The Three Big Mistakes We’re Making in the 21st Century

Why Our Civilization’s in Decline, And What to Do About It

The 21st century’s young. We’re not even a quarter of the way through it. And yet it feels like an eternity. The days drag on. The world slips into regress. Civilization turns backwards. Ignorance and greed and hate and violence begin to rule, as democracy and its great values come undone. Economies slink into recession. The planet boils, and those of us who are still sane weep at it all, a little bit, if we’re honest.

Though the century’s young, it’s a calamitous one. It’s shaping up to be the most calamitous one in human history, because at our current rate of decline, it’s lights out in a decade or three — accelerating scarcity for the basics, from clean air to food to water to medicine, and all that takes decency and modernity with it, of course. So though the century’s barely begun, already, there are lessons to be learned — for those who aren’t too busy worshiping influencers and watching superhero movies, that is.

Let me discuss three of what I think are the most salient.

There are numbers, and then there are…numbers. Just today, the Tony Blair institute released a jaw-dropping estimate.

Dr Martin Carkett, of the Future of Britain project at the Tony Blair Institute, said many of the 25,000 excess deaths since the summer “could have been avoided”, adding: “This is the human cost of government inaction in the face of an entirely foreseeable crisis.”

What he’s trying to say is this: since the summer, more than 25,000 people have died in Britain…because…nothing works anymore. You can’t get an ambulance, a doctor’s appointment, the once-renowned NHS broken and shattered after more than a decade of being starved, heating and electricity have become unaffordable, and so people are just…dying.

But let me put that in context for you. That’s more than a 9/11…every month. It’s more like a 9/11 every week, if you count the end of August as the end of summer. So it appears — not according to me, but according to its own thinktanks — that Britain is having a 9/11 every week. Every week.

There are few things that should cause your jaw to drop in astonishment, but that actually should. Because what we’re seeing here isn’t the result of terrorism, or natural disaster, or a giant meteor storm striking the entire Thames. It’s entirely self-inflicted. Britain’s having a 9/11 every week…because…well…

This is what happens when you turn your back on modernity. And that’s my first mistake of the 21st century. Turn your back on modernity? Be careful what you wish for — you might just get it. Let me explain that a little. From about 2010 or so, Britain was seized with a kind of regressive, atavistic, hyper-conservative mania. Instead of relenting, fed and fueled by Big Lies — like those famously on the sides of buses — it escalated, in great waves, until Britain became a nation that sneered at being part of the modern world.

Of course, one part of that was Brexit — Britain literally abandoned its position in the modern world, and broke off with the EU. Its economy is now in the process of implosion, as anyone vaguely thoughtful predicted, already shrinking by more than 10% — depression levels of contraction. And yet Britain’s mania to abandon modernity goes right down into the details — there it is, trying to do “deals” to…human traffic…refugees…to Rwanda…thumbing its nose at international law. It’s saying to the modern world: screw you. We don’t need you. We’re better than you. We don’t need your laws or your institutions or your organizations or your values or norms or ideals.

How’s that working out for Britain? Well, like I said, it’s having a 9/11 every week. Why? Because living standards are plummeting back to pre-modern standards. Britain is becoming something like a Victorian or Edwardian country again — the ruthless, Dickensian villains profit immensely, while the average person plunges into poverty. And what happens as a result of that is that people die. Because they can’t get healthcare, medicine, money, heat. The proof is in the pudding, and yet Brits, as a society, still choose to not quite see it. They lament Brexit, but they don’t understand the larger point that as a society, they gave up on modernity, and so now, they’re going right back to pre-modernity.