'Shrinking' Civilization

As a student of psychology, I've spent decades peering into the murky depths of the collective psyche, watching humanity stumble from one self-caused catastrophe to another, driven by the same primal impulses that should have been tamed—and sublimated—long ago. Civilizations rise, bloated with hubris, only to collapse under the weight of their own contradictions, like a child who builds a tower of blocks only to kick it down in a tantrum, a Tower of Babble, if you will.

The current situation in the United States, teetering on the edge of a dystopian abyss in 2025, is no exception. The tribal mindset, the reptile brain’s panicked clawing for dominance, has once again overridden the higher faculties of reason, compassion, and unity, on a mass scale. As usual, it is fueled by, in a nutshell, the legacy of Jim Crow in the face of mass immigration and, with it, visible, palpable evidence that Caucasians will soon compose less than 50% of the US population. This alone explains so many of the things the Trump administration has said and done. Now, though, the neo-confederate, neo-fascist, authoritarian crackdown that Trump hsa triggered is also fueled by the sinister ideologies of figures like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Thiel’s in-house philosopher, Curtis Yarvin, and other billionaires, centi-millionaires, and over 80% of evangelical Christians.

The Musk-Thiel-Yarvin vision is explicated in the “Dark Enlightenment” aka the neo-reactionary movement (abbreviated to NRx), an anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian, and reactionary philosophical and political movement that favors a return to traditional societal constructs and forms of government such as absolute monarchism and cameralism. Influenced by libertarianism, the movement advocates for authoritarian capitalist city-states which compete for citizens. It is also a grotesque resurrection of eugenics and hyper-racism, dragging us toward a future where surveillance, coercion, and exclusion reign supreme.

That proponents of the Dark Enlightenment are in the White House signals a cultural decline, rooted in a eugenicist, hyper-racist vision that echoes historical atrocities. This is not just a political crisis but a psychological and spiritual one, a failure to find meaning, and shared meaning, that threatens to plunge us into a new Dark Age. Carl Jung and Viktor Frankl, whose delved into the human need for meaning and purpose, offer a lens to understand this unraveling, and a path to redemption.

Civilizations, like individuals, have a lifecycle—birth, growth, decline, and death. They emerge from a shared vision, take collective action based on faith in the vision explicated by the leaders and masses, make history by growing and influencing their neighbors—one way and another—to become dominant, only to stagnate when fear and division take hold.

The tribal mindset, rooted in the reptilian instincts of survival and dominance, thrives in times of stress, reducing complex human societies to us-versus-them binaries. It has been great at sustaining ethno-states, like…(I could go on), in which all citizens can identify with the ancient tribal god or ideology, and project all of the evil men do onto the “other.” This is the shadow of the collective psyche—those unacknowledged fears and desires that fester in the unconscious, erupting as violence, oppression, and scapegoating.

Today’s America, under the sway of Trump’s second term and his billionaire allies, is a case study in this regression. The PayPal Mafia (Thiel, Musk, and their ilk), alongside ideologues like Steve Bannon and Yarvin, are exploiting this primal fear to dismantle democracy and erect a techno-feudal autocracy. Their rhetoric of “making America great again” is a thin veil for a dark agenda: a return to hierarchical, exclusionary systems that prioritize a self-proclaimed elite while condemning the rest to subjugation.

The administration, both in 2016 and again today, is obviously working to ethnically cleanse as much of the US as it can of any residents without citizenship, 90% of whom are from Mexico, Central & South America. Unable to reduce the number of African Americans, it is removing Blacks from jobs in government, and removing them from government websites, such as the one listing heroes of color buried at military cemeteries which, in its own way, is just as despicable as anything else the administration is doing. based as it is on hatred.

It seems many an aggrieved white man wants to bring the US more into alignment with the context of The Handmaid’s Tale, and the theocrats who have played an increasingly central, active role in government since the GOP-SBC alliance in 1980 is making that happen, as per The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. The story takes place in Gilead, a totalitarian regime that emerged after environmental disasters led to a collapse in birth rates and a period of turmoil. Gilead is a patriarchal society ruled by fundamentalist religious leaders. Women are stripped of their rights, denied property ownership, careers, and even the ability to read. 

The evidence is out in the open. Trump’s cabinet selections and policy priorities—mass deportations, slashing social safety nets, scapegoating minorities and LGBTQ communities, and undermining education—echo the eugenicist ideologies of the early 20th century, which sought to “purify” populations through exclusion and control. These policies aren’t just political; they’re psychological warfare, designed to inflame the tribal instincts of fear and othering. The appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health & Human Services Secretary, pushing to revoke proven vaccines, and a Thiel-connected “herd immunity” advocate at the Center for Disease Control, signals a deliberate rejection of collective well-being in favor of a Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest ethos.

This regression is amplified by the revolving door between government and corporate power, a mechanism that fuses state authority with private greed. Figures like Dick Cheney, who funneled Iraq War contracts to Halliburton, and Trump, whose presidency enriched his own enterprises, exemplify this collusion. Thiel and Musk, with their vast wealth and influence, have taken this to a new level, using their control over technology and capital to shape policy and public perception.

Their vision rejects democracy as a failed experiment, advocating for a monarchy-like system where a CEO-king rules with absolute authority. This ideology, dressed in the jargon of “hyper-racism” and “assortative mating,” is, more or less, a modern eugenics program, aiming to engineer a society where a “genetically self-filtering elite” reigns over a fragmented underclass.

Societies thrive when they balance tradition with innovation, unity with diversity. But when fear dominates, as it does now, the collective psyche fractures, and the creative vitality that drives progress withers. The United States, once a melting pot of ideas, is becoming a boiling cauldron of divisions, where misinformation and propaganda—amplified by Musk’s control of X and Trump’s TruthSocial, to say nothing of enemy cyberwarfare—drown out truth. Of course, so many people willingly entered and continue to get their Pavlovian rewards in the bubble of FoxNews or one of its copycats.

The “Trump Contagion,” as some have called it, is a psychological epidemic, spreading despair and paranoia through constant lies and distortions. Gen Z, the digital natives who’ve grown up in this toxic environment, are particularly vulnerable. Surveys show 20% of them have considered suicide, and 40% feel hopeless about the future.

From a Jungian perspective, this is the peril of an unintegrated shadow. When a society refuses to face its darker impulses—greed, fear, the lust for power—it projects them outward, creating enemies where none exist. The Dark Enlightenment is a textbook example, rationalizing racism and authoritarianism as “scientific” solutions to a perceived crisis of white male dominance. Yarvin’s vision of “Patchwork cities” run by corporate overlords, backed by Thiel’s investments in projects like Praxis and seasteading, is a dystopian fantasy of escape from the collective. The psychological mechanisms at play are painfully familiar. Authoritarian control, as Steven Hassan’s BITE model illustrates, manipulates Behavior, Information, Thought, and Emotion to reshape identity. Trump’s administration, with its purges of independent officials and replacement with loyalists, operates like a cult, demanding absolute allegiance and punishing dissent.

The “Neuromesh,” a hypothetical AI-driven surveillance network, is the logical endpoint of this mindset—a panopticon where every citizen is monitored, controlled, and sorted according to the whims of the elite. There’s a deeper layer to this tragedy: the spiritual impoverishment of a civilization that has lost its connection to the transcendent.

Viktor Frankl’s central thesis is that humans need meaning in life, especially when they are suffering. In Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl recounts his Holocaust experiences, noting, “Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’” (p. 104). When meaning is absent, or meaning lies only in the satisfaction of base desires, sensual and egotistical, in a “McGenocide” culture of consumerism and imperialism, the soul starves, and the shadow takes over. The obsession with wealth, power, and control embodied by Thiel, Musk, and Trump is a desperate attempt to fill this void, but it only deepens the emptiness, prompting an accelerating or intensifying of the modus operandi. So, what can be done?

Watching humanity stumble yet again, I urge a return to the principles of true power, peace, and love—not as platitudes but as psychological necessities. True power lies in creation, not destruction; it’s the quiet strength of compassion and clarity, not the hollow bluster of coercion. “Collective Discernment” will unmask the false power of authoritarianism, exposing its fragility.

Peace, our natural state, requires us to cultivate inner stillness, to resist the frenzy of tribal conflict. This means building “frames,” psychological boundaries that protect our sanity and allow us to reconnect with the simple joys of life: a flower, a song, a loved one’s presence. Most crucially, love is our greatest weapon against the shadow. By seeing the other as oneself, we dissolve the divisions that fuel violence and oppression.

The PayPal Mafia’s eugenicist fantasies threaten to plunge the world into a new Dark Age for the many (and a Die-Off for many more), with a lovely, Great Gatsby-esque era for the 0.001%, short-lived and succeeded by life in an oribiting space station, as long as that lasts, and only if they make it there, in the midst of massive climate chaos. Despite this “bottom line” of survival now threatening humanity and all life on Earth, civilizations can evolve as well as devolve and break apart, just as individual minds can evolve to higher wisdom, to a higher level of consciousness. By confronting our collective shadow, and acknowledging our fears, greed, and tribal instincts, we can integrate them and move toward wholeness. This requires collective action: demanding transparency, banning warrantless surveillance, restoring institutional independence, and fostering community through art, dialogue, and mutual care.

Humor, too, is a weapon as well as a refuge. Satire and mockery can point out the greed, racism, shortsightedness, stupidity and absurdity (as well as the heartlessness) of the powerful, reminding us that their façade is transparent. Humor in the face of oppression and tyranny is a vital mental shield. It defies despair, transforming pain into shared resilience. Laughter weakens the oppressor’s hold on one’s mind, fosters hope, and sharpens perspective. It becomes a rebellious spark, empowering the group to endure and resist.

“The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real” (The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, CW 9i, para. 14).

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a psychological framework outlining human motivation in a five-tier pyramid. At the base are physiological needs (food, water, shelter), essential for survival. Next is safety (security, stability), followed by love and belonging (relationships, community). Esteem needs (respect, recognition) come next, driving personal achievement. At the peak is self-actualization, where individuals realize their full potential and seek meaning. Maslow later added transcendence, connecting to something greater. Unmet lower needs, like safety or belonging, hinder higher growth, explaining why tribal fear in 2025 blocks collective meaning-making, fueling division and despair.

Erikson’s Stages of Growth Pyramid
Erik Erikson’s psychosocial development theory outlines eight stages across the lifespan, each a conflict shaping identity:

• Infancy involves trust vs. mistrust, building security.

• Early childhood addresses autonomy vs. shame, fostering independence.

• Play age focuses on initiative vs. guilt, encouraging purpose.

• School age tackles industry vs. inferiority, developing competence.

• Adolescence confronts identity vs. role confusion, shaping selfhood.

• Young adulthood deals with intimacy vs. isolation, forming bonds.

• Adulthood addresses generativity vs. stagnation, contributing to society.

• Old age resolves integrity vs. despair, finding meaning in life’s reflection.

A manual for self- and nation-saving can be made from the above, outlining how a personal and shared meaning brings minds and people together. Jung’s individuation process—integrating the shadow through self-awareness—parallels Frankl’s logotherapy, which finds purpose in suffering. Frankl writes, “The meaning of life differs from man to man, but in principle it is possible for every man to find it” (Man’s Search for Meaning, p. 101). To avert the abyss, we must embrace true power, peace, and love as psychological necessities. True power creates, does not destroy; it’s the quiet strength of compassion, not coercion. Peace, our natural state, requires inner stillness to resist tribal frenzy, cultivated through simple joys. Love sees the other as oneself, dissolving difference. Jung affirms, “The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed” (Modern Man in Search of a Soul, p. 49).

America stands at a crossroads. The Mideast, the climate crisis, and Gen Z’s despair—40% feeling hopeless, 20% suicidal—mirror our failure to integrate the shadow: greed, fear, tribalism. Somehow, the citizenry must force the government to be more transparent, ban unchecked surveillance, restore institutional independence, foster community through art and dialogue, and start an FDR-type Green New Deal type of program, like the WPA, to get jobs for everyone who needs one, so that everyone can have some kind of gainful employment, that provides purpose (the task of their job, at least).

Satire can unmask the powerful’s absurdity, framing the fight as the People versus the Elite, but meaning it (like Bernie, not like Trump). If we fail, a 2035 Neuromesh police state dystopia awaits, if not endless civil strife, war... But by embracing meaning—through power, peace, and love—enough of us can transcend our reptile brains to build a world worthy of our potential.