Elites seem oddly determined to pull down our civilization around them.
The world is living through a crisis of civilization which differs from ordinary disruption in that it involves not a breakdown of physical systems, as might be caused by a natural disaster or technological failure, but is a malaise afflicting the intellectual functioning of society itself.
But the "world" isn't in a crisis of civilization. The Chinese seem confident that they will win. Islamists seem pretty confident that Allah is on their side.
It is the West that is in a crisis of civilization as its elites turn against civilization. A confident civilization has elites who are proud of what their civilization built. Our civilization has too many elites who are proud to condemn our civilization in ignorant hatred for failure to reach perfection. The elites are ignorant of our history, the world's history, and seemingly of reality itself.
This isn't the first time that the West has had a crisis of confidence (from Admiral of the Ocean Sea, pp. 3-5 ):
At the end of the year 1492 most men in Western Europe felt exceedingly gloomy about the future. Christian civilization appeared to be shrinking in area and dividing into hostile units as its sphere contracted. For over a century there had been no important advance in natural science, and registration in the universities dwindled as the instruction they offered became increasingly jejune and lifeless. Institutions were decaying, well-meaning people were growing cynical or desperate, and many intelligent men, for want of something better to do, were endeavoring to escape the present through studying the pagan past. ...
Throughout Western Europe he general feeling was one of profound disillusion, cynical pessimism and black despair. ...
Yet, even as the chroniclers of Nurenberg were correcting their proofs proofs from Koberger's press [which saw Judgment Day imminent], a Spanish caravel named Nina scudded before a winter gale into Lisbon, with news of a discovery that was to five old Europe another chance. In a few years we find the mental picture completely changed. ... "A new envisagement of the world has begun, and men are no longer sighing after the imaginary golden age that lay in the distant past, but speculating as to the golden age that might possibly lie in the oncoming future."
I'm no longer as confident that America is a force resisting this trend. One problem is frustrated elites. James Lindsay isn't the first to make this observation, but he's right about our credentialed class in universities:
I don't think a lot of people realize how much resentment gets boiled up in people who are smart but too impractical to know how to make money, especially when they see "dumb" people making more money. Overproducing these bourgeois types is very dangerous to any society.
There is more in the thread.
But I do retain hope that a frontier in space can serve the role that the New World provided 500 years ago in reviving Europe and saving the seedlings of rule of law and freedom that eventually grew into the world we know today in the West.
The West is in a crisis of civilization. Not the world. But the world is affected by the Western template.
If the Western elites succeed in destroying our civilization, another civilization that lacks our rule of law and freedom traditions will be the template that affects the world. Including the West.
Have a super sparkly day.
UPDATE: How much more of our circular firing squad can America endure?
