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 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.
The stupidity, the idiocy of the adolescent-adults who frequent the social-amusement park scene—whether they’re 15 or 70—is unmatched. They rush to spend their tickets to ride the various rides, even though they’re always the same, even though the power is starting to go out, even though the mirrors in the House of Mirrors are broken and the Haunted House has holes in the roof. Some are already beginning to realize that perhaps the amusement park is about to close, but they can do nothing against the raucous crowd—shabbily dressed but eager to play.
We move forward quickly but without direction. Illness, death, and grief are to be avoided. So let’s forget about them and keep playing at the Luna Park—and above all, let’s make sure no one ever kicks us out. That would be the greatest horror.
It must be said that all of this is nothing new in the history of humanity.
Not only does religion no longer inhabit humanity, but neither does thought; not only morality, but neither does seriousness.
Thus, the decay of intellects and minds advances amid epidemics and climate change.
At the same time, public debt is growing. We spend money we’ve borrowed—money we’ll have to pay back tomorrow—but who cares if we can go on the roller coaster one more time? When will humanity begin to take things seriously? The problem of Imperial Rome—whose civilization was dissolving just as Ammianus Marcellinus described it—was resolved with the arrival of the barbarians. For Cavafy, they are, after all, a solution, of course. But the walls of the besieged cities still smolder with spilled blood. The problem is that history is not cumulative: each generation is as if it were born anew, as if history were beginning all over again. Hence, by the time someone comes to understand something—if they ever do—it is too late.
Faith in Christ cannot be a festival of romantic love as propagated by certain fringe groups that seem more like they’ve emerged from the hippie movements of the 1960s than from the gravity of death on the cross. The Christian must respond to the questions of our time; he is obliged to do so. His faith must yield deeper insight, understanding, science, and wisdom. For a new apologetics, it is not enough to speak of social justice or human dignity; rather, it is necessary to respond to the profound needs of that modern man who emerged some 500 years ago and who has suffered a painful generational illness at the very core of his being. For those experiencing the burnout of a civilization—can Christ offer them an answer?
We must restore the importance of wisdom in a society where mediocrity and superficiality are epidemic evils, and where the entire paper world burns merrily—amidst death, epidemics, and wars—and dissolves, like a light handkerchief, into a wisp of smoke that soon vanishes, and with it, life departs, never to return.
How to cite this article
Riccardo Colasanti MD. (2026, September 1). The Last Carnival Dance. Rielo Institute for Integral Development. https://riidblog.org/post/01-09-2026/