To finish with the topic of Western value system, I would like to carefully examine the concept that constitutes it core — liberty, and its derivative ideology — liberalism. Ideas of this kind are plaguing our Eastern society very intensely at the moment, and, while clashing with our own long-standing cultural system, I think, are undermining our stability and prosperity.

In the following paragraphs, I will draw some logical conclusions and describe my personal observations that are based on a direct experience with the Western society. Hopefully, reading these arguments will elucidate some things for you and help you interpret them at an alternative angle, which you might have never even thought about. First, let us look at the official definitions of liberty and liberalism. According to Wikipedia (which, by the way, I do not uphold as the ultimate authority), liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed and equality before the law. Liberals generally support individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), liberal democracy, secularism, rule of law, economic and political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, private property and a market economy.

Liberty is one of the most fundamental concepts that is inherent to the human nature. We are able to love only through the freedom of choice. Without freedom there is no joy to any human action. However, a human at any given moment cannot possess the ultimate freedom in everything: his or her actions should respect the established laws and freedoms of other surrounding people. By laws I mean not only written state laws, but rather, to a much greater extent, the spiritual laws, the existence of which I am absolutely sure about.

Spiritual laws are analogous to ordinary physical laws, which we were once learning in school or at a university. For instance, the physical law of gravity implies that if you jump out of a second floor’s window, you will likely break your leg. The spiritual world, though hidden and not seen directly to our eyes, is permeating everything at any given moment, rules our behavior and directs our actions since every action starts with a thought of intention in our mind. In turn, thoughts are induced in the mind by the desires that are the main product of our soul. The soul, just like our physical body, can be either in a good or bad condition. Good or bad are fairly relative terms, but, in the context of a soul, they can still be objectively measured by the mood or by the actions the soul produces. This is just like with the physical body: we feel good and perform well when our body is fit and healthy. In the same way, our soul can either be fit and healthy, or deviate from the norm. We can denote this deviation with a special term — a sin.

In my opinion, the first problem with liberalism is that it opens opportunities for sinning. In other words, everything is accepted, considered normal, and should be “tolerated”. Under this paradigm, which cancels the notion of a norm, almost anything can be morally justified. Say, we want to instill into people’s minds the idea that cannibalism is okay. By intentionally shifting the Overton Window, a government could start the discourse on this topic in the society, sponsor the corresponding scientific studies that human cannibalism is historical and natural, reflect these ideas in the pop culture, and, at the pinnacle of public acceptance, establish policies that allow for different forms of “unharmful” cannibalism, e.g. eating dead people. I think this kind of paradigm shift has already happened with the widespread acceptance of LGBTQ+ movement in the Western society.

Liberalism promotes that there are no rules or a defined norm. In turn, this leads to unpredictable and irresponsible behavior of people. There are no firmly existing virtues, except a government’s written law, which can bind someone to do something. The notions of owe, integrity, consistency, and honesty through conscience are expressed very weakly in people’s minds. People do not fear God and His rules, but only a legal prosecution. Nobody owes anything to anybody. The problem with following only the written governmental law is that it, being imperfectly created by humans, can come in contradiction with the immutable and absolutely perfect spiritual laws. Also, human laws are finite, and fail to cover the infinite abundance of our wonderful existence.

In the liberal system, there is no clearly defined goal (or a role model) for people to strive for, except for material things. At least for me, such a world seems quite dry and nonspiritual. Attaining material prestige is the highest glory. Differences in people are not acknowledged, and everyone is treated equally capable of achieving any dreams. The last statement seems unbelievable for me since the distribution of talent is clearly not uniform between people. People are unable to build useful hierarchies in their social groups based on differences in talent among the group members. People follow the rule: “You are your own boss”.

Under the liberal paradigm, there is an indisputable dominance of the very single liberal idea. Non-liberal ideas are not tolerated and, generally, provoke rage in ordinary people. This issue clearly demonstrates that liberalism, which purports to be omni-tolerant, contradicts itself since, in fact, it does not tolerate ideas outside its circle.

In a society arranged in accordance to liberal principles, marginals are celebrated and promoted more than “retarded” normal people. People that hold to conservative values are considered to be stuck in time and not keeping abreast of “progress”. However, do we really need progress in things related to the human nature, whose basic principles have been around almost unchanged for more than 2 million years?

In the Western value system, the power of money and corporate culture is very strong: jobs are a vital priority in people’s lives. Corporate life expects total conformity and lack of initiative from each individual. Breakage of norms is explained by unsuitability of them for the ever-changing modern society. Nevertheless, I believe this to be a circular argument. If the modern society is exactly defined by and emerged from the breakage of classic norms, then we cannot logically justify such a society and its moral correctness by itself. In other words, why would we need to break norms to create such a society in the first place? How would we justify the correctness and necessity of this shift?

P.S.: When I first published this essay on the previous version of my website, I got the following wonderful comment that I would like preserve here:

Your statements in the sixth paragraph greatly remind me of this excellent article on the Brothers Karamazov, and specifically, the idea that “without God, all things are permitted.”:

https://www.firstthings.com/article/2002/12/ivan-karamazovs-mistake