
Shall the West Pass Too? Whispers from Fallen Civilisations - sheefrex
https://www.themetasophist.com/chapter/whispers-from-fallen-civilisations
======
Aperocky
Should we be worried? From the very first paragraph:

> the Medieval Era was the spring of the West, the Renaissance its summer, and
> the Baroque era its autumn. He predicted that the West would enter its
> Winter around the year 2000, which would be characterised by a decline of
> democracy due to excessive influence from moneyed interests, and a resultant
> rise of authoritarianism.

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. I immediately starts smelling hypocrisy, the only thing
about Medieval West is that it is almost entirely white.

So here comes the real question: What is the west? Culturally, the west now is
way more different then the west in 1500 as versus the East today. Why is it
that people start feeling that the west will pass - and that it somehow
coincide with demographic changes. Is it a coincidence or subconscious bias?

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. 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'.

~~~
oh_sigh
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.

~~~
blaser-waffle
Democracy was certainly a thing before the Baroque era. A lot of old school
"kings" were chosen by groups, with varying degrees of how large that group
is, e.g. Ancient Athenian democracy.

What you're talking about is European/Western Liberal Democracy, which may
involve voting, but has a different set of assumptions and serves different
rights.

------
hyko
It’s fun to think about the decline of civilisation and ponder where we might
be in the history of the West, but the truth is we have no idea. Being a
student of decline does lend you an air of gravitas that optimism or even
indifference just doesn’t I suppose.

These studies often involve panning the rubble of previous civilisations for
clues about decline, but without much in the way of generally applicable
theories those clues aren’t really much use to us. Yeah, civilisations that
are collapsing have agricultural, economic, military, ecological, and
demographic problems. So do the thriving ones.

 _Is it the destiny of the West to die?_ Well, sure – it requires a huge
wobbly stack of things to keep it alive (from physics to poetry), so one day
it will almost certainly end. It’s not prophecy unless you can tell me when
these things will happen. It could conceivably be ten years or ten thousand
years away.

------
sheefrex
This is the first chapter from a book I am writing about the decline of the
West, and how to reverse it. This chapter summarises a number of indicators of
decline and implications for the future, while also touching on the potential
causes by applying the thoughts of Spengler and Toynbee.

Enjoy and feedback welcome!

~~~
pstuart
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_.

~~~
rpiguy
Everyone collectively wants to, we just can’t decide how.

Half the population wants the post-capitalist, ecologically sound, anti-racist
path forward.

The other half wants to lean hard into capitalism and traditional civil
liberties (“freedom to” not “freedom from”) with an emphasis on innovating our
way to the future and out of our current problems.

The post-capitalists look too much like communists to be trusted by the
freedom folks, and the freedom folks look too much like history’s economic
oppressors and robber barons to be trusted.

Historically these divides take a long time dissolve (unless there is a bloody
conflict and clear winner).

~~~
tristor
> traditional civil liberties (“freedom to” not “freedom from”)

There's no such thing as "freedom from", which is probably one of the main
sticking points between these two groups. "Freedom from" is just a nice way to
say "loss of agency due to oppressive external control".

I realize this may seem like a pointless semantic quibble, but I think at it's
root it points out a philosophical divide, where-in I personally believe one
side is divorced from reality.

There are reasonable discussions to be had about where on the sliding scale
from totalitarian to libertarian that society should fall for the best results
for everyone, but in no case is there ever a situation in which "freedom from"
is a real thing. You are trading off "freedom" for "safety".

~~~
adwn
> _" Freedom from" is just a nice way to say "loss of agency due to oppressive
> external control"._

That is not always the case. Counterexample: "freedom from tyranny", as in
"citizens are free from tyranny by the government" – that can hardly be
reframed as "the government loses agency due to oppressive external control by
the law".

------
woodruffw
This website appears to be a (not very subtle) collection of dogwhistles
masquerading as historiography.

From the "Introduction to Metasophism"[1]:

> The above proposals may seem sweeping, but we are only getting started.
> Particularly concerning is European demographics arising from low fertility
> and deepening social divisions. A society is beginning to divide along
> ethnic lines is one where any debate will be tribal; higher ideals such as
> discovering the meaning of life will be ignored. Ethnic issues must
> therefore be de-dramatised. The Fellowship programme described earlier would
> help unify society by engaging diverse groups in common tasks.

> But we must go further: to dispel ethnic tensions within Europe, asylum-
> related migration needs to be limited. Chapter Nine therefore discusses a
> way of doing this that would prevent further asylum immigration while
> ensuring that migrants would have prosperity and security. 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. Such an area would become an attractive place for
> investment, thus providing jobs for migrants.

[1]:
[https://www.themetasophist.com/chapter/introduction](https://www.themetasophist.com/chapter/introduction)

~~~
sgillen
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?

~~~
woodruffw
> Honestly not trying to be snarky.

I'll take that at face value.

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

Both tie closely into bog-standard reactionary and white nationalist rhetoric.
The first is a dogwhistle for "the great replacement," or the conspiracy
theory that Europeans (meaning, to them, whites) are being intentionally
replaced by migrants as a method of control. The latter ties closely to a
crowd that calls themselves "white nationalist" but not "white supremacist"
\-- they insist that they don't believe in the superiority of whites, and only
want isolation for "fundamentally different cultures" (by which they mean
races). It should be apparent that this is really just white supremacy with
more steps, especially if (as this introduction proposes) the European
continent functionally becomes the landlord and benevolent overseer of a
migrant nation.

~~~
throw_for_now
I'm sorry for the question, but I'm reading this sort of opinion more and more
frequently here:

Do you think the whole world has a _right_ to enter Europe? Isn't this an
amazing form of entitlement?

~~~
woodruffw
> Do you think the whole world has a right to enter Europe? Isn't this an
> amazing form of entitlement?

As every European country agrees[1], _refugees_ certainly do have the right to
request asylum in Europe. There's nothing "entitled" about fleeing death,
violence, and privation.

That's the base case, and the one this blog post seems to be opposed to. More
elaborate cases require more discussion, but you'll have to forgive me if I'm
not inclined to spend time on that with a throwaway account.

[1]: [https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/1951-refugee-
convention.html](https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/1951-refugee-convention.html)

------
29athrowaway
After watching "Pumped Dry: The global crisis of vanishing groundwater", I
think future conflicts will be over water.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjsThobgq7Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjsThobgq7Q)

I think the West will eventually we faced with a decision: either learn to
live sustainably or get used to living in an irreversibly ruined environment.

Reduce and reuse come before recycling.

~~~
jeffbee
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.

~~~
29athrowaway
That happens when you replace a population that lives sustainably (Native
Americans) with a population that does not care about sustainability (Modern
Americans).

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/Bison_sk...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/Bison_skull_pile_edit.jpg)

Converting material wealth with an intrinsic value (a healthy environment,
biodiversity) into abstract wealth without an intrinsic value (a number in a
bank account) is really the dumbest thing to do.

Once we are done converting every resource into a money, the resulting balance
will surely be very useful to satisfy our needs.

"When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is
polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late,
that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can't eat money."

~~~
andi999
Honestly, you need to level up your argumentation. No material is (except in
form of waste) converted to anything abstract without an intrinsic value.
Capitalism generally reduces waste. What happens though, is that material is
turned into products which a lot of people find useful/desirable. This problem
is a problem, but it is a much harder problem to 'solve' than the one you are
claiming.

------
KirinDave
It's not at all clear to me why we should be concerned with the decline of a
proposed "west." Many of the traits folks laud the "West" for were in fact the
products of a series of influences from many other cultures at the time.

Desirable traits for a society inviting growth, prosperity and egalitarianism
can exist in nearly any industrialized society today, and _many_ of them
currently fall short of their stated ideals when difficulty is encountered.
Further, society as a whole seems to make lots of progress when small and
large overturnings (or revolutions?) happen. Poorly formulated ideas are
refined or discarded, and values are reaffirmed. Counter-revolutionary
elements seek to roll them back, but even in success they're irrevocably
changed for the experience and cannot help but define their mission in terms
of their challengers.

Let's worry more about creating a sustainable, distributed, and well-
understood technology base. Unlike culture, that actually takes time and
infrastructure to build.

~~~
chrisco255
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.

~~~
KirinDave
This seems like a very, very sketchy definition of "progress." The later 1/3rd
of Rome was not exactly full of memorable technological and intellectual
progress, _especially_ compared to its neighbors.

Roman's are sorta famous in history for their lack of interest in anything but
making war. There's a reason we don't refer to many roman math treaties; they
were often very dogmatic texts referring to greek works and heavily influenced
by the lens of military problems; and often fantastically wrong.

~~~
chrisco255
Well maybe for intellectual works, you're right, but their civil engineering
prowess was unmatched for 1000 years. But again, you're just underscoring my
point... this "war making" culture prevented other types of intellectualism
from flourishing. Culture matters. And cultural revolutions can just as easily
wind up in hell as in heaven.

~~~
KirinDave
Isn't that my point? That we shouldn't be afraid of cultural change if it
brings about more of the values we want and less of the values we don't?

"Cancel Culture" is much feared by many, as an example, but in practice it
actually intensifies public debate among questionable issues while not wasting
time allowing folks with classically racist views to muddy the more pressing
issues, so while it can feel painful sometimes, it seems like a net good.

------
omosubi
I love reading stuff like this, but wow does it put my mental state in a bad
place, maybe this is part of the problem...

~~~
sheefrex
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.

------
Aaronstotle
I'd really like to think that the "West" will survive. Yet, part of me has a
hard time shaking the feeling that we're all living in a period of decline.

I think about the world my parents and grandparents grew up in, and then I
think about what life is going to be like in the next 50 years (I'm in my mid
20s) and it makes me anxious.

The only bright spot about Covid is that it rapidly accelerated social changes
(work form home) and gave people time to think about the kind of society they
want to have.

~~~
sheefrex
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.

------
ncmncm
I don't see any need to invoke grand themes. We are perfectly capable of
collapsing via our own unique failings.

Global climate disruption followed by mass migration, triggering fascist
government, and then global thermonuclear war, could be our generation's
unique mode of collapse.

In particular, you don't need to blame the Woke movement or the US's failed
pandemic response. Exxon suffices.

~~~
sheefrex
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.

------
taurath
My great-grandparents lived in an era before the car. They lived through
seeing cars, planes, and finally moon landings. The internet is the crowning
achievement of this age, but that also means that in a way physical
achievements have lost their focus and luster - that doesn’t mean they haven’t
existed.

------
throwaway-8c93
Given the content of the linked article, I heartily recommend taking a peek at
Peter Turchin's work on Secular Cycles (1). He also keeps a blog, where he
expands on some of the ideas. Not a light reading, though. The best
introduction to his work was a book review at now deleted slatestarcodex -
maybe it can be retrieved by internet archive.

Based on the dataset he and his colleagues compiled, civilizations big enough
for internal dynamics tend to exhibit these characteristics during their
stagnation phase:

* stagnating or declining real wages

* increasing rents

* decrease in social cohesion

* increasing inequality

* increasing urbanization (mostly due to no rural opportunities)

* more people pursuing education, arts and crafts in hopes of joining the elite. This sounds as a plus, until you realize it's caused by inability to keep a decent standard of living in traditional occupations

* sharpening intra-elite competition, leading to a gradual abandonment of previous norms. Dirty tricks become more and more commonplace

* crisis amplification - non-issues turn into crises, challenges turn into disasters

* 'overproduction of elites' leads to increasing corruption and rent seeking

* stagnating wages and increasing corruption leads to strain on public finances

Turchin's contribution lies mainly in providing historical statistics to back
these claims, the novel mechanics of 'elite overproduction' and 'elite
aspirants', and overlaying a secondary generational cycle, when a clique of
elites keep power for too long (30-50 year cycle, think of Boomers in US or
WW2 veterans in USSR).

(1) [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8778747-secular-
cycles](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8778747-secular-cycles)

~~~
sheefrex
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.

------
simonh
The reason the rest of the world is rapidly catching up with the developed
world (are Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore part of ‘The West’?) is
because they are copying as much of it as possible as fast as they can. The
cultural and economic template of the developed world is taking over
everywhere, it’s spectacularly successful.

Spengler would have hated this because he was afraid the non-white races would
adopt our technology and use it’s against us. However since I’m not a racist,
with a zero sum fear of the foreign, I think that’s fine. They’re part of our
civilisation, or at least are rapidly becoming part of it just like Japan,
Korea, Taiwan etc.

The one outlier is China, which against the odds has managed to ditch
Communism, adopted radically laissez faire Capitalism, yet retain one party
authoritarianism. They seriously worry me, but not for anything to do with
Spengler and the inherent instability of civilisations.

~~~
sheefrex
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.

------
kingkawn
All things pass

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

------
justicezyx
There is no west decline, it's just individual across the globe reclaimed
their rightly productivity. That by itself is a victory of western value: the
democracy and freedom of economic power.

Now it's the time for west to advance to the next stage and herald the new
chapter of human civilization, instead of wrongly reminiscent of its past
glory that was not really meaningful nowadays.

~~~
sheefrex
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.

