thought process based on our existence and purpose in life. ` Ecological degradation linked to human regression. Natural beauty is ruined by human activity: “ … the Louisiana of the novel is an ecological mess …. it shows the peculiar indifference of the strange new breed of Louisianians in the novel. After all, chimp-like creatures do not generally form environmental protection societies.” A world gone mad. Humans in Western countries have lost their grip on reality: “But the world is also deranged … The looniness …. of the 'normal' denizen of the Western world who …. doesn’t know who he is, what he believes, or what he is doing.” Breakdown of communication. People consistently fail to understand each other: “... some literary critics, philosophers, and semioticians … seem hell-bent on denying the very qualities of language and literature that have been held in such high esteem in the past: namely, that it is possible to know something about the world, that the world actually exists, that one person can actually say or write about the world and that other people can understand him. That, in a word, communication is possible.” Decline of the West. Mentally, Western society is moribund. Percy sees the USA “gradually subside into decay through default and be defeated ... from within by weariness, boredom, cynicism, greed, and in the end helplessness before its great problems” while the West is “losing by spiritual acedia”. Devaluation of humanity by science. In the book, Percy is angered by “the widespread and ongoing devaluation of human life in the Western world” which he ascribes to two mindsets: “ Thou shalt not find anything unique about the human animal even if the evidence points to such uniqueness” and “Thou shalt not suggest that there is a unique and fatal flaw in 'Homo sapiens sapiens' or indeed any perverse trait that cannot be laid to the influence of Western civilization”. He contends that humans are unique in being both God-like and tainted by original sin. Bad faith leads to bad outcomes. Percy portrays fatal errors in both religious fundamentalists and secular humanists, commenting: “It is easy to criticize the absurdities of fundamentalist beliefs like 'scientific creationism' — that the world and its creatures were created six thousand years ago. But it is also necessary to criticize other dogmas parading as science and the bad faith of some scientists who have their own