From woke ideology to digital disincarnation, Western civilization has been collapsing into total chaos as purpose, tradition, and identity are melting away.
Jonathan Pageau, Symbolic World Press founder and master icon carver, and James Poulos of “Zero Hour” are well-aware — and they understand that the loss of traditional values is directly tied into why Americans are facing such an identity crisis.
“Maybe some of our identity problems that everyone seems to be suffering through has to do with the fact that we can’t understand who we are in a world that is constantly filled with words,” Poulos theorizes.
“I agree,” Pageau answers. “We tend to forget that identity is participation, it’s not actually totally who you think you are, or how you think about yourself, it’s where you are and how you participate in that world.”
“And so, identity is something that you engage in,” Pageau continues. “Participating in the world that you’re in, being a father, being a husband, being a part of your community. When you do that, in practice, a lot of the identity problems just go away.”
On a macro level, something like the national anthem is a great example of where identity is formed — and where it’s been broken.
“The attack on the national anthem that happened a few years ago in all these sports events, that is a sign of identity fragmentation. You know, because identity and being something and participating in something never means that you agree with everything that ever happened in the history of the thing you’re in,” Pageau explains.
“I am Pageau, and I come from a line of people and family, and I’m happy for that, but it doesn’t mean that everything that everybody’s ever done in my family lineage is worthy of praise,” he continues.
However, as we’ve catapulted everything and everyone under the sun into the social media spotlight, identity fragmentation like this has become harder to avoid.
“You create the internet, and you say, ‘This is amazing, it’s going to be like the ultimate library,’ and then as time goes on, the number of books in that library seems somehow to start shrinking, or every book that you pull off the shelf starts to look strangely increasingly similar to every other book,” Poulos says.
“And you look at Instagram and the beauty standards on Instagram. You know they’re trying so hard to say, ‘No, you can be as big of a mutant, you can disfigure yourself as much as possible, and that’s beautiful, too,’ but what’s really happening in the vast majority is just sort of coalescing around this kind of alien-esque, Kardashian-esque,” he continues.
“It’s like when they would do those composites of, you know, ‘We took every race in the world and sort of turned it into one face,’ and it’s kind of becoming that one face. Incredible uniformity,” he adds.
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