Why the U.S. Is a Crazed, Menacing ‘Anti-Society’

I want to love my country. I really do — desperately. I want to respect, love, and like my home country, the US. But the overall direction and glaring inhumanity of American society are making my yearning an ‘impossible dream.’

In reality, the US is not a ‘society’ at all. It’s just… not. Instead, it’s a weird agglomeration of separate ethnic groups, clans, religions, races, classes, businesses, corporations, super-competitive ‘winners,’ and hapless ‘losers’ who are all battling for economic and cultural supremacy — or even just a seat at the table. In truth, the US is the most aggressively antisocial ‘society’ that has ever existed — bar none.

The big question is: Why?

Freedom FROM vs. freedom FOR

Let’s get one thing straight. What is considered ‘normal’ in the US — like our super-permissive stance on guns and gun rights — is, for the most part, seen as highly abnormal and destructive by the rest of the world. Our American notions of ‘normal’ human nature are so twisted and grotesque that most other nations can only stare in horror as they watch America implode. And suffer.

Of course, our bizarre ‘normalcy’ is intertwined with the heavily antisocial slant of our society. At bottom, the US was built on hypocrisy and greed. It was built on slavery and the opposing idea of individual freedom (for White men only, that is) — viewed as freedom from restraint, onerous laws, taxes, etc. But, as is usual in social revolutions, the colonists/revolutionaries went overboard and threw out the baby with the bathwater.

In our zeal to overthrow and reject monarchy, we forgot that society — and especially democracy — depends on citizen engagement and involvement. In our rush to break free of the past, we forgot about (or deliberately suppressed) another all-important freedom: freedom FOR, which focuses on our need and ability to cooperate and work together towards the common good.

Weirdly, in today’s US, there is almost NO concept of the common good. It’s all about individual gain, personal ‘prosperity,’ and monetary wealth — with everyone competing against everyone else for economic and political dominance. Thus, the ‘separate,’ greedy individual is glorified, while social sharing, empathy, and cooperation are derided as ‘socialism.’ (Is it any wonder that so many Americans feel deeply lonely?)

There’s a major, glaring problem with this mindset: all functional societies require social sharing, empathy, and cooperation to succeed and prosper. These qualities and actions are not optional, they are mandatory — IF a society is to truly prosper. Sadly, our founders could not have imagined that industrial capitalism and its twisted spawn, self-centered consumerism, would come to so thoroughly dominate and direct our society. Back then, they still respected the common good and working toward that end.

But, since the modern US rejects or even vilifies the necessary attributes of social sharing and cooperation, the US is increasingly flailing, failing, and collapsing. This is perfectly clear now; it’s shoved in our faces, each and every day.

Antisocial brainwashing is everywhere

Yet most Americans can’t see this, or if they briefly glimpse this truth, they rush to smother it in denial. Why?

As far as I can tell, it’s mainly due to the intensive, relentless ‘programming’ that all Americans experience, which insists the US is ‘the greatest nation on Earth’ and a ‘beacon of democracy and hope’ for mankind. As I’ve written before, in many respects Americans are the most brainwashed people on the planet, and Exhibit A is our belief we are a ‘free people’ living in a wondrous, fair-minded ‘democracy.’

In fact, neither proposition is true. US citizens are far from being ‘free,’ and our society is at best a semi-democracy and at worst an oligarchy (tending toward full autocracy under Trump). But it gets worse. Our self-delusion is so powerful and pervasive that we still believe this is ‘the greatest nation ever’ and the glorious ‘land of the free,’ despite ever-mounting evidence to the contrary.

Indeed, none of this is surprising — rather, it shouldn’t be. The dysfunction and accelerating collapse now spreading through the US are a direct, logical result of our over-the-top individualism combined with our total neglect and abandonment of community, sharing, and social caring.

We’ve gone ‘all in’ on individualism and its crazed alter ego, unrestrained capitalism, and simultaneously have banished social awareness and caring about the common good to the shadows. Over the past decade, especially, these vital qualities have been endlessly scorned. They’ve been relegated to the much-despised categories of ‘wokeness’ and ‘socialism.’

I’m sorry to say it, but for any society to effectively banish social caring/sharing and massively neglect the common good is simply insane. It is a sure path to antisocial madness, conflict, and societal collapse.

It’s a surefire way to create a virulent, toxic ‘anti-society,’ with all its accompanying problems, tensions, social discontents, and violence. It’s a sure way to create and glorify an ‘anti-society’ that must fall apart and fail.

The choice: collapse or a 2nd American revolution

So, exactly what made the US a cruel, menacing ‘anti-society’? It’s an ugly, devastating ‘logical’ progression. It’s due to the totality of centuries of poor choices and all the neglectful, arrogant beliefs we keep holding onto, seemingly forever. The US was built on the dark, misguided foundation of racist super-individualism combined with irrational rejection of the common good as the primary purpose of modern society — and that misguided foundation still rules our society today.

Not only that, but we adore our misguided beliefs (we call this adoration ‘patriotism’) and have no intention of giving them up. Today, surging racism and widespread denial are both rising fast — and intensifying. Therefore, I’m forced to conclude that the US in its current form is doomed to destruction and collapse. The US carries, and keeps expanding and intensifying, the seeds of its own destruction. Only a society-wide ‘second American revolution’ can reverse America’s rapid downward spiral.

It will have to be a revolution based on inclusive social consciousness and deep caring for the common good. It will have to balance the needs of the individual with the needs of the broader society and all its citizens (and the Earth as well).

Yet… yet… as of today, the US is nowhere near such a radical ‘conscious revolution.’ In fact, in the near term, all signs point to further enslavement to crazed individualism and greed, along with accelerating social neglect and politicized cruelty (toward immigrants and BIPOC folks especially).

This being the case — sadly, horrifically — I again assert that, for the foreseeable future, the US will remain a dysfunctional, mean-spirited, and menacing ‘anti-society.’

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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