western civilization no longer aspires to be something better than what we are

Look at the art, architecture, music, clothing, and style that people strived to create from roughly the mid 1800's to the mid 1900's

It was all beautiful, despite the fact that the vast majority of people were extremely poor and had limited education compared with today

Also people strived to conduct themselves in civilized manner in public and had self discipline to do basic things like beautiful penmanship

Contrast with today, where we have wealth and material comforts and access to knowledge beyond the wildest dreams of decades past

But our culture is lowest common denominator garbage by comparison