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In 1968, the film Planet Of The Apes ended with the then-shocking shot of a half-submerged Statue of Liberty, revealing that the future dystopian world was none other than our own. The revelation has been part of Western consciousness for quite some time. The Bible continuously warns that if the Land does not have its Sabbaths, the Lord will impose them. It is a fixture of Western consciousness that some day the West, like every other civilisation, will die.
Every Victorian reader understood allusions to The New Zealander, a rhetorical figure in Thomas Macaulay’s 1840 essay. He was a traveller to a long-vanished civilisation, and gazes, uncomprehendingly, on the ruins of St Paul’s Cathedral. At around the same time, Marx believed that capitalism was a necessary stage of decay, from which communism could come into being. We see his prediction proved correct — in Russia, China, Cuba, Venezuela and, now, in the United States. But his vision was of decay-into-perfection; rather than into chaos, savagery and dissolution, which we see to be the case.
Marx stopped too soon in his equation. For if force was necessary to replace Capitalism with Communism, it would be necessary to ensure its continuation. Tsar Nicholas was replaced by Stalin, and Batista by Castro; the Philosopher King was not on the ballots as there were no ballots. The people were “saved” through the imposition of a force — no less necessary after their unconvinced salvation.
In Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, the firemen of the future exist to set fire to books, the reading or possession of which is a crime. Books are, today, being censored and banned by destructive forces, and, soon, these will take to their burning, as, today, they burn flags. The joy of their licensed rage is augmented by their unity with a zeitgeist, or time-spirit.
We might understand this as an era-specific fashion that runs in a cycle. But, from a greater remove, the zeitgeist can be seen as a progression. Here, however the quiddities of politics or fashion appear as the result of human reason, civilisation, being an organism, evolves towards its own death and dissolution.
Some day we will be gone, and the monuments we have built will be one with those we have desecrated. Even those books which might remain will eventually share the fate of the little plastic phones. How are we to behave while we’re here? It’s no wonder that our operating manual, or quick-start guide, the Bible, is denigrated by anarchists and dismissed as absurd by intellectuals. They are both on the same team, unconsciously in the service of acceleration.
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SubscribeThe disease: unlimited profit making mentality on finite organism.
Cure: cooperation, technological innovation, and creativity.
Like all empires, it is the evening of their empire, with woke and the internet putting the final nail in the coffin of a society that has turned ” anyone can achieve anything” into a society where people, in order to look after their own financial interests and well being, will lie, backstab, and cheat: Britain is neatly following in these footsteps. Who, say 30 years ago would ever imagine Ford, GM and Chrysler actually going bust?
It so saddens me, recalling the legendary bright, charming, educated, smart WASP bankers who came here for and after big bang, the most impressive people that I have ever had the pleasure to meet and work with… now all gone and replaced with tribes of seething mediocrity.
An indicator of decline not identified would require a glance at the leadership of the western world and all of the potential alternatives. Do you need a list?
Dismal.
Xi and Putin must discreetly exchange eye rolls when they meet.
Xi and Putin are doing more than exchanging eye rolls. They are making plans.
I have never read Spengler’s Decline of the West but the idea that every civilisation will eventually – sooner or later – fall apart seems axiomatic… and borne out by history. The laws of entropy will apply…why would an exception be made of Western Liberalism? But equally, any but the vaguest predictions and timescales for that future melt down seem foolish and hubristic. It is surely impossible – given that our personal journey from youthful optimism to elderly nostalgia is but one epocal single day – for us to judge exactly where on the great arc of history we currently are.
I would suggest that while we may not know what the particular day might be we can certainly tell the season.
And while we can’t tell exactly where western civilization is on the S curve, it’s pretty obvious progress has leveled off, perhaps even started to decline. For example the economist Robert Gordon notes that progress between 1870 and 1940 was far greater than between 1940 and 2010.
Akin to distant ancestors likely observing summer and winter solstice at Stonehenge with solemn dance and ceremony, I have observed the solemn “end of democracy” ceremony each and every four years in America…and yet the sun still shines the next day after the presidential election with folks carrying on with mumbling about their 1st world problems (and worrying about whether Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are really a thing).
The high priests of merchandise politics need to sell their visionary end-of-world something, I suppose, in order to scrape together a living from off the people living in the Western World who otherwise carry on with enjoying their lives.
It was Byron, not Walter Scott, who wrote that the sword outwears the sheath and all the rest of it. Just saying.
And rightly so. How do these people get these things wrong?
the slash and burn cultivation techniques of the Australian Aboriginals.
If you say this, David, why should I listen to anything you say? Slash and burn is about agriculture. I’ve not seen any evidence if this being practised by Aboriginals. It’s pathetic.
There’s a whole book about the slash-and-burn technique: Bill Gammage’s The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines made Australia. Gammage argues that this was a very sensible form of non-sedentary farming. You’re definitely wrong there. However, Mamet is still guilty of inaccuracy: he’s erroneously credited Sir Walter Scott with a poem (So we’ll go no more a-roving) actually written by Lord Byron.
Land management, reviewed in that book, is not slash and burn, which is the agriculture use of the land. The burning of the land has nothing to do with slash and burn and was never considered by Aborigines to be such.