Want to know the single. easiest way to figure out if a culture is dying?
Answer this question: Does the culture as a whole have a united vision of the future?
If the answer is no, the culture is doomed.
Islam as a whole has a very strong vision of the future. The world will be Islamic, united and the infidels put to the torch or converted.
Simple straight forward, all-encompassing.
Christianity has a vision for the future, but it is one of persecution, suffering, cataclysm and the eventual return of Christ.
It does not instill a lot of confidence when the expected outcome for a group is decimation, attrition, persecution and suffering with God finally coming to the rescue after tribulations.
One does not have to be a pop psychologist to see that one group has a “winning” philosophy with humanity, guided perhaps by a divinity achieves their goal and mission, while the other group has a defeatist, I can’t do it God will have to save me attitude.
Leaving the escatologies of these groups behind, if you look at the United States, it has had at various times a vision of the future that was collectively shared.
Manifest Destiny is a big example of it. The spread of the republic was seen as inevitable, and that view was shared by the culture.
Opposing fascism, and communism and tyranny have all been a shared common destiny and attitudes of the culture as a whole. The Space race is another example of a vision of the future.
There is no vision for the future now. None.
Words like hope and change, are not a vision, but a platitude. A cheap salve for what a country really needs.
A global, one world government, although a vision of some liberals, is not a vision for the United States or Europe other than a vision of the country and europe being subjugated.
Without a cohesive shared vision of the future, the culture can not survive.
Western Civilization no longer sees itself as having any place in the future.
