It feels like human civilization is slowly dying across the board. It goes beyond just a bad president or a bad government. The ideas that have guided humanity as a whole over the last few centuries, beginning before even the renaissance, are finally playing out their logical conclusion and becoming discredited.
Our ideas do not work. Technology, economy worship, universal competition, the desire for equality and meritocracy, democracy, liberalism, feminism, secularism. These ideas lead to a depressed and anxious society of suicidal people who don't reproduce.
It has real world, not just hypothetical repercussions. South Korea's culture is currently causing a national security crisis as their population is collapsing while the communist North remains stable. This is a disaster but our leaders have no ideas beyond more of the same, or a return to what lead us here in the first place.
I think we really need to take a deep look at our priorities and re-examine them in light of what actually makes human beings happy and healthy. It turns out, religion might be more important in the long run than air conditioning. Close family units may be more valuable than social media. Even local economies where people are farmers and butchers and bakers might prove to be superior to one dominated by asset bubbles, global trade and finance. Maybe our whole conventional way of thinking is wrong. Maybe people in the past didn't "progress" for a good reason that we forgot over time. Re-learning this is going to be painful as hell.
The "Wake Up" slap.
Precipice.