It has become commonplace to bemoan with bewilderment the rising tide of mental health disorders in America, particularly among youth, as though it were a mystery, a cosmic joke played upon an otherwise blameless society. But the trenchant question is not why this is happening, but rather, how could it not? To look at the state of our civilization — if one dares still use that term — and expect anything other than mass psychological disarray, is to misunderstand profoundly the extent of our moral, social, and cultural disintegration.
Consider first the cornerstone of all ordered societies: the family. For centuries, the family served as the nucleus of human flourishing — a source of stability, love, and identity. Today, it is treated as an anachronism, an oppressive relic of less enlightened times, blithely replaced by a hookup culture, online voyeurism, and co-habitation without commitment, all of which undermine the deeper connections that promote emotional well-being. The result could not be more predictable: superficiality, relationships doomed to fail from the start, and a failure of the most essential component of the human experience: to learn how to love and be loved; or that one is even deserving of real, meaningful love, and what exactly that is.
The consequences extend beyond the participants. Children are now regularly born into broken homes, and even those born to married parents are highly likely to experience the heartbreak of divorce. The institution of marriage, once a covenant of permanence and fidelity, has been reduced to an optional one, easily discarded at the first sign of inconvenience. Childhoods — which are called “formative years” for a reason — used to be characterized by a sense of stability and unyielding love, but that’s been replaced with uncertainty, disintegration, and rejection. Worse still, modern parenting has shifted from discipline and guidance to permissiveness and indulgence, leaving children without the stabilizing force they so desperately need to mature, to moderate their behaviors and emotions. A child who is never taught boundaries or accountability does not grow into resilience or maturity, but drifts instead toward behavioral instability, social alienation, and, ultimately, dysfunction. No child has ever self-indulged his way to happiness and metal stability, but far too many have stumbled down that road into lifelong chaos.
And what of religion, that ancient pillar of human existence? For generations, religion provided humanity with a sense of purpose that transcended the self. It reminded us that our lives were not mere accidents of biology but part of a divine narrative, imbued with meaning and guided by moral laws that were not ours to rewrite. We were loved and valued not just by our parents, but by our divine Creator, who — listen to this! — made us in His image! But religion has retreated from public life, and with it, the sense of divine purpose and love that anchored many. In our hubris, we have dispensed with God, imagining that in His absence we would construct a utopia of permissiveness and reason. What we have built instead is a wasteland of chaos and nihilism, where the absence of divine purpose has given rise not to enlightenment but to despair. The moral relativism that accompanies such a worldview has proven itself incapable of sustaining the very virtues — discipline, sacrifice, responsibility — necessary for a healthy society.
Consider also the matter of patriotism. It was not long ago that a sense of national pride imbued Americans with a feeling of belonging to something greater than ourselves. Patriotism provided not merely the fervor of symbolic gestures but a profound sense of civic duty, community, and shared responsibility. It encouraged individuals to see their neighbors not as strangers but as fellow citizens, bound together by a collective destiny and shared responsibility. But now we are taught to hate our country, and therefore each other, and even ourselves. The cultural, political, and academic Left tells half the country that they are victims forever trapped in a world aligned against them — which must do wonders for their self-concept! — and the other half that they are oppressors: racist, sexist, homophobes, heir to a legacy of white supremacy and misogyny. No wonder the erosion of patriotism has accompanied a sense of common purpose! Community has fractured into tribalism, duty has given way to entitlement, and the notion of sacrificing for the greater good has become an object of derision, leaving us atomized, isolated, and increasingly indifferent to, if not outright disdainful of one another.
Even reality itself is under assault. How can anyone properly orient themselves if we can’t even agree on the most basic truths? There used to be objective, pursuable reality, guiding us like a compass detecting true north, but that’s been replaced with self-definition, a process that has transformed identity, and reality itself, into an interminable exercise in narcissistic introspection. The truth has been replaced with your truth and my truth, the latter of which seems always at variance with actual truth. But how can there be trust without truth? How can we trust our own judgment — which is central to mental health — if we can’t even trust the reality of the world around us? Even something as basic, and scientifically provable, and central to our very existence as gender has been destroyed. The once-stable concepts of manhood and womanhood, which for millennia provided not only clarity but purpose, have been replaced by an amorphous lexicon of identities, each more elusive than the last. We expect mental well-being, but then tell boys they might not be boys, and that’s lucky for them, because boys grow up to become men, and men are toxic! Better for the boys to de-masculinize themselves, and girls to take their place; or, if they insist on remaining girls, becoming plastic objects of desire for those very boys who make for such natural predators that they require emotional castration, if not the actual sort. And if that sounds confusing, that’s because it is, and that’s the point. And ask yourself: has this liberated us, or shackled us to confusion, alienation, and an unrelenting pressure of existential self-denial masquerading as self-discovery?
On that point, what does our culture offer us, other than degradation? One is scarcely able to flip through the channels of our entertainment or browse the labyrinthine corridors of social media without being inundated by a relentless parade of hedonism, violence, and consumerism. The message is clear: happiness can be purchased, whether in the form of a new gadget, a fleeting sexual encounter, or the vicarious thrill of indulging in the worst instincts of humanity. The result is not contentment but addiction to these dark sugar highs that provide not nutrition, not peace, but disillusionment. The soul, starved of meaning and direction, cannot thrive on such fare.
And this we call progress! Indeed, the architects of our current disorder — typically those quickest to wonder aloud why we have a mental health crisis — tell us that the family was an instrument of oppression, that gender roles were suffocating, that religion was a tool of subjugation, and that patriotist is indistinct from jingoism. We need not over-idealize. Every family, like any human institution, will have its flaws, true, but they provide comfort and stability. Gender roles, like all societal constructs, can be misused, but they provide clarity and symbiosis. Religion has its burdens, but it also bestows purpose. Patriotism may demand sacrifice, but it unites us. In tearing down these pillars, we have not freed ourselves. We have merely left ourselves exposed to the chaos they once held at bay. It is one thing to critique the walls of a fortress; it is another to tear them down and then wonder why the barbarians have penetrated the city.
And so we arrive at our present condition: a society that, having rejected the comfort and benefits of structure, now finds itself bewildered by its absence. We marvel at the prevalence of anxiety, depression, and despair, but these are not aberrations; they are the natural consequences of a culture that has abandoned its foundations.
What is to be done? Perhaps the first step is to acknowledge the obvious: that the great institutions of human life — family, identity, religion, and even patriotism — exist for a reason. They are not arbitrary conventions but the product of millennia of wisdom and evolution, hard-earned and often painfully acquired. These pillars survived while others failed because they were superior, until we achieved prosperity and determined they we could do without them. They provided the stability and purpose without which human beings cannot flourish. To reject them wholesale is not progress but suicide by degrees.
Let us then discard the facile assumption that our current maladies are inexplicable. They are, in fact, the most explicable thing about us. The true mystery is not why so many suffer, but how, given the state of our society, anyone remains sane at all.
