There is tendency to look at the world these days and feel a tad pessimistic. Perhaps hopeful beyond this world, but still despondent about this world. It may have something to do with anti-intellectual relativism, lost virtues, corrupt institutions, new-age gnosticism, technocratic secularism, woke hysteria, hyper-capitalism, godless materialism and transhumanism. That's just for starters. In a more nuance fashion, D. C. Schindler hits on all the issues at the heart of the matter in his recent book, The Politics of the Real:
“There is a basic restlessness, a radical “mobility,” because there is no “anchor” in reality that would present a place of contemplative rest; Instead of real flourishing as the perfection of one’s actual nature, we find a more negative preoccupation above all with safety; Participation, or membership in a reality larger than oneself, is regularly trumped, not so much by the reality of the individual as by the activity of self-assertion; An essentially abstract sense of equality is taken to be a— perhaps the —governing ideal of social existence; Intrinsic meanings and values, which have their roots in actual realities and demand for their recognition the categories of goodness, truth, and beauty, are relentlessly functionalized, identified with what they achieve or produce, and measured by consequences; There is an all-encompassing drag toward materialism, both in the moral/existential sense of the reduction of goodness to economic value and in the properly metaphysical sense of a tendency to interpret “spiritual” realities exhaustively in terms of their material components; A sense of transcendence, in all of its manifestations, is either lost altogether, moralized, or sentimentalized; Cultural forms, and the taste and manners that accompany them, are minimized, held in contempt, or enacted only ironically; The capacity to understand and recognize genuine authority, and the capacity to hold and exercise it (these capacities cannot be separated from each other) disappear, and so authority is generally reduced to power; Political discourse, cut off from reference to the reality of intrinsic meaning that would give it substance and enable genuine deliberation, tends in a formalistic and functional way to the opposition of simple polarities; The profound principle of unity that allows the cultivation of beauty is excluded, and so art tends to fragment into the sentimental (art as kitsch or mere ornament) and the “edgy” (art as political statement)—or both at once; Technology increasingly saturates the culture, penetrating into the most intimate (social relations) and the most significant (work, both manual and intellectual) dimensions of human existence, so that, even when the excitement and curiosity fades and concern begins to set in, the culture can find no substantial resources for resistance; Absent the intrinsic organizing principle of form, there is a tendency toward sprawl in public building and social organization; Architectural style tends to fragment into either pure utility (whether that be measured by economic efficiency or ecological sensitivity) or the purely aesthetic, that is, the intrusion of features that are not only useless but inconvenient and intended only to produce a psychological effect; One witnesses a relentless, collusive effort to deny the essential meanings of things, rooted in the actual givenness of nature; an effort that is forced to go to extremes of absurdity and self-parody; Detached from its roots in the real, language tends to inflate, or to settle into the formulations of (technologically mediated) hip expressions or phrases and words “of the day,” accompanied by a tendency toward hyper-rhetoricization in speech, both public and private; The actuality of human judgment cedes its place increasingly to process, technique, and automation; The “peace” of order is generally imposed, enforced, and repaired through the essentially coercive means of political action, police and military force, and lawyers; Education ceases to be a formation of the person, through his introduction into the tradition, which he is meant to display and pass on in turn, and becomes instead training, the provision of the information and skills needed for individual success; The organization of human affairs, institutions, and collective endeavors tends to take the form of bureaucracy and formalized “management,” whenever it cannot simply be replaced by computer or machine; Philosophy is dethroned by science (and engineering) as the paradigm of human reason; There is a reduction of wisdom traditions to a culture of “scientifically-trained and certified experts”; Natural bonds, or those rooted in nature, are reinterpreted as far as possible from the ground up in terms of contracts (deliberately) entered into by (abstractly) “free” agents; Political authority is reduced to “the state,” which is either relied on in a disordered way (the “nanny state”), insofar as the bureaucratic structures replace the role of “natural” human institutions, or it is rejected as an artificial intrusion into one’s affairs (libertarianism); And finally tradition , rather than unifying a people, becomes a principle of diversity (“cultures and traditions”), and is thereby reduced to a superficial overlay—the seasoning one uses in cooking, the style of dress, taste in music, and so forth.”
There is always a part of us that may decide not to inquire where do we start?!, but to check out entirely! Obviously, this is always the cop-out. The temporal may be an image of the Real, but it's still God's image. The issue is always what is the relationship between the Real and its image. It's not like we can easily integrate them (in the Catholic integral sense or even the Ken Wilber integral sense).
I like to think of the integralists like this sometimes: Take a clear glass of pure water (here is the Real). You can mix in a few drops of lemon. Fine (a proper image). A few drops of lime. Also fine (another proper image). And then there's a few drops of fecal matter. Not so fine (yucky image). Now I would never drink that water! For some, that's what integration can be.
This may be a bit grim on a superficial level, so we always need clear, explicit discernment—and that sometimes means putting things in their proper order. I'll drink from the lemon/lime water, but use the poop to fertilize the lemon/lime tree.
The bottom line is we need to begin with aligning ourselves to the Real beyond whatever cultural or political order we belong to. It starts with us individually before anything can happen. And nothing may happen collectively. We may not even make a dent to our immediate circles, never mind the culture at large, in any measurable way. Yet, there is an immeasurable change of heart in us which will always matter in God's eyes.
Beyond this, it is still essential that we maintain the Christian virtue of hope, and not mistake this hope as belonging exclusively to our own individual salvation or liberation. God's creation will always matter and there will always be the deepest longing for the redemption of the whole world. It is important to keep this in mind, because otherwise the virtue of hope might seem to be in some ways selfish, with us not wanting to take part in history.
The purpose of the earthly city is to provide the conditions which will allow human beings to develop themselves to the fullness of their gifts and in right relationship to the Real. And in this two things are necessary: that we live in fellowship with each other, and that we live in communion with God. However, I would not put this on equal footing: one is always primary; and that is our relationship to the Real is first!
Bruce Charlton recently wrote on his blog:
“There is an alternative way of being Christian - one which offers the possibility of a hopeful attitude to this moral world, and a sense of positive purpose for this mortal life; but it involves regarding tradition, orthodoxy, church, human-groups as being of secondary, not primary, importance. Indeed, I believe that the alternative is a deeper and more validly Christ-derived truth.”
I tend to agree.