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There have been some who question whether we are living in the End Times. While that is an unknown, I do wonder if we are watching (or participating) in real time the decline and fall of a civilization era similar to the fall of the Mayan, Roman, or Soviet civilizations. Are we witnessing societal collapse?
Throughout history, civilizations have risen and fallen. Reasons vary: war, drought (which could bring on famine), other climate conditions/natural disasters, mass migration, changes in trade, lack of innovation or invention, social unrest, or political upheaval. Where would we begin the particular era in which we are now living? With the Age of Exploration? Colonization of the New World, Africa and Asia? Should we start with the American Revolution? Culture was changing before that, with the so-called Enlightenment period influencing the founders of the US. We could go back to the Protestant Reformation - a departure that perhaps began the dismissal of authority (at the time, the Catholic Church) to believe and act in a manner more conducive to one's own pleasure or philosophy. To make one more godlike. That would be almost 400 years.
Let's try that.
The academic and religious freedoms brought about by the Reformation were a sea change in society. If you did not like the local church governance, you could break away and go elsewhere, or stand and fight. Many wars followed. The Puritans left England and began lives on an entirely new continent. The people already living on that continent were pushed out or absorbed. More war. Later, even the Americans could not agree on how their society should be structured - allowing slavery or entirely free - and fought a civil war to preserve a specific free society. Moving on, there was copious innovation and invention toward the end of the 19th century. Society was settling into a period of prosperity. Not for all, but for a great majority. A European war, an Asian war, a severe economic fall, a second war - this one more widespread - encompassing more people and countries. Yet, there was progress - and lots of it: automobiles replaced horses, gas and electricity replaced wood fires and candles. There was powered flight, eventually to the moon. The population grew, but so did mechanized farming methods, and people were fed. More prosperity.
Some countries were ready to break away from this exchange-based prosperity and went the collectivist route. This, due to the nature of the beast, became totalitarian. Prosperity, freedoms, and so many lives were lost. But other nations continued to progress. Living conditions improved. Computers are now ubiquitous as handheld devices. Progress! AI can now (almost) think for you. Progress? Populations are now declining. Innovation and productivity appear to have slowed, with some gaining monetary rewards for producing nothing. The Old World is in decline, being taken over yet again by the followers of Mohammed. Not progress. The British Empire, upon which the sun never set, is not even a shadow of itself.
The world seems crazy. Bureaucracy has replaced productivity. Things we used to be able to do well now seem out of reach. Transgenderism, sexual deviance, the rise of Satanism, victim mentality, the decline of public education, the advance of Islamists unabated, the gap between the self-identified elites and the common man, homelessness and idling without stigma, the rampant and ruinous drug culture, criminality without consequence, untreated mental illness, and the disappearance of common sense - is there any thought process that is common to society anymore? This is not progress. It is regression. This society is forgetting how hard work and a moral compass produced real progress. It is forgetting how to be civilized.
How long before the fall?
Discussion (21)
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Heck of an essay, Juliana. On the positive side, this weekend, month, and year has been an amazing mturnaround. It may even be a societal shift. We have a President who has shown a remarkable tenacity to change our momentum. He is refusing to yield to the weak naysayers. Iran, an historically great nation, now ruled by primitive fatalism, will not be allowed to gain the ability to destroy our civilization. Our military has shown the power and technological capability to prove how awesome they can be, when allowed. Our space program is back on track. We are back to leading the world in the direction of prosperity and confidence! May God continue to bless us.🙏
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Thank you. Unfortunately, I fear this spate of action will be short lived and will not change the overall downward trend. I know this sounds rather doomsayer-ish, but I am not sure our path can be reversed. I wonder how the citizens of other civilizations felt as they watched their own society collapse. To take a recent example, the hardline Soviets as they watched the Berlin Wall being destroyed. But it did not take long for those Communists to regroup and continue to eat away at any real freedom for the Russian people. I wonder what this society will look like when my 4 year old grandson is 70 years old.
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I agree that this "era" began with the Protestant Reformation. Well, I sort of agree.
In my view, it was Guttenberg's printing press. I think that's what allowed for what we now call the Protestant Reformation, and many of the changes which you described above. It made The Bible and all sorts of other sources of knowledge available to the common man. It allowed men to think for themselves. Which led to innovation, free trade, and prosperity. It was sort of like the internet of the day. World-changing.
Will AI close that circle? I'm not sure. I don't think so. But maybe.
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I'm just throwing this out there so everybody has the information. I'm not making an argument. According to libertarian economist Deirdre McCloskey, wide prosperity started in the 1840s roughly, because that's when bourgeoisie values spread around. I forget what that consisted of, or why it happened, but you can see it on a chart that the Western GDP really took off.
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Here is the summary of the bourgeoisie values, stuff from her Wikipedia page.
Bourgeois trilogy
Main article: The Bourgeois Era
Her book The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce,[11] published in 2006, argued that the bourgeoisie exhibits all of the seven virtues of the Western Tradition.
A second, Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World, was published in 2010, and argued that the unprecedented increase in human welfare of the 19th and 20th centuries, from $3 per capita per day to over $100 per day, issued not from capitalist accumulation but from innovation under an unprecedented liberalism in northwest Europe and its offshoots.
The third, Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World(2016) explains the origins of the liberalism that made the modern world.[10] The trilogy gives a new, and old, account of the nature and causes of the wealth of nations.
A popular version of the trilogy is Leave Me Alone and I'll Make You Rich: How the Bourgeois Deal Enriched the World (co-authored with Art Carden) in 2022.
Why Liberalism Works: How True Liberal Values Produce a Freer, More Equal, Prosperous World for All (2019) and much of her recent work develops a full-scale defense of true liberalism.
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