It’s as if people no longer see life as something that should be organized around a specific vocation, a calling that is their own way of doing good in the world. Everything feels personalized and miniaturized. The upper registers of moral life—fighting for freedom, struggling to end poverty—have been amputated for many. The awfulness of the larger society is a given. The best you can do is find a small haven in a heartless world. Melanie Phillips

The fragmentation of family life damages personal identity and can lead to a catastrophic loss of self-worth. This promotes promiscuity and the inability to form meaningful relationships. Melanie Phillips

These characteristics of irrationality and mind control made Eastern religious manifestations particularly attractive both to totalitarian movements of the Left and of the Right. Which is why the embrace of meditation, mindfulness, and other such practices reflecting “spiritual narcissism” isn’t just a harmless absurdity but part of the West’s ongoing cultural tragedy. Melanie Phillips

According to a study by Dutch researchers, practices such as mindfulness and meditation that are supposed to make people less judgmental and egotistical actually make them more self-centered and narcissistic. Melanie Phillips

A Pew study in 2009 found that people who described themselves as liberal were almost twice as likely to say they believe in astrology than self-described conservatives. Melanie Phillips

When man dumped God and assumed his role, this became the agenda of secular idealists who believed they could create paradise on earth. Stalinism is no more, but its legacy endures in new forms. That secular idealism is today channeled into a range of ideologies, all of which replace the biblical belief in a created world by the intention to create the world anew. Melanie Phillips

The main reason for the West’s embrace of self-destructive ideologies is the erosion of religion, specifically, belief in the Jewish and Christian ethics that lie at the very core of the civilization. Melanie Phillips

Intact opposite-sex marriage ensures children of the persistent presence of their joint biological parents; same-sex marriage ensures the opposite. Melanie Phillips

In 1997, the US Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency reported that the most reliable indicator of violent crime in a community was the proportion of fatherless families. Melanie Phillips