YES, ALEXANDRIA, CIVILIZATION IS FRAGILE.

Civilizations as Commonly Labeled.

I recently said to my partner, Peter, while we played Scrabble, "I can't imagine how millennials of affluent Western countries will intellectually and emotionally process the current war in Ukraine." His response was, as usual, dead-on: "What makes you think they will even try?" 

The generation of The Great Depression and WWII are almost gone. The generation of the Vietnam Civil War which lured America into its quagmire is aging and dying as well. Afghanistan and Iraq did not have a general impact on American youth. Those invasions were felt most painfully in America's lower economic classes, the source of a volunteer military.  

The riots and arson of 2020 were, in my opinion, symptoms of a youth culture and its social media which are deeply ignorant of the closeness of injury and death in everyday lives. The complacency of America in the face of real and violent challenges to its stability and heritage revealed a mass depression, lulled and occasionally tickled by silly pet videos on You Tube. Unchecked person-on-person violence and lawlessness in America persist at an increasing rate. 

Few young Americans, I would speculate, understand that what is happening today in Ukraine could happen tomorrow anywhere. If they did understand this, they would not see riots and arson in our cities as entertainment. They would not have voted for a senile politician to lead them. They would not be charmed by young women in Congress whose joint hatred for American heritage and American values is thrown about lightly to shock and seduce. 

The core value of knowing history is learning that human civilization is a fragile evolutionary development, supported by the unique intelligence of our species. When the group intelligence of our species declines, civilization declines. This is the real lesson of failed empires. An actively engaged and skeptical public prevents the Putins of the world from indulging their megalomania at the cost of human life and social harmony.

A population that stares at its smartphones, even in social settings, is not a socialized population. Virtual connection is remote and enforces narcissism. No real-time discussion or challenge of ideas. All communication geared to the approval of the individual by a chosen virtual mob. This process of multitudes does not comprise a functional civilization. The dithering confusion in response to the evils represented by Russia, China, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, etc. illustrates the net effect of a world of detached narcissists who elect officials based on advertising videos. 

But those who would exploit the world to support their evil greed or ideologies are not worried about their Facebook profiles in the least. They fiddle as the world texts itself into complacent ignorance. Their goal is to exploit the chaos of destroyed civilization and human harmony. Divide and conquer. And, if they succeed in conquest, human civilization will lose momentum and potentially fall back into primitive tribalism.