Anomie

Anomie is a condition of instability resulting from a breakdown of standards and values or from a lack of purpose or ideals. Social entropy is a measure of the natural decay within a social system. Decomposition of social structure happens when disrespect for people, places, things and even beliefs becomes acceptable by the majority, and condoned by those who pretend to lead society.
When those institutions charged with maintaining order through justice and education become frozen in a state of denial and are no longer able (or even willing) to perform their services to society, then Anomie is no longer a threat but a reality.
 
But what is reality in contemporary (western) society?
Our everyday reality has become so distorted that we dive headlong into the abyss of virtual reality; life is lived staring into little screens and answers to all questions can be found on Google. (Un)reality shows pollute even the most serious television channels, madia reports only that which is likely to increase audience and cinema has become a journey into total phantasmagorical nonsense.
 
Anything goes and nothing matters.
 
Everyone is entitled - Everyone (and everything) has “rights”.
Unions have the right to violence. Corporations have the right to kill you for profit. Strangers have the right enter your country and to usurp your culture and your lifestyle. Politicians have the right to incompetence. Humans have the right to rape and abuse nature (and natural behavior) ….
 
Awareness fosters no dissent.
Everyone is so afraid of losing their “rights”, “possessions” their “status” or their iPhone that they dare not challenge their inevitable transformation into toxic, brain-dead, overweight zombies.
Virtual reality becomes a sort of escape or subconscious sidelining.  
Few have realized that Anomie has begun and no-one wants to face that reality.
 
Natural laws are a certainty.
Gravity will always make the apple fall, the sun will always rise in the East and the entropy of any isolated system always increases.
 
Then there is the thorny question of the survival of the fittest.
In a society that is moving from cooperation and advancement towards conflict and chaos (Social Entropy) it is the individual that ultimately becomes the fittest because society is no longer there to protect the weak, the lame and the lazy.
 
And what about religion?
In a social system caught up in Anomie conflict between religion and liberty is assured.
Contemporary western society has evolved into such a pathetic conglomeration of do-gooders (because everyone has “rights”) that the weakest are devouring the strongest through a complex chain reaction of forced subliminal acquiesce. All the while Islam has evolved into such an acceptable adjunction to our way of life (because everyone is afraid of terrorists) that we agree and even applaud while fanatics devour the moderates through coercion.
 
And me?
I continue to observe this spectacle in wide eyed bemusement and wonder. Occasionally I will get upset or outraged to the point of abusing my keyboard. But overall I am not concerned for myself; I am near the exit and will not witness the final chapter when the little screens eventually lose their pixels and people are forced to stare at the barren world in which they have been a virtual tourist.