It has been obvious to me for a while that Generation X was the last generation to be inculcated with liberal values. And by “inculcated, I do not mean only that we were taught to affirm the truth and correctness of a set of explicit liberal principles. We were trained to perform mental and social liberal acts. Perhaps it would be better to say that we were initiated into a liberal praxis. We are the last to understand liberalism from within.
What do I mean by praxis? Praxis is a reinforcing feedback relationship between theory and practice. Theory guides practice. Practice informs theory. The theory-guided practice informs theory. The practice-informed theory guides practice. Behind this loop, a set of intuitions develops, which move and shape perceptions, conceptions and responses. This intuitive grounding gives practice a reflective lucidity and theory applicability and effectiveness, and both a spontaneous naturalness. Praxis creates a tacit common sense among thinking and doing (and sometimes feeling). In other words, through praxis we develop a faith.
Until a faith develops behind praxis, the theories are only known about. And the actions are executed via memorized mental instructions. The practice is theoretically explained by reciting memorized concepts. The words and actions are stiff and unnatural.
After a faith develops behind praxis the words and actions are animated by something spontaneous and masterful, and they have a grace and naturalness. A person with faith-grounded praxis clearly “knows what they’re doing.” Their hands and bodies act with intelligence. And their minds are deferential. The mind knows it plays a leadership role, but must share credit with the whole being.
The point I am trying to make is that a great many young people I attempt to discuss politics with have been initiated into an illiberal praxis backed by an illiberal faith. They believe what they have been taught to believe about liberalism, from the understanding of an illiberal faith that rules out solidarity and understanding among unique persons, and accepts only shared interests among members of identities. They have been taught criticisms against liberalism and have accepted them uncritically, and are therefore closed to liberalism as a praxis, because it has been rejected as a theory. And against all evidence, they have been taught to interpret their own internalized nihilism, despair and dissatisfaction as caused by liberalism (and capitalism!), when, in fact, this unhappiness is a symptom of their own illiberal faith.
This seems true across the left-right spectrum. Young right-wing post-liberal youth are as smugly contemptuous of liberalism as the “left”-wing progressivists. They each see themselves as confronting an ideological other from the most diametrically-opposing position possible — as utterly opposite as Bolsheviks and Nazis.
From the perspective of this political Flatland, they cannot conceive how they are opposed from outside by something their omniscience cannot conceive, submerged in oblivion, a nothing from nowhere.
The sun is setting on our liberal-democracy. This is not because our institutions have eroded, or because one bad side is ruining everything. It is because we are running out of citizens who know how to participate in liberal-democracy. Liberalism must be inculcated in the young through education, but instead of educating our children, we stashed our children in childcare facilities where they were pacified for convenient management, while their parents dedicated themselves to what matters most in life: their career paths to retirement. The tradition has been broken, and now it is decaying, and the more people celebrate this fact, the faster we rot.