This book is a diagnosis of the decline of the modern western world. We live in the greatest civilization that has ever existed; it is the safest, healthiest, and most prosperous society in history. Yet, we’re throwing it away. Depression, drug use, and conspiracy theories are rampant while marriage rates, community cohesion, and overall religiosity are fast declining. So, what happened?Here’s an appropriate metaphor: If a frog is put into a pot of boiling water, it will jump out immediately. If, however, a frog is put into a pot of room temperature water which is then slowly heated to a boil over time, the frog will cook to death. This is the argument for how we got to where we are today (and also for why global warming is such a threat, but that’s a different topic.) It has happened slowly, over the course of generations, and now it feels as though the water is suddenly boiling! Shapiro posits that when The United States was first founded, it was on the twin pillars of Judeo-Christian ethics and an Aristotelian belief in the use of human reason to understand the world around us. “The Bible and the Philosopher come to the same conclusion” he writes, “the Bible commands us to serve God with happiness and identifies that moral purpose with happiness; Aristotle suggests that it is impossible to achieve happiness without virtue, which means acting in accordance with a moral purpose that rational human beings can discern from the nature of the universe.”The definition of the word virtue, similar to most words, has changed over the course of time. Whereas virtue was once associated with individual character development, it is now defined as “conformity of one’s life and conduct to moral and ethical principles” (taken from dictionary.com). This new definition is tricky, because who decides what is morally correct and ethical is important. Conforming to that which has been dictated as morally correct is often a recipe for disaster. This is exactly how the atrocities of communism and nazism happened, as the individual was sacrificed in service to the greater good of the nation.Shapiro says that a happy and prosperous society requires “four elements: individual moral purpose, individual capacity, collective moral purpose, and collective capacity.” I also believe this to be true. Human beings need to feel happy with themselves and their individual work towards the betterment of their own lives. They also need to feel content within their communities and to feel as though their contributions to the collective matter. Human beings exist on both planes, the individual and the communal, and must nurture both. In his book, Shapiro takes us on a ride through history, stopping along the way to visit the different philosophers and thinkers who got us to where we are today. It started in Athens, around 2500 years ago with Aristotle and the birth of human reason. This is where humanity first tried to understand the world through an objective lens. Then came Judaism, closely followed by Christianity, and the belief that human beings served a larger moral purpose. While these two pillars of thought were honed and redefined throughout the ages, the next biggest break was the Enlightenment (occurring in 17th and 18th century Europe) which placed the focus on the individual. Up until this point in history, societies had all been mostly constructed around the greater good of the whole. Now, all of a sudden, people began to value themselves. It is no coincidence that this is also around the same time that the industrial revolution occurred and capitalism began. Capitalism is focused on the individual and what that individual can produce. If you can make more than your neighbor, or make something better, than the quality of your life improves. That is how the United States, and by association the western world, grew to become to most advanced and prosperous country in the history of humanity, lifting billions of people out of poverty along the way.If you didn’t know, Ben Shapiro is a conservative political pundit here in the United States and spends a considerable amount of time and energy diagnosing the present political scene. Considering his biases towards the left, he makes a good point about the foundations of their current destructive nature. The Democrats, as they stand today, seem to be throwing away the importance of the individual for the importance of the whole. We can see this in the relentless ‘cancelling’ of people on social media, or how they don’t seem to have a good answer to the question of why there are gay and black people in the Republican Party. The damaging philosophy, as posited by Shapiro, is their dependance on their own subjectivity in relation to the world around them, as opposed to the objectivity of days long gone. “By focusing on self-esteem” he writes, “the New Left could kill three birds with one stone: they could overturn reliance on Judeo-Christian religion, Greek teleology, and capitalism.” When Shapiro says facts don’t care about your feelings, a sentiment often repeated by pundits on the right, this is what he means. He goes on to say how “Religion suggests that ‘your bliss’ does not exist; only God’s bliss does. Greek teleology is utterly unconcerned with your personal definition of self-realization; the only thing that counts is whether you are acting virtuously in accordance with right reason. And capitalism cares far less about how you’re feeling than about your ability to create products and services someone else wants.” This, according to Shapiro, is how the left is destroying the America we all know. Meanwhile, modern Democrats assert that they are intent on dismantling the patriarchal hierarchy of the current system, fighting for justice for marginalized people, and doing away with a system that is unequal. The problem is that they are also correct in their beliefs. Is Shapiro right when he says that the Left is doing tremendous damage to the collective psyche of the country when they ignore the individual in preference of the community, and when they focus on subjectivity over objectivity? Yes. Is the Left right when they say the reason for this is because the community has been racist, sexist, and homophobic since the founding of the country? Also yes.Anyways, whether we like it or not, here we are, boiling. And whether we choose to accept it or not, the warning signs were there. We, as a society, have stopped focusing on individual character development as a route to a more harmonious society. Instead, we have everything we want at our fingertips and it will never be enough, because without virtue, without individual meaning to our lives, no amount of material stuff can make us happy. The same goes for collective meaning, which is equally important. The great Russian writer and thinker Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881) once remarked that “materialist man is far more of a threat than religious man.” Regardless of whether you are on the political left or right, whether you live in the modern western world or not, the lessons here still apply. Society needs people who use their reason and their objectivity to be both virtuous individuals and valuable members of their communities. Whether we return to Judeo-Christian ethics and Aristotelian virtue remains to be seen. Without these things, however, society will surely continue to crumble.