We hear a lot about brain rot these days, the contemporary term for the condition of cognitive near-atrophy caused by the consumption of low-quality digital slop. The consequences of brain rot include shortened attention spans, hours and days lost to screen addiction, and nonsensical vocabulary undermining anything approaching meaning.

But there is also another, more subtle yet more profound condition going around. I think it should be called soul rot. It’s the feeling of disbelief, disappointment and even depression at the state of the world. The crazier things get, the harder it is for us to process them. The crueller things are, the more we hurt collectively, the more we feel reality unravelling.

I feel soul rot when I hear the bloodthirsty ramblings of US secretary of war, Pete Hegseth. Authoritarianism is both a political system and a personality type. It’s a desire – born of personal defect, threatened egotism or strange trauma recycled as punishment for others – to dominate, and for others to submit to you through violence, all underpinned by ethnocentrism and hatred of difference.

I felt acute soul rot when I read Donald Trump’s declaration, “A whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” Imagine saying that. How are we........

© The Irish Times