Brian LeCompte responded this way to a post on the riots in London. I then responded as written above:
I believe the problem is a loss of the fear of Hell. Nietzsche predicted that when liberal religion destroys man's concept of good and evil, he will be delivered over to his own irrational appetites. That was in reference to the coming world wars of the 20th century. We have yet to see the outcome in the 21st.
Lots of countries besides the UK have social welfare programs and are not faring so poorly in their moral example. What the UK today lacks is a sense of tribal unity. Its best and brightest are fleeing the country for work abroad. The bonds of ethnicity among the remaining are weathered by the large influx of immigrants. The bonds of religion are broken by the inevitable ennui brought on by liberal theology. Recent articles on the gang culture of UK youth point to an influence by American gang culture, with the same slang, music, and dress code here being appropriated there. American gang culture has always provided a sense of belonging in a world where one doesn't belong. The UK youth must feel adrift and lost.
But blame it first on the loss of fear of Hell, rather than on politics. Without fear of loss of heaven and the pains of hell, you cannot expect a population to be anything other than pagan.
One wonders how humans survived the hunter-gatherer stage of cultural evolution. Did the emergent concept of hell get us out of this mess?
Unlikely. The rise of civilizations during the Axial Age and the early formation of related concepts of hell were not known for promoting any resulting civilized behavior between tribes either.
LeCompte was impressed by the high level of violence exhibited by humans during the 20th century. But mass violence such as that is much more likely to be a result of the power given to humans by industrialization than the loss of an ancient religious belief.
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