful connections between individuals, the ethics of personal responsibility, and the sense of pride and fulfillment that comes from valuing one’s own work apart from the compensation (and, likewise, the immeasurable gratification that comes from contributing something to his family or his community, and from priding himself in a job well done).  

This kind of decadence results not only in every thing carrying a quoted price (and that price being conflated everywhere with the concept of “value”), not only in things becoming more expensive, more nonsensical, and more inefficient (than they might otherwise be), but in the progressive cheapening of society as a whole — or what’s left of it; a cheapening corresponding with the growth of an establishment that condemns our children to futures in which they are told not only what to think and believe and what they can say, but to what extent they must work (and in what form) for the benefit of the ‘utopias’ the talking heads and their followers can nearly imagine. This is insidious for a wide variety of reasons and in a wide variety of ways, not least of which the way in which it detracts from family living, from the kind of modest and faithful living possible if not for the massive bureaucracy which requires us to work just to keep our homes, as it keeps us all on the road to serfdom, chasing ever-illusive and ever-changing conceptions of nirvana.  

Ultimately, through all of the deceit, the decadence and the distractions, we have a kind of mass avoidance of the cold, hard truth: that so much of the world’s problems and anxieties come from false confidence in the shortcuts of convenience and expedience, and from ill-placed faith in false promises of nirvana — those things which give ease and comfort but which detract from the labors of life attending the life worth living, and which keep the people from developing and passing on traditions and legacies of any kind, let alone the kinds worth prizing and preserving between generations.