Violent riots routinely erupting on university campuses in protest of Ben Shapiro’s lectures galvanized him into proffering an explanation for why the West is ripping itself to pieces.

There are two interrelated mysteries that need to be investigated. One, how did things get so good? Two, why are we ruining it? Our ancestors endured fearful, brutal existences for millennia, subsisting on seasonally-available roots and fruits and fending off frigid cold and dangerous predators. Such was the state of things until fairly recently. Even in the early 1900s, one in ten infants did not reach one year old in the United States. Mortality rates were even higher elsewhere. There was a one percent chance that the mother would not survive the delivery.

Today, mortality rates among mothers and infants have plummeted. The majority of Americans enjoy air-conditioned spaces, ample food, a car, a TV or three. Money can be wired to the other side of the planet in a matter of seconds. Inexpensive goods are brought to your door with the press of a few buttons. Useful information is just a quick web search away. Not only have health and convenience dramatically improved in the United States in comparison to all previous eras of history (and in comparison to most countries today), but freedoms enjoyed are unparalleled.

When a newborn is placed in a bassinet at the hospital, the odds are very good that she will not be sold into slavery or murdered. There’s a strong likelihood that the newborn will live her entire life without fearing arrest for following one religious tradition or another. There are no governmental restrictions on gender or race, no statutes created to give advantage to one group over another. There aren’t restrictions on the number of children we can have, about whom we live and associate with. If you want to open a business, you can do so.

A perfect world does not exist, but we do live in the best world that has ever existed. The signs that we are tearing ourselves to pieces are not hard to come by. Suicide rates haven’t been this high in half a century. Depression rates are soaring. More people are now dying from drug overdoses than from car accidents. Successful marriages are increasingly uncommon, and couples are having fewer children. Subjective impressions take precedent over dispassionate, objective observation. Facts bow to feelings.

The 2016 election was the most contentious in recent US history. Only 36 percent of eligible voters considered Hillary trustworthy; 33 percent considered Trump trustworthy. 53 percent of voters said they would be scared or concerned if Hillary won; 57 percent said the same about Trump. Almost half of self-described liberals said they would have a hard time continuing friendships with people who had voted for Trump. 68 percent of Democrats polled found it “stressful and frustrating” trying to talk with people of a differing political persuasion. 52 percent of Republicans surveyed said the same.

A Gallup poll surveying American trust in basic institutions was disquieting, too. Only one in five people trusts the news. 41 percent trust organized religion; 19 percent trust the federal government; 18 percent trust big business; 9 percent trust Congress. Faith in democracy itself is waning. 40 percent of Americans say they’ve even lost faith in our democracy altogether.

The signs that there is social tumult are not hard to come by: the alt-right and Antifa, the riots and suppression of free speech on college campuses. We can’t watch a football game without arguing about the National Anthem, or worship without wondering which congregants voted for whom. We get increasingly angry over increasingly frivolous debates. The evidence of divisiveness is clear; what’s proven more difficult is finding a compelling explanation for that divisiveness.

Here are some of the popular theories about why we’re tearing ourselves apart:

Economic inequality is among the most popular explanations. The argument goes that a large sector of society feels left behind in a competitive, global market: urban is outpacing the outmoded rural; white collar is eclipsing blue collar; the one percent is grinding down the 99 percent. The remedy to this economic inequality is some form of protectionism or redistribution. But this assessment overlooks the fact that over the past century, the economic trajectory has been positive for all demographics. In 1979, the middle-class comprised 12 percent of the general population. It now comprises 30 percent. The economy at the moment is doing remarkably well, with record-high stock market and record-low unemployment rates of around 4 percent. The Great Depression was a difficult time for most Americans, but it did not lead to the kind of rancor we see today. The social crisis doesn’t appear to be closely linked to money matters.

Racial tension is another common explanation for the turmoil. According to critical race theorists, all the political dysfunction is a representation of America’s racial inequality. Ta-Nehisi Coates argues that Barack Obama was the best and last hope for the black community, and that Trump’s election represents the white man’s revenge, the inevitable backlash and punishment coming to a country that was birthed in racism, built upon slaves, and will continue to be a racist nation. Interestingly, some of Coates’ biggest fans are on the alt-right, a contingency that agrees with his assessment that America is a land where whites are supreme. But racism has existed throughout US history. Who is willing to say that things are worse now than during Jim Crow era?

In 1958, only four percent of Americans were in favor of interracial marriage. Just a few years ago, that figure was 87 percent. In 2013, 72 percent of white Americans and 66 percent of black Americans considered race relations to be positive. Between 2000 and 2013, this statistic remained about the same. As of 2016, 53 percent of Americans thought relations were good, but 46 percent believed relations were bad. Clearly, there’s some kind of disintegration occurring, and racial tension may be a symptom, but it wouldn’t be accurate to call race the root cause of our current social malaise.  

Technology is also a common whipping boy for our social issues, particularly digital communication platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Media theorists and social psychologists argue that social media creates echo chambers where people can filter out opposing viewpoints and interact only with those who agree with their preconceived notions about the world. Those with whom we disagree have become opponents and enemies rather than brothers and sisters. This theory resonates with many, but studies from Stanford and Brown find little evidence for this. Political divisiveness is highest among groups that are least likely to utilize internet or social media, which suggests that our polarization is not a respecter of technology use.

Tribalism is another explanation that’s been posited. Writers like Jonah Goldberg and Steven Pinker argue that Enlightenment principles like rationality, science, and humanism have failed to keep the more tragic, brutal aspects of human nature at bay indefinitely. But why did we deeply tribal humans suddenly embrace science, rationality, and progress? And why are we only now throwing it out the window—rather than a century or two ago?

The popular explanations for the social and political discord, like economic and racial inequality, technology-driven disruption, and tribalism are all problematic and fail to go deep enough. The problem has to do with the abandonment of the spiritual and philosophical foundations that made the West great in the first place. Those foundations are Judeo-Christian and Greek.

The two strands of thought, that each person is made in the image of God and that the world is to be known and explored, became intertwined to powerful effect, creating a culture and institutions unlike the world had ever known: the divine wisdom of Jerusalem and rationality of Athens.

The Hebrews discovered a divine wisdom that provided a deep understanding of morality and meaning. Ancient Greece produced a valuable philosophical tradition and brought it to bear on political institutions. Christianity was the first serious and successful attempt at bringing together the Hebrew and the Hellenist. It carried on the sense of moral purpose and mission of the Hebrews and combined it with the Greek tradition of making its philosophy universal.

The West has been monumentally inspired by Hebrew tradition dating back 3,000 years and an ancient Greek tradition that extends back almost as far. These are deep roots that over the past several centuries have been hacked at—to the detriment of our civilization.

Despite the widespread cynicism toward American political institutions, people tend to place high hopes in presidential candidates and a change in the Congressional majority. There’s a strange but persistent hope that the government can furnish us with happiness. Politics do not produce happiness—nor should politicians promise it to their constituents. We know it’s absurd, and yet we slip into such thinking every election cycle. And politicians are only too happy to play into it.

When Obama was elected to his first term, Michelle Obama proclaimed that her husband could help “fix our souls.” Eight years later, Trump declared, “I will give you everything. I will give you what you’ve been looking for for 50 years.”

The government cannot provide happiness, only protect the capacity to pursue it by ensuring people’s  right to free speech, their right to assembly and worship, and by preventing others from encroaching on their safety or property. But the pursuit of happiness has become tantamount to finding pleasure, release, or financial stability. What the Founders and thinkers from antiquity saw as a means to an end of happiness have become ends in and of themselves.

But before we can talk meaningfully about the pursuit of happiness, we must acknowledge how the understanding of happiness has changed since antiquity, or even since the time of the United States’ founding. Happiness in modern imagination is linked to a fleeting feeling, but how did the ancient Greeks and Hebrews understand it? In both traditions, happiness cannot be divorced from moral purpose. The Hebrew word for happiness throughout the Torah is simcha. The happiness spoken of in the Bible has far less to do with what we want than what God wills. God actually commands that we live in simcha, so the understanding of happiness has far less to do with how we feel—it’s actually something that we can—and have a duty to enact.

The word that Aristotle used for happiness was eudaimonia, which has to do with living life well. It’s not a temporary, emotional high, but the good life.

George Washington understood his cultural inheritance—as did the other Founding Fathers. The Bible and the Philosophers informed his understanding of the world and human affairs, and saw excellent congruity between them on the question of happiness. He brings simcha and eudaimonia together in a letter to the Protestant Episcopal Church in August, 1789. Washington wrote, “The consideration that human happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected, will always continue to prompt me to promote the progress of the former, by inculcating the practice of the latter.”

Happiness is the pursuit of purpose. Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl reminds us that what we expect of life matters less than what life expects of us. A sense of moral purpose impacts life satisfaction, health, and longevity, but only one in four Americans believes in having a strong sense of purpose and in pursuing what is meaningful.  

The internal contradictions, individuals without purpose, and communities without unifying values have created a state of affairs that Western civilization cannot endure forever. Ronald Reagan once remarked that, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” The values that uphold the free society are not genetically passed on, nor passively absorbed through a kind of cultural osmosis. It must be taught to the next generation. We must model a willingness to protect and sacrifice for freedom if we want to pass on that inheritance to our kids.

So what do we do?

We need to revive a sense of moral purpose. The four components that are present in any successful civilization are: 1) individual moral purpose, 2) capacity to pursue individual moral purpose, 3) communal moral purpose, and 4) the ability as a community to pursue it. This might sound abstract and metaphysical, but there are practical ways to bring this about.

The author has turned these four elements into a collection of beliefs he tries to imbue in his two children:

1. Your life has purpose. There is an ultimate meaning to which your life is connected. There’s order to your existence, even if it involves struggle. You get to use reason and your particular talents, and by honing them, you will help bring that about.

2. You can do it. You are born into the freest country to ever exist. It’s an amazing opportunity that many people throughout history would never have dreamed possible. Choose. Build. Create. You’re not a victim of circumstances. Examine yourself and your own shortcomings honestly before blaming society. You’re a human made in the image of God, full of dignity and responsibility.

3. Your civilization is unique. Most humans have lived in squalor for millennia, fearing pest, plague, and plunderer. Tyranny and abuse of power have usually been the rule rather than the exception. Our ancestors endured more pain in just a few years than you’ll probably go through in your whole life—which will probably last far longer than theirs did. Freedom and virtue are not things that emerge from a vacuum or something that you spontaneously created without any reference to the past. You stand on the shoulders of giants: from Bacon to Bach, Augustine to Aquinas, and Socrates to Shakespeare. Learn your civilization’s roots. The journey to Athens and Jerusalem will unveil the ancient sources of your values and freedoms. Embrace them and defend them.

4. We are all brothers and sisters. It is not enough to pursue individual moral purpose. We must be connected to something beyond ourselves. Romantic relationships that flower into meaningful companionship are great; so is friendship as understood by Aristotle: a virtuous friendship in which you selflessly seek the good of the other for the other’s sake. But even beyond committed companionship and friendship, we need connections to civic life. We are a family of brothers and sisters who must work together to invigorate our civilization with moral purpose. We need a common vision. We need to work together, to have a common understanding of liberty. It must be one that allows us to work together and separately, a balance between coerced cooperation and radical individualism.

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