TNPU Discussion about the West

Malayan Singapura

Malayan Singapura

TNPer
Since TNPU is basically a place to talk smart stuff. I need some help before December comes. I need to research random people's opinion and reason if the West is declining and here seems dafe enough instead of meeting eye to eye and the people here are not specifally asian.
Honesty is appreciated.
So for the TNP$ 1,000,000,000 question is : IS THE WEST DECLING AND IF SO WHY ?
 
Sounds like a question for Oswald Spengler of "Der Untergang des Abendlandes" fame.

Actually, I should expound upon that statement.

It is simple. Every civilisation goes through a life cycle. Birth, childhood, adulthood, and ultimately death. It's just a normal cycle that every civilisation or culture goes through. The paradigm outlives its usefulness. And it isn't just the West - it's the East too.

Largely, according to Spengler in "The Decline of The West" (Der Untergang des Abendlandes), all civilisations reach a point of crisis in terms of its survival and is forced to revert to "Caesarism" (totalitarian rule by the Executive branch of any given government) in order to attempt to survive. This happened in Tsarist Russia, Spain under Franco, Germany under the Nazis, China under the Communists, Japan in the Imperial Era leading up to WWII, for some prime examples.

Here's a good synopsis of Spengler's analysis of the decline of the West (and you will notice that it applies to not only the West as the rest of the world is further down the tubes than the West:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oswald_Spengler

Spengler's book "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oswald_Spengler" is in print in many languages and should be in any good public library's collection. It is a tedious read, but well worth the reading. It will change your entire perspective on History and the World. It's about 300 pages long, but it is an education in and of itself.

Also, if you can find it, read the book or find tapes of the TV series "The Power of Myth" by Joseph Campbell. That too is an education in an of itself and well worth the read/viewing. It explains it all.

In a nutshell, Western civilisation is just at the point the Romans were when the Barbarian Invasions destroyed Rome. If you want to see a dying civilisation, just look for the Civilisation in which its various nation-states refuse to enforce their own borders and respective cultures. When a civilisation comprising of different national entities loses its will to survive, it is manifested in the form of not enforcing national sovereignty, borders and cultural integrity. Essentially, if you refuse to maintain your culture and insist upon not requiring acculturation and assimilation, you are toast in a generation or less.

The message Spengler sends is that no nation or empire in history has ever survived "multi-culturalism' and 'multi-lingualism'. If the culture of a civilisation/nation/etc. refuses to obey the mythology and ethos which informs it, it dies, and dies quickly.

It's sort of like the people who want to eliminate and abolish and illegalise religion for one reason or another - they are intentionally destroying the very ethos and morality which informs a given culture or society. Friedrich Nietzsche had a lot to say about this subject and put it best in his quote: "Be careful in that casting out one's demons that one does not cast out what is best in oneself."

Yeah, I know, TMI. ;)
 
Hey that's a really good answer

Anybody else ?
If I win this contest I get to study in UCLA

weird a prize about the decline of the west is a full paid studying in the west
 
I suppose it depends on how you look at it.

If we look at it from an economic point of view, the "East" is developing faster than the "West," and thus comparatively, the west is declining. This is for two reasons: First, western nations are generally Liberal Democracies, and eastern nations are generally Authoritarian in nature. When it comes to the economy, divisive fast decisions must be made all the time. In a Liberal Democracy, this is very difficult, because the people must agree with any decision made. In an Authoritarian regime, it is far easier to make these decisions, as the people generally have no idea what is going on. Second, the population and resources of eastern countries are, on the whole, greater than those of western countries. This means that the actual resources required to have great productivity are found in greater abundance in the East than in the West, and so they have a higher productivity. Therefore, in terms of the economy, it may be fair to say that the West is declining, and this is because of it's general form of government, and general resource and population distributions.

If we look at it from a standard of living point of view, the West is not declining, nor is the East improving faster. Liberal Democracies, whilst being bad for efficiency, is very good for improving the lives of the citizens, due to the integral role citizens play in the decision making processes of their nations. In Authoritarian regimes, this is not the case, and bribery, corruption, and mismanagement of public services can go largely unpunished, seeing as the citizens have no channels of opposition to these actions. For these reasons, the West can be seen as not declining, at least through the lens of standard of living.
 
Interesting analysis.

The East, however, has never been innovative, technologically speaking, in terms of modern technology, and tends to imitate and copy modern 'western technologies' and production means. They economically depend upon the west to buy their industrial and consumer products (nothing new here). In simple terms, the economic survival of, for example, China, depends upon the economic viability of the west. For the time being, that is.

The real cause of the decline of the west is Socialism (which, ironically, an invention of the west ala Karl Marx and German Socialism starting in the late 19th Century in Germany.

The big problems of Socialism is that it is a system doomed to economic failure when it reaches the point when the non-productive elements of a given society or economy which depend on the government (and hence taxes extracted from the productive elements of society) exceed the productive elements of a society. Hence, you end up (to use a tired metaphor) with a cart being pulled by one person and everyone else who does nothing riding in the cart. Now extend this to historical incidences of Socialism, all based upon Marxist paradigms.

When you have socialist regimes like Mussolini and his "Fascists" (aka "Socialista Italiana, aka, The Italian Socialist Party, which still exists in Italy), and Hitler's "National Socialism" (Hitler was a socialist, as was Mussolini, and both systems and ideologies are 'left of centre', and are based by their own admission on Marxist thought despite later claims to the contrary) which injects racist elements into Socialism, you have recipe for total disaster.

The total disaster is that in order to maintain a socialist agenda, it requires that you treat people as sources of revenue to support a given regime and that people are a function of the state rather than the state being a function of the people. The historical record shows that socialist regimes slide further and further to the left in terms of totalitarian controls (as is happening in the west now) until they eat up their means of economic sustenance and must turn to invading their neighbours to keep the whole gig going or face total failure. It's similar to just running the printing presses when you need more money - it is equally doomed to failure.

"Eastern" communist regimes have realised this and hence the true nature of Communism being the most brutal form of Capitalism has emerged as "State Capitalism" because the Communist Chinese realise that they are doomed to complete collapse if the west which buys its output collapses. The problem is that no matter how totalitarian you go, you run into that nice little wall called reality - you cannot get blood from a turnip and if you treat people as property of the state and try to run them like machines and kill them if you don't, the whole scheme fails or ends up a dystopia like North Korea (which would totally collapse if the US stopped funding NOKO which ironically wants to blow up the US).

You also have to remember that even "Easter" civilisation is working under the very same paradigms as "Western" Civilisation. In fact Easter Civilisation has adopted the same operational paradigms that are causing the decline of the West. Communism and Socialism are purely western strains of thought, at least in political and governmental processes. The East is failing in exactly the same way the West is failing - and mainly this is due to the whole process of centralisation and concentration of power as opposed to wealth.

Centralisation of economies and governmental power leads to collapse because ultimately, the more centralised and structured any system gets, the greater the possibility of its rapid and total failure become. The Roman Empire proves this, and the demise of the Soviet Union and earlier, Nazi Germany proves it. It spins out of control like a feedback loop in aircraft controls until you cannot correct the problem and failure is the inevitable result. This is exactly why Globalism is the death of civilisation, both East and West.

To paraphrase Max Wertheimer of "Gestalt Theory" fame, the greater the level of control you seek to impose, the greater the resulting chaos. Totalitarian systems, while initially efficient, fail to realise the truth of this dictum.

For example, take the United States. The whole paradigm was that each individual state was sovereign and only 'lent' the authority to a federal government for the purposes of defence and to promote free trade between the states and other "nations" (nations not being analogous to states). Each state had its own monetary system connected in 'value' to a federal monetary system. If one state failed or the federal system failed, you still had an economy with one or another viable form of stable currency. Fast forward to the 21st Century:

We now have one single all-powerful federal government who uses coercion in many forms against the states and the people and as such, treats the people and the states as nothing more than a source of revenue and a function of the state, and in which we have a 'Federal Reserve' system which denies the states their own sovereign ability to govern their own economies. And as such, if one link in the chain fails, it ultimately spells doom for everyone. As a metaphor, a ship that contains many water tight compartments can sustain a lot more damage than a ship that is one big compartment. And Western "Liberalism" is indeed the doom of "Western Liberalism", and will ultimately die of a theory, so to speak. And the East will do the same.

Centralisation political and economic power as well as infrastructure is the doom of Civilisation, East and West.

For instance, if the Internet goes down, we are toast since everything from banking to buying groceries at your local grocery store depends upon the internet. The power grid and all communications depend upon that centralised system called the internet. If it goes down, billions die because the technocrats have made sure that for the sake of power and control that every other former means of infrastructure no longer exists. So, the more concentrated the control is, the easier it is to collapse it.

Look at it this way - the human species has been around in nearly it's present modern form for about 200,000 years (or more, according to some anthropologists) without the existence of modern industrial technology and centralisation and social/political organisation. Our dependence upon modern technology and governments to take care of us from cradle to grave will ultimately destroy us, and that means the end of "Civilisation" in any meaningful form if we are not careful.

Civilisation is just a thin veneer which if peeled off exposes a vicious predatory animal (the human) who is quite capable of reverting to its most primitive form in a New York second should the lights go out.

Hence, to steal a like from the TV series "Fear The Walking Dead", when civilisation falls, it falls fast, and it takes about four days.
 
Donald trump is not a reason good enough. I mean the US is geopolitically located perfect. Invasion of it seems impossible due to its isolation away from its major enemies. True donald trump is ruining america periodically, it would take a monumental flop to destroy america's going on things, which is pretty good
 
Malayan Singapura:
Donald trump is not a reason good enough. I mean the US is geopolitically located perfect. Invasion of it seems impossible due to its isolation away from its major enemies. True donald trump is ruining america periodically, it would take a monumental flop to destroy america's going on things, which is pretty good
Click to expand...
Still Donald trump.
 
flemingovia:
Malayan Singapura:
Donald trump is not a reason good enough. I mean the US is geopolitically located perfect. Invasion of it seems impossible due to its isolation away from its major enemies. True donald trump is ruining america periodically, it would take a monumental flop to destroy america's going on things, which is pretty good
Click to expand...
Still Donald trump.
Click to expand...
Donald Trump is not causing any decline in the West, as what actual threat would he pose? Mr. Trump if anything, is helping the West regain strength against the East. Trump's foreign policy is absolutely amazing, and is bringing prosperity in the Americas and the West.
 
I agree. It's amazing. Great Guy. You're gonna love it. Build a wall. Make America great again. Fake News. media witch hunt. Believe me. We're going to make a policy that is foreign. You're going to make a lot of money, along with Spicer. You know him? He's a great guy. A foreign leader came to me and asked me about our foreign policy. I said to him... great guy... visionary .... We're going to take care of it. We're all going to make a lot of money. Build a wall. You're going to love it. and the incredible men and women of America will see the wall and turn to the peddlers of fake news and say "America is great again."
 
Skittleyflakes:
flemingovia:
Malayan Singapura:
Donald trump is not a reason good enough. I mean the US is geopolitically located perfect. Invasion of it seems impossible due to its isolation away from its major enemies. True donald trump is ruining america periodically, it would take a monumental flop to destroy america's going on things, which is pretty good
Click to expand...
Still Donald trump.
Click to expand...
Donald Trump is not causing any decline in the West, as what actual threat would he pose? Mr. Trump if anything, is helping the West regain strength against the East. Trump's foreign policy is absolutely amazing, and is bringing prosperity in the Americas and the West.
Click to expand...
More seriously,


what specific aspects of trump's foreign policy have brought prosperity to America and to the west?
please be specific in the measurables of prosperity, both in the US and other western nations.

Because without evidence all you have is a soundbite.
 
"Trump's foreign policy is amazing. You know that, I know that, everybody knows that. We're getting tough on our allies, you know, because it's time for them to stop leaching off America, and start working for themselves. We're getting soft on Russia, I mean letting Putin - I love that guy, you know - letting Putin go will just help everyone - he's fighting ISIS, he's rebuilt Russia, he's fighting the FAKE NEWS LIBERAL MEDIA - you know, when will they quit lying about the Russians being in Ukraine, or making it look like they hacked our elections - which they didn't, we all know that. We're making new peace, we're getting along - we're gonna get along so well. And we're gonna win big-league, against ISIS, against the FAKE NEWS media, against the liberals ruining our economy and our nation - we're gonna win so much you're gonna get tired of winning, believe me. With Trump in the White House, and the Republicans in both the senate and house, we are gonna Make America Great Again!"

[/satire]

Okay, so what seems to be happening here is that you're saying the West is declining and asking why. This...isn't how intellectual honesty works; you can't state the conclusion and come up with the evidence based on that.

Roman's screed basically boils down to "it's those damned Lie-berals and governments ruining our great, pure societies, and the only way forward is extreme-right-wing pseudo-anarcho-fascism". It is factually wrong on basically every level, and signaling a single demagogue as being able to educate you and change your ideas to the /right/ way of thinking (pun intended) should be setting off alarm bells in your thought process, not admiration. That being said, it is remarkably well-written for the content. But what he's missing is the /how/ part. A historical trend line is just that, a line on a graph. Looks pretty, and it can basically say whatever the heck you want it to say, but it's not enough. One guy writing a book is just one guy writing a book. If you're reading this, then that's pretty solid proof that I can write stuff too, and if I can most people can. It's not hard to bullshit. What I'm just not seeing is how various pieces of social liberalism are acting on the countries to make them decline, aside from vague historical notions and trumped-up predictions of doom and gloom on the basis of nations having a centralized democratic government.

I, myself, am genuinely having a hard time coming up with stuff to show the west is declining to follow that presupposition here. If you want evidence that supports your conclusion, you will get it, this is the internet after all. So I'm just going to leave off with this thought: perhaps the west, you know, isn't objectively declining like you think it is? I'm not saying it's all sunshine and roses; there are definitely serious problems with society and the economy that need to be worked out, but, you know, there is a chance that maybe, just maybe, social democracy isn't a slow death sentence for civilization?
 
I personally don't think it's "declining" in its literal meaning, more changing culturally in ways it hasn't completely been made aware of.
 
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