This is contrary to what both Scripture and experience teach us about human nature. The purpose of civilization, in Deneen’s words, “has been to sustain and support familial, social and cultural structures and practices that perpetuate and deepen personal and intergenerational forms of obligation and gratitude, of duty and indebtedness.” In other words, civilization doesn’t exist to make it possible for individuals to do whatever they want to do. To believe that is an anthropological error. A civilization in which no one felt an obligation to the past, to the future, to each other, or to
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