The fact that there is a now a single interconnected nearly-global system (The System) of the international, national; and also the functional (mass media, law, health, education, science, military etc) institutional bureaucracies - actually confirms my contention that the life has been drained from systems.
Because The System is not merely life-less, but life-consuming.
The System - and indeed all systems - subordinate and consume not just humans, but animals, plants and mineral planet/ weather/ climate itself - assimilating Life to System requirements and imperatives.
And, strictly, The System is not even a true system; because it is parasitic rather than self-regenerating.
(Systems, like organisms, are defined as being substantially autonomous, self-perpetuating, self-reproducing. Whereas some parasites are not, since they depend to various degrees on a host. They would be defined as either sub-systemic parts-of other true-systems, as with symbiosis; or else destructive of true-systems.)
In other words The System as a whole, predates upon its constituent systems; destroying their autonomy (i.e. their very nature as systems) and extracting their energies.
Thus The System is consuming itself; and actually shrinking - which is why the trend globally has been to destroy nations, agricultural and industrial productivity, and - increasingly - human/ animal/ plant life and the actual structures of 'the environment'.
Consider how 'the environment' - which is a top-down defined and actively-managed abstract concept; has replaced the freedom, self-sustenance, and independence of real 'nature' - such that theoretical-'environmentalism' - in all its major manifestations - is in practice always destructive of actual-nature.
As Christians; we can experience for ourselves how the System aspects of our religion (doctrines and dogmas, rituals and practices, symbolism and structures...) are continually-collapsing: continually losing their power and effectiveness - and it has, so far, been impossible to stop (let alone reverse) this trend.
Traditions are subject to this trend of collapse, but so are all attempts to re-found and innovate new systems of Christianity.
Any apparent success turns out to be at the expense of Christianity as a whole - and short-lived.
This is happening, I believe, because of changes in human nature - especially of human consciousness; because of a divinely-driven development which is a part of God's plan of salvation and theosis.
Systems that worked well with earlier, and different - kinds of people, now don't work as well - or don't work at all.
(This seems to apply to all types of Christianity, in the West.)
In so far as Christian systems remain - they are increasingly material and mundane - and less and less spiritual. Thus the power of systems positively to transform Man has now all-but gone (and where it remains is, as I said, continually ebbing).
Consequently, those who remain inside the Christian (or other religious) systems, and who are actively committed to the systems, have become indistinguishable from the secular in those fundamental respects that matter to The System.
Whether we like it or not (and many Christians do not like it at all, and resist as strongly as they can) positive support from systems is continually disappearing. One may think he has found a supportive niche - but the chances are high that this niche is already dwindling, will not last for long - and will become assimilated to the general pattern of collapse.
Sooner or later, and in the end; I believe all Christians will have system-help stripped-away - and be thrown-back onto an individual relationship with the divine and creation.
He will then need to discover how best to survive, and thrive, on such a basis - or else become drawn onto the non-Christian - which is in practice anti-Christian - side, in the spiritual war of this mortal world.
The choice is between joining the self-destroying ideology of The System; or developing for oneself a faith rooted out-with that System.
Note added: One whose faith is rooted out-with The System and its sub-manifestations (including System-linked churches) - can safely make good use of the remnant Good within the waning niches of once-real Christian churches. But if he has rooted his faith within any institutional manifestation of Christianity; then I predict that - sooner or later - his faith will be in-trouble: either becoming Christian-in-name-only and dishonestly corrupted to the side of System evil while in denial; or having faith lost altogether and by disillusion and despair coming to a direct affirmation of System ideology.
