Freedom of thought and the habit of questioning everything is what differentiated West from other civilisations - that was exactly what brought the West the prosperity for which is admired and emulated globally.
I would not recommend abandoning those "uncomfortable" qualities for the sake of improving national self-esteem, the cost might be higher that it now appear.
Great reminder of perspective. Some additional points if "inconsistency": the Ottoman system if Deshirve, the blood tax where (the best and brightest) Christian boys were abducted, forcefully covered and then indoctrinated to be honoured Janissaries; the Jyzya, or poll tax in Christians for the "peace" that prevailed after their conquest; the Asian co-prosperity sphere enacted by the Japanese after their liberation of Asia from White Devils...
Like the rich bragging about how expensive necessary luxuries have become, this self flagellation can also be seen as a form of reverse signalling: we alone have a conscious...
There's something unique about the effects of the two World Wars and then the constant existential terror of the Cold War. From the Renaissance onward the entire raison d'etre of Western Civilization was that expanding knowledge and material progress would bring moral progress as well and eventually lead not only the West, but all mankind, to transcendence of constant struggle, warfare, poverty, ignorance, etc. This worldview reached its peak during the Belle Epoche and then was absolutely shattered.
Once a generation came back from the trenches of WW1 seeing science used to exterminate their friends like cockroaches, gas causing people to die from their lungs blistering, and all manner of unimaginable horrors it became very difficult to believe. WW2 brought industrial horrors to the average Western civilian, most notably in the form of aerial bombing of cities. Then the holocaust showed how industrial methods could be brought to the task of wholesale murder. After that, the end of the War brings us to the realization that our material progress put the further survival of our species and planet in doubt with the prospect of Nuclear War. The realization of environmental damage was then the frosting on the bitter cake that the 20th Century baked.
I personally don't think the baby can be put back together again. The West may recover one day, centuries from now, but this iteration of it took a mortal blow in the trenches of the Western Front between 1914-1918. Everything after that has been the staggering around and occasional hysterical strength of a man bleeding out.
F. Scott Fitzgerald from Tender is the Night:
"This western-front business couldn’t be done again, not for a long time. The young men think they could do it but they couldn’t. They could fight the first Marne again but not this. This took religion and years of plenty and tremendous sureties and the exact relation that existed between the classes. The Russians and Italians weren’t any good on this front. You had to have a whole-souled sentimental equipment going back further than you could remember. You had to remember Christmas, and postcards of the Crown Prince and his fiancée, and little cafés in Valence and beer gardens in Unter den Linden and weddings at the mairie, and going to the Derby, and your grandfather’s whiskers.”
“General Grant invented this kind of battle at Petersburg in sixty- five.”
“No, he didn’t — he just invented mass butchery. This kind of battle was invented by Lewis Carroll and Jules Verne and whoever wrote Undine, and country deacons bowling and marraines in Marseilles and girls seduced in the back lanes of Wurtemburg and Westphalia. Why, this was a love battle — there was a century of middle-class love spent here. This was the last love battle.”
Lots of interesting comment to chew on there, but if there is going to be both sides-ing - which is fair enough - then I have to pull you up on this: “ those who worship it”. Progressives may hate the “west” for what it was, but you can equally argue that the right or “conservative” reactionaries hate it just much - for its liberalism, its openness, its egalitarianism, it’s self-reflection. They have rejected the West's foundational enlightenment freedoms, seeing them instead as fundamental weaknesses, effeminate, and degenerate.
You can’t put that down to an “antiwoke” backlash, because it’s has been the position of reactionaries since time immemorial. And they're the ones in power now.
Thanks Eoghan, that's a good point. I agree there have always been reactionaries who have opposed any social change. But I don't think that accounts for the full political shift to the right, which seems to be taking in a broad swathe of the population.
But I agree that when I mentioned those who 'worship' the West, what I meant was a certain idea of it that doesn't necessarily reflect what it truly is.
"Yeah, well, other civizilations are bad too" is not a great argument.
Freedom of thought and the habit of questioning everything is what differentiated West from other civilisations - that was exactly what brought the West the prosperity for which is admired and emulated globally.
I would not recommend abandoning those "uncomfortable" qualities for the sake of improving national self-esteem, the cost might be higher that it now appear.
Great reminder of perspective. Some additional points if "inconsistency": the Ottoman system if Deshirve, the blood tax where (the best and brightest) Christian boys were abducted, forcefully covered and then indoctrinated to be honoured Janissaries; the Jyzya, or poll tax in Christians for the "peace" that prevailed after their conquest; the Asian co-prosperity sphere enacted by the Japanese after their liberation of Asia from White Devils...
Like the rich bragging about how expensive necessary luxuries have become, this self flagellation can also be seen as a form of reverse signalling: we alone have a conscious...
There's something unique about the effects of the two World Wars and then the constant existential terror of the Cold War. From the Renaissance onward the entire raison d'etre of Western Civilization was that expanding knowledge and material progress would bring moral progress as well and eventually lead not only the West, but all mankind, to transcendence of constant struggle, warfare, poverty, ignorance, etc. This worldview reached its peak during the Belle Epoche and then was absolutely shattered.
Once a generation came back from the trenches of WW1 seeing science used to exterminate their friends like cockroaches, gas causing people to die from their lungs blistering, and all manner of unimaginable horrors it became very difficult to believe. WW2 brought industrial horrors to the average Western civilian, most notably in the form of aerial bombing of cities. Then the holocaust showed how industrial methods could be brought to the task of wholesale murder. After that, the end of the War brings us to the realization that our material progress put the further survival of our species and planet in doubt with the prospect of Nuclear War. The realization of environmental damage was then the frosting on the bitter cake that the 20th Century baked.
I personally don't think the baby can be put back together again. The West may recover one day, centuries from now, but this iteration of it took a mortal blow in the trenches of the Western Front between 1914-1918. Everything after that has been the staggering around and occasional hysterical strength of a man bleeding out.
F. Scott Fitzgerald from Tender is the Night:
"This western-front business couldn’t be done again, not for a long time. The young men think they could do it but they couldn’t. They could fight the first Marne again but not this. This took religion and years of plenty and tremendous sureties and the exact relation that existed between the classes. The Russians and Italians weren’t any good on this front. You had to have a whole-souled sentimental equipment going back further than you could remember. You had to remember Christmas, and postcards of the Crown Prince and his fiancée, and little cafés in Valence and beer gardens in Unter den Linden and weddings at the mairie, and going to the Derby, and your grandfather’s whiskers.”
“General Grant invented this kind of battle at Petersburg in sixty- five.”
“No, he didn’t — he just invented mass butchery. This kind of battle was invented by Lewis Carroll and Jules Verne and whoever wrote Undine, and country deacons bowling and marraines in Marseilles and girls seduced in the back lanes of Wurtemburg and Westphalia. Why, this was a love battle — there was a century of middle-class love spent here. This was the last love battle.”
Lots of interesting comment to chew on there, but if there is going to be both sides-ing - which is fair enough - then I have to pull you up on this: “ those who worship it”. Progressives may hate the “west” for what it was, but you can equally argue that the right or “conservative” reactionaries hate it just much - for its liberalism, its openness, its egalitarianism, it’s self-reflection. They have rejected the West's foundational enlightenment freedoms, seeing them instead as fundamental weaknesses, effeminate, and degenerate.
You can’t put that down to an “antiwoke” backlash, because it’s has been the position of reactionaries since time immemorial. And they're the ones in power now.
Thanks Eoghan, that's a good point. I agree there have always been reactionaries who have opposed any social change. But I don't think that accounts for the full political shift to the right, which seems to be taking in a broad swathe of the population.
But I agree that when I mentioned those who 'worship' the West, what I meant was a certain idea of it that doesn't necessarily reflect what it truly is.