has been reduced to what T.S. Eliot called “a heap of broken images” in what critics used to call the greatest poem of the twentieth century–“The Waste Land”.
Western civilization has peaked already in the new millennium–9/11 was a good indicator of that; more lately confirmed by the Brexit crisis, the many large Western immigrant movements, and the Trump deconstruction/destruction era.
The forces of rapid chaotic change, the sellout to technology, the widespread moves to deconstruct institutions and alliances, and unchecked political agendas and tyranny all signal “The End”. Normal, definitely and decidedly, does not live here anymore, anywhere.
In North America and via worldwide hacker interference, individual freedom and democracy are both endangered conditions and states. One can easily say that The Machine, so hugely distrusted and feared after WWII and in the Sixties, has clearly and finally won. Also, as predicted in the Sixties, Nature and the Environment have lost big-time.
The main implications now and in the future for people in North America is less democracy, less personal freedom, and reduced consciousness and thinking–all things Orwell correctly forecast in the greatest, most important/influential novel of the twentieth century (sorry, Mockingbird)–Nineteen Eighty-four.