Despite blisteringly rapid technological advancement, the presence of nihilism looms large over our era and I believe this is because the basic assumptions which underpin global cosmopolitan culture are its inevitable cause. Polite society has quite frankly become deranged, We are no longer able to openly acknowledge obvious truths, such as some cultural structures being generally more stable and prosperous than others over time.
As a South African, I was raised to think of my country as the “rainbow nation”, a grand experiment in multiculturalism. Judge it by any metric you like, that experiment has failed. The harsh fact is that people with vastly different cultural values cannot successfully coexist without the benefit of a superordinate unifying narrative.
Religious faith is commonly mocked today as primitive and unnecessary, even though it held communities together for centuries. A few decades under the progressive world order has created such existential confusion that something as self-evidently real as biological sex is routinely and systematically denied on the altar of empathy and inclusion.
People are nihilistic because in order to get through life without drawing the wrath of both governments and the mobs who buy their propaganda, they must go along with obvious absurdities as if such things were normal. Living under a system which defines progress as inherently good, tradition as inherently harmful, and then demands you ignore the evidence of your own senses will eventually drive even the most resilient among us to despair.
The only way to avoid going crazy is to draw a line in the sand and simply refuse to participate in things you know to be immoral or untrue. This doesn’t require being intentionally antagonistic, but it does mean sticking to your principles in the face of harsh opposition.