2011, for many of us, has been predominately characterised by having everything we once cared about and held dear torn away from us - and not merely torn away but snatched, mocked and destroyed by gibbering fools who care for nothing but their own momentary pleasure. Things that we loved for their purity, truth and beauty have been turned into sewage by the very people who promised to protect and cherish them. We've seen ever spark of humanity, every twitch of the rotting corpse of the beautiful civilisation that once gave us Swift, Cervantes and Rabelais immediately extinguished by a world that confuses what it means to be authentic with what it means to be selfish.

Every piece of music that made our souls leap, every connection with a fellow-traveller, every idea that ever spoke to us has become tarnished and poisoned by the cult of immediacy and sensation. Creative acts are now simply opportunities for monetisation, every altruistic impulse is a way of serving advertisements. The idea of "choice" has been cited by politicians and businessmen as a reason to choose not to care.

It's no longer enough to shudder against the onslaught of uninformed speculation - we've developed entire industries dedicated to maximising our exposure to the dribblings of idiots, and another to provide those very dribblings freshly minted and cropped to the requisite number of characters. All of it slewn with the suffocating irony and dog-whistling crowd management lowest-common-denominator dreck that has left us flinching from joyless, spiritless puns and artless references to other nuggets of popular culture that have had any semblance of humanity sucked from them generations ago.

Looking back across 2011, we have been lied to by everyone who has ever pretended to have our interests at heart. We've moved from governments pretending to do the right thing to seeing them pretend to do the wrong thing as a cover for doing something even more wrong. Anyone attempting to speak up for anything approaching meaning has been marginalised, smeared with shit before being effectively subsumed into the same stinking machine they once wanted to smash. We have failed to stand in support, we've bickered, jeered or ignored anyone we've been told to.

It has been the year of the false binary, the cynical requests that we provided detailed and costed alternatives to acts of audacious evil before we earn some "right" to question it. We've seen selfishness and mendacity enclose our memories and pleasures, limit our search for meaning to those which can be sold at an eye-watering profit margin.

2011 was the year we gave up and bought in to the narrative where we settle for losing what we are most proud of unless we lose more. We've redefined education as a state-funded hothouse for junior executive recruitment programmes, we've sold the minds of our children to entrepreneurs and thought leaders. We've turned the pursuit of truth, via art and science, into a disgusting and demeaning plea for money and security.

This was also the year when we learnt the languages of business and finance - quoting thoughtless anti-profundities in the way we used to quote poetry and philosophy. We've watched people live and die by the whims of discredited economic theories, we've let people starve and wither as we've argued for ideas that have been wrong for more than 100 years. We've seen ancient prejudices and jealousies, thought long-managed, re-explode into ugly life. And we've watched on YouTube, pointed and sniggered, as if our own ill-considered opinions are being ratified.

Top amongst the great sales pitches of the year has been the industrialisation of the artesan. Supermarkets pile-high "hand baked" and "authentic" goods, but these are available at an even greater price from airbrushed and idealised "farmers markets". The ecological movement has become a smokescreen for the industries that celebrate inefficiency as if it were some kind of worthwhile goal.

2011 was the year we finally managed to sell love and friendship. Brands start conversations and launch memes, and the potentially beautiful platforms where we spread these to those we care about are able to carefully place the appropriate advertisements alongside them. 

And this year marks the end of outmoded ideas like retirement, curiosity, dignity and mutual support. Solidarity is little more than a hashtag. Even the language of the old left has been plasticised into vague exhortations about the "big society" and "we're all in this together."

And all this is what we used to call the "first world", the supposed exemplar of all that is noble and intelligent about humankind. In less advantaged parts of the world things are also exactly as I have described above, the only difference is that 99% of the population of the world have never known it any other way.

It is traditional to end yearly reviews with an optimistic message for this happiest of all seasons. And it is true that 2012 would have to monumentally suck to have any chance of out-sucking 2011. So we can all be happy that it already shows every sign of doing so. Merry Christmas!

 [This post originally featured a section dealing with the German Brothel Myth, at the time I didn't realise it was a myth but I'm very glad to hear that it is. However I guess it says something about the state of the rest of the year that I didn't notice this until the wonderful @amcunningham pointed it out to me]