It's not anything new in terms of how society, humanity en masse, have corrupt and wicked tendencies in every age and they just have different characteristics or external values that still hold society together in one way or another. I agree that now is no better or worse than many ages past. The overly preoccupied social virtue folks within every corrupt generation have tendencies to believe they are at the end point of civilization and divine judgment / the end of the world is nigh.

What is uniquely different about today is not the existence of rampant immorality, its the way in which its expressed and the ideas that led to it. The cultural shift in recent decades is the latest train stop of centuries of ideological developments... which arguably goes back to the 18th century with Rousseau, who basically constructed a philosophy of self apart from the Western Christian belief system, as well as a reaction to the Enlightenment rationalists. Rousseau rejected both divine revelation and human reason as the instruments of attaining true knowledge, and instead said No, we must look within and find true knowledge through our feelings and experiences of the external world.

And everything since then goes from there.

We don't live in an age characterized by atheism/agnosticism/non-religious, its a new religion and has been best described as Expressive Individualism. In other words, the self is elevated to such a point that life now becomes about finding your true, inner self, being authentic to that true self (individualism), and then everyone around you needs to know about it (expressive individualism).

The Marxist shift in society and academia means you can be self righteously nasty and authoritarian about others falling in line to not only know all about your true self, but coerced to positively affirm your true self.

The post Freudian shift in psychology means in your religious practice of Expressive Individualism, you can assume sexuality is essential to identity, and expressive sexuality has no ultimate moral constraints. This is where the indulgence in all t these campy ancient cult imagery and practices has become hip because it expresses in primal and archetypal symbols this new religion.

This new religion, btw, permeates ALL of society no matter the political affiliation... all of us breathe the air. So the CRT, cultural Marxist left, as well as the libertarian / right assume certain divine right of expressive individualist ideas and behaviors that take priority over everything else.

It's not anything new in terms of how society, humanity en masse, have corrupt and wicked tendencies in every age and they just have different characteristics or external values that still hold society together in one way or another. I agree that now is no better or worse than many ages past. The overly preoccupied social virtue folks within every corrupt generation have tendencies to believe they are at the end point of civilization and divine judgment / the end of the world is nigh.

What is uniquely different about today is not the existence of rampant immorality, its the way in which its expressed and the ideas that led to it. The cultural shift in recent decades is the latest train stop of centuries of ideological developments... which arguably goes back to the 18th century with Rousseau, who basically constructed a philosophy of self apart from the Western Christian belief system, as well as a reaction to the Enlightenment rationalists. Rousseau rejected both divine revelation and human reason as the instruments of attaining true knowledge, and instead said No, we must look within and find true knowledge through our feelings and experiences of the external world.

And everything since then goes from there.

We don't live in an age characterized by atheism/agnosticism/non-religious, its a new religion and has been best described as Expressive Individualism. In other words, the self is elevated to such a point that life now becomes about finding your true, inner self, being authentic to that true self (individualism), and then everyone around you needs to know about it (expressive individualism).

The Marxist shift in society and academia means you can be self righteously nasty and authoritarian about others falling in line to not only know all about your true self, but coerced to positively affirm your true self.

The post Freudian shift in psychology means in your religious practice of Expressive Individualism, you can assume sexuality is essential to identity, and expressive sexuality has no ultimate moral constraints. This is where the indulgence in all t these campy ancient cult imagery and practices has become hip because it expresses in primal and archetypal symbols this new religion.