author: Tyler Durden
Written by Victor Davis Hanson for VictoreHanson.com,
Western civilization was established in the 8th century BC in Greece. About 1500 cities-states emerged from the dark, illiteracy, 400-year-old Dark Age. This chaos occurred after the full collapse of the palace culture of the Mycenic Greece.
However, what has appeared is the constitutional government, rationalism, freedom, freedom of expression, autocriticism and free markets — what we know present as the foundation of a unique Western civilization.
The Roman Republic inherited and enriched the Greek model.
For a 1000 years the Republic and later Empire spread Western culture, yet becoming inseparable from Christianity.
From the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf and from the Rhine and the Danube to the Sahara, there were millions of square miles of security, prosperity, progress, and discipline — until the fall of the Western Empire in the 5th century C.E.
Then came the second dark European era, about 500 to 1000 C.E.
Population's down. The cities were falling apart. Roman roads, aqueducts, and laws have broken up.
Instead of erstwhile Roman provinces, tribal and lenna chieftains were formed.
While Roman law erstwhile protected even agrarian residents in distant areas, in the Dark Ages walls and stone were the only means of security.
Finally, by the end of the 11th century, the old values and know-how of the complex planet of Greek-Roman civilization gradually renewed.
The slow revival was later stimulated by humanists and Renaissance scientists, reformation, and yet 200-year-oldabout the European Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries.
Modern Americans do not believe that our present civilization could be deposed for the 3rd time in the West, and then came the mediocre and brutal Dark Era.
But what caused this earlier return to tribality and failure of science, technology, and the regulation of law?
Historians mention any of the causes of the collapse of society — and present they are alarmingly familiar.
Like people, societies grow old. There's complacency.
The hard work and sacrifice that built the West besides make wealth and free time. specified wealth is treated as apparent for generations to come. The success is yet ignored — even ridiculed.
Expenditure and consumption outweigh revenue, production and investment.
The raising of children, conventional values, strong defense, love of homeland, religion, mere.
Tocracy and empirical education are disappearing.
The mediate class of autonomous citizens disappears. Society is divided between respective gentlemen and many peasants.
Tribalism — pre-civilization of bonds based on race, religion, or common appearance — is renewed.
The national government is divided into regional and cultural enclaves.
Borders are disappearing. Mass migration is uncontrollable. The eternal nightmare of anti-Semitism returns.
The currency is inflationed, losing value and trust. General rudeness in behavior, speech, dress and ethics replaces earlier standards.
Transport, communication and infrastructure are falling.
The end is close erstwhile the essential medicine is seen as worse than the disease.
This was the life of any 450 C.E. in Western Europe.
The modern West can make akin informing signals.
The inheritance fell importantly below 2.0 in almost all western country.
Public debt is approaching levels not sustainable. The dollar and the euro have lost much of their purchasing power.
Universities are more condemned than honoring the gifts of the Western intellectual past.
However, the ability to read and analyse the average people of the West, and especially Americans, is steadily decreasing.
Can the general public at all operate or realize the increasingly advanced machinery and infrastructure that forms an elite group of engineers and scientists?
A citizen loses assurance in a frequently corrupt elite that neither protects the borders of its states nor spends adequate resources on collective defense.
The drugs are despised.
Do we dare to deal with the spiral of deficits, unsustainable debt and corrupt bureaucracy and benefits?
Even the mention of reforms is slandered as "wanted", "racist", "cruel", or even "fascist" and "Nazi".
In our time, relativism replaces absolute values in the ghastly repetition of the late Roman Empire.
Critical legal explanation says crime is not truly a crime.
Critical race explanation assumes that the full society is guilty of sneaky prejudices, demanding monetary reparations and preferences in recruitment and employment.
Volleyball kind "sallet bowl" replaces assimilation, culture and integration of the old crucible.
Despite much richer, more relaxed and more technological modern America, was it safer in 1960 to walk around fresh York City or usage the subway than now?
Are advanced school students better at math now or 70 years ago?
Are films and tv more entertaining and sublime in 1940 or now?
Are atomic families with 2 parents the norm now or in 1955?
We are blessed to live longer and healthier than always — even erstwhile a wider society around us seems to be wobbling.
However, the West historically is highly self-critical and introspective.
Reform and Renaissance historically are more frequent than descending into the Dark Ages.
But the cure for the fall requires unity, integrity, courage, and action — virtues that are now uncommon in social media, among popular culture, and among the political class.
Translated by Google Translator
source:https://www.zerohedge.com/
