There are a few ways that a society can implode. One is to lose hope, and stop loving each other, and that is what appears to be happening in many countries that were great powers during the long war, such as Russia and Japan.
Ai Aoyama is a sex and relationship counsellor who works out of her narrow three-storey home on a Tokyo back street. Her first name means “love” in Japanese, and is a keepsake from her earlier days as a professional dominatrix. Back then, about 15 years ago, she was Queen Ai, or Queen Love, and she did “all the usual things” like tying people up and dripping hot wax on their nipples. Her work today, she says, is far more challenging. Aoyama, 52, is trying to cure what Japan’s media calls sekkusu shinai shokogun, or “celibacy syndrome”.
Japan’s under-40s appear to be losing interest in conventional relationships. Millions aren’t even dating, and increasing numbers can’t be bothered with sex. For their government, “celibacy syndrome” is part of a looming national catastrophe. Japan already has one of the world’s lowest birth rates. Its population of 126 million, which has been shrinking for the past decade, is projected to plunge a further one-third by 2060. Aoyama believes the country is experiencing “a flight from human intimacy” – and it’s partly the government’s fault.
The problem here is not merely one of an aged sex worker trying to drum up business. It’s that the society has atomized. The article talks about people stuck in homes, living alone, living into late middle age with their parents.
And when my Mum — in her mid 70s — cannot understand why one of the young men in their mid 20s needs to have his parents help him drive 100 miles, things are wrong. It may be that the end game for hedonism and hedonic marriage is not more and more joyous freedom, but instead isolation, loneliness, despair: for none of us can compete with the fantasies inside our head.
But that is the small power: that is Japan. (In Russia, the problem is not lack of desire but lack of performance: alcoholism is rife). There is a different prophecy for a society that becomes truly Anti-Christian. It does not fade away: it does die in a whimper, it explodes.
21Then a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea, saying, “With such violence Babylon the great city will be thrown down, and will be found no more;
22 and the sound of harpists and minstrels and of flutists and trumpeters will be heard in you no more; and an artisan of any trade will be found in you no more; and the sound of the millstone will be heard in you no more; 23 and the light of a lamp will shine in you no more; and the voice of bridegroom and bride will be heard in you no more;
for your merchants were the magnates of the earth, and all nations were deceived by your sorcery. 24 And in you was found the blood of prophets and of saints, and of all who have been slaughtered on earth.”
Now, this applies to the end times: it is part of revelations, but it also applies to the errors of this time. For we chase spirituality: we look far too often to the pagans and to the occult for ceremonies — particularly the feminist Anti Christian theologians — in a hope that they can, by imagination and fantasy, build another religion and call it Christian, one that venerates women.
And the men then leave, for which they are blamed.
They are told that they have a right to get what they want, to see their dreams fulfilled. They are not told that almost every course worth doing has ten times as many applicants than places: that no one cares about your gender (there is no quota for women, for they win two-thirds of the places in these courses except for advanced math and the daughter disciplines of computer science and engineering).
They are told they can do what they like without consequence, and then are shocked when they find themselves waking from a drunken stupor in the risky part of town, having lost all their jewelry if not more.
This current set of fantasies, this ideology, denies the very existence of evil, placing all blame instead on a class (the patriarchs). In my trade there is a word for this: Projection. So these newly trained young narcissists use whatever tools they have: their youth, their beauty, their intelligence, their social skills and at times chemical aides from the caffeine to methamphetamine to get this qualification, enter this course.
Not knowing that behind that door is a world of putting others before yourself, of laying your life down for those you have taken a vow to help: of limiting your choices to make it safe for others to make choices.
And not understanding that two or three generations of this ideology lead to men leaving. Not marrying, not attending shul or kirk.. And that this path leads to destruction.
So, as men & women of faith: do not ally with Babylon. Mistrust the ideology of this age, which is the collectivist politics of identity, generally called either anti racism or feminism. Women should step back from leadership roles and make a vacuum — for men will not get into fights with you for that brass ring. And perhaps, perhaps, if women feminize, men may masculinize, and we may, perhaps, find each other attractive again, for androgyny is unattractive: most of us want to love a man or a woman, not a castrati.