A Rush to the End

Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of mankind was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. Genesis 6:5 NASB

Every intent – Was the world so profligate that God had to destroy it?  Was every person filled with corruption, power-hungry, exploitative?  Or was there something else that brought about the end of everything?

If we look at the Hebrew vocabulary, we find something interesting—and terrifying.  The word translated “intent” is yēṣer.  We know this word.  It’s the basis of yēṣer ha’ra, the ego role in me that wants the world my way.  It comes from the root yāṣar, an ethically neutral verb meaning “to form, to fashion.”  It’s one of the central functions of being human—to make the world into something new.  But, of course, that kind of power has another side, that is, to make the world into something new for me!  As the West proceeds along the road of ever more control, a lot of what we are making looks more and more like that world of Genesis 6.  Let’s look at some patterns.

1. Climate change radicals have convinced young people that the world will end in 10 years.  This results in little motivation to change or improve personal or communal life.  According to this political agenda, nothing can stop the degradation of the planet and along with it the extinction of human life.  This produces an attitude of “just take what you can now” since there is no hope for a vibrant future.  The ethical result is a complete fixation on myself.

2.  For generations, corporations have deliberately fragmented extended family connections in order to make work more important than family.  Forced moves, carrot and stick promotions, and financial incentives caused extended family proximity to collapse.  This caused a shift in personal values so that work (i.e., money and status) became life’s primary goal.  An example is our tendency on meeting someone for the first time to ask what they do, not who they are.

3. The economic system of the West recognizes wealth and power as critical virtues, promoting those who reached the top as role models for everyone else (a logical impossibility) and denigrating those who refused to the climb the corporate ladder.  Celebrity status has become the most important symbol of human achievement.

4. The Church has been rendered irrelevant and antiquated, and with it the God of the Bible.  Since the European Black Plague, the Church has played less and less importance in society.  Those functions once the domain of the Church have been taken over by the State which now requires total subservience.  Since the “higher criticism” of the 1900’s, the primary position of the Bible as a cultural ethical authority has been radically undermined to the point where general society doesn’t know, or care to know, what the Bible teaches.  

5. The basic categories of personal identity have been successfully undermined (gender, ethnicity, culture).  Basic physical, emotional, and psychological identification has been replaced (deliberately) by “socio-political” terms that no longer bear any resemblance to actual human reality.  This allows politicians to define us by whatever fits their agenda, keeping everyone in a state of constant fear and confusion.  For the individual, personal choice becomes the touchstone of reality.  I can choose whatever I want—and woe to anyone who thinks otherwise.

6.  The Western consumer/business model, built on the industrial revolution where human beings are replaceable cogs in the economic engine, reached its zenith with the replacement of humans by machines.  The greatest threat to self-fulfillment is artificial intelligence for which there are presently no boundary conditions.

7. The society has replaced values previously based on divine revelation – worth, equality, truth, right and wrong, charity, forgiveness, and the promise of a better life.  God has been exiled from humanity and along with His exile, all sense of greater purpose, community, and interdependence.  We have graduated from “Man is the measure of all things” to “I am the only one who really matters.”

But it has all happened before—at the end of an empire—Rome, the Greeks, the Egyptians, etc.  Once the tipping point has passed, no civilization has ever recovered.

Jonathan Sacks makes a point about this recurring theme in Genesis: “The central message of Genesis is that sexual anomie—the unfettered play of Darwinian forces and alpha males—leads to a society marked by widespread violence.”[1]  What he suggests is that the breakdown of the Judeo-Christian West will not lead to a new AI utopia.  It will lead to factionalism and violence—more and more so until, at last, the house of card collapses.  It’s only a matter of time.

Unless . . .

Topical Index: utopia, Western civilization, yēṣer ha’ra, Genesis 6:5