(LifeSiteNews) — Why is the modern world so insane and wicked that it seems to be following the rules-based order of Satan himself?
In my new video show, Frankly, I begin by explaining how the 20th century saw the creation of the system of liberal democracy – whose real purpose was to replace our Christian civilization entirely.
I believe that liberal democracy was a sort of experiment on the civilizational scale whose goal included the replacement of the belief in Christ with belief in itself. The result was the replacement of Christianity and its moral system with the customs of other tribes. What these customs are, where they came from and how they were applied to us all is the subject of the first four episodes.
I try to show how mass culture has been manufactured, replacing our culture inherited from the Catholic Church with a counterfeit. In the first episode “Disintegration” I explain how the liberal system was created, why it is disintegrating now – and that you do not have to disintegrate along with it.
In the second episode I explain we are all undergoing a sort of “Detransition” as a result, as all the crazy ideas which the liberal consumer system sold us are exposed as self-destructive. This, I explain, illustrates the reality of sin.
Our consumer system monetizes and promotes sin. The reason God forbids sin is not because He dislikes you enjoying things, I go on to say, but because sin destroys you. In “Detransition” I argue that the so-called values of the liberal regime are all self-destructive, ruining you, the family, your nation and of course undermining the foundations of reality itself in seeking to reject God entirely.
In the third episode (“Desublimation”) I show how techniques of advertising – or propaganda – have been used to sell you a series of false gods. The last century was the century of sales – selling you the belief that buying things can make you a better person. This was called “repressive desublimation” by the notorious Frankfurt School. Despite offering Marxism as the remedy, these intellectuals were right about diagnosing the sickness.
The sickness of our society is in part presented by the replacement of the meaning of life with a series of consumer options. The liberal consumer system we inhabit offers you a seemingly endless range of products to buy – advertised with glittering promises. You can choose only what is on sale, of course. This is called freedom.
I show you how this promise of a consumer paradise delivers a hell on earth, because it liberates you into a trap. How does it do this? It says to be free you must remove all restraints on your appetites – delimiting your desires – and so become the ideal consumer. Permanently hungry, always dissatisfied, your unrestrained wants deliver you into a trap. We inhabit a sort of prison of choices between cut-price bargains, displayed in air conditioned placeless aisles, all available on credit.
The Frankfurt School called this process of imprisoning men “repressive desublimation.” It is repressive because it promises freedom and delivers dependence. It is “desublimation” because it encourages you to release all the desires which formerly civilized life would caution you to contain.
Instead of remaining “subliminal” – contained by your conscience and your sense of moral duty and so on – your desires rage without restriction. This makes you into the perfect consumer, and you will dissolve your life into the trying and buying of things. We are to become passive consumers, and the result is a “service economy” of monetized addictions from sex to shopping through junk food and drugs legal and not.
Episode four, to be released this coming Tuesday, will be called “Disenchantment” – and shows how the spell of the century of sales is wearing off. We have not only been sold things to fill up the void in our lives, but also sold ideas to rule our minds when we are not thinking about shopping.
Why do so many people seem content with this lifelong consumption of junk food and junk food for thought? Why is a diet of trash so successful?
Supplying toxic waste as nourishment for body and mind obviously degrades us all. Yet there is a deeper reason that manufactured chronic sickness for the success of this system.
The reason why so many seem content to consume this is because the liberal system has supplied a desperate hunger. It has replaced the central meaning of our lives with nothing. If you feel empty, you crave to be filled, and if you feel you are starving you will take in practically anything.
The liberal consumer system supplies this hunger. It comes from the fact that the liberal system seeks to replace God with itself. In fact, it seeks to replace everything with itself. This is the reason our homes and cities, our schools and our workplaces all seem so placeless today. The liberal global system with its global ambitions aims to create an international nowhereland which cannot be escaped. Within and without you, it subtracts everything of value in life and replaces it with price and terms and conditions.
The message of Frankly is a positive one. The fact this wicked system is dissolving is A Good Thing. What is even better is that there is a cure for all this. The Catholic Social Teaching of Pope Leo XIII shows how we can restore our entire civilization in the service of the glory of God. It is a total and feasible remedy uniting the true spiritual purpose of mankind in a practical politics promoting maximal human flourishing.
As the old system collapses, we have a tremendous opportunity to realize this mission around us now, replacing universal evil with the common good.
What a time to be alive.
