The Test of a System: What Are We Becoming?
“The test of every religious, political, or educational system is the man which it forms. If a system injures the intelligence it is bad. If it injures the character it is vicious. If it injures the conscience it is criminal.” – Henri Frédéric Amiel
Across time, civilizations have risen and fallen not just by external conquests or economic collapses, but by internal moral decay. At the heart of every enduring culture is the individual – the kind of man or woman it produces. Today, we must confront a grim reality: the kind of man modern systems are producing is far from noble.
Over the past century, a quiet yet devastating transformation has taken place. Influential powers – oligarchs, corporate media, technocrats, and ideological engineers – have slowly reshaped religious, political, and educational institutions. The change has been so gradual that many fail to recognize the full scope of what has been lost.
From Character to Personality
As Stephen Covey illuminated in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, the American cultural ethic shifted from the Character Ethic to the Personality Ethic after World War I. Where once success was defined by integrity, humility, patience, and adherence to moral principles, the new paradigm focused on image, manipulation, and shallow techniques. The result? A society more concerned with appearance than substance, more interested in self-expression than self-discipline.
Technological Simulations and the Disappearance of Reality
Jean Baudrillard warned of a world overtaken by hyperreality – a simulated version of the world so pervasive it replaces the real. In the postmodern world, reality is whatever can be simulated, branded, and commodified. Children are more emotionally attached to video games and avatars than to family. Experiences once defined by real interaction are now consumed through screens. The soul, once the seat of deep personal reflection and meaning, is distracted into oblivion.
The Education Crisis
Education, once meant to form free-thinking citizens of character, has been inverted. As Arthur Schopenhauer said, education “perverts the mind” by replacing observation and discovery with indoctrination. Instead of teaching children how to think, the system increasingly teaches what to think, aligned with materialist, humanist, and relativistic ideologies that omit God, virtue, and truth.
The Cultural Drift from God
Where God once served as the moral compass of nations, today we see Him replaced with idols of entertainment, technology, and self-worship. Avraham Gileadi warns of this prophetic pattern: that nations that abandon divine law are eventually consumed by their own corruption. The divine center has been supplanted by artificial ones.
The Manufactured Citizen
Oligarchs and centralized powers now use data, media, and algorithmic control to shape a new kind of citizen – one that is distracted, disoriented, and detached. The markers of civilization, as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, are not its buildings or GDP, but the kind of man the country turns out. By that standard, we must now seriously question the direction of our culture.
A Call to Reclaim the Real
This is not merely a political or cultural critique – it is a spiritual alarm. We stand in a bi-polar war zone: reality versus simulation, truth versus illusion, the soul versus the system. Those who live by the “law of the farm,” who practice patience, virtue, and truth in daily living, will increasingly be seen as out of touch, even strange.
But as Mark Twain reminded us, “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”
Let us pause. Let us reflect. And let us resist. Because if a system is destroying the intelligence, injuring the character, and dulling the conscience of a people, it must be named for what it is: criminal.
And then we must build something better.
