The most striking aspect of modern secular society, which would have amazed and horrified our ancestors, is the moral inversion by which have redefined bad as good, sin as virtue.
This has happened as part of the modern rejection of Christianity, and as a solution to the fundamental paradox of the human condition – the conflict between spontaneous human desire and spontaneous human morality.
It is, at root, this moral inversion which is causing secular modern societies to commit suicide by a combination of denial of danger and by deliberate policy.
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It seems that our literate ancestors (such as the ancient Jews) all spontaneously recognized that for a person to live according to their spontaneous desires - living primarily for seeking gratification and avoiding (or minimizing) suffering - was morally wrong.
This was so obvious that it needed (and indeed needs) no argument - it is the natural moral law for humans that a life aiming at selfish hedonism is intrinsically wicked: that is wicked as a basic stance, not merely in terms of its consequences (which vary according to specific circumstances).
Yet it was also recognized that at some level, for humans as they are now, it is also natural and spontaneous to be selfish and hedonic.
So there was a conflict between the way that humans were 'set-up' to be self-gratifying and the moral sense by which we knew that this way wrong.
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This was the basic situation, the human condition, as perceived by pretty much all humans throughout history - that of conflict.
And therefore the situation was bleak in the extreme, since there seemed to be no solution.
Of course, all humans also believed (in some sense) in the soul, and its potential persistence after death (in some form, perhaps as a ghost, perhaps in Hades - not the same as hell, perhaps returning to be recycled or reincarnated)
The ancient Jews attempted solution was The Law, which prescribed morality in terms (essentially) of behaviour. If a man could live according to the law, his life (in this world) would be good - although the end was the same for all - good and bad - the ghostly and depersonalized realms of Sheol/ Hades.
However, actually men could *not* live by the law. It was impossible, because of their nature. They could never achieve that to which they aspired. The human condition was tragic.
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This was the basic human situation, about which humans could do nothing, and from which humanity needed to be rescued.
The Christian solution, the Good News, was that God's Grace had provided a solution, since the incarnation meant that God had taken-up humanity; and if a person proclaimed in their heart Jesus as Lord, and repented of his (inevitable) sinly nature, then there would be forgiveness and the soul would (instead of losing humanity in Hades) be granted eternal life with God.
Man's soul after death would become God-like instead of a gibbering, depersonalized ghostly form of persistence.
So, the Christian message is that belief and repentance in this life can lead to a solution of the fundamental paradox, but only in the next world, after death (however this life is temporary, while life after death is eternal).
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For whatever reason, the Western elite ruling class became increasingly atheist from the advent of modernity (?c 1700). Since the elite ruling class disbelieved in the soul, they were this-worldly; and since they were this-worldly they wanted as much satisfaction from life as possible (there being nothing else).
But spontaneous natural morality gets in the way of worldly self-gratification – so spontaneous natural morality must (somehow or another) be rejected.
Yet since morality really is spontaneous, it cannot be rejected.
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So emerged moral inversion: the morality that (contrary to the instinct of spontaneous morality) this-worldly self-gratification is the proper primary aim in life.
From this derives the many specific new ‘Laws’ of modernity; which state that what we used to think was necessary is actually un-necessary, that what we thought was bad was actually good, and what we used to think was good was actually bad.
For secular moderns the only *real* sin is to believe in the reality of sin.
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This is the current situation, this the secular modern ‘solution’ to the fundamental paradox of the human condition – that life in this-world can be, should be, harmonious - *if only* we recognize that our spontaneous self-gratification is actually morally necessary and should be the primary explicit goal of human endeavor.
And because this solution actually solves nothing, and is merely a statement, a wish-that-this-was-so; it has necessarily been embodied in the *coercive* beliefs, practices and laws of atheist totalitarian states (notably the USSR, National Socialism and Communist China) and this process is now advanced in all Western societies (by enforcement of what is termed ‘Political Correctness’).
So the citizens in modern secular societies are not merely *encouraged* to flout the natural morality which they cannot help but feel, they are increasingly *forced* to flout natural morality. They are compelled to live (and to think and to believe) as if hedonic gratification was the primary value in a life which ends with death and extinction.
And there is no hope of resolution in this world, nor the next world (the existence of which is denied).
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Since there is no hope of resolution, the only alternative is distraction – to lose oneself in hedonic gratification: such that intense, continuous self-gratification *obliterates* our awareness of the fundamental paradox.
Despair, distraction, denial, self-indulgence… and if these do not work, then some kind of suicide of awareness.
By this analysis, the Decline of the West is a willed societal suicide driven by the mass psychological consequences of top-down, enforced moral inversion.