The Book of Quantism
By Darren Cleave
Chapter 20
Social Decline
1
Unrest
When the rejoicing stops, the social decline restarts. The Condition may be subsiding but Socio-Insanity is intensifying. Despite the denial, social cohesion is failing.
The wealthy have completely detached themselves from mainstream society, both politically and socially. They are refusing to contribute towards a system they don’t relate to, and they are defying accepted social protocol. Their lives have become a frustrating display of opulent indulgence as they do exactly as they please.
The less privileged are acting no better. They have become obsessed with wealth and notoriety, at any cost. Those who can, unscrupulously pursue corporate advancement, or conduct avaricious business. Ordinary people happily demean and humiliate themselves in pursuit of celebrity status, willingly sacrificing what little dignity and morality they possess along the way. Areas of high unemployment and poverty, especially in densely populated cities and towns, are submitting to criminality and gang law. Many are finding solace in alcohol and dangerously crude, poorly manufactured drugs. Gambling, prostitution, extortion, and moneylending are widespread and openly conducted.
Critical service providers: teachers, nurses, police, fire-fighters, and social workers, are underpaid, disrespected, overworked, and permanently understaffed.
All levels of society have lost interest and faith in respectability. Even those who have tried to maintain a righteous lifestyle, and practice a degree of social commitment, are losing the will to continue. They are depressed and demoralised, abused and undermined; victims, continually tormented by relentless anarchists whose self-serving sense of entitlement permits them to make unreasonable demands upon a support system they contribute little or nothing towards.
2
Failing Leadership
The political system has lost the faith of the people. Successive governments have promised everything and delivered nothing.
Opposing parties offer no contrasting policies. They are led by spineless pseudo politicians, who hold no conviction and have no authority over their peers and counterparts; career politicians, more concerned with their own interests and those of the powerful corporate giants they surreptitiously serve, than the people they claim to represent.
Manifestoes lack conviction. They are dishonest and deceptive, based on corrupt and deceitful rhetoric. Campaigns are not built on strong policy, not even on the strengths of the candidates; they are dependent upon the systematic discreditation and vilification of the opposition, in the hope of making their own candidate appear the lesser of two evils.
Political frustration is creating resentment, not just towards governments, but towards all forms of authority. Good people are resorting to radical and uncompromising political extremes, adopting conflictive and confrontational militant intolerance.
Many are choosing to resent the capitalist system they once celebrated. They consider it to be out of control and moving towards elitist fascism. The system is being corrupted and manipulated by an unseen global autocracy; oligarchs who sit on piles of hoarded money, guarded by fences, alarms, and security guards, while watching the rest of the population scrabble for pennies. They rule supreme, and get away with their behaviour because they are distant and aloof. The people can see no way of opposing their overwhelming power beyond radicalised, outdated, and politically suicidal liberalism.
True authority has been lost in the endless bickering for supremacy. Idealism could suggest, the most effective leadership would be a form of benevolent dictatorship. Unfortunately, such a scenario would be self-prohibiting, because no individual could possess the capacity to gain supreme power, while retaining sufficient empathic wisdom to apply it rationally.
Industry is focussed entirely on profit. It relentlessly squanders resources on producing merchandise with wasteful and unnecessary planned obsolescence, intended to serve the desires of voracious consumerism. Food production is increasingly substandard. Crops are genetically modified; force grown using toxic chemicals that destroy the soil and kill the wildlife. Animals are intensively farmed and slaughtered on an industrial scale, with little or no concern for their health and well-being. All food is heavily processed and pumped full of preservatives.
Every aspect of modern life is based upon self-promotion and personal gain. It is a mentality of obsessive greed; a practice of mindless egocentricity and vulgar indulgence. Individuals are desperately, blindly, seeking the contentment their Souls crave by indulging in an orgy of mindless consumerism. It is a hopelessly misguided quest to make their lives feel better, and one that almost exclusively depends on making someone else’s life worse.
3
Dominated by The Devil
Other than the few remaining Angels, the population is entirely Demonic. The pseudo passive demeanour has been abandoned and they are completely dominated by the Devil.
The moderate citizens are being forced into isolation, hiding behind locked doors, unhappily surviving in fear and mounting poverty. They feel frightened and abandoned by a system that has failed them; a system that is growing increasingly authoritarian and choosing intimidation over cooperation. Civilians are growing hostile, even towards their neighbours, who are themselves feeling equally aggressive and distrusting.
The young have been raised to feel entitled. They blame their woes on the previous generation. The elderly behave no better, expecting to take far more out of the system than they have ever contributed into it.
The burden of responsibility is falling in the lap of the working class; those who are clinging to the precious illusion of a rational lifestyle, while being forced to subsidise the rapidly expanding number of people who take without giving: the obscenely rich, the inexcusably overpaid. Even the elderly, disabled, unemployed and underpaid are suffering the contempt.
The tension at all levels is palpable and unbearable. The excessive levels of cognitive dissonance are causing distrust to the point of paranoia. People are fixated with their own issues. They obsess over their own agenda and think they are the only person not going insane, while indulging in their own delusion and refusing to address any subject that causes them stress or anxiety.
4
Media Manipulation
The media are owned and controlled by the oligarchy. Not only are they completely failing to report anything realistic or relevant, they are being biassed and purposefully misleading; diverting public attention away from prevalent issues and towards triviality, celebrity gossip, and digressive stories.
The Angels have been blamed for the unrest; accused of creating a passive social environment that is obviously unsustainable; then serving their own interests as it falls into ruin. All of the benefits that Angels have brought to society are being conveniently overlooked. Even those who had once been Angels themselves are denying all knowledge, and baying for Angelic blood with the rest.
The switch from favour to fury is tragic. The moment social cosseting ceased, the egocentric population turned their fury towards what had been the only reliable source of compassion that is now glaringly conspicuous in its absence: the calming influence of Angelic guidance.
5
Power-Shift
Publicly, the government and local authorities are doing a lot of posturing and blustering rhetoric, but they have no idea how to stop the uncontrollable decline. Localised control is being lost to powerful underground groups, and things are getting worse on a daily basis.
The UCC knows there will soon be a power-shift. Violent rebellions, protests, and insurgences will happen everywhere. Once the working classes lose hope, society will lose cohesion. People will unite and form poorly organised rebellious groups, but their vain hopes of overthrowing authority will just add to the confusion. Control will be lost as criminal gangs, working outside the law, rule isolated communities unchallenged. They will terrify the once pampered population by employing vicious tactics; take control of food, fuel, power, water, and all other key resources. Inevitably, without political structure, those resources will also run out, and anarchy will spread like wildfire.
It has happened before, in many places, countless times. The UCC is disappointed but there is little it can do. The end has begun.
End of chapter 20
The Book of Quantism
By Darren Cleave
The Book of Quantism 