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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.
The comments to this article have been so heavily censored/removed as to make one inclined to think that Unherd is becoming part of the problem, not the solution.
Yeah. Having trouble posting a comment right now.
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. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/the-madness-of-intelligentsias
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.
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.
Instead of focusing on the State Sector and its Dependencies, and expecting any inspiration, we need to support small businesses and even medium sized businesses. More are growing some of their own food and supporting small shops. More are realising the truth of diminishing returns and rearranging life to optimise return on effort.
And the fight against the NET Zero Delusion and other forms of wokery is going to be a hard slog, especially if you come into contact with the State Mentality.
When governments support unrealistic union demands, as they have in the past, then take absolute control over family transport, no wonder those car companies fall apart. They are meant to!
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.
I agree, but many people have bought into the dooming narrative that the media on both sides has incessantly perpetuated. Every election now is the LAST ELECTION OF DEMOCRACY, or whatever other hyperbolic BS. Look, I’m not saying everything is peachy right now, but things ebb and flow. Right now is just a speck in time, and if you zoom out far enough, you realize that humanity has faced and defeated many more insidious challenges. At the moment, we are wrestling with the impact of the media (traditional but mostly social) on our lives. We are in the thick of it. Everything seems crazy. But it isn’t. Most of us are rational, normal people, trying to wade through this mess and sort it all out. And we will, as long as the majority of us sane folk don’t lose our god damned minds. Don’t buy into the BS!
America’s relative decline is inevitable – in the sense that as the gap between the US and other nations shrinks, her relative pre-eminence is less pronounced. Even if the US were “overtaken” by another country, whatever that means, that would not mean the end of the US. Countless societies and civilisations have gone through ups and downs.
Certainly we have in the Western nations created messes that we need to tackle, and the process will be painful. But Planet of the Apes it is not.
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?
Very cathartic ….. he speaks well for the acutely aware intellectuals of our generation. Yes, we mourn pitifully, but he’s correct: it needn’t happen on our watch. Thankfully Mamet will leave behind a treasure trove of films, books, personal observations and analyses which our children and grandchildren and their descendants can soak up and continue the resistance to the process of decay. Their generations will grow as healthy tissue in the organism of American society. My son and I share a love of Mamet’s movies and writings. I shall forward to him Mamet’s paean to our common religious and political heritage at this very moment, so that he can continue the resistance.
We have been here before. It was Nietzsche who skillfully described and prophesied the crisis of Western culture, and it is probably his specter, more than Marx’s, that has haunted the West ever since. The crisis was obvious during the 20th century: Spengler’s Decline of the West, the discussions about traditional values, the destruction of old ethics/morals and extreme narratives such as social Darwinism, left- en right- wing radicalism, futurism and economic instability. And all of these things have their contemporary counterparts, although not nearly as extreme so far. In that sense postmodernity – as the name also implies – seems like a rather weak reenactment of the 20th century.
It is probably good we are not that extreme anymore. Considering the world wars and episodes of totalitarianism it is understandable why radical- and Utopian grand narratives are taboo. On the other hand, the doctrine that we should remain docile and passive during stagnation and decline is also a good way for the status quo to protect their position. Especially because the pain of supposed decline never seems to fall on their shoulders, they have only massively enriched themselves in the past 40 years. During that time we have heard again and again that There Is No Alternative. That we had – as Fukuyama claimed – reached the end of history. But this has been claimed many times and never been true.
If America and Europe are dying, then why is the rest of the world desperately trying to move there?
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.