Thursday and almost the end of the third week of August 2020. One week to go and— there’s September, the transition month between Summer and Autumn. While the seasons flow past us at a normal pace, they’re about the only thing that still feels normal in 2020.

My mother told me several years ago that she was glad she wasn’t raising kids these days. “You have it much harder than I did,” she said. She was referring to the deterioration of the American culture, which had moved much further Left in its evolution from where it was when she was a young mom. I assume she was thinking there’s lots more to protect your children from these days.

I suppose that every generation watches their cultural norms fade over time as more “modern” beliefs and practices become stronger. New fashions, new technology, new music, new discoveries and new attitudes are introduced. Sometimes cultural shifts are sudden, like when The Beatles became a worldwide phenomenon and every boy wanted to wear their hair long and play electric guitar. Sometimes cultural shifts are much slower, like the acceptance of homosexuality or the election of a black president.

It seems to me that cultural evolution only seems to move in one direction, though, from tradition to liberation, from virtue to corruption, from meaningful to shallow, from order to chaos. It may wax and wane along the way, but it persistently edges away from cultural norms rather than upholding them. It’s the Second Law of Thermodynamics applied to society, exemplified in the difference between The Beatles “Love Me Do” and Cardi B’s “WAP.”

It reminds me of C.S. Lewis’s keen observation in The Abolition of Man.

In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.

In other words, when you abandon universal moral laws in favor of relativism, you fail to educate the heart and are left with men (and women) who behave like animals. Exactly what we’re seeing in cities like Portland with the absolute disregard for human life and dignity.

We’re living in the remnants of what was once a society based on Christian principles. But our culture has largely rejected Christianity, electing to be a pluralistic society where no one can make a superior truth claim. Institutions created in that former culture are now being populated by people who have no idea how to operate in them with integrity and propriety, and it shows. We’ve been coasting on the fumes of what our formerly Judeo-Christian society bequeathed to us, and even those have evaporated.

Can we recover? I’m skeptical. As I said, cultural decline seems to move in only one direction. If Trump is elected to a second term in November, the reprieve we’ve been granted for four years will be extended for another four. But what happens after that?

In my opinion, the only thing that will truly save us from a disastrous end is a return to God.