Reflection on the Existential Crisis of the West

There is an acute existential crisis moving through modern Western Civilization that is mostly affecting men. The responsibilities as the protector and provider have been outsourced to the State, and we are therefore dealing with a generation of listless men who find little gratification in the pleasures of modern society.

We try to inoculate ourselves against this acute pain with social media, drugs, incessant sex, and other superficial vices. But the main solution has been taken away from us, which is responsibility.

More and more we become aware that what modern society offers us is not sufficient. The digital nomad lifestyle, online dating, 24 hour news cycle. At the end of the day, we think to ourselves: “There’s got to be more to life than this.”

I think of a passage in Douglas Murray’s book The Strange Death of Europe in which he says that many Muslim Extremists he interviewed were former party-boys who had asked themselves the same questions after finding no solace in the life of indulgence the West had offered them.

This reversion to religion is coming at a time of the ultimate meaning crisis in the West. Perhaps there is no meaning to be found in an acute focus on one’s individual problems, but rather in serving others and a higher power.

In American culture, we value individualism over everything else. But what does it say when everyone’s problems become the same, do we need a common solution? We shouldn’t deny people their agency in these matters either, since that would be tantamount to treating the entire population as one entity, when people are clearly different in their values.

Every time we want to craft a narrative for ourselves, especially online, our attention is outsourced to cheap forms of distraction which limit our ability to carry out our purpose. The ability to carry out a purpose in society is drastically diminished by the modern struggle, that is, the fight for our attention 24/7.

The meaning crisis is not going away, and perhaps will get worse in the near future. What we need to focus on is how we can serve our communities directly and help each other, as this is the place where we will perhaps derive the most meaning in our lives.