Shall the West Pass Too? Whispers from Fallen Civilisations

The period when Spengler published his work (1918 and 1922) was a period of deep pessimism for obvious reasons.

At that time, the Baroque era was actually pretty close, less than 200 years ago.

The medieval era, while atrocious in the aspects you mention, was also the start of the liberation of cities and the beginning of some sort of "somewhat free" commerce.

So it does not surprise me that he'd name it the spring. After all, the spring is not an all-pleasant season.

What does surprise me is that German romanticism in the 19th century would already fall in the winter period. But I suspect that he blames Marx, the revolutions of 1848 for the decline and ignores the staggering achievements in art, literature, mathematics and physics in that era.

Democracy didn't really become a thing until after the Baroque era. Maybe democracy failing will bring us back to the "golden age" of the West, like the medieval/renaissance era.

>I can't help notice how decline of democracy is painted as the 'end of the West', meanwhile Medieval Era was the 'spring of the West'. There is no democracy in Medieval West, there were kings, theocracies, crusades, burning of heretics and women.

That's because what's important is the vector, not the absolute state. Towards the end of the medieval era we saw the emergence of all kinds of positive developments, plus increased prosperity, order, etc. And of course it was followed by the Renaissance.

Similarly, now we see all kinds of degeneration, including the most major: the western countries fall down several steps in the top 10 of GDP, giving their place to Asian countries. The West increasingly loses importance economy wise, and this also means declining standard of living, infrastructure, forward momentum, political discontent (Trump is an example of that), and cultural relevance. It's a slow process, which will take decades or even a century to be completed, but it will be completed.

>So here comes the real question: What is the west?

Historically/Geographically, the Europeans and their ilk in the USA/Canada.

Culturally, the mix of Roman law / Christianity etc as it progressed through to the Renaissance, Enlightenment and on to the 20th century.

Economically, sometimes "westernized" places like Japan and South Korea are included (and Australia/NZ).

In any case, it's mostly: what's not culturally Asian, African, Latin American, or Arabic.

> Culturally, the west now is way more different then the west in 1500 as versus the East today.

Yes, but that's neither here nor there. Physiologically, mentally, etc. a 60 year old is more similar to another 60 year old than to his 5 year old self. But despite that the 60 year old and the 5 year old are the same person - and share their development history.

>Why is it that people start feeling that the west will pass - and that it somehow coincide with demographic changes

Because that's how it happened for other similar cultures/countries in the past. Including for a succession within the west: In the 20th century Britain as an "empire" declined and gave way to the USA, for example.

Also because it has already began giving its place to developing economies that have began to surpass it, and have more momentum.

>US have been through much worse, from the America First nazi sympathizer of the 30s to McCarthyism of the 50s, that's not even mentioning the civil war of the century before that

Those are not "much worse". Those are historical developments in a country with a positive momentum vector and huge development (economic, population, global relevance, etc) during and afterwards.

>We as humans tend to characterize what we're currently moving through as more significant than they are - put it into historical perspective and it could just be a 'nah'

In history few powers (or superpowers) remain in their place for long.

Thanks for this comment.

Spengler referred to the Medieval Era as Spring because that was when what he saw as the key cultural forms first emerged -- such as linear perspective in painting, and soaring Gothic cathedrals - all of which he saw as manifesting a new cultural tendency to reach out to infinity which later seeped into maths and music.

For Spengler, this sense and longing for infinitely wide and profound 3D space marked out the Western individual.

I think what constitues the West is constantly changing. The historical base is Western Europe. If W. Europe and the US diverge in ideology over the next few decades (not necessarily a bad thing) then as a category the West will shrink back to the base. Possibly a bit larger if the EU stays intact or integrates further, as I hope it does.

thanks I look forward to reading it.

Jacques Ellul's 1979 "The Betrayal of the West" [0][1] was way ahead of it's time. You might find it useful during your research.

[0] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/004057367903600...

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Betrayal-West-Continuum-book/dp/08164...

Interesting, and (so far) well-sourced. You picked a good day to post here. For some reason, Sundays is always it's-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it on HN. Every week I see variations around the same theme. It's cool to have the topic covered with reduced scope (societies, not the planet at large), and in-depth.

Which brings me to my questions. One, what is "The West"? Would the French Revolution count as a civilization-wide failure? The Bronze Age collapse? Sea Peoples? The Long March? The Hellenic Era ending? Perhaps this is explained elsewhere, but some clarification would be helpful.

Two, it might be good to cover all of the "false positives" when it comes to predicting civilization collapse. It's been quite the cottage industry over the centuries. Romans were quite concerned with the lack of morals and corruption the Greeks brought them. Many believed that signaled the end of Rome. Why, some of the "new" Romans weren't even sleeping on the ground any more! They were using beds!

Three, and I apologize for so many queries, but "collapse" or "failure", or whatever you're using could also use a bit of definition. The Western Roman Empire collapsed and failed, that much is obvious. But just when that occurred is much less clear. People in Europe thought of themselves as Romans long after modern historians view Rome as being gone. I believe there are a couple of other examples of unclear failures, where the people involved in the failure couldn't see what was happening right in front of them, but none come to mind right away.

Good work. Look forward to seeing more of it!

So far you're on point as far as I'm concerned. I'm eager to see what you have to say about reversing course.

An issue that bothers me no end is the fact that we very well could get out of this mess if we collectively wanted to.

If you've read "The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future" by Oreskes and Conway, what did you make of it? The collapse they portray (and they're not so much saying "this is how it will happen" as just running with an idea) is driven by climate change and a refusal (political and social inability?) of the West to save themselves, if I recall correctly.

You certainly touch on this in your first section, although Spengler and Toynbee discuss other ways for a civilisation to collapse.

IMHO this misses the mark. For me the crux of it is that it's only possible for liberal western values to exist in contexts where most people have enough wealth to not have to seriously worry about their physiological- and safety-related needs.[1] And the reason we're at this level of wealth now is only because we've been unsustainably borrowing wealth from the future, and as per all unsustainable things by definition, sooner or later this situation is going to come to an end. Saying things like climate change or political corruption or whatever might cause western civilization to collapse is accurate, but that's not really a good starting point. There's a bigger pattern here that you should be mentioning.

[1] I realize Maslow's Hierarchy is not an accurate model, but close enough for the point I'm making.

Quite interesting work. My main questions are: What is the West? Which countries? and What do decline and death mean, and what don't they mean?

These, I think, should be established as early as possible, and the ideas of Spengler and Toynbee presented afterwards, with points of similarity and difference with your own definitions highlighted.

Some minor points:

- Section 1.2 begins by discussing a crisis in creativity and the changing relationship between the elites and the masses. But then it switches to a list of "challenges" including aging and growing sovereign debt. This is rather jarring and needs to be reorganized.

- It's very surprising to read that Greek philosophers switched focus from political philosophy to individual virtue once the Macedonians and Romans invaded. All of Plato's dialogues that I've read are about individual virtue. Even the Republic is only fifty percent politics and the rest is about the soul. Aristotle too is very concerned with what the personal virtues are and how they can be cultivated.

I read it, and am still puzzled what precisely you mean by 'the West'. Spengler meant western Europe; is this also your definition? Or do you mean same vague idea, including countries like North America (with or without Mexico?), New Zeeland, Australia? What about South America?

As mentioned earlier, this is a well trodden field whose results depend heavily on how you choose to define collapse or decline. I didn't see any indication of that kind of discussion. Secondly, you seem to make use of historical examples as demonstrations, but without discussing the context around them (if they were even collapses!). There's a huge risk in doing that of making superficial comparisons with no actual basis in reality. This is the trap most works on the subject fall into, because it's almost impossible for any single person to have high level expertise across multiple disparate periods and history of any particular collapse is very much unsettled, expert level territory.

How is it wrong? Too many people in a new environment where they're fish out of water that don't understand the customs will destroy the culture there. It's dilution. Foreign people should be intergrated into society or they'll be outcasts and not understand how it works. My friend got a credit card at 16 since his mom understood the financial system. My family used cash all the time only and I'm far behind because I was raised to hate credit.

In Italy everyone is furbo and lies to get ahead. People rely on honesty in the US, I remember reading a story where an Italian man complained about his room and he got another one, instantly. He was astonished, and said it would never work in Italy since everyone would lie about it.

> To remedy this defect, a new Metasophist University is needed to provide high quality online modules and reliable accreditation to all. We shall thus provide cheap education of the highest quality to all Europeans, while empowering people to explore all domains of knowledge at all ages. This is but a first step to boost creativity, a first volley in our war to ensure the creation of an effective elite.

Sounds like the neo-reactionaries of the so-called "intellectual dark web".

> The central idea is to rent a small amount of land on the coast of Africa for one century, give it a basic constitution and access to EU markets, and ensure legal and physical security.

I mean, it worked well enough for the people of Hong Kong... but what's going to happen once the century-long lease is over?

Honestly not trying to be snarky.

If what you quoted is the dog whistle, what is the decoded message that the in crowd would be hearing?

I really hate this dog whistle crap that I keep hearing. It's like a more intellectual version of 'so what you're really saying is <something you did not explicitly say>'. I don't know how it ever became a legitimate thing to say but I keep seeing it used to brandish anybody, who's opinion is not completely in line with standard left ideology, as some sort of bigot in hiding.

I don't agree so much with the parts you quoted but it should be obvious to a reasonable person that somebody could have those opinions and not be a white supremecist.

It really is scary to me how quickly people will throw around these accusations

Believe it or not, you do not have to be a white supremecist to be sympathetic with

We're already living in an irreversibly ruined environment. You don't notice because you didn't live to see it in its prior state. You never saw half a billion ducks take flight over North America. You never saw, and you will never see, a seasonal salmon migration on the San Joaquin river that can support a fishery catching 11 million pounds per year. My kids have never seen a Sierra Nevada conifer forest that wasn't sterile and dead, and they think forests just look that way. Our society does not have the facility to remember the ecosystems of the past. We just forget and adapt to the new one.

Thank you for commenting. I haven't looked into the groundwater issue -- perhaps a consequence of living in rainy countries to date.

On your second point, I think the big problem is that status is increasingly linked with consumption -- having a large house, relatively new car, frequently travelling, and so on. This link has always been there, but perhaps non-material ways of obtaining status have declined (religious vocations, public service, etc.)

Spot on!

The decline of West was invented as a tool to mobilize certain groups of Western population, just like any cultural and/or political narrative.

To name one obvious narrow prejudice: The prosperity in China was brought by market economy and Western corporation mechanisms. The rise of China is the rise of West. And often cited as one indication of the decline of the West.

No, society does not necessarily make large technical progress during overturnings or revolution. Rome is a case in point. Western society slid into nearly 1000 years of stagnation.

At any rate, culture is far more foundational than you suppose and it's very difficult to get right. And when a culture has become corrupt or toxic it is very difficult to get anything of value done at all.

Thanks for commenting, and sorry for that side-effect. I don't experience it myself anymore, and that may be due to exposure.

I guess to solve the issues you need to tolerate staring them in the face for quite a while!

To repeat what I said below: I'm personally optimistic -- I think the ideas are there to avoid protracted decline and there's also a historical awareness which most previous civilisations didn't have.

Thanks for this comment.

I'm personally optimistic -- I think the ideas are there to avoid protracted decline and there's also an awareness which most previous civilisations didn't have.

Many thanks for this remark. That scenario is unfortunately within the realm of possibility -- indeed in a later chapter I will address the topic of climate.

But there are other ways of failing which I think also need to be insured against -- hence my engagement with the cyclical models of history, to see what insight they have to offer.

Thanks for your comment. I'm agree with your second sentence.

For the first, I would shy away from discussing rise and decline in purely geopolitical terms. I'm more referring to internal aspects of decline -- social cohesion, creativity, quality of governance, and so on. It's possible to be in relative geopolitical decline but culturally and economically quite vibrant e.g. with Austria-Hungary between 1866 and 1914, and I wouldn't say they were in decline then.

Thanks for this comment.

To repeat what I said below, I would shy away from discussing rise and decline in purely geopolitical terms. I'm more referring to internal aspects of decline -- social cohesion, creativity, quality of governance, and so on. It's possible to be in relative geopolitical decline but culturally and economically quite vibrant e.g. Austria-Hungary between 1866 and 1914, and I wouldn't say they were in decline then.

Some countries (or at least their governments) are also starting to reject the Western secular cultural template -- Turkey, Pakistan, Hungary, and Poland.

Thanks very much for this detailed and rigorous comment.

I have already read part of that book (along with the book review), but haven't finished it yet. I find that model highly plausible, and think it offers useful insights into what is happening today (even though there is a major difference between the agricultural societies which provide all of his cases, and the modern situation).

I will address the overproduction of elites theme in the chapter on selecting and training a new elite. My central innovation is to try to create an alternative to top-down elite selection and training. Essentially, requiring an aspiring elite member to work with others in small groups at a young age, after which their performance would be peer assessed -- which determines whether they could enter the elite. I hope that this could dissolve the tendency of hierarchies to select people who look/think/talk just like themselves, and thus create an elite more reflective of the diversity in society. This component of the elite would be numerically limited (1 per 100, or 1 per 200).

I address the issue of inequality in other chapters. One idea follows from the above: if the groups above choose to spend their time together to form companies, then some of the shares should go into a Public Equity Fund, in which each citizen would have an account (a fair exchange in return for facilitating the activities of the group). This would mean that everyone would benefit from the formation of new companies. More details on all this in the coming weeks.

This is mostly true -- but knowledge, perhaps that can persist.