If my male neighbor decides to wear a dress and put on makeup, this isn't going to cause the fall of western civilisation.
Sigh. Yes it will. Because it is the canary in the coal mine. The real problem is the coal mine.
This is where it helps to be old. Because then you have the benefit of having seen these ebbs and flows of public sentiment before. Having been a stock trader for decades it's very analogous to how the stock market works. First troubling signs begin to appear in the economy. Nothing to panic about, but wiser funds start to get a bit more cautious... perhaps the market is a tad overstretched. This is just enough to get the market to flatten out and perhaps drop a bit. Then pundits and doomsayers begin to warn us about everything that's about to go wrong. And the caution begins to spread, therewith the doomsayer's warnings grow louder and louder, and the market may drop even more.
At this point one of two things will happen, over time the ominous warnings will prove to be much ado about nothing, and the market will resume its march to record highs, or the warning signs will get worse and worse, panic will begin to set in, and the Fed will assure us that it has everything under control... that is until it doesn't. At which point Bear Stearns will go bankrupt, the entire market will panic, and the ma and pa investor at home will be completely distraught about how their 401k just lost 30% of its value in a matter of weeks. This leads to people cutting back on spending. Which leads to companies pulling back on guidance, which leads to the final drop in the market, when everyone realizes that what they had hoped would be the bottom... isn't. But it's this last watershed moment that leads to the "Haines Bottom", when everybody has sold everything that they could... panic is at its most extreme, and there's nowhere left to go but up. But miraculously, civilization doesn't end, and the world continues as it always has, towards a brighter tomorrow.
This type of scenario is true in many aspects of society. It begins with people's legitimate concerns. Then grows as the pundits and naysayers start to weigh in on the inevitable and dire consequences about to befall us, all seemingly fulfilled by a mass shooting here, a judicial ruling there, and wokeism all over the place. Everywhere you look, the ominous predictions seem to be coming true. So the panic increases, and the voices of gloom and doom grow louder and louder.
Once again, one of two things will happen. Either it'll turn out that this was much ado about nothing, or after much hand waving and gesticulating about how western civilization is about to collapse, society will get a reset. We'll realize that things aren't going to get worse, and worse, and worse. It was just one of those moments in the history of societies when things change for the better... in spite of ourselves.
So no, western civilization isn't about to collapse, we're just learning to deal with a whole new paradigm of societal interaction, expression, and acceptance. We're dealing with technology and freedom that our forefathers never dreamed of. Yes, there are gonna be rules and limits that we have to figure out, but they're not civilization killers... they're civilization builders, if we can see our way clear to make them so.
If I can listen to your concerns and you can listen to mine then that's all we need. The yelling... as distracting and concerning as it is, is as Corinthians says, just a clanging cymbal. So don't panic, society isn't collapsing, it's just working things out in a way that isn't all that pretty.
Personally, I think that the future's so bright... that I gotta wear shades.