The Fall of Western Civilization

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Is it happening?

Iraq War... morals degrading... violence increasing... psychotic murderers...failing education...

Don't deterioriate into religious arguments, I'm trying to avoid that.

would seem like the capitalist war machine is bringing us into some weird place

i agree. and it's going to get worse before it gets any better.

i'm not sure that we'll completely off ourselves, but i think we're going to do a lot more damage before certain super powers get their heads out of their asses.

We are a far ways away from the "fall" of western civilization. Especially depending upon how you define western civilization. If you are defining it loosely enough then western civilization is increasingly thriving as the East is incorporating itself into our cultural ideas.

The Iraq war is nothing. It really doesn't matter a LOT in the grand political scheme. Actually, I don't even think that our violence is increasing much as even though we have some crazy scares our crime rates in all crimes have gone down (which some claim to be the result of Roe v. Wade). Moral degradation is not that big of an issue, we have a few scares there too, but I don't see much reason to suspect that our morality has really changed much for a while. Finally, education isn't failing so much as it is not succeeding as much as it could be. America itself is doing not that hot in its primary and secondary education, but it is not completely failing, but America is doing pretty well in its college education. The rest of the West is having its odd struggles but is pushing along ok.

Really, if Western civilization is going to die then what is going to kill it? We were in worse straits during the Great Depression or Cold War from my perspective. Now the West has a hegemony and some level of stability so long as our politicians don't screw it up too much.

Yeah, I know, a place with a relatively low amount of wars considering that everyone has their pants in a knot about a skirmish in a 3rd world nation as opposed to the greater clashes with the Soviet Union or even before then with the world wars and other clashes between great nation-states.


Yeah, fortunately things really aren't that bad if you don't live in Iraq. If you do then life really really sucks and I feel sorry for you, but Iraq is a pretty small clash compared to many of the others.

Oh, there might be some blowback, this entire mess has been a misallocation of economic resources, but other than that I merely see this as petty folly or perhaps cruelty, rather than dangerous idiocy.

Well, I can definitely say teenagers and kids are getting more irresponsible and violent. Seriously, I'm 19, and some of the stuff 15 and 16 year olds are doing shock me. Middle schoolers are doing meth, having sex and binge drinking. For cripes sake, they'll have their mid-life crises before they're 20!
Other countries, mainly Russia China and India are growing faster than us, and the latter 2 are going to pass us in less than 50 years. I don't know if the West will fall necessarily, but it's definitely not going to be the strongest anymore.

I think that China will be able to buy our whole country in a very short amount of time.

I don't think so. I just think Western society is just still trying to integrate the sociocultural innovations of the 1960s and 1970s into a healthy working social structure. The main thing getting in the way of such an integration are intellectual and political forces, mostly of postmodernist, multiculturalist, or identity politics bents, that wish to make no compromise with existing sociocultural institutions. Healthy societies must build on old social structures by adding on new elements and removing elements, like racism, that have become morally unacceptable, Postmodern iconoclastic slate-cleaning is a recipe for disaster.

From 1970s through 1980s, there was a fear that Japan was going to buy all America. Didn't happen. China does have economic power over US, and might someday use it, but cannot buy America.

I think we would be wise to go back to the good old days of the Civil War.

Western civilization is alot of things. Capitalism will survive as long as rich people can buy armies. The US may eventually fall because they have pissed off alot of other countries. Chistianity will survive as long as they are enough making money to keep buying off goverments.

As an American, I expected that 9/11 would probably wake most Americans up to the problems with the U.S.-dominated corporatocracy. I was wrong. The corporatocracy is stronger, not weaker. Since then, I have given up on high political expectations.

asking government to get rid of racism would require removing something that is inborn in people. People when they are unhappy want a scapegoat they want something to blame for their life sucking and they want to feel they are more important then whatever thats why racism exists the only way racism will be removed is to remove the jealous tendacy of humans to want power and be more important then other people. Government can't do that alone it would require people waking up and changing themselves.

What is funny is that honestly your defining movements as the problem which puts you in the same boat as racists and the like in my eyes. Your asking people to accept different cultural ideas but you can't accept other movements even when postmodernist thinking is clearly not the issue. If it was only post modernists hat objected to it then other people under different banners would have done it. The thing that is stopping people from expanding those insitutions is plain ethnocentirism.

I've noticed alot of the people who are really into science try to paint this postmodernist thinking as the root of all problems which goes against rational thinking. Nor can anyone put these people into a single group because theres different variations of any movement. You are in fact displaying the characteristics you depise so much. Your biased and saying that your way is better then others which is the cornerstone for racism.

in Closing I think thats a clear contradiction in what you purpose and how you do it. If using racism won't get rid of racism using bias will not get rid of bias. Just my opinion though.

Heck, it was strengthened by 9/11. Tells ya how predictions go!

I think he sort of has a point though. A house divided upon itself cannot stand.... at least without effectively trying to become 2 different houses. Postmodernism isn't the only philosophy going against rational thinking though, human nature stands against rationalism.... well, from my perspective, I don't see most rationalists as truly rational. The rationalists argue that their opponents are nihilists, but their opponents claim that rationalists are nihilists. The major issue is that societies are based upon a common moral premise, if groups try to undermine this premise then society will not stand. Rationalists are trying to promote their moral premise which often combines utilitarianism and liberalism, but other groups want to resist this with all sorts of other ideas.

but lets theorotically erase racism what do we have a prejudice based on different idealogies that will be as damaging or perhaps more damaging then racism currently is. Its like when the military uses violence against protesters does it stop the protesters no they protest how they were treated in the other protest. So claiming that racism should be removed but showing signs of the cornerstone that creates racism is defeating your own agenda. Or am I interpreting it wrong?

Well, the issue is with erasing it. Does our society have a way of cleansing itself from these things? I don't think it really does.... but then again, I hate the notion of society. The way that these things can be cleaned away effectively is through public school induced brainwashing. If ya get 'em when they are young, they will think whatever ya want 'em to.

I'm not sure I agree that racism is inborn; I would say it is generally learned.



Of course, government cannot erase deeply held prejudices with a stroke of the pen. It can dismantle structural racism (Jim Crow laws, Apartheid laws, etc). And it can start a transformational process - the US military was a leader in integration, because a) they needed recruits, and b) the decision came down through the chain of command.





Postmodernism doesn't really deal with scientific questions at its core - it deals with sociological issues. Societies do not display the mechanistic predictability of cells grown in a petri dish or nuclear particles smashed into each other. But the idea that those in power use their power to try and define the debate to increase their power is an idea that holds up well when looking at societies. So that is one place that post-modernism can start.

Not that I am a post-modernist. But when postmodernists ask if medical research in our universities has been shaped and biased by money from pharmaceutical companies seems like a good question. When post-modernists analyze the dot-com bubble or the sub-prime bubble, there are some very interesting and useful questions that get asked.

I don't see how post-modernists are displaying the characteristics they condemn, as you suggest. You seem to be saying that because they say their way is better, that is bias, and any type of bias is equivalent to racism. One might also say that all Democrats and all Republicans and all Libertarians are doing the same, because they are part of a political party, and they have biases or preferences. Or that people that had a good experience with Toyota (or whatever brand) who always buy Toyota are morally inferior because they think that one company is superior and others are inferior.