Excellent article, I do not usually talk about these things regularly but this time I will give my opinion ... Corruption in politics and representational crises are global and do not occur only in the great countries power of the world. This is because in societies and at a time without great values and ideological anchors it has been easy for money to become the great fetish and it is he, and not politics, that appears as a symbol of identity and prestige. This generates a true commodification of life and certainly of politics itself.
Thank you. Totally agreed.
Let us think how this tragedy happened. (First let's take religion out of the discussion, since people have different ones, and substitute with a 'common value system'.) What really undermines core values (say, the values of the Enlightenment, or 'don't steal,' or 'don't lie'?) Not that people don't intellectually believe them, but the erosion comes when they see others profit by breaking them. Because they naturally think the only way within their power to balance out the unfairness is to loosen their own standards.
One major way moral breakdown happens is how, as a society, economic growth is pursued ahead of all else. Growth is close to gospel in the rhetoric of all major political parties. For centuries, it has been pursued in the West by institutions and individuals, at the expense of all kinds of other priorities, like the environment, or personal happiness. Why? Really?
Because this money system we have demands that growth happen constantly, or the system will implode and the elites in charge are in trouble. If we view money as the tickets to seats in a concert, the political and financial elites first issue more tickets than there are seats in the room (because they benefit immediately from the sale.) Now, later on, they 'find' that they must build more seats before everyone realizes the problem and a riot happens.
So, led by the top elites, the entire society engages in a no-holds-barred chase for economic growth. The result is that, even when this is successful, we are richer but less happy, and our values have been set aside.