Western civilization is either on life support or dead.

I am not certain which, or whether at this point the distinction matters.

Nietzsche diagnosed the illness back in the 1870s, and World War I killed off the last generation truly committed to the old ways.

It’s not that there aren’t any remnants of the once-great civilization. Pockets of dead-enders survive, and the readers of Hot Air are likely among them.

But let’s face it: no healthy civilization would produce anything remotely like this and call it perfect:

Sam Smith looks amazing for PERFECT Magazine.

📸: Zhong Lin pic.twitter.com/4J9367nq3T

— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) February 28, 2023

Now I know what many of you will say: celebrities have always been outré. Pointing to an exception and declaring it the rule is good for easy clicks on a website but is nothing more than self-indulgence.

Yes…but. First of all, it’s not true that people at the apex of culture have always been indulging in such repulsive displays in order to get attention. Creative people have always pushed boundaries, but in healthy cultures, they have done so by drawing us upwards, not dragging us through piles of dung.

Mozart and Beethoven pushed boundaries. Modern pop music is about selling…this.

Modern culture is about celebrating dung. Self-indulgence, rejection of beauty, aspirations, and divinity are the norm. The best of popular culture–some of which I admit enjoying–still rarely calls upon us to be better than we are. Most actually try to entice us to indulge in our worst appetites.

The virtues upon which Western civilization was built are derided, while the basest impulses are presented as substitutes for the divine.

Western civilization was hardly without flaws, although its flaws were hardly unique as is often portrayed. Its virtues, however, were breathtaking. Its accomplishments in extending human knowledge, the arts, science, literature, and technology were unmatched in human history.

Yet all that has resulted in…TikTok. Modern medicine now aims to sterilize and mutilate children in order to cater to the transitory whims of teens; our music celebrates depravity, our intellectuals turn their attention to justifying pedophilia, and our religious institutions declare God to be nonbinary.

We celebrate little besides appetites. The arc of history doesn’t bend toward justice, but toward bestiality, it seems.

It is a bitter irony that civilizations rarely die because of poverty; more often it is wealth and self-indulgence that does them in. Success begets wealth, wealth begets gluttony, and gluttony brings decline.

Civilizations die very slowly at first; the decline is nearly imperceptible. But at some point the collapse becomes inevitable.

Are we past the point of no return? I declared so above, and I believe the answer is yes. Although maybe I just have a migraine coming on; that always makes me glum.

My hope is that pockets of civilization remain, as happened after the fall of Rome. Places where the past is preserved in order to rise again.

The longing for beauty and truth is as powerful today as they have ever been, and there is much to build upon.

In the meantime enjoy the wealth.