When Was West? The Civilization.

[Will Torbald]

We did it. We saved Western Civilization. I think? I've been reading a lot from many different groups, and they all want to Save The West. I guess we agree on where it is, but not when it is. Everyone has their opinion about it, and the problem I see is that "West Civ" is undefined, which causes many debates and discussions on what it is actually about. Is it an egalitarian society? Is it about equality of gender, of race? Of civil rights? Or the one about private property and discrimination? Does it include the empire, or the democracy? Is it secular or christian? Is it liberal or conservative? All of the above?

 

The point is that whatever it is that you or we are trying to save, no one is willing to actually define it concretely. It's in Europe and in America aka The West. But when?

[M.2]

Brilliant question! I myself can only make guesses, so I am looking forward to reading the replies.

[rosencrantz]

 Everyone has their opinion about it, and the problem I see is that "West Civ" is undefined, which causes many debates and discussions on what it is actually about.

 

Each Western culture is different and what they value and what their perspective is. Those values and perspectives are largely driven by genetics that adapt to a geographical and economical situation. 

[DCLugi]

In a very broad stroke I see it as when more blood and oxygen made it to the frontal lobes. Hey, I said it was broad.

[dsayers]

Best of luck with your topic. When I asked people what Western civilization was and how they knew it should be preserved, I got downvotes, ad hominem, appeals to emotion, etc. In my The Fight for Western Civilization Debunked article, I put forth the idea of what I called "Northern civilization" and why I thought it was superior to the often undefined Western civilization. Because the west includes institutionalized theft, assault, rape, and murder and humans have evolved beyond the tolerance for such things.

[luxfelix]

Best of luck with your topic. When I asked people what Western civilization was and how they knew it should be preserved, I got downvotes, ad hominem, appeals to emotion, etc. In my The Fight for Western Civilization Debunked article, I put forth the idea of what I called "Northern civilization" and why I thought it was superior to the often undefined Western civilization. Because the west includes institutionalized theft, assault, rape, and murder and humans have evolved beyond the tolerance for such things.

 

I remember that article.

 

Usually ad hominems mean that you've won the argument... 

 

Bonus: One viewpoint is that the "West is the best" because it is the culture group heading in the direction of individual liberty, prosperity, and happiness. Perhaps "Northern civilization" is the destination that the West has been journeying towards and, on rare occasions, has found their compass directed northwards?

 

(To carry on the metaphor: One must make preparations before travelling further North...  )

[Will Torbald]

Best of luck with your topic. When I asked people what Western civilization was and how they knew it should be preserved, I got downvotes, ad hominem, appeals to emotion, etc. In my The Fight for Western Civilization Debunked article, I put forth the idea of what I called "Northern civilization" and why I thought it was superior to the often undefined Western civilization. Because the west includes institutionalized theft, assault, rape, and murder and humans have evolved beyond the tolerance for such things.

 

I agree with the ideals of your article as well. A lot of people also claim that the west is the best, or the pinnacle, but I also disagree that it is the best we can do. Whenever something is elevated to the position of the best, all progress is stunted. Humanity can do much better than the west in the long run, but it will never do it unless it stops contemplating itself as if it were the last thing it can achieve.

 

 

Bonus: One viewpoint is that the "West is the best" because it is the culture group heading in the direction of individual liberty, prosperity, and happiness. Perhaps "Northern civilization" is the destination that the West has been journeying towards and, on rare occasions, has found their compass directed northwards?

 

 

Yet people are the unhappiest they've ever been if you substract the anti-depressants, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, suicide rate, self hatred/white guilt/race tensions, - I mean, if you were to treat western countries as one personified entity, it is a self harming depressed mess of a gender fluid guy. The negative aspects cannot be overseen.

 

 

Each Western culture is different and what they value and what their perspective is. Those values and perspectives are largely driven by genetics that adapt to a geographical and economical situation. 

 

This would sum up West Civ as "What White People Do". Since western culture has been at one point in history hard left, hard right, liberal, socialist, capitalist, and everything in between - the only thread is white people. Save the west is code for save the white race.

[dsayers]

Bonus: One viewpoint is that the "West is the best" because it is the culture group heading in the direction of individual liberty, prosperity, and happiness. Perhaps "Northern civilization" is the destination that the West has been journeying towards and, on rare occasions, has found their compass directed northwards?

 

(To carry on the metaphor: One must make preparations before travelling further North...  )

Preparations? Tell me more.

 

The Inuit have a more meat-based diet. Presumably, this is because they live in a place that less hospitable to plants or that meats keep better or whatever. I don't think they set out to be different from others. They evolved as other humanoids were evolving elsewhere. My point being that I don't think that people spread ideas, trying to improve upon "Eastern civilization" for example. I think it's a label that was tacked on as a generality later on.

 

Of course, being a generality means defining one's terms is that much more important!

 

Culture is subjective, so I could never be an expert on such things. But it seems to me that the main difference between what others would describe as Western and I would describe as Northern (oops, now I regret using Inuit as an example ) is the belief that humans can exist in different, opposing moral categories. Western clings to the idea in terms of ideas such as slavery, gender equality of opportunity, etc. Thanks largely to the internet though, ideas such as peaceful parenting and that government is predicate on violations of property rights (Northern) have flourished. If I'm right about this, then "traveling" would merely consist of accepting reality despite the ways in which they go against the narrative, leading to the shaking of one's previously held relationships.

 

Were the world to make such a transition, I think preparation is always useful. Going from a world where people can whine and beg to the masters/enforcers to being responsible for self and finding solutions to problems will be a challenging one. This is why I have not been able to stress enough the importance of those of us that know better to not do anything to pretend institutionalized violence is valid or acceptable. Because we'd risk the recently freed slaves begging for a new master all over again. But as Stef used to point out, life adapts. If there's no government teet, then people will seek jobs that didn't before. When people cannot mistreat others and still survive, they'll find ways to co-operate and be kind. The self-correction of the free market is what makes it so beautiful I think. The State obstructs the free market's two most important components for self-correction: consequence and competition.

 

Those are my thoughts. I'd be interested in hearing what you had in mind.

[A4E]

Where we can have discussions like this about most things without government or a mafia publicly murdering us.

[Dylan Lawrence Moore]

Read Carroll Quigley's Evolution of Civilizations. The guy defines it brilliantly.

[luxfelix]

Yet people are the unhappiest they've ever been if you substract the anti-depressants, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, suicide rate, self hatred/white guilt/race tensions, - I mean, if you were to treat western countries as one personified entity, it is a self harming depressed mess of a gender fluid guy. The negative aspects cannot be overseen.

 

Of course, and fortunately, in the larger historical perspective, the West takes the negative aspects into account and course-corrects -- eventually towards true North? 

 

 

Preparations? Tell me more.

 

The Inuit have a more meat-based diet. Presumably, this is because they live in a place that less hospitable to plants or that meats keep better or whatever. I don't think they set out to be different from others. They evolved as other humanoids were evolving elsewhere. My point being that I don't think that people spread ideas, trying to improve upon "Eastern civilization" for example. I think it's a label that was tacked on as a generality later on.

 

Of course, being a generality means defining one's terms is that much more important!

 

Culture is subjective, so I could never be an expert on such things. But it seems to me that the main difference between what others would describe as Western and I would describe as Northern (oops, now I regret using Inuit as an example ) is the belief that humans can exist in different, opposing moral categories. Western clings to the idea in terms of ideas such as slavery, gender equality of opportunity, etc. Thanks largely to the internet though, ideas such as peaceful parenting and that government is predicate on violations of property rights (Northern) have flourished. If I'm right about this, then "traveling" would merely consist of accepting reality despite the ways in which they go against the narrative, leading to the shaking of one's previously held relationships.

 

Were the world to make such a transition, I think preparation is always useful. Going from a world where people can whine and beg to the masters/enforcers to being responsible for self and finding solutions to problems will be a challenging one. This is why I have not been able to stress enough the importance of those of us that know better to not do anything to pretend institutionalized violence is valid or acceptable. Because we'd risk the recently freed slaves begging for a new master all over again. But as Stef used to point out, life adapts. If there's no government teet, then people will seek jobs that didn't before. When people cannot mistreat others and still survive, they'll find ways to co-operate and be kind. The self-correction of the free market is what makes it so beautiful I think. The State obstructs the free market's two most important components for self-correction: consequence and competition.

 

Those are my thoughts. I'd be interested in hearing what you had in mind.

 

-- First Draft --

 

If I recall, West and East originally referred to an ideo-geographic distinction between the Greek City-States and the Persian Empire, adopted later as a stand in for the dichotomy of individualism v. collectivism, rationalism v. romanticism, masculine v. feminism (etc., and as archetypes rather than accurate descriptions since each can exhibit the traits attributed to the other).

 

In geographic terms, if you keep heading west, you'll eventually end up in the east; we can relate this to the historical/generational pendulum swinging to the left and right (but ultimately remaining in the same cycle, or frequency). This relates to how increased freedom and prosperity feeds the state which then becomes unbearable to the point of revolution and "reset" to start the period over again.

 

North -- as both a spatial direction and principle -- is perpendicular to West v. East, requiring certain prerequisites: you'll cross latitudes into colder climates and harsher winters, requiring self-discipline for deferring gratification, as well as reliance upon trade (Scandinavia has to import 100% of their coffee  ).

[Will Torbald]

Read Carroll Quigley's Evolution of Civilizations. The guy defines it brilliantly.

 

I mean, I'm sure it's a great read, but it's not like you can't summarize it in one or two sentences.

 

 

Where we can have discussions like this about most things without government or a mafia publicly murdering us.

 

No such thing exists in the West currently in practice. Maybe I exagerate a little, but all of Europe is a surveillance state, and in US the social justice mob takes care of you.

 

 

Indeed a Great question!  Too great for me to try to answer.

 

Assuming it could be answered, there are still questions that follow, that almost need addressing as you answer the first.

The likely possibility that there are various simultaneously valid/definable answers, could be a premise to start with. If so, then:

 

Valid for who?  Is there enough real estate to accommodate the sum? Would people be willing to move to their favorite theme park if,

by the process of defining, they ended up in another? Problem is, a more ethical theme, requiring much more self policing, would be a preference

for a person or group that preferred to prey on such a crowd, rather than a homogeneous society of it's own ilk. Perhaps any "free" society

short of a mass ethical awakening of the sincerest nature ever, would always face a mixture of honest and dishonest participants,

or those not willfully adhering to the theme? ?

 

Any intermediate options ?  Inevitably, something other than self policing would necessarily arise, however "universally preferred". Maybe that's OK ?

 

The only other choices seem to be reruns or the continuation of the current (whatever that is).

Maybe we already passed by the most functional theme, and actually a rerun or similar is the best we can come up with?

I don't know. Seems like, by now, there's enough individuals mixed throughout the "west" that the collective consciousness of,

could move to higher ground, an at least slightly better overall place than previously ever achieved. ?  ? Are we that jaded/stagnant?

Shooting higher may not be practical, as application and realization are absolutely required, anything short is hot air.

 

This is unintelligible.

 

 

Of course, and fortunately, in the larger historical perspective, the West takes the negative aspects into account and course-corrects -- eventually towards true North? 

 

 

 

-- First Draft --

 

If I recall, West and East originally referred to an ideo-geographic distinction between the Greek City-States and the Persian Empire, adopted later as a stand in for the dichotomy of individualism v. collectivism, rationalism v. romanticism, masculine v. feminism (etc., and as archetypes rather than accurate descriptions since each can exhibit the traits attributed to the other).

 

In geographic terms, if you keep heading west, you'll eventually end up in the east; we can relate this to the historical/generational pendulum swinging to the left and right (but ultimately remaining in the same cycle, or frequency). This relates to how increased freedom and prosperity feeds the state which then becomes unbearable to the point of revolution and "reset" to start the period over again.

 

North -- as both a spatial direction and principle -- is perpendicular to West v. East, requiring certain prerequisites: you'll cross latitudes into colder climates and harsher winters, requiring self-discipline for deferring gratification, as well as reliance upon trade (Scandinavia has to import 100% of their coffee  ).

 

1- Very idealistic. It's only gotten worse, never better, never freer, at least with the US. In Europe it's full cultural suicide.

 

2- Still a where, not a when.

 

People idealize their preferred time period. Some prefer the 80's (new retro wave movements) others the 50's, and others the 1776'.

[luxfelix]

1- Very idealistic. It's only gotten worse, never better, never freer, at least with the US. In Europe it's full cultural suicide.

 

2- Still a where, not a when.

 

People idealize their preferred time period. Some prefer the 80's (new retro wave movements) others the 50's, and others the 1776'.

 

If we take the metaphor of the left-right (less freedom v. more freedom) pendulum swing throughout the history of the West we can see how the length has increased, causing the pendulum to swing further to the right and then ever further to the left through its momentum (unless we learn from history and go North).

 

(This is another way of portraying how increased freedoms/prosperity have historically fed ever greater government tyrannies.)

 

If we attribute themes of liberty such as better child raising, philosophy, separation of church and state, and economic mobility (among others) to the swing to the right, we can then also attribute the counters such as helicopter parenting, sophistry, state-as-religion, and fodder for tyranny to the swing to the left.

 

If you're frame rate for historical snapshots only ever sees the pendulum on the left (and going further left), then your statement would appear to be the case; likewise, if you're frame rate of snapshots sees the pendulum only going further to the right, then it would appear very idealistic, as you also point out.

 

West and East are not exclusively wheres nor whens, but rather the resulting worldviews/cultures shaped by events that took place in various places and times previously in history.

 

Both the West and East are aware of the North; however, historically speaking, adventurers to the North have more often come from the West (both figuratively and literally).

 

(Their also aware of the South, but when things go South...   )

 

The pendulum swings from a fixed point, just as West and East rotate around a pole -- that's North -- reality that neither West nor East can escape; and, when at the North pole, all other movement across the Earth's surface is heading South (in idiomatic terms) -- or likewise increasing the length of the pendulum's extremes swinging to the left or right.

[Dylan Lawrence Moore]

I'm going to re-emphasize Carroll Quigley's Evolution of Civilizations. I have never seen a definition as concise and brilliant as the definition Quigley puts forth in his book for civilizations. I attempted to summarize in my article What I Learned in School and the Battle for Civilizations, but I wasn't able to cut it down without significantly cutting out vital points of his explanations. I'm going to re-post part of my article here in attempts to generate enough interest in whoever reads it to go seek out the text of the book itself.

 

You can find a free PDF here and free text of the book here. If you're anything like me, once you get started you won't be able to put this book down. Quigley has a writing style as brilliant as his content.

 

Quigley defines the crux of civilizations, which is the method by which it develops economically, and which he calls the "instrument of expansion". The life cycle he later defines has everything to do with how this "instrument of expansion" is functioning, and per this definition all growth, decay, and boundaries of that civilization can roughly be measured by it. The instrument of expansion contains 3 vital characteristics: 

1. The society has to have a method by which is creates excess wealth.
2. There needs to be a way in which this excess wealth is saved.
3. This saved wealth must be used for the general improvement of society.

(The above should be familiar as the basic requirements of capitalism.)

 

The growth of a civilization is generally characterized by the instrument of expansion being able to put its savings back into society. The decay of civilization is generally characterized by this instrument becoming an "institution" (Quigley's terms), in which the method of savings still exists, but it gets funneled off to non-useful services, typically for ridiculous luxuries for an oligarchical elite (think pyramids). Basically, the general populous still pays its bills for society, but they no longer see the services they used to get for it. The civilization dies when this goes on long enough that it's too weak to defend itself from invading foreigners.

 

Fundamentally the West is special because it has not followed the standard life and death cycle of civilizations, and it has to do with its ability to reform its instrument of expansion (which for the West, of course, is various types of capitalism) and re-invigorate its growth cycle.

 

This is the text from my article:

 

WHAT I LEARNED BY MYSELF: THE LIFE CYCLE OF CIVILIZATIONS

 

After learning some historical perspective (that wasn't the name-and-date memorization boredom marathon known as history class), I saw just what civilizations were, the patterns they went through, and the way humans have organized themselves throughout history. I learned with fascination the life cycles of civilizations, and immediately one thing stood out: Western Civilization was different from all the rest. It was way, way better than all the other ones. No contest.

 

(NOTE: The definition of civilization I'm using here is the one presented in Carroll Quigley's amazing book The Evolution of Civilizations. Get it and read it.)

 

Civilization, and societies for that matter, tend to consist of two groups of people: a handful of rulers and all the slaves that they own. Life is hard, short, and brutal. If you were able to survive past birth and early childhood, and didn't succumb to any number of deadly medical conditions in the world before modern medicine*, there was a very good chance you could be invaded and killed by a neighboring society or barbarians (Mongol hordes, anyone?). Well, maybe if you were lucky you would just be raped and taken off to be a slave. Regardless, the point is that formost humans on the planet, life was rough.

 

*Imagine living in a world where a urinary tract infection, more likely than not, would kill you.

 

Civilizations have a seven-stage life cycle:

 

1^st Cycle: Mixing. Two different cultures meet in one geographical location and begin to mix.

2^nd Cycle: Gestation. The two cultures mix thoroughly enough that they form a new culture. If this new culture has a method of saving and reinvesting economic surplus, if moves on to the third cycle.

3^rd Cycle: Expansion. The method of economic expansion causes a rapid rise in wealth due to the savings from its economic growth and its reinvestment into society.

4^th Cycle: Conflict: Eventually the savings of wealth gets diverted from its reinvestment into society to being spent on luxuries or other unproductive activities, generally split between a small oligarchical group and welfare to the poor. The instrument of acquiring that wealth still remains, creating a drain on the population, but the services it used to pay for vanish. The civilization then begins conquering neighboring nations to pay for the services that the economic expansion used to provide.

5^th Cycle: Universal Empire: After the cycle of conflict grows, a single political unit, generally on the periphery of the civilization, will come and conquer the entire civilization in one fell swoop (think of the Romans conquering the Classical/Mediterranean World). This ends the fighting and creates a “golden age”. This term is tongue-in-cheek, as though the fighting has stopped, the original problem of the civilization's economic surplus no longer being reinvested into the general society has not been solved, and the problems the original led to the fourth stage exacerbate.

6^th Cycle: Decay: The civilization, no longer able to sustain itself, grows weaker and weaker. This cycle goes on indefinitely until:

7^th Cycle: Invasion: The civilization, unable to defend itself is invaded by another civilization or society and is destroyed (think about the barbarians finally sacking Rome in the 5^th century). The peripheries of the destroyed civilization can now mix with societies on the fringes to begin the 1^st Cycle for a new civilization.

 

To give a quick idea what this looks like in various civilizations throughout history, check out this chart from Quigley's Tragedy and Hope:

 

(From Tragedy and Hope, page 7.)

 

Every civilization has gone through this same life and death cycle. After a new society develops by mixing two or more different societies together to create a new culture (Cycles 1 and 2) that develops a method of economic surplus, savings, and reinvestment, the society explodes into growth (Cycle 3). Eventually, the controlling members of the society become more and more corrupt and deal with economic slumps by going to war within the civilization (Cycle 4). The wars don't actually solve anything, other than making a few key members within the civilization rich and weakening individual societies within that civilization. Eventually after weakening the core of society via this means, a society on the periphery of the civilization, usually one that still has some vigor left in its bones, crashes in and conquers the whole thing (Cycle 5 – see the chart above). While this seems to result in a Golden Age, because the wars within the civilization have been quelled, in reality the core problem hasn't been tended to: economic surplus within the civilization is no longer being reinvested into the general community. General unrest continues and the civilization, now under one ruling political faction, turns to foreign wars to pay its obligations have keep the civilization alive. This further exonerates the problem, as it doesn't solve the core issue of economic reinvestment, it causes more problems within society (wars do that), and it really pisses off the neighbors. Eventually the cohesive strength of the civilization begins to decline (Cycle 6). This is generally accompanied by more foreign wars, massive handouts on welfare, immigration from foreign and often hostile cultures that do not have the values that created the civilization to begin with, debasement of the currency (i.e. inflation), massive unemployment, and reactionary government policies that further exacerbate problems. This continues until the civilization no longer has a heart to fight and is unable to resist when a neighboring society or civilization smashes into it and destroys it (Cycle 7).

 

If you were paying attention, much of the above should sound very familiar to you.

 

This is the first reason why Western Civilization is incredible: it is the only civilization that has not followed this standard life-and-death cycle. It has been three times that Western Civilization, as it mired through the Age of Conflict and was on the verge of Universal Empire, solved the problem of reinvesting economic surplus into the community and restarted the Age of Expansion (Cycle 3).

 

Each growth period of Western Civilization was fueled by a form of capitalism. Profits were sought by increasing the interchange of goods. Each growth period ended by the institution of a form of controls, where profits were sought by restricting the production or interchange of goods instead of encouraging it. To put it more simply, each Age of Expansion was accompanied by the presence of relative freedom which allowed foreconomic surplus, and each Age of Conflict was accompanied by a removal of that freedom and the installment of controls over trade.

 

Each time the controls of political units began to clamp down on economic productivity, a new form of productivity would be created to circumvent old controls. Carroll Quigley breaks down the dates of the cycles of Western Civilization down:

 

1. Mixture 350-700 AD (The remains of the Roman world mixed with European Germanic tribes)

2. Gestation 700-970

3a. First Expansion, 970-1270 (“Commerical Capitalism” phase one)

4a. First Conflict, 1270-1440 (“Municipal Mercantilism”)

Core Empire: England, 1420 (William the Conquerer)

3b. Second Expansion, 1440-1690 (“Commercial Capitalism” phase two)

4b. Second Conflict, 1690-1815 (“State Mercantilism”)

Core Empire: France, 1810 (Napolean)

3c. Third Expansion, 1770-1929 (“Industrial Capitalism” and “Financial Capitalism”)

4c. Third Conflict, 1893-1944 (“Monopoly Capitalism”)

Core Empire: Germany, 1942 (Hitler)

3d. Fourth Expansion, 1944-?

(From Tragedy and Hope, pages 10-11)

 

(That was as far as Quigley got by the time he wrote his books. It's difficult to impossible to describe current events using historical analysis, and though I will try in the course of this article, my amateur efforts will pale in comparison to the cutting mind of Carroll Quigley.)

 

 

 

 

 

[Donnadogsoth]

Fascinating stuff, Dylan.  It serves as a riposte to the fatalism of Spengler The Decline of the West, which you might care to compare to Quigley.  It's available from the Internet Archive here.

 

The Western difference is that it is founded on the principle of man being made in the image of God, combined with the Greek intellectual heritage to produce classical science and art which produce principles whereby society can be re-ordered to increase its power over nature. Achieving a Fifth Age of Expansion depends on whether we return to this heritage or not. If not, our economy will continue to spiral out of control as our populace operates mentally in terms of clinical insanity, not in terms of how nature actually works.

 

I would add to Quigley's list

 

3d. Fourth Expansion, 1944-1973 (destruction of gold standard)

4d. Fourth Conflict, 1974- (globalisation, clash of civilisations)

Core Empire:  2016 (Trump)

 

[luxfelix]

I'm going to re-emphasize Carroll Quigley's Evolution of Civilizations. I have never seen a definition as concise and brilliant as the definition Quigley puts forth in his book for civilizations. I attempted to summarize in my article What I Learned in School and the Battle for Civilizations, but I wasn't able to cut it down without significantly cutting out vital points of his explanations. I'm going to re-post part of my article here in attempts to generate enough interest in whoever reads it to go seek out the text of the book itself.

 

You can find a free PDF here and free text of the book here. If you're anything like me, once you get started you won't be able to put this book down. Quigley has a writing style as brilliant as his content.

 

Quigley defines the crux of civilizations, which is the method by which it develops economically, and which he calls the "instrument of expansion". The life cycle he later defines has everything to do with how this "instrument of expansion" is functioning, and per this definition all growth, decay, and boundaries of that civilization can roughly be measured by it. The instrument of expansion contains 3 vital characteristics: 

1. The society has to have a method by which is creates excess wealth.
2. There needs to be a way in which this excess wealth is saved.
3. This saved wealth must be used for the general improvement of society.

(The above should be familiar as the basic requirements of capitalism.)

 

The growth of a civilization is generally characterized by the instrument of expansion being able to put its savings back into society. The decay of civilization is generally characterized by this instrument becoming an "institution" (Quigley's terms), in which the method of savings still exists, but it gets funneled off to non-useful services, typically for ridiculous luxuries for an oligarchical elite (think pyramids). Basically, the general populous still pays its bills for society, but they no longer see the services they used to get for it. The civilization dies when this goes on long enough that it's too weak to defend itself from invading foreigners.

 

Fundamentally the West is special because it has not followed the standard life and death cycle of civilizations, and it has to do with its ability to reform its instrument of expansion (which for the West, of course, is various types of capitalism) and re-invigorate its growth cycle.

 

This is the text from my article:

 

WHAT I LEARNED BY MYSELF: THE LIFE CYCLE OF CIVILIZATIONS

 

After learning some historical perspective (that wasn't the name-and-date memorization boredom marathon known as history class), I saw just what civilizations were, the patterns they went through, and the way humans have organized themselves throughout history. I learned with fascination the life cycles of civilizations, and immediately one thing stood out: Western Civilization was different from all the rest. It was way, way better than all the other ones. No contest.

 

(NOTE: The definition of civilization I'm using here is the one presented in Carroll Quigley's amazing book The Evolution of Civilizations. Get it and read it.)

 

Civilization, and societies for that matter, tend to consist of two groups of people: a handful of rulers and all the slaves that they own. Life is hard, short, and brutal. If you were able to survive past birth and early childhood, and didn't succumb to any number of deadly medical conditions in the world before modern medicine*, there was a very good chance you could be invaded and killed by a neighboring society or barbarians (Mongol hordes, anyone?). Well, maybe if you were lucky you would just be raped and taken off to be a slave. Regardless, the point is that formost humans on the planet, life was rough.

 

*Imagine living in a world where a urinary tract infection, more likely than not, would kill you.

 

Civilizations have a seven-stage life cycle:

 

1^st Cycle: Mixing. Two different cultures meet in one geographical location and begin to mix.

2^nd Cycle: Gestation. The two cultures mix thoroughly enough that they form a new culture. If this new culture has a method of saving and reinvesting economic surplus, if moves on to the third cycle.

3^rd Cycle: Expansion. The method of economic expansion causes a rapid rise in wealth due to the savings from its economic growth and its reinvestment into society.

4^th Cycle: Conflict: Eventually the savings of wealth gets diverted from its reinvestment into society to being spent on luxuries or other unproductive activities, generally split between a small oligarchical group and welfare to the poor. The instrument of acquiring that wealth still remains, creating a drain on the population, but the services it used to pay for vanish. The civilization then begins conquering neighboring nations to pay for the services that the economic expansion used to provide.

5^th Cycle: Universal Empire: After the cycle of conflict grows, a single political unit, generally on the periphery of the civilization, will come and conquer the entire civilization in one fell swoop (think of the Romans conquering the Classical/Mediterranean World). This ends the fighting and creates a “golden age”. This term is tongue-in-cheek, as though the fighting has stopped, the original problem of the civilization's economic surplus no longer being reinvested into the general society has not been solved, and the problems the original led to the fourth stage exacerbate.

6^th Cycle: Decay: The civilization, no longer able to sustain itself, grows weaker and weaker. This cycle goes on indefinitely until:

7^th Cycle: Invasion: The civilization, unable to defend itself is invaded by another civilization or society and is destroyed (think about the barbarians finally sacking Rome in the 5^th century). The peripheries of the destroyed civilization can now mix with societies on the fringes to begin the 1^st Cycle for a new civilization.

 

To give a quick idea what this looks like in various civilizations throughout history, check out this chart from Quigley's Tragedy and Hope:

 

(From Tragedy and Hope, page 7.)

 

Every civilization has gone through this same life and death cycle. After a new society develops by mixing two or more different societies together to create a new culture (Cycles 1 and 2) that develops a method of economic surplus, savings, and reinvestment, the society explodes into growth (Cycle 3). Eventually, the controlling members of the society become more and more corrupt and deal with economic slumps by going to war within the civilization (Cycle 4). The wars don't actually solve anything, other than making a few key members within the civilization rich and weakening individual societies within that civilization. Eventually after weakening the core of society via this means, a society on the periphery of the civilization, usually one that still has some vigor left in its bones, crashes in and conquers the whole thing (Cycle 5 – see the chart above). While this seems to result in a Golden Age, because the wars within the civilization have been quelled, in reality the core problem hasn't been tended to: economic surplus within the civilization is no longer being reinvested into the general community. General unrest continues and the civilization, now under one ruling political faction, turns to foreign wars to pay its obligations have keep the civilization alive. This further exonerates the problem, as it doesn't solve the core issue of economic reinvestment, it causes more problems within society (wars do that), and it really pisses off the neighbors. Eventually the cohesive strength of the civilization begins to decline (Cycle 6). This is generally accompanied by more foreign wars, massive handouts on welfare, immigration from foreign and often hostile cultures that do not have the values that created the civilization to begin with, debasement of the currency (i.e. inflation), massive unemployment, and reactionary government policies that further exacerbate problems. This continues until the civilization no longer has a heart to fight and is unable to resist when a neighboring society or civilization smashes into it and destroys it (Cycle 7).

 

If you were paying attention, much of the above should sound very familiar to you.

 

This is the first reason why Western Civilization is incredible: it is the only civilization that has not followed this standard life-and-death cycle. It has been three times that Western Civilization, as it mired through the Age of Conflict and was on the verge of Universal Empire, solved the problem of reinvesting economic surplus into the community and restarted the Age of Expansion (Cycle 3).

 

Each growth period of Western Civilization was fueled by a form of capitalism. Profits were sought by increasing the interchange of goods. Each growth period ended by the institution of a form of controls, where profits were sought by restricting the production or interchange of goods instead of encouraging it. To put it more simply, each Age of Expansion was accompanied by the presence of relative freedom which allowed foreconomic surplus, and each Age of Conflict was accompanied by a removal of that freedom and the installment of controls over trade.

 

Each time the controls of political units began to clamp down on economic productivity, a new form of productivity would be created to circumvent old controls. Carroll Quigley breaks down the dates of the cycles of Western Civilization down:

 

1. Mixture 350-700 AD (The remains of the Roman world mixed with European Germanic tribes)

2. Gestation 700-970

3a. First Expansion, 970-1270 (“Commerical Capitalism” phase one)

4a. First Conflict, 1270-1440 (“Municipal Mercantilism”)

Core Empire: England, 1420 (William the Conquerer)

3b. Second Expansion, 1440-1690 (“Commercial Capitalism” phase two)

4b. Second Conflict, 1690-1815 (“State Mercantilism”)

Core Empire: France, 1810 (Napolean)

3c. Third Expansion, 1770-1929 (“Industrial Capitalism” and “Financial Capitalism”)

4c. Third Conflict, 1893-1944 (“Monopoly Capitalism”)

Core Empire: Germany, 1942 (Hitler)

3d. Fourth Expansion, 1944-?

(From Tragedy and Hope, pages 10-11)

 

(That was as far as Quigley got by the time he wrote his books. It's difficult to impossible to describe current events using historical analysis, and though I will try in the course of this article, my amateur efforts will pale in comparison to the cutting mind of Carroll Quigley.)

 

Thanks a bundle Dylan! 

[M.2]

I found a visual chart pertaining to Dylan's excellent post: http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~200375~3001080:The-Histomap-

[Dylan Lawrence Moore]

 

Fascinating stuff, Dylan.  It serves as a riposte to the fatalism of Spengler The Decline of the West, which you might care to compare to Quigley.  It's available from the Internet Archive here.

 

The Western difference is that it is founded on the principle of man being made in the image of God, combined with the Greek intellectual heritage to produce classical science and art which produce principles whereby society can be re-ordered to increase its power over nature. Achieving a Fifth Age of Expansion depends on whether we return to this heritage or not. If not, our economy will continue to spiral out of control as our populace operates mentally in terms of clinical insanity, not in terms of how nature actually works.

 

I would add to Quigley's list

 

3d. Fourth Expansion, 1944-1973 (destruction of gold standard)

4d. Fourth Conflict, 1974- (globalisation, clash of civilisations)

Core Empire:  2016 (Trump)

 

 

 

Thank you for the resource! I'll add it to my pile of resources that I desperately want to read.

 

Regarding newer ages for the civilizations on earth, I think the rules have changed from the way Quigley has described it, based on three main factors:

 

1. The development of nuclear weapons.

2. The lack of available real estate.

3. The internet.

 

The growth of civilizations in the past involved conquering or expanding into new territories, whether they were uninhabited, inhabited by barbarians, or another civilization. There are no more uninhabited areas or barbarian areas outside of the jurisdiction of a modern nation-state, and the presence of nuclear weapons prohibits civilizations from outright invading each other. This means we're going to have to expand somewhere else. As I don't see space colonization anywhere in the near future, I'm curious to see what expansion is going to mean.

 

Another key aspect to the civilization life cycle a la Quigley (I didn't mention this in the article), is velocity of material wealth vs. intellectual wealth. In the history of civilizations, the core of the civilization is generally the cultural center, where there are an elite with enough spare time to come up with new ideas for culture (religion, architecture, law, language and writing, science, math, etc.). The core is also the manufacturing center, where the best goods are produced. Goods, particularly weapons, make it to the periphery of the civilization faster than ideas, which may be one of the key components of the Universal Empire Age: a "hardier" society, who doesn't mind outright conquering its neighbors, on the periphery of civilization gets the advanced goods and weapons without the advanced ideas.

 

The internet may be flipping this equation around, or at least making it more equal. Ideas can now move as fast as we can search for them on the internet. I think the "conservative pushback" that we're seeing around the West right now (Brexit, Swiss drawback from the EU, Trump victory, Italian referendum so far*) has been possible simply through social media; the velocity of ideas has increased so quickly, the standard rules and methods for sliding into Universal Empire have changed fundamentally.

 

*Austria fucking blew it in their elections. I lived there for two and a half years; it's a wonderful country that just broke my heart to slide into the socialistic abyss.

 

Regarding your comment on the West needing to return to its roots of seeing man made in the image of God, as well as remember our parent Civilization's heritage of science and art, I couldn't agree more. I think we're starting to see it in the conservative pushback I mentioned above.

 

 

Thanks a bundle Dylan! 

 

Welcome!

 

 

I found a visual chart pertaining to Dylan's excellent post: http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~200375~3001080:The-Histomap-

 

Hah! My 8th grade history teacher had that chart on his wall.

[dsayers]

There are no more uninhabited areas or barbarian areas outside of the jurisdiction of a modern nation-state, and the presence of nuclear weapons prohibits civilizations from outright invading each other. This means we're going to have to expand somewhere else. As I don't see space colonization anywhere in the near future, I'm curious to see what expansion is going to mean.

Well if we continue to speak the truth and accept reality, I imagine expansion (assuming this is a requisite) would be found in evolving beyond the State. At that point, the claim of no more uninhabited areas becomes false.

[IsaacGage860]

For what it is worth my definition of the West can be summarized in two quotes by two Western economists/philosophers: 

 

"The only proper role of violence is to defend person and property against violence" (The NAP) -Murray N. Rothbard 

 

and 

 

"What kind of society isn't structured on greed? The problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm; Capitalism is that kind of a system." -Milton Freidman 

 

Basically all of the negative things that people have said the West is currently defined by wouldn't be there because there would be no State and therefore very little to no initiation of the use of force.