Polls show that many Americans suspect our civilization is in decline. Much of that concern arises because our world-wide secular leadership is no longer dealing adequately with such growing world problems as nuclear proliferation, terrorism, climate change, and dwindling natural resources. It takes world cooperation to solve such problems; and cooperation, in turn, requires unity. In our Christian, Muslim, Judaic, Hindu-Buddhist and East Asian Marxist-divided world, unity exists only to the extent that the Western secular system provides it.

 Ideological systems are transitory, however. Our secular beliefs as well as the old religions are all ideologies, not “the Truth,” (see pages 251-254) Each tends to determine how its believers think; and that in turn determines global trends and events. The world does not conspire to create problems for us. We humans let our divided and imperfect ideologies cause the world's problems, and then let our beliefs get in the way of solving them.

Is the Western secular system really an ideology? Democratic ideologies come and go in world history, and believing in them has never made them “the Truth,” (pgs 251-254). It is just that they have to be believed as such in order to provide a unifying bond so people can feel a common purpose and cooperate to solve common problems.

The development of the Western secular ideology began with the Age of Enlightenment (1650-1800). The Protestant break-up of Western Catholic ideological unity had ushered in a period of debilitating religious wars. The wars diminished as the new ideology combined with the old faiths and restored unity to the West's otherwise sect-ridden society (pgs 122-125). Secularization turned people into “liberal Christians.”

During the last half of the 20^th century, the Western secular ideology began placing more emphasis on humanism, tolerance, equality, “the pursuit of happiness,” and “The American Dream.” This fit-the-need refocusing helped the West to secularize the world by liberalizing the other faiths as well, thus creating “liberal Hindus,” “liberal Muslims,” and even “liberal (nationalist and capitalistic) 'Communists.'” The result has been the forming of the United Nations and the Global Economy.

All that, however, has begun to change. The secular ideology has itself become divided. Its doctrinal core remains intact but the system's fervor has shifted to an assortment of secular cults or “isms.” They include World Liberationists, and the women liberation and animal-liberation movements. Some of the others are pacifists, Libertarians, Objectivists, conservatives, vegetarians and the Tea-Partiers (pgs 154-157).

Divided as they are, the mostly older ideologies (the religions) still provide their followers with an all-important sense of community; but they would not by nature share that sense of common fellowship with any of the other systems. Only the influence of the West's secular ideology and its doctrines of liberty, equality, humanism and multicultural tolerance enable that to happen.

However, a dividing ideology cannot effectively unite a divided world, so the West is losing its ability to solve world problems. People become discouraged and turn back to the old spiritual beliefs. This regression means the secular way-of-thinking is failing, not that the ancient belief systems are becoming less obsolete. People are beginning to connect the political chaos and social radicalization in the US with its social, economic and political decline. They resist what has become a threat to the word's until-now-successful five-thousand year old patriarchal-marital value-system.

The senescence of the secular was bound to happen. The Western secular ideology only evolved to supplement Christianity, not to replace it, or the world's other faiths.

All this has been academically obscured. The secular way of thinking has to regard all the old ideologies as “the spiritual” and not relevant to the real world and its affairs. The media complies by ignoring the other faiths whenever possible. When it is not, it blames the trouble on “ethnic” differences.

As the Western secular system continues to weaken, world cooperation becomes even more difficult. That means world problems grow ever more threatening. So, still more people become disillusioned and regress back to older beliefs. All that necessarily comes at the expense of science and technology. In just such a way, a civilization slips into a slow, self-accelerating decline.

But just as declines begin, they also end. Throughout the history of human social evolution, whenever an overwhelming need became recognized, a solution ultimately always followed. The need now is for a new and non-”spiritual” (that is, advanced) ideological system, one able to unite the world into a single new society. Then, mankind would have the unity needed to move on and build the next civilization.

But people are monumentally disinclined to change their ideology. Historically, it has happened to societies only when deteriorating social, economic and political conditions led to such high levels of stress, tension and sense of doom as to become unbearable (pgs 207-210)..

Will that happen? What would it take to replace the divisive old ideologies and end the decline? In what ways would it have to be more “advanced,” more scientific? It is not too soon to begin answering these questions. The answers, moreover, cannot come from either religious or secular reasoning. It will take a harshly objective, social evolutionary, approach. Otherwise, the next needed new system could continue to remain only a mystery, an unattainable dream, while all else crumbles around us 

ARE STRESS LEVELS RISING IN THE US?

Stress contributes to the swelling of our medical costs as well as the rising rates of depression, sleeplessness and suicide. It helps to fill our jails. More men abuse their wives and children while some even go berserk and deliberately kill others. Instead of a bright future ahead, the American public increasingly sees gloom, even doom.

In the 1980s and 1990s, most of those social problems were noted with alarm. The academic community went all out to “educate the public” about them---all in an effort to solve them. Finally, however, it realized it was not only unable to solve them but could not even explain why they were proliferating. That left it with no other choice but to give up the effort and focus on other less troublesome subjects and pursuits. From then on, the subject became “politically incorrect.”

The reason why stress is increasing is explained social biologically in Chapter 16.  Amazon provides access to pages and chapters in the book:   

A .  Place: Amazon. the last civilization in your search engine.(Use Bing if there is a problem).

B.   Find photo of book and click on it.

C..  Scroll from cover down to the      Table of Contents and to Chapter 16.