The Last Carnival Dance

What is happiness? For much of the West, happiness is living in a society that’s like a massive amusement park—a noisy, colorful world where one can get by by hopping from one digital game to another, always young, always having fun, and always entertaining others. The progress of nations can only aim for this ultimate goal. After all, the great dream—“Make It Great Again”—is to expand the amusement park and equip it with even more beautiful and newer rides: if possible, without having to pay for them. Certainly, the land of milk and honey, the Shangri-La, is threatened by villains, terrorists, migrants, and the world’s poor. But let them stay out. A good whack with a baton will be enough to make them flee, or a nice deportation program—an expression of the great charity of Western thought. We have degraded ourselves so much that we have reached our lowest point. The Land of Plenty, Shangri-La—if you look closely—seems more like a ballroom with a broken heater, where worn-out seniors with dyed hair are still looking for a dance partner. With ordinary, worn-out music.