Step 1: Conscience is ignored
By an act of will - which through repetition will become unconscious habit - the legitimate voice of conscience is brushed away or drowned out with something else - mental shallowness, activity, a relationship, alcohol, sex, fantasy, etc.

Problem 1: Conscience steps up the intensity of its voice.

Step 2: Conscience is denied
The uncomfortable feeling of conscience can not be avoided, so it is re-labeled a "poor self image" or "depression" or "the blues" or some other label that acknowledges the feeling without acknowledging its moral authority.

Problem 2:
No effort to relieve the feeling works because the feeling is never allowed to be connected to one's own personal moral failings.

Step 3: Conscience is projected
Other people or external circumstances are blamed for being the cause of the uncomfortable feeling. Thus conscience increasingly is metamorphosed into hostility (scapegoating), leading to more of the feeling, leading to more projection. Except as mere rhetoric, "loving your neighbor as yourself" becomes a practical impossibility.

Problem 3: Increasing isolation from any deep, meaningful, satisfying interaction and relationships (mate, children, friends, etc.) - since all such relationships must by definition bring pangs of conscience. Yet the sense of isolation is unbearable.

Step 4: Conscience is globalized
The feeling has become so great that the only conceivable cause must be global ______ (capitalism, war, poverty, warming, biblical faith, patriarchy, etc.). Increasing interaction only with people who are at the same stage and whose comradery can only be based on a common cause: to solve the "Big Problem(s)." Though filled with hatred, their sense of isolation is relieved by gathering together over the the commonly reviled scapegoat.

Problem 4 (Final): One such group eventually takes over the government and democracy is swallowed up by tyranny.