Society is burning down. This is what you should do.

I'll admit it. I have been overwhelmed by the news. Keeping up with current events lately has felt like a daunting, impossible task. This year, it really seems like we hit the foobar of headlines. It feels like everything around us is burning. Our house is burning down. Think of the Catholic school shooting in Minnesota, the Mormon church attack in Michigan still smoldering, drone footage of Gaza City reduced to rubble, Charlie Kirk keeling over. And Jimmy Kimmel, back on late night, smirking at us like nothing happened.

Maybe that feeling of helplessness, of the end of it all, takes you forward to a bleak future, a climate catastrophe, AI taking your job, digital IDs and government surveillance, a housing market collapse, or maybe New York City turning into a Marxist fever dream. Take your pick, and enter the Rube Goldberg machine of dysfunctional dominoes falling all the way to Armageddon. Whether you're on the right, or the left, or somewhere in between, many Americans feel politically homeless, culturally homeless, and maybe even spiritually homeless.

A sense that the future is being stolen out from under us by violence, betrayal, by a culture that no longer shares principles or moral values, and we can't vote our way out of it. So, what do you do when your house burns down?

Let's take our eyes off the ashes for just a moment, and let me tell you a story. A very, very old story. Long ago, there was a city called Troy. A man named Aeneas loved his city. He loved his father and his ancestors and religion. He loved his son, who would inherit his homeland. And then, it all burned down.

But Aeneas didn't curl up in the ashes. He picked up his father, grabbed his son, and set sail with a few other survivors. He put out into the deep, and founded a new home, a new nation, a new civilization. This episode is about that. This is how we, like Aeneas, rebuild after the fire.

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Why does our sense of being increasingly powerless, antsy, and disoriented just keep coming back? It's not just that bad things happen. Bad things have always happened. It's that the whole interplay of complex systems we inhabit in our post-industrial age feels rigged, manipulated, gamed by algorithms and politicians who would sell out their grandmother to get on a committee. Gone are the days of Walter Cronkite. When our grandparents could flip on the nightly news and believe it was mostly true, they didn't agree with everything, but they trusted that Cronkite was at least coming from the same place, an America that shared some bedrock-first principles, some generally agreed-upon moral principles.

And now... We've gone from Cronkite to chaos. More choices, less trust. More noise and less clarity. A podcast for everyone. Unity with no one. And it's not just a declining trust in media. It's a loss of faith in the top brass from every kind of institution in our complex social systems. Despair in the ability of any institution in your life to offer security, community, Meaning and purpose. And nowhere is this more apparent than in my beloved Gen Z. The 2024 National Harvard Youth Poll found that only 11% of 18 to 29-year-olds believed this country was generally headed in the right direction, reflecting a significant decline in optimism about the nation's trajectory from previous generations.

Similarly, a 2023 survey by the American Public Media Research Lab. Found that only 36% of youth agree or strongly agree that the United States democracy today can address the issues the country is facing. And when you don't trust the people at the top, it's easy to drift into despair and inaction at the bottom. So, what do you do when your home burns down?

Here's the real danger. A lot of us freeze. The good news is, that reaction actually comes from a good place. We're horrified because good people recoil from evil times. The bad news is, when we go into a sort of collective shock and embrace a passive response as a generation, this is a very, very bad thing for a civilization that is predicated on the active participation of its citizens. Political and spiritual passivity neutralizes the firefighters and almost guarantees the damage will be worse.

38% of Gen Z fits a profile of either dismissive detachment or outright hostile dissatisfaction with our democracy. They're the ones who have noticed Troy burning down, and they blame the system. Interestingly, though, only 7% of Gen Z want to take a hand in burning the cities down themselves. The rest seem to be sitting back and watching. And this passivity is happening even among young Americans who still do have some trust in institutions. For example, when it comes to politics, even though a majority of Gen Z expresses an appreciation for the ideals of democracy, such as the protection of human rights, elected representation, and rule by the people, 63% of American youth fit into a passive appreciation profile.

So, what specific behaviors are we talking about when we talk about passivity, whether from people who hate the system or people who are generally appreciative of the system? Passive behaviors can look like this. First, depending on the For You feed to tell you what matters. Instead of choosing your news, you let TikTok or X choose it for you. It's like outsourcing your brain to the algorithm. Second, relying on social media for community. Thinking your Discord server or your Instagram followers are your tribe.

Spoiler, they won't show up when your car breaks down. Third, low voter turnout and low information voting. Telling yourself, my one vote doesn't matter, and then being shocked and outraged when the politicians you hate keep winning. Fourth, slacktivism.

Liking a post, signing an online petition, buying the bumper sticker, you feel involved, and then being shocked and outraged when the politicians you hate keep winning. But you know you haven't actually moved the needle, even an inch. And number five, doom-scrolling to feel informed.

You think you're researching, but really you're just marinating in despair while your dishes pile up, and your dog looks at you like, bro, can we go outside now? Doom-scroll culture is the ultimate passive response to our urgent civilizational crisis.

And ironically, every one of those passive behaviors It comes from a noble impulse. You want to be informed, you want to belong, and you want to help, because we all know at a very deep and primordial level that, yes, we are our brother's keeper. But the fire, the house burning down all around us, has turned that desire inward, suffocating it instead of fueling action. And that's where Aeneas comes in. Aeneas watched his home burn down, and he had every excuse to quit.

But he didn't. He rebuilt by doing three things, things that every one of us can do, too. He carried his father on his back. That stands for the tradition. As Gustav Mahler said, tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. That means, stop thinking that dad's the enemy because he doesn't get my generation.

Find a living pillar of your community. Find a great thinker or mover or shaker of the West. Seek out mentors who are living or lived the life you want. Aeneas also held his son's hand. That stands for your responsibility for the future. Someone is looking at you, whether you know it or not. What kind of a man do you want to be for your kids, present or future? Forge your character today so they will have something to imitate. And finally, Aeneas trusted the God's direction.

For us, that means the one true God, faith and tradition and virtue. Without it, your compass spins, and you end up burned out, bitter, and drunk on your couch. So, these three things, tradition, the future, and faith, they form the bedrock of rebuilding.

It's a narrative centered around the future tense, not the past. For Aeneas, it was Rome, and for you, that remains to be seen. What kind of a world do we build from here? A lot of that answer depends on the person you are becoming right now, today. St. Augustine put it like this, good societies come from good men who are devoted to the common good as a sacred obligation. For Augustine, a good society can't be crafted by human laws or a constitution alone.

The laws have to spring from somewhere, and they spring from our existence as moral creatures. In a good society, it is first the love of God in each citizen that compels each one of them, in turn, to create the material, social, moral, and cultural conditions needed to draw their neighbors to full human flourishing. The state might be able to redistribute some wealth and provide material relief, but it cannot order men to love God. And their neighbor. That's the principle of subsidiarity.

Rebuilding starts at the smallest, closest level to us, within our own hearts, and builds outward then to our family, neighborhood, city, and nation. You don't fix America by doom posting on X. You fix America by setting your heart straight so that you can rebuild your home, your parish, your neighborhood, and beyond. Now, none of what I am about to say is revolutionary, and yes, I am going to sound like the cringiest motivational poster ever, but sometimes the truth is simple and obvious.

How can we change the world if we can't change ourselves? Here's what that looks like. Personal virtue. So, get your own house in order, literally and spiritually, with fasting, prayer, budgeting, and discipline. Do your push-ups. Yes, I do push-ups. Confess your sins. Go to church. Integrity isn't sexy, but it's the muscle that holds everything else up. Included in that is personal study. Remember that doom-scrolling is a perversion of something good in you. You want to know what's happening in the world.

That's because we're social creatures, and we are responsible for applying our minds to the problems of our day. So don't be a Luddite. Stay informed. But to do that, you will need the third element, your trust tree. We need to have the people we trust. You need friends, your parish, your family. You need trusted news sources, spiritual inspiration. So build that network, and be that guy for others. And finally, we need local engagement. School boards, coaching little league, volunteering, all these things sound really small, until you realize every generation that changed the world started with dads and uncles and moms and aunts and neighbors who showed up.

Now, don't use self-improvement as an excuse to ignore the big issues. Some people treat work on yourself like a get-out-of-politics-free card. Not good enough. Balance both. Yes, fix your habits, but also speak up when evil is shoved down your throat. Building virtue isn't running to the hills. Building virtue is preparation for rebuilding. So, now you've cultivated yourself. You've built up this desire for knowledge and wisdom, and you have virtue, but how do you maximize your noble instinct for truth in an environment designed to To debase you or make you fail.

Again, I'm not suggesting anything revolutionary. On the contrary, much of this is common sense, but I know when I get overwhelmed, I need to hear it again, too. So, let's talk tactics. What do you do when your house burns down? So, first, be discerning in your media. Don't just consume. Filter. Build a small circle of trusted voices. Don't argue with randos in the comments. That's like sword fighting with shadows. Replace doom scrolling with action. Set a timer on your media consumption.

Set an alarm, or two, and set down your phone. I'm talking to myself. Call a friend. Write down three things you can fix in your life today that is not on your phone. The news will still be there when you get back in 10 minutes. Be that cool uncle or the motherly aunt, not the angry picketer. People listen to men and women they trust, not to the picketers screaming with Sharpie signs outside your Starbucks. Influence comes from respect earned over time, not from volume.

Finally, invest in some skills. Learn how to change a tire, and grill a steak, pray out loud, fix your leaky sink. These aren't just chores. They are civilization-building blocks. Every little choice like this stacks bricks for a new city. Or, to continue our Aeneas metaphor, you're pulling the oars, and the ship is one stroke closer to land. It's easy to talk about ancient Troy and forget that our own house is still burning. Take Charlie Kirk's death. The shock was brutal. An assassination that could have, and yes, still might, shatter the movement he started.

It's a story we are still writing, and it could go either way. But here's why I'm hopeful. When Charlie died, people prayed, some for the first time in their lives. Churches filled, communities gathered. It's what I call the Charlie Kirk effect. When evil tried to burn down the house, people didn't just sit in the ashes. They went to mass, they hit their knees, and they turned grief into something constructive. And that is some Aeneas energy right there. That is a narrative based on the future tense.

But even Aeneas' Rome Didn't last. Augustine wrote his City of God after the sack of that very Rome, when, quote, devastation, slaughter, looting, burning, and affliction filled the empire founded by the lost Trojans. But Augustine wasn't shocked. He wasn't passive, he didn't run off to the hills, he didn't wail like Saint Jerome that the whole world perished in one city.

Instead, he saw Rome's fall as just another turn in the customs of war, reminding us that in the same fire, gold glows, but chaff smokes. The question is, will you be the chaff that burns up, or the gold refined by that fire? And yes, we are part of that story. All of human history, and we're still in the middle of it, is a sort of uncovering of the lust for domination and fear behind human empire. That kind of apocalyptic realism feels urgent today, and Augustine teaches us not to deny what's going on or our feelings about it, but to place it within the context of the real end of human history.

We shouldn't react to apocalypse by zipping up our snuggies and putting a Facebook filter on our profile. Christians have an unruffled hope, as Peter Lightheart once put it. He said, because those endings are embedded in the overarching reality of an eternal pilgrim city moving toward an end without end. As the old saying goes, good times create weak men. Weak men create bad times. Bad times create good men. And guess what time it is? It's bad times, which means, you guessed it, it's time for you to be a good man, a great man.

So, pick up your father, take your son's hand, and listen to God. That's how civilizations are reborn, one good man at a time. If you enjoyed this episode, get ready for the next one. Subscribe and hit the notification bell, and don't be passive about it. Share this with your friends.