What's happening now seems to be the crumbling of Western / American civilisation or the reordering of it. I grew up in the 90s where we were at the calm before the storm. The zeitgeist around that time was one of:

• Anti-religious feeling

• Optimism over the ability of technology and science (i.e. human rationalism) to solve all of our problems

• A feeling of having 'made it' - life was fairly easy, prosperous and unified.

This feeling around that time can be summed up by the political essay 'The End of History?' written in 1992 which argues that "with the ascendancy of Western liberal democracy—which occurred after the Cold War (1945–1991) and the dissolution of the Soviet Union (1991)—humanity has reached "not just ... the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: That is, the end-point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government."

This 1990s period was followed by the 2000s. The biggest event to happen during this period was 9/11 and the beginning of the War on Terror, however, this period continued in much the same vein as the 1990s.

The relevant cultural trends during this period (1990 - 2012) were:

• Shock humour and offensive comedy having no bounds or limits (i.e. making fun of dead people, terminally ill people and anything sacred).

• Glorification of crime, promiscuity and illegal behaviour.

• Routine disrespect of the elderly and any sort of authority.

• Toleration of swearing in public, casual work clothing and a general decline in standard of personal behaviour, etiquette and appearance.

I should say that I fully indulged in all of this nonsense because it's so much fun.

Without wanting to go into the whole cycle of civilisation theory too much, it seems that we have simply deviated from strong standards of social behaviour and that's why we're in such a confused social mess. Asian countries seem to manage to maintain their culture without going into decline simply because they respect their ancient customs of behaviour and the family unit. Simple things like not eating with your hands and not swearing are nothing when considered in isolation. However, when they become the social norm we have the condition we are in today, where politicians swear openly on TV, where people throw the nastiest insults possible at politicians themselves for no particular reason and the whole debate is polluted with insults and a generally demoralising, undignified and vitriolic atmosphere.

Like it or not, the West is founded on Judeo-Christian values. They are the basis for what we consider to be right and decent, even if we've consciously rejected it. Millennials who were born before 9/11 may still have gone to church when they were young and subconsciously imbibed ideas like:

• Do unto others as you would have them do unto you

• Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone

These ideas are more than just words in an old book. They used to teach people very deep things about social behaviour (forget God and the trinity and all of that) that are only the result of generations of people observing their own behaviour. Like most civilisations, we reached a peak of greatness, thought that at this peak we could do without these rules, then seen as constrictions, and then entered a decline as we have no common standard of behaviour anymore. It's becoming barely possible to have conversations with people who disagree with you because we don't even share a common language, as echo chambers fuel ideological thinking and divergence, just as is the meaning of the story of the Tower of Babel.

So if we all read the Bible again we can remind ourselves of those standards of behaviour that keep people from becoming animals. It doesn't mean we have to agree with all of them and it doesn't mean we have to strictly follow them all the time, but the Bible is not just a religious propaganda tool of the Catholic Church. There is a lot of social wisdom in there.

There is another reason why it might be worth rereading the Bible. People have got lost in a kind of delusional state of mind that comes from being very privileged. Many imagine the past to be a kind of utopia where people were simpler, kinder and more enlightened. However, if you read the Bible, you remember that the state of mind that humanity used to be in, where people got their hands cut off for stealing, where women were bought and sold like animals, where people covered in bandages begged for money on the street, where slavery was normal and where people had an attitude to the universe of one of complete subservience, fear and submission. It was a very different state of mind, with much more suffering and limitation. In some ways, that time was literally like the medieval descriptions of hell. We need to remind ourselves how dark it can really get when we don't have good social norms put into practice.

Things like swearing don't have an effect if a minority do it often. However, if everyone in society starts swearing then over time people get more and more agitated, the debate becomes more and more crass and people get ruder and ruder and thus more and more triggered. These effects are difficult to observe because they happen over decades and there's no obvious cause and effect. However, maybe if we read the Bible to remind ourselves of the social standards and state of mind that built this civilisation, then we will have a little more dignity and composure when talking in public, with a little bit more respect for what we are and where we have come from and maybe although we might still face problems and disagreements we wont be reduced to monkeys flinging shit at each other over it all.