A morbid fascination with the decline of Western Civilization
There is something going on in the West. I have been writing about it for the last five years. At its most basic level, it seems to be a culture wide loss of confidence. It is self-imposed, coming from collective guilt of our history, internally and externally, and how well the West has done compared to the rest of the world. Surely we have been exploiters and now the bill has come due.
This has had countless deleterious effects on our society, including the death of meritocracy, both historical and contemporary. And of course, as ever, the grifters pounce on the guilty and the incompetent. In any case, it is undeniable that the West is falling apart. Brick by brick, in sort of a slow motion entropy of the physical and the intellectual.
I have always been a news junkie. In the past, I concentrated my curiosity on politics and business. I would wake up, and couldn't wait to see what had happened. Did Boeing get that big order? It was my curiosity about these issues that kept me going. But today it is different. I have developed a morbid fascination with the ongoing decline of Western Civilization. Today I wake up with a new, fearful curiosity about what fell apart overnight. Did another Boeing jet make an emergency landing?
I knew Boeing was in trouble twenty years ago, when they made the genius decision to move their headquarters from Seattle to Chicago. But that is just one example; most businesses today struggle mightily with good decision making. Our so-called leadership class just can't seem to do it any more. They have lost all capacity for critical thought. And here I'm not even going to get into what is going on with our government. But it is a mess, we all know it is a mess, and in my opinion it is unfixable and irredeemable. It will take us all down with it.
In fact, I would say that more than anything else, it is the United States government that is leading the retreat of Western Civilization. As I sit here writing this, I ask myself: What is the last good decision that the US government made? What is the last positive development that it accomplished? It is worth considering, and even if you are more optimistic than I am, ask this instead: Does the US government do more good than harm?
I don't know anyone who would say yes.
So anyway, my curiosity has switched from progress to decline. It's horrible, but just like a horror movie, it has an entertainment value. If you can avoid the bricks falling on your own head. But I am not sure a horror movie is the correct analogy. It is more like a long-drawn-out snuff film. But instead of some pretty coed, the victim is western civilization itself. And as with any such movie, it would be best to turn it off. But how?
If the nineteenth century was about the building of America, brick by brick, I predict the twenty-first century will be about the demolishing of America, brick by brick, institution by institution, principle by principle, truth by truth. And as others have pointed out, building is difficult, destruction is easy.
We of a certain age can watch this with some amusement. I mean, what is the alternative? But our children and grandchildren are in trouble. No matter what side of the current university chaos your children happen to be on, surely we can watch these events and know it's over. The university systems are hollowed shells of their former selves. The mission irrevocably devalued.
So add academia to government and big business, throw in the media landscape, and K-12 education, all of these institutions are contributing agents of our decline. It is just one big spiral.
And something drastic will have to happen to address US and state government debt levels. I will leave it to people smarter than me to predict what that will look like and when it will happen. But I have to point out that Joe Biden has a social worker serving as his chief economic advisor. Of course he does. So even I can say for sure, something dire will happen. As Herbert Stein famously said: If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.
At that point, none of us will be able to avoid the falling bricks.