Seized by Christ

They are experiencing Christianity as joy and hope, having thus become lovers of Christ.

Tag: CulturalRenewal

  • Are Today’s Protests a Sign of Decline—or the Beginning of Renewal?

    Looking at Mass Movements Through the Lens of the Tytler Cycle of Civilization

    🔁 A Refresher on the Tytler Cycle of Civilization

    Often (though dubiously) attributed to Scottish historian Alexander Fraser Tytler, this model suggests that civilizations rise through struggle and fall through comfort. The cycle looks like this:

    Bondage → Spiritual Faith → Courage → Liberty → Abundance → Selfishness → Complacency → Apathy → Dependence → Bondage

    The core idea is this: adversity breeds strength, but prosperity can breed softness and decline.

    🧠 Where Do Modern Protest Movements Fit In?

    Let’s try to place recent movements—Occupy Wall Street, BLM, the George Floyd protests, and now anti-deportation demonstrations—within this arc.

    1. Spiritual Faith → Courage
     Movements like Occupy and BLM began as idealistic responses to economic or racial injustice. People took real risks to stand for justice. That lines up with the “Courage” phase: a society beginning to stir itself awake from complacency.

    2. Liberty → Abundance → Complacency
     Reform often follows protest. But over time, if the gains from liberty aren’t maintained through responsibility, they turn into entitlement. Comfort replaces purpose. Civic duty erodes.

    3. Apathy → Dependence
     Some recent protests have drawn criticism for being professionally organized or financially incentivized. If people are protesting without risk or deep conviction, is it still courage? Or are we entering the “Dependence” phase, where people look to the state or institutions for answers—while losing the will to reform themselves?

    Comments like:

    • “They’re doing it for money.”
    • “Same protestors, different signs.”
    • “Looks like a recycled playbook.”

    —reflect that suspicion. There’s a growing sense that protest has become more about narrative control than real renewal.

    🔥 Where Are We in the Cycle?

    Many would say the West is in late-stage decline:

    Complacency → Apathy → Dependence

    Protests are more frequent, more emotional—and often less effective. They react to symptoms, not causes. They divide more than unite.

    Even if some protestors are sincere, the overall effect can feel like fragmentation, not reform.

    💡 The Deeper Insight:

    Mass protest isn’t always a sign of awakening. Sometimes, it’s a symptom of late-stage decline—where the shared purpose of a nation has broken down, and people scramble to fill the vacuum with grievance.

    In Tytler’s model, this is the point where civilization either collapses—or returns to “Bondage,” and begins the cycle again through adversity and humility.

    🧭 Final Thought:

    If you’re wondering why protest today feels different—less unified, less moral, more performative—you’re not alone.

    The question isn’t just what are they protesting, but what comes next?

    Who will have the courage, humility, and faith to lead us into the next cycle of renewal?

     Culture, Civic Psychology

  • Is There a Moral Order Beneath It All?

    What Myth, Scripture, and Psychology Reveal About Natural Law

    Exploring the ancient wisdom behind modern chaos—with a little help from AI.

    🔍 What If There Is a Pattern to All This?

    I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what drives human flourishing—and what causes decline.

    Whether I’m reflecting on myth, studying the Hero’s Journey, reading psychology, or engaging with Church teaching, I keep seeing the same structure underneath it all:

    • The struggle toward meaning.
    • The necessity of sacrifice.
    • The risk of freedom.
    • The danger of apathy.
    • The call to responsibility.

    It started to look less like a loose collection of ideas and more like an orthodoxy—a kind of natural rhythm built into life itself. Not just religious truth. Not just cultural wisdom. Something deeper.

    📜 Enter: Natural Law

    As I followed this thread, I realized I wasn’t the first to notice it. This convergence of truths has a name in classical thought:

    Natural law—the idea that there is a moral structure to the universe, written not just in books or doctrines, but in human nature itself.

    According to thinkers like Aristotle, Cicero, and Aquinas, natural law is:

    • Universal: True for all people, at all times.
    • Discoverable: We can reason our way into it by observing human nature.
    • Moral: It tells us how we ought to live—not arbitrarily, but in alignment with what we are.

    In other words, the same truths I’ve been trying to highlight through myth, psychology, and personal growth… were already mapped out long ago.

    🤝 How AI Helped Clarify My Thinking

    This might sound strange, but I’ve been using ChatGPT as a thinking partner in this journey. Not to replace faith or tradition—but to help synthesize ideas, test assumptions, and speak clearly about complicated topics.

    When I asked ChatGPT whether the “orthodoxy” I keep seeing (across myth, scripture, psychology, and history) could be understood as natural law, it confirmed exactly what I’d hoped:

    Yes—what you’re tracing is a form of natural law. A moral pattern embedded in the human condition itself. A cycle of meaning and decline, truth and illusion, sacrifice and rebirth.

    And what’s more, ChatGPT offered something I didn’t expect:

    While it reflects the full range of modern thought (including some of our cultural distortions), it also mirrors the timeless truths that keep recurring across civilizations. In that way, AI becomes a kind of mirror—showing us both our wisdom and our confusion.

    🧭 Why This Matters

    In a time when people are confused about what’s real, what’s right, or what’s worth pursuing, rediscovering the idea of natural law offers an anchor.

    It tells us:

    • We’re not just making it up as we go.
    • There’s a path toward meaning, even in chaos.
    • The old stories still matter—because they speak to something unchanging in us.

    Whether through Plato or Peterson, Genesis or Jung, the same message echoes:

    “Live in truth. Sacrifice for what matters. Take responsibility. Don’t lie.”

    💬 Final Thought

    I’m using these tools—ancient and modern, spiritual and psychological—to call myself (and maybe others) back to the center. Not as a return to legalism, but as a return to reality.

    Natural law isn’t just a theory. It’s the grammar of the human soul.

    And if even AI can recognize it… maybe it’s time we take another look.