Without Historical Context, Modernity’s Problems Seem Natural
Surely I’m not the only one who’s noticed that most of modernity’s problems are of our own construction—we make our bed, and we lie in it.
And yet, lots of people don’t see it that way. Terrorism, offshoring, illegal immigration—that’s just the way the world works. It’s how it is.
This is especially true when it comes to millennials.
And why not? A world of open markets and open borders is all they’ve known. To them, it’s normal, as sick as that may sound—just like how the threat of nuclear annihilation was normal to people born during the Cold War.
People adapt.
Worse still, millennials weren’t taught history, or civics, in school. They lack any sort of factual context for the modern world—many don’t know, nor care why it is the way it is.
That’s why statements like “terrorism is just part and parcel of living in a major city” make sense to them—it’s always been that way for twenty-something’s.
And no, I didn’t make that quote up, it comes from London’s Mayor, Sadiq Khan:
But it’s worth remembering that there was a time when Islam was virtually non-existent in Western societies. And, not surprisingly, there was no such thing as radical Islamic terrorism.
No terrorism? Sounds nice, doesn’t it?
Of course, anyone who was familiar with Samuel P Huntington’s book Clash of Civilizations could have seen it coming: “Islam has bloody borders”, from the Philippines to India. Everyone with a brain knew that by bringing Islam to the West, the West would turn into said “bloody border”.
And it has.
Therein lies the problem: liberals completely lack an education in history. They lack knowledge.
If you don’t know the history of Islamic aggression against the West (perhaps because they deliberately scrapped it from the school curriculum), then you’ll easily fall prey to the mainstream media’s lies. Knowledge inoculates against stupidity.
Of course, a lack of perspective permeates Western culture to the core—our ignorance is used to justify just about every globalist policy you can think of.
Remember, there was a time when we didn’t need illegal immigrants to pick our fruit and “do the jobs American’s won’t do.” Work still somehow (almost magically) got done without an illegal immigrant pseudo-serf class.
Likewise, can you remember a time when we didn’t depend on Chinese imports? Remember when we had our own thriving manufacturing sector?
We used to make things in the West, and weren’t addicted to “cheap goods” (which aren’t that cheap, as it turns out).
There was a time when the media wasn’t owned by a small cadre of special interests, and didn’t report exclusively fake news, and label all dissenters as racists.
There was a time when mass immigration wasn’t “required” to maintain our entitlement programs (that were meant for our citizens).
There was a time when we didn’t need immigrants to grow the economy—we did that the old fashioned way.
Remember when progress meant going to the moon, putting people to work, and getting rich? Now it means forcing Christians to bake cakes for gay weddings, or arresting people who refuse to use the ‘correct’ gender pronouns.
My point?
It wasn’t always like this: all of these problems are fairly recent, and yet they seem normal to millions of people. They shouldn’t be.
I don’t think the suppression of history was by accident. I think it’s deliberate.
If people don’t have a word for “yellow”, they won’t talk about things being “yellow”.
Likewise, if people don’t know that Western society existed without illegal immigration, or terrorism, then they won’t question them. They will accept them: meanwhile, the special interests can continue pushing their ideological agenda, rather than being forced to take pragmatic approaches.
How do we solve the problems of modernity?
It starts by realizing they aren’t inevitable.
