Why the idea that the world is in terminal decline is so dangerous
This is a left wing view. Aeon has some interesting articles, but many are mainstream progressive. In this same issue is a rant about Western philosophy being racist for ignoring China and India. Aside from that, This article is worthwhile because it offers a left wing perspective on something we know all-too-well here: the sky is falling.
"From all sides, the message is coming in: the world as we know it is on the verge of something really bad. From the Right, we hear that ‘West’ and ‘Judeo-Christian Civilisation’ are in the pincers of foreign infidels and native, hooded extremists. Left-wing declinism buzzes about coups, surveillance regimes, and the inevitable – if elusive – collapse of capitalism.
[...]
"Rome’s decline looms large as the precedent. So, world historians have played their part as doomsayers. At the same time as the English historian Edward Gibbon’s first volume of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776) was published, the American colonists said good-bye to their overlords; some read that as an omen.
[...]
" Declinisms share some traits. They have more purchase in times of turmoil and uncertainty. They are also prone to thinking that the circles of hell can be avoided only with a great catharsis or a great charismatic figure.
But most of all: they ignore signs of improvement that point to less drastic ways out of trouble. Declinists have a big blindspot because they are attracted to daring, total, all-encompassing alternatives to the humdrum greyness of modest solutions. Why go for partial and piecemeal when you can overturn the whole system?
Declinists claim to see the big picture. Their portraits are grandiose, subsuming, total."
[...]
"The problem with declinism is that it confirms the virtues of our highest, impossible solutions to fundamental problems. It also confirms the disappointments we harbour in the changes we have actually made. This is not to say there aren’t deep-seated problems. But seeing them as evidence of ineluctable demise can impoverish our imaginations by luring us to the sirens of either total change or fatalism."
Fill in the details here:
https://aeon.co/ideas/why-the-idea-th...
"From all sides, the message is coming in: the world as we know it is on the verge of something really bad. From the Right, we hear that ‘West’ and ‘Judeo-Christian Civilisation’ are in the pincers of foreign infidels and native, hooded extremists. Left-wing declinism buzzes about coups, surveillance regimes, and the inevitable – if elusive – collapse of capitalism.
[...]
"Rome’s decline looms large as the precedent. So, world historians have played their part as doomsayers. At the same time as the English historian Edward Gibbon’s first volume of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776) was published, the American colonists said good-bye to their overlords; some read that as an omen.
[...]
" Declinisms share some traits. They have more purchase in times of turmoil and uncertainty. They are also prone to thinking that the circles of hell can be avoided only with a great catharsis or a great charismatic figure.
But most of all: they ignore signs of improvement that point to less drastic ways out of trouble. Declinists have a big blindspot because they are attracted to daring, total, all-encompassing alternatives to the humdrum greyness of modest solutions. Why go for partial and piecemeal when you can overturn the whole system?
Declinists claim to see the big picture. Their portraits are grandiose, subsuming, total."
[...]
"The problem with declinism is that it confirms the virtues of our highest, impossible solutions to fundamental problems. It also confirms the disappointments we harbour in the changes we have actually made. This is not to say there aren’t deep-seated problems. But seeing them as evidence of ineluctable demise can impoverish our imaginations by luring us to the sirens of either total change or fatalism."
Fill in the details here:
https://aeon.co/ideas/why-the-idea-th...
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I have been re-reading The Lessons of History by Will and Ariel Durant, the copy I bought in 1968, and they confirm "the similarity" that coaldigger notes. All we are experiencing is the same thing with modern (tech, communication, etc,) factors in the mix. For me, it's interesting but not reason to worry. We been here before.
"To people with a hardcore declinist view, anything other than seeing doom is actually supporting the problems of the world." equals "If you are not part of the solution, then you are part of the problem." Questioning the solution or the definition of (or existence of) a problem is not an option.
I have been reading historical biographies lately based on a genealogical information website a neighbor started me looking at. It seems that there are some interesting characters in my tree and for fun, I have been reading about them. This follows reading binges on the founding fathers and many of the more interesting US Presidents (none of them in the tree). What is absolutely striking is the similarity of civilizations throughout the ages. The politics and disagreements on philosophy and religion keeps going on and on. No one has heeded any lesson from history and it keeps repeating. I asked myself "How can that be?" and the best answer I can come up with is that they were people, we are people and that is what people do. Therefore, I am neither worried nor optimistic about the future because in every meaningful way, I am convinced, it will be essentially the same.
That being said, we can generalize about trends and evaluate whether the principles underlying the trends contribute to more or less freedom. Is the sky falling? To answer that question one must first define what sky is wanted. There is very little question in my mind that the trend in the United States over the past 50 years has been towards socialism and away from true liberalism - that being the liberalism of Thomas Jefferson and the Founding Fathers rather than the co-opted version appropriated by Woodrow Wilson. To a freedom-loving person like me, the blue sky and open spaces which is a product of individual liberty is very much endangered by the policies espoused by the political left. In that respect, the sky is falling (and its crash would have been hastened by another progressive Presidency). If you are a leftist, you want that sky to fall so as to usher in the communist utopia you envision. What most wishing for the falling sky do not realize is that they are effectively evicting the mythical Atlas and they will soon find that their shoulders bear the weight of the oppression that is the reality of leftism.
The phrase in the article "the party's over" reminded me of 2005 book "The Party's Over" that says modern civilization will come to an end when there is no more cheap oil. I think oil will stay cheap within an order of magnitude because other things will replace it and there won't be much reason to extract it from difficult-to-reach places.
"Rome’s decline looms large" - It does for me too. I see my US society as Rome. I feel it more when I travel. We have this vast empire of bases. People count on us to provide security and to respond whenever there's a military crisis anywhere in the world. Sometimes it seems like more people at home view success as a birthright rather than something to be worked for. So I feel like we're Rome. I think we should get off this path, but I don't feel like the path leads to a climatic collapse.
"In fact, we are all, as a species, in this mess; our world supply chains and climate change have ensured that we are poised before a sixth mass extinction together." - I don't minimize these problems, but they do not make me feel any fatalism or declinism. The current mass-extinction event started before widespread agriculture. We're not sure of the cause of it.
Organizations working on any problem, e.g. fighting crime, reducing spouse abuse, protecting the environment, don't like to say, "We've mostly solved this problem by standards of 100 years ago, but still contribute so we can make little incremental improvements making things even better." It seems like they have say the problem is about to kill everyone. And further, they seem to need to have a group of evil people to blame it the problem. To people with a hardcore declinist view, anything other than seeing doom is actually supporting the problems of the world.
I'm baffled by people who see problems as so bad that society is bound to collapse soon. I'm living in a prosperous part of the world in a prosperous time. More and more people are living in it. There used to be poor "third-world" countries not allied with USA or USSR. That's all gone. Being born in a particular country no long means your rich or poor. The wealth comes from technology, so people have an incentive to learn an abandon old superstitions. Communism threatened to destroy life on earth when I was a kid, and now it's a joke. I know it's bad to laugh about it or put communist figures on hip tee-shirts, but it's actually good that's not an immediate threat anymore. I don't understand the world declinists live in.