The Last Generation of the West and the Thin Strand of Civilization

[Stephanie]

links in article at site

SNIP:

January 19th, 2014 - 2:26 pm


Had the Greeks lost at Salamis, Western civilization might easily have been strangled in its adolescence. Had Hitler not invaded the Soviet Union, the European democracies would have probably remained overwhelmed. And had the Japanese just sidestepped the Philippines and Pearl Harbor, as they gobbled up the orphaned Pacific colonies of a defunct Western Europe, the Pacific World as we know it now might be a far different, far darker place.




I am not engaging in pop counterfactual history, as much as reminding us of how thin the thread of civilization sometimes hangs, both in its beginning and full maturity. Something analogous is happening currently in the 21st-century West. But the old alarmist scenarios — a nuclear exchange, global warming and the melting of the polar ice caps, a new lethal AIDS-like virus — should not be our worry.

Rather our way of life is changing not with a bang, but with a whimper, insidiously and self-inflicted, rather than abruptly and from foreign stimuli. Most of the problem is cultural. Unfortunately it was predicted by a host of pessimistic anti-democratic philosophers from Plato and Aristotle to Hegel and Spengler. I’ve always hoped that these gloom-and-doomers were wrong about the Western paradigm, but some days it becomes harder.

Over 90 million Americans who could work are not working (the “non-institutionalized” over 16). What we take for granted — our electrical power, fuel, building materials, food, health care, and communications — all hinge on just 144 million getting up in the morning to produce what about 160-170 million others (the sick, the young, and the retired who need assistance along with the 90 million idle) consume.

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Works and Days » The Last Generation of the West and the Thin Strand of Civilization

 

[bodecea]

I read an interesting essay about WWI, especially the first year. It might have been better had Germany won in those first months with England not even coming into the war. No Hitler, no Soviet Union.

 

[editec]

Reporter:

Mr Ghandi, now that you've been to London and seen it, what do you think of Western Civilization?"

Ghandi:

"I think it would be a good idea"​

Western Civilization will survive as it always has...by morphing into something different.