An Interesting Question

Reading here, I found this assertion.

Our problem is that we don't really learn from history. George Santayana said that "those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it." The philosopher Hegel said, "What experience and history teach us is this: that people and government never have learned anything from history or acted on principles deduced from it." Or as Winston Churchill said, "The one thing we have learned from history is that we don't learn from history."

The refrains that are often heard are: "It can't happen here," or "Our country is different." But the reality is that nations are born and die just like individuals. Their longevity may exceed the average person's lifespan. But the reality is that nations also die.

History has shown that the average age of the great civilizations is around two hundred years. Countries like Great Britain exceed the average while other countries like the United States are just now reaching the average age.

Each of the great civilizations in the world passed through a series of stages from their birth to their decline to their death. Historians have listed these in ten stages.

The first stage moves from bondage to spiritual faith. The second from spiritual faith to great courage. The third stage moves from great courage to liberty. The fourth stage moves from liberty to abundance. The fifth stage moves from abundance to selfishness. The sixth stage moves from selfishness to complacency. The seventh stage moves from complacency to apathy. The eighth stage moves from apathy to moral decay. The ninth stage moves from moral decay to dependence. And the tenth and last stage moves from dependence to bondage.

These are the ten stages through which the great civilizations have gone. Notice the progression from bondage to liberty back to bondage. The first generation throws off the shackles of bondage only to have a later generation through apathy and indifference allow itself to once again be enslaved.

The "interesting question" is: What does the "post-American geopolitical landscape look like?"

There is no doubt that our power is waning. Collectively, we spend far more time tanning and getting our nails done that we do in repairing things. Frivolous pursuits do not build national power. Innovation and exportable goods do. We are percieved as force for morality in an ever-shrinking span of influence. Hollywood will tell you that it's because of our imperialist-militarist behavior, but that's not really it.

It is an "anything goes" moral-relativism that has offended the world the most. Most cultures find narcissistic self-indulgence to be offensive, and the nit-wits of moral relativism are as narcissistically-self-indulgent as you can be. They march through the great capitals shouting: "Forego no pleasure unless it be the result of virtue. Nothing is offensive except for virtue." The rejection of real virtue isolates America far more than any other behavior.

Can a great civilization survive? Maybe, but not in the hands of the ignorant masses. Selfish masses cannot be relied upon to make the hard choices. It is demanding ambitious investors that make nations great. It is those that forego ease and frivolity to toil on farms and in laboratories, the shopkeeper that makes goods available through investment and the engineer that correctly calculates the bearing span that sustains the traffic on a bridge that makes goods cheaper than if they had to be ported by ferry.

I don't believe in a master race, but I believe it is possible to develop a master culture. It's ironic that it can't happen in a safe and serene world. We will develop a master culture when it becomes the only way to survive. We'll make the lazy starve until they produce. Those without the will to earn their way will die off.

I know this all sounds a bit like Friedrich Nietszche. But there's a great deal of benefit in having enough adversity in your life. That which does not kill you, makes you as hard as woodpecker lips.

I'd like to stop the decline of the West, but I don't have the charisma to capture the hearts and minds of the ignunt masses. Perhaps Keanu Reeves and Lawrence Fishburne can save us.