How West Does Not Decline
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:date: 2022-01-03T22:29:50
:status: draft
:category: faith
:tags: review, cultureWar, blogComment
(my comments on “`Looking Forward as the West Declines`_” by author)
.. _`Looking Forward as the West Declines`:
https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/looking-forward-as-the-west-declines/
Well, it is truly intellectual discourse when you start labelling
your opponents as idiots (the author started with comparing his
opponents with Hitler in first two paragraphs).
Oswald Spengler’s “Decline of the West” is one of the weirdest
books in the area of political science. It really doesn’t looks
like a scientific book at all. Certainly its proposition is not
verifiable/falsifiable, it is not possible to find out whether
its conclusion is false or not. It was wrong in the time of its
publication, because the West certainly didn’t head towards the
decline, but 1918 was in the beginning of the absolute dominance
of the West for the next almost century (at least), where history
of the rest of the world was just unimportant footnotes on the
history of West. This period is also called “The American
Century” which very obviously signifies such decline of the
Euro-atlantic civilization.
Or perhaps it is actually religious eschatological vision of the
doom which will come sometime in future, like century or more in
future, and then I don’t care about it. Certainly it doesn’t
look like the prophecy inspired by the Holy Spirit, it lacks the
basic signs from 1Co 14 or 2Ti 3:16.
Or it is just a blather, where any time you don’t like what’s
going on around you can claim to be The Decline and hoping that
everybody will forget what nonsense you were forecasting when the
situation gets better.
OK, I don’t like this book. Back to your article.
The claims without any evidence, that there is “the collapse of
moral norms and civilizational standards on both sides of the
Atlantic Ocean.” I really don’t like this statement. Let me
dispute this a little bit. Yes, claiming decay and oncoming doom
is popular trope for all preachers of all times, and you can find
it in any eschatological sermon as proof of the Second Coming of
Christ (“`Death Comes Unexpectedly!`_” of course, this is a joke,
but how many sermons, political speeches, etc. are written on the
same pattern of making people worried so they are willing to
accept a medicine suggested by the preacher; after all, that was
the same pattern which made Germans to accept The Final Solution,
because it was claimed to be the only emergency solution against
the destruction of whole nation by Jews; we don’t hate Jews, we
are just defending ourselves!), but where is the actual proof
that the situation in the world actually declines.
I liked the book “`The Progress Paradox`_” by Gregg Easterbrook,
not so much for its conclusions which are rather vague, but for
the large amount of statistical evidence that in every measurable
aspect of life situation in US of 2000 was by far the best ever?
And he was not measuring just a material welfare, but also every
possible social pathologies. “Yes, we are more wealthy, but our
morals are falling apart!” No, there is a long line of social
pathologies (alcoholism, teenage pregnancy, drugs addictions,
divorces, abortions … actual, even when they were illegal, etc.)
where he shows huge improvement against the past.
What if in fact we are living in the thirtiest richest nation on
the Earth? What if the Czech nation has it never ever so good in
any aspect of life, material, moral, or anything else? What if
“[…] all will be well, and all will be well, and every kind of
thing will be well.”?
> As a result, the Old Continent is increasingly populated by
aliens physically residing in Berlin, Toulon, or Leeds, but
spiritually in Anatolia, Punjab, or the Maghreb.
How do you know? There is plenty of evidence that the
accommodation of even Muslim immigrants in Europe is not that
different from the accommodation of Italian and Eastern European
immigrants to America in early 1900s.
> Today’s “United Europe” is light years away from the civilized
and, on the whole, decent community of nations which existed
before 1914.
That civilized and decent community lead multiple wars in the
nineteenth century all over the Europe, and resulted in
the First World War. Decadent and barbaric Europe post-1945 had
one local war (falling apart of Yugoslavia).
.. _`Death Comes Unexpectedly!`:
https://youtu.be/t7kA2idaLCo
.. _`The Progress Paradox`:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FBJDUW/
