I have to say, this was the revelation of the year to me, if not of the decade. When we will write the history of our current ruling class, with whom I am somewhat familiar because of my professional history, we will see it as the advent of the 'barbarians from within', in the last stages of Western civilization (barring any temporary rejig that may extend our period).
Trump, Musk and Andreessen are the current examples of a consciously non-reflective life; Thiel, a tortured soul, is the exception, though you may not like the direction that his thinking has taken him, but believe me, he does reflect.
Although I follow the neo-civilizationists, I"m a big fan of
@robbertleusink for example, and have done a lot of thinking about it, there is a reason I speak of post-civilization, and the form it will likely take, 'cosmo-localism'.
Essentially, even if our local, (bio)regional, national and civilizational roots remain <very> important, i.e. I am not anti-national nor anti-civilizational, these are crucial layers of our individual and collective self construction, but: single self-reliant civilizations are no longer viable in the long run. Cosmo-local inherently has a planetary (if not a more fully cosmic) dimension. You can only be fully and 'only' civilizational, if the geosphere is the predominant cultural reality, but that ship has sailed. Do you really think that the Chinese, even behind their Great Internet Wall, are not getting the very same planetary influences than people everywhere ?
Civilizational work remains crucial, put only as a part, 'transcend and include', of post-civilizational, cosmo-local, forms of consciousness.