What is your purpose in life? It is such a simple question, yet practically impossible to understand. But if you ask the western elite, especially those on the left, they are absolutely certain of what the answer is supposed to be - our primary purpose in life is to maximize the production of dopamine and serotonin in our bodies.
The sad truth is, that is a direct result of democracy. Most people are hedonistic simpletons, and their primary interest is fulfilling their primitive animal desires. Who cares about the achievements of civilization or mankind, when one can simply get drunk and have fun with a cheap prostitute. And although manipulable with regards to complex situations and decisions making, simpletons are very hard to fool when it comes to the current status of their own physical well being.
That is the reason why every scientific, cultural, or any other achievement has to be explained in the terms of well being for the common Joe. Sure, we've discovered the miracles of the universe, but what do I get out of it? A food cooker that can cook 10% faster than the one I had before? Well, that kinda sucks, but get me one that can do 20% and I'm all sold for science. Yeah, moon landings, radio waves, that's all cool, but I just want 5 more minutes of slacking every day. Oh, and I'll also vote for the political option that will manage to take those extra 5 minutes of my time away as soon as they can.
There's basically two ways to convince those people to accept short-term suffering for greater long term goals. Logic is not one of them, because those people are often illogical and they usually care only about today. Those two ways are religion and violence, and they both boil down to same thing. You will suffer great physical pain if you do not comply. Whether it be eternity in the fires of hell, or two policemen in a dark room beating the life out of you, great physical pain is reason enough to comply. It works even if the pain is set in the far future, it's just that the further away that future is, the greater and longer lasting the pain has to be.
Now, a democratic state has neither the religion nor physical force at its disposal. And without those two levers, people ultimately become weak, decadent, and spoiled, caring only about their current well being. The morals decay, and hedonism takes over as the prime mover, ahead of valor and virtue that usually go with more repressive systems. The elite seems to have realized this, even though they may not have formulated it yet so concisely. That's basically why NGO's came to exist, in order to provide a replacement religion for the ones we have lost.
Unfortunately, the new religion has kinda missed the point, and is pushing the people in the wrong direction, as it basically explains that physical pleasure is the purpose of life. Here is what Solon from ancient Greece considered to be the happiest life a man could ever live, a quote that is basically incomprehensible for modern mind:
Tellus... had both beautiful and good children, and he saw all his grandchildren from birth and all remaining alive... And the end of his life was most brilliant: for when the Athenians had a war against their neighbours in Eleusis, coming to the rescue and making a rout of the enemy he died most beautifully, and the Athenians had buried him publicly right where he fell, and honoured him greatly.
and here's what the elite thinks is real happiness today:
Life full of purpose. as long as that purpose is on banned substances list.
I'll let you be the judge of which of those two lives you'd rather live.
The moral decay is everywhere. People in the west are barely breeding, they are full of self-loathing and disrespect, and most of them would be absolutely horrified if they'd have to end their life as happy Tellus did. Because death from overdose is just so much less painful than death from a sword. Little wonder it is then, that the west is losing ground to Islam. Islamists have a goal. They have faith. They have purpose. And they're most certainly not afraid to die for it.
What do we have to die for? Charlie Hebdo and champagne? Free sex and drug addiction? Hedonism and self-sacrifice are polar opposites, they are mutually exclusive. All those people who were singing Imagine in Paris would never die for their beliefs. Sure, they all want that, but they would never sacrifice themselves for the rest of the society to get it. And for what reason? Well, simply for the reason that death usually hurts. Their addiction to physical sense of happiness is just too strong. They'd rather die in bed of old age, even though that death may be very long and painful, than they would die on a battlefield for what they believe in. They'd rather be subdued and have the whole civilization fall apart than stand up against evil. It just doesn't cause as much physical inconvenience in the short term.