JK: This article came together slowly over about a month, but today's set of "What Moussaoui Portends," Callimachus' "Heroes and Neighbours" re: Ayaan Hirsi Ali's tribulations, and "White Guilt, War Guilt, and the License to Kill" gave it new impetus. These thoughts begin with a gripping, personal, and very human story, then travel into the sick soul of a culture. Unfortunately, that culture is ours... and we need to understand the real sickness before we can hope to make it healthy again.
We've written a lot about Europe here. It was Cicero who coined the phrase "aggressive docility," and it's one that continues to ring true. While both France and Denmark performed much better than North America did during the Cartoon Jihad, Europe's riots raise legitimate questions about the will to maintain public order and safety at all. The long term trends, and the comprehensive difficulty those societies have with defending themselves at any level, is concerning. Watching its Weimarization bring Nietzsche's "Last Man" to life leaves many of us wondering if we are seeing the finale for Western Civilization in Europe unfolding in our time, even as some in Europe itself and beyond wonder, and not without reason, if that future Europe will also be Judenrein (German term, means "without Jews").
Ultimately, however, Europe's problem is spiritual - and I use that term in ways that go beyond any specific religion. Some say Europe's death began in the trenches of the Somme during World War 1, and note that all the rest from Bolshevism to Fascism to the postmodern nihilist Left has been the saga of its long death throes. Others place the fall later, noting that Europe died in Auschwitz and that The Holocaust was also "a form of self-administered lobotomy for Continental European culture."
Actually, it may have been much more. The good doctor at Shrinkwrapped has finally finished a fascinating series called "Shame, Aggression, & Demographic Suicide" that begins by looking into one soul, and ends with some profound and fascinating questions and insights. Questions and insights that stretch deep into Europe, and back across the Atlantic.
The blog "Sigmund, Carl, and Alfred" quoted some of it in Self Love, Self Hate And Children of the Dark:
"Even after many years of [psychological] work, Gudrun could not fully appreciate the enormity of what her family had lived through and how they had dealt with their own roles in the events surrounding the Holocaust. Although she was not a religious person and had had minimal religious training and teaching (in a Protestant denomination), she felt that the stain of the Holocaust on her family was, in effect, an original sin, for which she could never fully atone. Where Christians felt that their "original sin" was redeemed by Christ's sacrifice, especially in the post-Holocaust highly secular world of post-war Europe, there was no equivalent redemption available. It took a very long time for Gudrun to put into words her deeply held feelings that the shameful stain at her core could never be erased.
Gudrun felt that her familial complicity in the horrors of the Holocaust made her unsuitable for a decent person to love; she knew she was likable and could even convince herself that she was lovable, but she deeply felt that she was not lovable. The gap between what she knew intellectually (that she had no responsibility for what had happened) and what she felt (that she was the descendant of evil) was unbridgeable. We worked on this for a very long time. During that time she successfully established her own business, bought a home, and became involved in her community, but she could never tolerate the kindness of the kind of man she most wanted; it never felt right or fair. Further, the idea of bringing a child into the world who would, potentially, contain the same evil she did, lurking and waiting to one day be re-expressed, was a source of unimaginable horror to her. She could not shake the feeling that no matter how much good she did in the world, she came from people capable of the greatest horrors, and could not risk being even in a small way responsible for such evil once again being loosed in the world. It is hard to describe how deeply she felt this horror and how powerful it was.
I cannot emphasize enough that this woman was the most gentle of souls; the idea that she could hurt another person was enough to make her feel physically ill. Yet she could never shake the feeling that at her own core was a horror. Ultimately, she consciously made the decision to remove herself from the gene pool. She renounced her own future and the possibility of love for herself. [JK: emphasis mine] Nonetheless, she felt the therapy had been extremely helpful and had clarified for her the inchoate feelings that had plagued her much of her life. She no longer had to provoke in quite the same way as in the past and could work well with others. People were no longer turned off by her and chronically angry at her, but genuinely liked her. She could not explain to friends and colleagues why she was always alone, but she knew why she had decided on the course she had taken.
Although caution is always advisable when extending from the particular to the general, I can't help wondering if what I saw in Gudrun does not represent an unconscious dynamic at work in the Europe of today...."
A theme that is, of course, explored further in her post and her series. Here's the full set, which links nicely to Shelby Steele's thesis discussed today in "White Guilt, War Guilt, and the License to Kill." It's personal, gripping, and well worth reading:
- Shame, Aggression, & Demographic Suicide: Part I. Sets up the situation.
- Shame, Aggression, & Demographic Suicide: Part II. Explores "Gudrun's" example, and begins to ask questions about wider applicability.
- Shame, Aggression, & Demographic Suicide: Part III. "I believe the "return of the repressed" is already in motion. Tomorrow, I plan to discuss how an unlikely source has confirmed some of my worst fears."
- Shame, Aggression, & Demographic Suicide: Part IV. Links the previous posts to a number of disturbing trends in Europe.
Bennett speaks of Dreaming Europe in a Wide-Awake World, and offers an excellent summary of Europe's core issues and course. But what is killing Europe may in fact be its nightmares. To some extent, as Steele points out, those nightmares are ours as well.
What to do? Can there yet be hope? Jack Wheeler notes that:
"It takes both heroic optimism and heroic faith to attempt a revival of Europe now at death's door. For many astute observers, Europe is doomed by a "perfect storm" of inescapably negative demographics, welfare state bankruptcy, and the creeping seizure of its cities by Moslem immigrants. Yet the cause of all three is Europeans' willful abandonment of their cultural souls. Restore that to them and all three of the clouds creating this perfect storm start to clear."
That's pretty much what I see. Europe, and to some extent North America as well, can usefully and accurately be described as decadent, and many of the trends noted at the beginning of this article are merely symptoms. "When people accept futility and the absurd as normal," writes French-born Jacques Barzun, "the culture is decadent. The term is not a slur; it is a technical label." The New Criterion replies in "Closing Time" that:
"If From Dawn to Decadence is partly a celebration of the West, it is also an elegy for its passing. Mr. Barzun's second large purpose is to delineate the evolution of that decadence his title announces. Early on he tells us that the word "decadence" is "not a slur; it is a technical label." But that is not entirely candid. For one thing, being a slur is not incompatible with being a technical term. For another, Mr. Barzun's summary of what he calls "our present decadence" shows that he does not regard decadence as a neutral historical fact but as a cultural, moral, and political disaster of the first order.
It has certainly been so for many socieities and civilizations, from Rome and then the Byzantine empire to Venice and beyond. Yet even in a decadent era, Rothstein's NY Times review notes that despair is not inevitable:
"And though it often seems a slur in Mr. Barzun's book, its intimations of decay also provide some reason for hope. After all, Mr. Barzun suggests, other more extreme periods of decadence -- which include the corrupt 17th-century universe of Swift or the 15th century before the Reformation challenged the corruption of the medieval Church -- were followed by periods of reconstruction, in which Western culture was re-examined and reconstituted."
Jack Wheeler's piece adds that "such restoration can only be done with, and cannot be done without, Christianity...." Which makes sense given its prevalence in Europe's population and culture. It also ties in with one potential source of hope:
"There was a very funny movie made back in 1987 called The Princess Bride. Imagine an Errol Flynn swashbuckler with a Monty Python script. One of my favorite scenes is when the hero, Westley (played by Cary Elwes) is wounded and his friends drag his limp body to a Yiddish Wizard named Miracle Max (played by Billy Crystal) in hopes of saving him. But it's too late. He's dead, they tell Max.
"Look who knows so much," Max replies after examining Westley. "It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There is a VERY BIG DIFFERENCE between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there's usually only one thing you can do."
"What's that?" his friends ask. Max answers, "Go through his clothes and look for loose change."
It turns out there was an adaptive replay of this scene in the Sistine Chapel this week. The College of Cardinals dragged in the limp body of European Christianity - which means of European civilization and culture - and placed it at Josef Ratzinger's feet. Can you save him? they asked, because we are afraid he's dead. Their Dean and Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith replied that yes, he is mostly dead - but not all dead, so there is hope for his revival. That hope is what elected Cardinal Ratzinger to the papacy."
Will that be enough? Can Benedict XVI be the "Miracle Max" of our age? G-d only knows. Yet the lessons of the late 20th century should teach us not to underestimate a determined Pope. Europe has many antibodies to Catholicism, but it also has many societal and cultural channels through which a Pope can exert significant influence. Not least of which may be his ability to grant to Europe the two things it cannot discuss and yet must have: a way to forgive itself, even as he and his church insist on and promulgate the reality and centrality of both morality and evil.
A happy ending? Not for everyone.
An Indecent Left that has sought to silence, or denigrate, or even to cheer on 9/11 [PDF] may yet have good cause to fear such a man. An Indecent Left which has moved on to World War 2 Holocaust denial in Europe via relativism, and is embarked on the fetishization of Judas by the folks Gerard Van Der Leun refers to as "The Church of the Self" may yet have good cause to fear such a man. An Indecent Left that relies on unresolved shame as its primary source of energy and power, cannot imagine a hostile tyrant it will not shill for, or service, and increasingly finds itself cooperating with and borrowing from Islamists and neo-fascists, may yet have good cause to fear such a man.
The rest of us will need to get over our minor differences and find strong allies, as the fundamental conflict of Western civilization vs. its enemies emerges once again as a central organizing principle for our times. In Winds' discussions re: the Euston Manifesto of the Decent Left, I noted the common thread of Western civilization, Enlightenment values, and the sense of human dignity. The strength of these values in the signatories, whose political beliefs are rooted in a socialism based on the things it loves rather than the things it hates, created a chasm between them and many of their pseudo-Leftist compatriots. Even as it united them with people they generally disagree with, and prodded them to action in robust defense of the things they loved.
Lest those things be lost. For they have been. They can be, still. We are not immune.
Which is why I also added a cautionary note:
If you are still in your comfy Bubble Of Me, or believe that Western Civilization is just one long story of oppression and evil, then the war is an inconvenient distraction, "values" is a word used to relativize rather than affirm, and none of this has any interest.
The bad news? There won't be much snapping out of this, no mater what happens. History tells us (note, for example, the specific stories around the fall of Rome and, almost 1000 years later, Constantinople) that this kind of bubble can persist right into and through the final sieges and surrender of a civilization. Constantinople's denizens were not decadent by birth - they had been carefully made that way, and in the end it was impossible to undo by any persuasion or set of external events. This scenario may be in the process of repeating itself in large segments of Europe/Eurabia, but it is present as a broad tendency in America as well.
Those who believe in nothing but survival, or power, can always find opportunities for it, after all. And we already see its harbingers and indicators in the various "letters to Muslims" (or more hilariously, the photos with hand-made signs) from the Liberal-Left that amount, more or less, to "we're not the problem, leave us alone, go get the bad [neocons/Jews,Red Staters, whatever] over there." Some, like Michael Moore, have been more openly literal about this, and we thank them for their honesty.
The good news? Many people will never leave the 1960s, but this mortal coil is another matter - and their children and childrens' children are still reachable. The war will hinge on them, in the end.
The vacation from history is ending. The vacation into ridiculously cheap hydrocarbon energy is ending. The vacation from morality as a serious subject is ending. The fight will be long, the road darker than most of us have even begun to imagine, and in the end Europe may be lost. It is a fight that will begin with al-Qaeda, but not end there. It is a fight that will cross some political lines, and harden others. It is and will be the fight of our lives - and if we screw up, of our children's lives and our children's children.
There is much work to do, on multiple fronts and in many areas, if we wish to honour and perpetuate the values, habits, and practices that have given us Western Civilization's incomparable legacy.
Contribute in any way you can. The work will be hard. Your allies may be unusual, unexpected, or even uncomfortable. Change will be part of the equation. So be it. Stand up and be counted.
Win or lose, it's worth it. We're worth it. Be part of it.
I have seen close variations of the following in several places over the years, only once attributed -- to Orville Freeman, Ike's Secretary of Agriculture, and I suspect he was quoting it -- but it seems tremendously pertinent.
The Sequence of Civilisation:
from Bondage to Spiritual Faith
from Faith to Great Courage
from Courage to Liberty
from Liberty to Abundance
from Abundance to Leisure
from Leisure to Selfishness
from Selfishness to Complacency
from Complacency to Apathy
from Apathy to Dependency
from Dependency to Weakness
from Weakness BACK TO BONDAGE
I have always seen this expressed as a long cycle, as in hundreds of years, with a certain finality to it all, but if for "bondage" you substitute CRISIS in the real meaning of that word then the whole thing begins to look a lot like Strauss & Howe's 'Fourth Turning' with roughly a ten-year dwell time in each phase.
from CRISIS to Spiritual Faith
from Faith to Great Courage
from Courage to Liberty (1940s)
from Liberty to Abundance (1950s)
from Abundance to Leisure (1960s)
from Leisure to Selfishness (1970s)
from Selfishness to Complacency (1980s)
from Complacency to Apathy (1990s)
from Apathy to Dependency (2000s)
from Dependency to Weakness (late '00s ?)
from Weakness BACK TO CRISIS (2010s ?)
I sure hope the Strauss & Howe flavour of this sequence is the operational case, for indeed if not -- given the very good decadal fit for the last 60 years or so -- then the disintegration will have been stunningly rapid on an historical scale.
And, to weave in a thread from the Mexican immigration discussion below, much of that problem arises from our cultural weakness in being willing to defend our culture, language, and borders.
Why does that matter? Well the Visigoths and Ostragoths and all the other .goths who eventually overwhelmed the Roman Empire did not come to conquer. *They came to get a piece of the economic action. They wanted to be Romans.
A healthy civilisation would have been able to absorb them if it wished or keep them out if it did not wish to absorb them. In the event Rome could do neither -- because of its decadence -- and it is a lesson we ignore at great risk.
Jean Francois Revel is dead. The sharpest and more honest of last european (real) thinkers. RIP
Change "aggressive docility" to "passive-aggressive".
im not reading this long thing on demographic suicide
Tell me - does it explain why Japanese people are longing for demographic suicide? Why did northwest europe find demographic suicide appealing first, but it spread to the southern europe only later?
Low birthrates are explained by traditional demographics well enough - female education and work, expensive housing, low economic value to children, expensive child rearing, etc.
liberalhawk,
Perhaps if you had actually read it, you'd realize that the suicide it discussed was cultural/civilizational rather than demographic.
Perhaps if you had actually read this piece, and then perhaps Shrinkwrapped et. al., you'd realize that Gudrun's case was not about female education and work, expensive housing, low economic value to children, or anything like that.
But of course, then you might have to, you know, read. And grapple with the argument as it is.
A more interesting question might be - why couldn't you bring yourself to follow the argument?
Ronald Proby offers an on-point observation in a comment to our Euston Manifesto post:
Europe has many antibodies to Catholicism,
For odd reasons, I found that line the most evocative in the essay, Joe. As an engineer and a computer scientist by trade and training, I have a tendency to cast my political thoughts in terms of current computer science metaphors. One that I've been kicking around in the back of my head for a while is the notion of cultural immune system defects.
(How is that a computer science metaphor? Well, I read a lot of bio-inspired computational literature, and one of the relatively new forms of bio-inspired optimization routines is the artificial immune system. Yes, it's a long stretch.)
The West in general does have strong immune responses to Christianity and Catholicism in general. There are powerful arguments to be made that this is a good thing, and one of the distinguishing characteristics of the West over Islam or several ancient civilizations where religion completely co-opted government or vice-versa. As an atheist, and a secularist before I left the Church, and as an avid reader of history, those arguments resonate very strongly with me.
But it may be true only to a point. Much as I would very much like to see an atheist world, I don't believe it will happen in my life time. Given that, the drive to completely and entirely discredit Christianity may be a form of societal immune system dysfunction.
I am not in despair over this-- from a long American perspective, at least, we tend to have a general cycle about 60 to 80 years long of Great Reawakenings followed by periods of secularism. I am also not in despair because there have been times in European history-- you note at least one-- where the Church itself needed to be rebuilt, which is something that can happen best with secular input. The relation between secular and spiritual society in the West seems to me to be a system. Not a perfectly smooth system, but a system. The total destruction of one branch of that without something of equal heft and function to replace it seems like a bad idea to me.
(That wasn't my original thought about immune system dysfunctions, but your essay made me think to apply it quickly and see what people thought of it. My original thought of it was in application to the American Left's reflexive but entirely overblown moral distrust of, among other things, military power projection or even the entire notion of a thing called strategy. Skepticism is healthy to a point, but after a point, it is toxic. Knowing where that point is, is wisdom, and I don't think nearly enough people have it.)
m.vitruvius@gmail.com
This article puts into words exactly the conclusion I had come to years ago after asking "why" and that has gotten harder to ignore in recent years.
It isn't difficult to understand at all, but only in one's ability to make sense of it well enough to others who are unaware of what this article expresses but who have begun to also ask: "why".
While we live the moment, in this life, we feel we are the most important thing of all...yet if we do not not understand the past, the present, then we are doomed not only to repeat the past but obliterate the future.
Here is an article on how Europe has effectively given up on the future
liberalhawk--I'm not so sure that there isn't a cultural element to Japan's demographic decline. There is no lack of shame/guilt/horror in Japanese 20th century history. Substitute "rape of Nanking" for "Holocaust." A Japan expert could help work through that mindset for us.
I hear you about the economics, though--that is a common thread worldwide.
Sigh. Restore christianity? Until The Enlightenment Europe had a common culture, of which christianity was a very big part. After that it deteriorated. In the common culture there existed a pop entertainment, but also a high art - which told people what to feel. Think of the influence of courtly culture (chivalry is still with us (the best knight would be #1 machismo). Nobility is long gone (replaced by Paris H. & Co.). but their old culture's still here.
There is neither in Europe nor in America anyone capable of telling people what to feel. something similar for christianity. This is an art and it requires a living tradition and mastery of that art (genius?). Joseph R. is simply too old. If he's the best the catholic church cann do...
ps. it's Ayaan and do remember she's not exactly mainstream - which is a pity.
You know, all this talk of demographic suicide makes me think of Russia. Birth rates plummeted, death rates soared, and Russia was going to collapse within a generation.
But in the space of five years, the Russian birth rate has shot back up.
Granted, that's largely on the back of the increased security brought about by Russia's hydrocarbon fuelled economic recovery.
But don't put too much stock in demographic trends. They can turn around pretty quickly, usually when you least expect it.
Bart,
The original quote is from Sir Alex Fraser Tytler, Scottish Jurist and Historian (1742-1813), from his 1801 Collection of Lectures:
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasure. From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasure, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s great civilizations has been 200 years.
These nations have progressed through this sequence:
From bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From great courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to selfishness;
From selfishness to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependency;
From dependency to bondage.
Perhaps a extension to the realm of societal values (or the abandonment thereof) is warranted?
Joe, you've nailed the social manifestation of "Bad Philosophy" that we started all this with...
A.L.
The political leadership in the West does not understand these new times. Like generals, they are fighting the last war. The people who moved then were mostly European (different nationalities!) but at least they shared many common qualities (Christianity, language roots, alphabet, clothes, food, customs, etc...). There were variations, but they were minor. Immigration was perminent - no going back! There was no welfare safety net - it was work or starve. Most of all there was no PC multicultural doctrine that discouraged integration and not only exempted foreign cultures and religions from criticism (some justified, some not) but promoted actively encouraged a critical and even disrespectful attitude towards "Western" culture and history.
Enter a new group of immigrants, from the lands of Islam, starting after World War 2 but really picking up mommentum in the 1970s. Immigrant populations soared! Word got out that life in the West was good, Millions came, in ships, trucks, planes, on even on foot. They came and they brought with them their customs and their religion - and their hate and anger.
Europe has several problems, but the biggest is Islam. Europe has gone to bed with the devil and now must pay the price.The Muslims in the West will not assimilate or integrate. Modern technolody, sheer numbers and European Social policy have not only made this unnecessary but even discouraged it. Muslims can watch Jihad live on their satellite TVs, hear radical hate speeches in their mosques and download the latest infidel beheading on the Internet. They have their own schools, newspapers, radio and shops. If they can't find work, a welfare check is in the mail. Muslims live in Europe but most (?) are not part of it - and immigration is just a slow motion jihad.
But lets not just blame the Muslims for the situation in Europe. Lets also blame the Europeans and especially their blind, lying, stupid leaders and intellectuals.
There is hope. All that is needed is honesty and courage. If nothing is done, every man, woman and child in Europe will face the ugly reality of dhimmitude. Oh yes, kiss your pensions goodbye also.
People need to stand up and tell the truth. Ask Muslims why they persecute and oppress other religions. Talk about jihad history! Ask them about the "Kill all the infidels," "beat your wives" and "women are stupid" passages in the Koran/hadiths. Make it clear that you know that the Quran and the Imans do not preach peace, tolerance and equality. Ask why they not only follow a man who tortured, murdered, enslaved, raped and even beat his own wife, but demand that others respect him also (Yes, there are all found in Islamic writings!).
Demand answers. Demand that Muslims be accountable for their actions of their fellow Muslims. Demand that Muslims accept Western principles of equality or freedom - or get out. Sooner or later someone will stand up and say "enough." It may be the Pope, or maybe it will be some other leader. Europe has no choice but to act in self-preservation.
Radical Muslims kill, moderates make excuses.
John Kactuz
Worthy post and warning - some will say it's Cassandraesque, but I don't think so. The only way to avoid a dire fate is to recognize it.
Your post, as usual, is one I wish I had written (and indeed have been pondering similar themes but haven't been able to put them together of late).
"They can be, still. We are not immune."
Definately. Especially the Red-Staters/Jacksonians may be smug and think we won't follow that path. But I see us as perhaps only a decade behind - unless we undertake the intellectual challenge to fight off certain invidious trends.
We don't and likely won't have the extreme demographic problem (a big plus, I conceed). But in all else it's more and more difficult to be optimistic on balance - the trend is in the wrong direction. And I don't mean that in a partisan sense (but I do mean it in an ideological sense, though not so much in the usual narrow "Lib/Con" divide - though the route and demoralization of the Liberals in the Scoop Jackson/JFK/Truman tradition is an acute pain. {Yes I know they are out there, with negligable influence anywhere except perhaps as a faction among the dispized "NeoCons" and within the Democratic coalatiion serving as the Most Hated}).
As the former member of the New Left, Jean-Francois Revel, said, "A civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself."
We have some energy, enough for half-measures infused with vast self-doubt (and no by "full measures" I don't mean "nuke everything till it glows"), but that will drain away until our position resembles that of the Europe we scorn. None of these trends show any sign of reversing - indeed the long march continues in the wrong direction.
#17 John Kactuz, Ask them why? Haven't they already told us? As I understand it we wrongfully stole the Andaluse from them. Our religion is morally bankrupt and God sent Mohammed to start the new one. We don't know how to use women for babies. We.... oh you get the idea.
I realize this is somewhat heretical, but, after looking back over the horrendus track record Europe has had for the last century and more, I don't find it that surprising that they've given up and resigned themselves to a slow fade out.
The culture of Europe has been a fountain of poisonous nonsense philosophically, politically, and culturally for generations, including those "lost generations" they killed off in lunatic warfare.
I'm afraid some nice paintings, some good books and a few delicious recipes doesn't make up for the dozens of millions killed as a direct result of European malignancy.
The future for the US and the world lies in Asia, especially if they can grow out of their disastrous experiments with marxist/socialist dogma, and discover the benefits of a society based on human rights and competetive economics.
What a great post! Yet, "what is to be done?"
When Iran gets nukes and actually uses them, those claiming "guilt" now will be actively blamed. Evil MUST BE FOUGHT, or else it will win.
It might well be too late for Tel Aviv; or Jerusalem.
The world needs a Human Rights Enforcement Group, to institute regime change of a non-democracy that fails to support Free Speech and Free Religion.
Perhaps NATO, perhaps the Anglosphere; the USA (tech) and India (bodies) can enforce Human Rights. But the world must understand that some outside force must stop dictators from violating them.
For me, I'm far more enraged at the genocides in Vietnam & Cambodia, and Rwanda, and slo-mo in Darfur. Those full of hate against Bush, even when they have reasonable points (many Reps ARE corrupt), drown out the good criticism with hysterical silly pacifism.
The Left loves to claim "the personal is the political" and they are more right than they know. In Europe today, marriage and children are almost non-existent. Those who do have children are usually single mothers, the marriage rate is almost entirely collapsed in Europe, and the same thing is happening in the US.
With women's power to choose freely their own mates, and not depend on men for economic support, the old certainties of marriage, children, and family have gone in Europe, the US, and yes Japan too.
Instead fatherhood and romantic companionship have been separated, with the dream of Modern Feminism, ala Barbara Ehrenreich's Time essay in 2000 being realized. "Short term, passionate affairs" and the "free-flowing, amorphous" structure to raise children. Essentially the Welfare State. Which raises children and provides families the same way it administers everything else.
Various researchers have seen essentially a collapse in marriage and the traditional two-parent family in working-class women, with only upper-middle class women (better educated, etc) having essentially the same marriage rate as prior to Feminism and the Sexual Revolution (around 80% of women with children marrying their fathers). Social and political implications of these unstable, single-parent families with kids in turmoil and poverty loom large. I agree with the poster who postulated "the History of Me" as part of this problem. Along with feminism viewing Marriage and family as a prison (see: Friedan, Greer, Ehrenreich, Millet, others). No wonder women opted out, maximizing freedom.
And that's really the crux of the matter. A lack of responsibility and compromise in the most personal sphere, marriage, in favor of maximum freedom. Everything else IMHO, including loss of religious faith, extremely low rates of marriage and childbirth, inability to stand up for themselves etc. all comes from this loss of family, indeed social engineering to remake humanity and get rid of the nuclear family.
No wonder Europe is on suicide watch. It's all about "finding themselves" and other lame Sixties personal fulfilment stuff instead of the traditional family. People will fight for their children and families. For "replaceable" stuff like Freedom of Speech? Not so much, sadly.
The story of Gudrun is very similiar to the story of the daughter of one of our very own conservative icons. Like Gudrun, this daughter of right wing wet dreams, could not bring herself bring a child into this world. Unlike Gudrun, however, she made sure of her decision by having herself sterilized at the earliest possible time after reaching the age of consent, at the tender age of eighteen.
I am sure all here immediately recognized the similarities between Patti Davis, the daugher of Ronand Reagan, and Gudrun. I just wonder why Joe didn't bring her into his essay on demographic suicide.
Will the indecent right ever come to terms with their own dispicable idealogy that drives young girls to such desperate acts of denial? I doubt it. I don't think people like Joe even care.
"The culture of Europe has been a fountain of poisonous nonsense philosophically, politically, and culturally for generations, including those "lost generations" they killed off in lunatic warfare."
Oh,horses***,I'm sick of this "uniquely evil European" crap.
The aztecs butchered tens of thousands to a bloody snake god,victims captured by waging perpetual war on their neighbors.
How about China and it's "tributary kingdom" system imposed on it's neighbors,by war?India's caste system? Shaka Zulu's genocidal wars of empire?The Mongols,The Arab Muslims themselves and thier dhimmi system?The Ottomans Turks and the Kurdish genocide that inspired dear old 'dolphy?
The "Noble Savages" were notable for their utter savagery and distinct lack of nobility.
How about the communist genocides of the 20th century?
(communist?what's a communist?)
Show me a guilt free civilization and I'll call you a liar.
"The future for the US and the world lies in Asia, especially if they can grow out of their disastrous experiments with marxist/socialist dogma, and discover the benefits of a society based on human rights and competetive economics."
If our future depends on ethnic facist asia,the biggest racists/racial supremacists on earth,then the future of "a society based on human rights and competetive economics" doesn't exsist.Nor does democratic governt by popular consent and the impartial rule of law.
"Substitute "rape of Nanking" for "Holocaust""...there's a big difference, though: German schools have apparently been pretty honest in teaching about the Holocaust, whereas Japanese schools have been much less honest about Imperial Japanese atrocities. I doubt that these have permeated the culture to anywhere near the same extent.
If you like your religion of a more post modern flavor, Aleister Crowley has a few good things to say:
My adepts have their heads in the highest heavens and their feet in the lowest hells.
Or if you like the Jefferson Airplane
"You need to be out before you come in
And after you come to go
In the midst of Yang is a smaller part of Yin"
Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of men?
Evil happens when men believe they can do no evil.
For Gudrun to be good she will have to love the dark side and always keep an eye on it. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. Moral and political.
Even so, demographic suicide is a temporary phenomenon.
In the long term breeders will dominate.
Why is that a problem? In the case of Europe: culture.
BTW #23 Ken,
You are quite correct anecdotally (one story). However, in America the right is outbreeding the left.
The sexual revolutiion is not a new phenomenon.
Ever hear of the roaring twenties?
You get one every time there is a shortage of men. Usually during or post war. The 60s "sexual revolution" was caused by fewer males born in the depression and during WW2.
Demographics
#18 Porphyrogenitus,
The Iranians are socialist/communist to the core.
This puts them at a huge disadvantage in the long term.
What we fight is a mix of the worst of the 7th, 19th, and 20th ideologies. This is a BIG handicap.
Marcus Vitruvius,
Much as I would very much like to see an atheist world, I don't believe it will happen in my life time. Given that, the drive to completely and entirely discredit Christianity may be a form of societal immune system dysfunction.
I think you're on to something here. Most atheists are also anti-religious. There is an either/or antagonism between atheism and religion. But what if religion itself is an evolutionary adaptation?
If we look back on human history, cultures progressed from disbelief to polytheism and finally to monotheism. Polytheism displaced disbelief, and montheism displaced polytheism. Obviously these are generalizations.
Europe has come full circle. Monotheism of the Christian variety has been displaced by disbelief. But since disbelief is maladaptive, it will be displaced by something. And unless Europe changes course, that something will be Islam.
Ultimately, all of us are hosts for our genes. We, the hosts have free will. We are actors, sometimes passionate and sometimes rational. The cultures in which we live are the sum of the individual decisions we made since the beginning of civilization. Our genes don't have free will. They are objects. They adapt based on the sum of the evolutionary forces that have operated on the matter of which they are comprised since the beginning of time.
Religion is the arbiter between we the hosts and the evolutionary needs of our genes. Without it, our passions as willful hosts no longer serve the evolutionary needs of our genes. And both perish, displaced by individuals who better serve their genes.
I am making a spiritual journey that is the reverse of yours. I've been an atheist my whole life. But I've begun to question my own disbelief, and become a doubting atheist.
The source of this doubt is the concept of free will. I cannot conceive that free will does not exist. Because without free will, the thoughts I think are nothing but an illusion - a trick played on me by the matter of which I'm comprised and which is subject only to timeless electro-chemical physical forces. Nothing I think can overrule these forces if that is all there is.
So if free will really does exist, what is its source if it is other than God? And if so, isn't it possible that Europe can return to Christianity through reason rather than faith alone? And doesn't that way lie the only hope for Western Civilization?
If you still have fight in you, you'd better stand up and use it. The hour is late kids.
I'd say start with hand-to-hand against Leftoes.
Let's face it - they are the main enemey. They are the destroyers of all things.
Western Civilization has a pedigree second to none.
It's about to die.
Lefties welcome this. It is their life's work. Even the 'nice' ones. Don't be fooled. It's a ruse.
Fight them to the end. They are crushed or posterity is crushed. Everything is crushed. There is no third option.
"It was Cicero who coined the phrase "aggressive docility,""
Wow. Great English, Cicero!
I'm late for the party again (I blame a busy weekend and dial-up internet) but a few points:
I think arguing European problems originate in the trenches of WW1 or the horrors of the Holocaust overestimates the "Europeaness" of Europe.
The extent to which Continental Europe (let alone including the UK in the set) constitutes a demos is dubious.
Were the WW1 neutrals (Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal) truly spiritually afflicted by the Western Front?
How far does, say, a Spaniard or a Briton feel their countries morally tainted by the Holocaust?
Any more than would an American?
Due to geographical proximity?
As for the problems of "Europe" in relation to religion, I would argue that religion has not been a vital, creative cultural/intellectual force driving European culture for almost 200 years.
(As opposed to its often enormous continuing role in the lives and attitudes of people as individuals and of community routines.)
In much of the Continent, religion (especially Catholicism and to some extent German Lutheranism) was badly damaged by the association of dominant Churches with the Old Regimes and the Old Reactionary Right during the 19th and early 20th centuries, but remained sufficiently entrenched socially to exclude significant growth of other denominations.
One example of the "British exception": there were always significant alternative denominations in England; and the British Tories were never Monarchist reactionaries of the Continental type.
Related to this, a reason why the frequent US contention that fascists/Nazi's were essentially akin to left-wing movements makes many Europeans go "huh?": differing historical political premises.
In the political taxonomy of Continental Europe 1780's to 1940's, American Republicans could easily be defined as leftists: a written constitution, equality before the law, rule of law, no autocratic authority, no legal hereditary orders of society, no established church, free markets etc. etc.
These principles were anathema to the Old Right in Europe.
The demise of both the Old Right and militarist fascism in the furnace of World War 2 led to various European "new right" alignments, (Christian Democrats, Gaullists etc) reconciled to Classical liberalism in politics but also joining in the welfare state+markets "grand compromise" with the social democats/democratic socialists of the postwar era.
This compromise had its virtues: it (plus the Soviet threat, the lessons of the 20's and 30's, and the Continental economic boom of the 50's and 60's) helped cement a popular consensus behind the Atlanticist/Capitalist order.
This very consensus, however, helped produce the reaction of the New Left (and later the Greens); embodiments of Bad Philosophy perhaps, but also able to link to the very understandable more general questioning of aspects of the European past.
A healthy tendency, perhaps, before it became disorted into a new orthodoxy of "right thought", increasing abandoned historical perspective and realism, and began to jettison the baby of Western achievements with the bathwater of its failings.
A second problem was that the very prosperity and security that the consensus developed has made it all the more difficult to address the increasingly apparent economic problems.
Both the percolation of (parts of) New Left persons and concepts into the mainstream, and its place within the social consensus also make it difficult to address such issues as the limits of tolerance, the potential of dysfunctional culture-complexes to imperil a inter-linked world, and the role of force and coercion rather than (purely) peace, dialogue, and compromise (preferably entrenched in institutions).
Aversions which can become, among some, almost pathological when dealing with either the nominated "victims" of history or the perceived victor (i.e. the USA).
While the Catholic church (and others) may be able to form part of the response to the various malaises of the countries of Europe, I suspect the main factor which will resolve these issues is the inherent self-correcting functions of "liberal" political systems (a factor absent or at least not entrenched in Continental Europe in earlier periods) and the Western tendency to information processing and combining rational consideration with fundamental ethical premises.
Once, that is, a critical mass of the populations decides that the issues concerned require their serious attention.
We are legit,and registered company,
[You are also now banned. Congratulations. --NM]