The dark powers that presently govern this world are secretly dedicated to the denigration of character, which they slowly achieve through attrition, glorification of social imitation, and a growing sense of discouragement felt by anyone who sees the promise of humanity slipping away in creeping mediocrity.

Whenever any government anywhere promotes and celebrates the idea of reduced individual responsibility to the point where it becomes a cultural ideal—so that its people are actually thankful to the powers that be for diminishing their own higher possibilities—so dawns a new dark age, which is, as it turns out, the goal of the same dark powers that helped to usher it in.