Christmas in Singapore

From Plough

Rising and descending between Venice and The Shoppes amid the rootless evergreens, I realized that I was witnessing a colonization of sorts – but it was not the imposition of Western or Christian values on the world. The West itself had been the first to fall to this new empire without realizing what had happened, leaving behind caricatures of itself and expensive retail chains. Political philosopher Patrick Deneen coined the term “anticulture” to describe this colonizing force – not a nation-state but the unspoken ideology of those currently running our nation-states – that drives global commerce and government, uprooting local traditions in order to sell us newer models of ourselves. Weaken the ties of family, faith, community, and culture, of the particularity that roots us in time and place, and nothing remains but homo economicus, whose only fixed identity is to consume.