Is Western Civilisation on its Last Legs?

Blind As A Bat

At least in Ireland we have the workings of ancient civilisation's from our ancestors to visit and look upon. 

Do we though? I'm seriously depressed. Look at the scale of vandalism going on. Look at what they did to the standing stone at the Hill of Tara just recently. There are already Irish people who have no respect at all for our history and culture. And in a couple of generations, if we carry on as we are, half the population of Dublin at any rate won't even be Irish - don't know about the rest of the country. In tough times we won't have that cohesive society to pull together and draw on our ancient culture. I'd love to share your romantic vision but I'm very much afraid that 'romantic Ireland's dead and gone, it's with O'Leary in the grave'.

dxhound2005

That culture on the island all belongs to foreigners. There were no people in Ireland during the Ice Age, and for thousands of years after. Various foreigners have arrived since, to make up our culture.

mariaalice

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_decline#:~:text=Although%20still%20growing%2C%20the%20UN,1963%20to%202.4%20in%202019.

Wibbs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120395439#Comment_120395439

That's pretty much a complete non argument, though I have heard it more than once as a Hail Mary attempt at argument for modern multiculturalism. On that basis Native Americans are "foreigners" too. Never mind that when people did arrive, they most often came as conquerers and colonists and we're still dealing with that even today.

dxhound2005

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120396877#Comment_120396877

It's a big subject, the end of human civilization. No harm in pointing out the long view, when recent arrivals in Dublin is supposed to be what is going to cause it.

saabsaab

The 'black' Irish genes, still around especially in parts of the West. painting of an Irish Fisherman from circa 1900..

silliussoddius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120396909#Comment_120396909

With the what now.

Black irish is an American term which should really be called; look an Irish person that doesn't have red hair and freckles.

riclad

Ireland relys on people coming here to work from other EU country's

One other problem is the USA has given up on being a global superpower. China has a large navy and has the capacity to match the us in terms of military spending .it's extending its political power by investing in other country's and it's providing support to Russia in the war against Ukraine

The rising global population is making it more difficult to tackle climate change

If Iran gains the capacity to make nuclear weapons it could become a serious threat to Western country's

Ozymandius2011

I do think the West is in decline, but so is Russia. I think China is the rising power, but unlike the West and Russia its military hasn't really been tested on the battlefield other than some border-skirmishes with India. However I don't think Western civilisation is on its "last legs".

I think the West is also polarised in a way we haven't seen since the 1920s and 1930s. The Far Right are propping up the Swedish government. The Spanish Popular Party are in coalition with the Far Right Vox party in the Castille-Leon region. As in the 1920s (Italy) and 1930s (Germany), the Centre-Right are going into coalitions with fascist parties again, forgetting the lessons of history. In those times, the traditional conservatives saw Communism as the biggest threat rather than fascism, and so formed coalitions with fascist parties. Hitler of course had some of these old-style conservatives as well as the Left murdered in the Night of the Long Knives (1933) and created a dictatorship.

I am concerned that in the USA, most of the Republican party base is no longer committed to democracy and constitutionalism. They have become a personality-cult centered around Donald Trump. I think if a war comes with China or Russia, the West may be too divided to offer a united response. At present the West seems fairly united against the Russian aggression in Ukraine, but if Trump comes to power that is likely to change.

Hearing Trump's recent remarks where he said the problems in the US are not Russia but 'we ourselves' struck me. Is this part of the rejection of democratic western values? It probably indicates a retreat into isolationism in a potential second term, and maybe even withdrawal from NATO. Certainly I doubt he would continue to support Ukraine (which he doesn't anyway). Imagine the response during the Cold War in a US presidential election if a Democrat had said the Soviet Union was not a problem but that "we" were. Joe McCarthy would have had a field-day with that in his Committee for Un-American Activities in the 1950s.

seanrambo87

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120396909#Comment_120396909

Im sorry but that painting looks like a white man to me. A fisherman in the 1900s had no sunscreen and was on the water from sun up to sun down, blasted by the suns rays from above and blasted from a the suns reflection below. I work construction and in the summer you could mistake me for a sicilian, never mind black haired lads who are nearly black (figuratively)

saabsaab

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120401622#Comment_120401622

He is a 'white man' as you say but with a Summer tan and the rays and wind burn off the Atlantic. At the same time he kinda looks like a North African or a Spaniard.

Strumms

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120398452#Comment_120398452

A problem to US has had is that it’s elected some presidents recently that were not very good at aspects of that job and didn’t command respect on the world stage like Obama, Bush and Clinton did.

a megalomaniac old nut job in Trump was replaced by a doddery old reactive, slurring, gaffe ridden Joe Biden…. An 80 year old.

it’s been proven beyond any tangible doubt that Russia attempted to interfere in the 2016 US general election.

I wonder what others did they try to have a go a steering in a certain direction ? US and further afield.

what is happening to the EU, growing EU skepticism, Ukranians flooding every city and town on the continent and looking for handouts, housing and dig outs.. it’s unprecedented and ALL Russia’s doing… in an attempt to undermine the EU, its unity and successfulness.

and they know what they are doing, why they are doing it and so on….

dxhound2005

People in a survey were generally favourably disposed to the EU. Maybe a bit surprising that Poland was the most in favour, seeing that their government, along with the Hungarian government, are seen as the most anti EU. Any polls I looked at for the UK, suggest that a new EU referendum would produce a result in favour of going back in. I haven't detected a growing skepticism to the EU, but rather the opposite, since people have seen the outcome of Brexit.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/10/13/positive-views-of-european-union-reach-new-highs-in-many-countries/

The poll was done in Spring 2022 and the link was published in October. I'm sure other people can find research to prove the opposite. But the EU and the Euro have survived many predictions of their demise, and there has always been some crisis or other going on.

Grayson

Every civilization is always on it's last legs. In the last century we saw two world wars and after each there was massive social upheaval. Were each of those the last breaths of a dying civilization? Yes and no. Parts died, other parts stayed. Societies are constantly in flux but by and large they carry on. In the past we've seen collapses but they just look that way. Cities and kingdoms died. But the people moved on. They brought their cultures to other places. They integrated and some things changed, some things stayed the same. So when we look at the ruins of a place like babylon we think a civilization died but it didn't, just that one place did.

Run Forest Run

George Galloway certainly seems to think so...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zq4v0lgKwo

I don't agree with everything he says here, but there is certainly a fair bit of truth in much of it. (harsh and uncomfortable truths)

The west has become drunk on it's sense of superiority compared with what would have been less advanced parts of the world. We are severely lacking when it comes to the skill of introspection or self-reflection...

Put simply, we cannot recognise our own faults/weaknesses. But we are very good at pointing out what we see as faults in other cultures. Our weaknesses are eating us alive from within, but we're too blind or arrogant to recognise it. Perhaps this is a very natural process, when you have been on top for such a long time... the inevitable rot sets in. The west will fall off it's lofty perch, and then the world will re-calibrate and move on with this "new normal".

Unfortunately, there will probably be some significant pain to endure as we adjust to this new reality. Particularly with regard to the Americans, who look very unlikely to accept this gracefully. They will almost certainly "rage against the dying of the light" as the famous quote goes. Fading super power they may be, but just like a mortally wounded Lion they can still inflict serious damage as they go out.

dxhound2005

There were "civilizations" in other parts of the world, before Europeans "discovered" them. None of them were very civilized, no more than the savagery that went on in Roman times and before that and afterwards in Europe. Genghis Khan put parts of Europe to the sword, but in general Europe has been secure from outside domination. We confined our own savagery to fallings out among neighbours, until the other places were "discovered"

Then there was an astonishingly swift conquest of large parts of other Continents by Europeans. And a major European influence still pervades in the Americas, Africa and Australasia. These are European people, only a few hundred years removed. Western (as in European) power has never been as mighty in that sense, and the notion that it is on the way out now, does not chime with reality. It requires a longer view to see the overall picture, not parochial stuff like vandalism in Ireland. Or even the latest economic or immigration/emigration calamity in Europe or America. They pale when compared to the famines and other disasters of the past. The even longer view, would identify that the Europeans came from elsewhere, if we go back far enough.

Wibbs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120405141#Comment_120405141

Calloway has long emigrated to and gained full citizenship of Lalaland, but you must be living in an entirely different "West" than the rest of us yourself. We rarely bloody well shut up about our apparent "faults/weaknesses".

Western culture barely goes a day without someone somewhere within it throwing on the sackcloth and ashes and quite publicly going on about how terrible the West was and is to everyone. Well anyone who isn't Straight, White and male apparently, who apparently have no value other than as the big baddies in the never ending victimhood stageplay. The very script itself written in the West. At best falling over backwards to atone for their mountain of sins. And this isn't fringe either, it's front and centre across much of Western media.

Currently Western culture is absolutely steeped in "introspection and self-reflection" and insecurity. At times and all too damned regularly to the point of farce. It's hard enough to avoid. Christ try defining something so basic a man or a woman without some chinless twit with third hand half baked opinions bouncing around their empty skulls baying for blood about the phobics among us.

Try finding "introspection or self-reflection" beyond said "West" in areas and cultures like China, or Russia, or the ME, or Africa. Even talking of possible "faults/weaknesses" is culturally and politically verboten. If anything it can be far more easily argued it's this "introspection or self-reflection" that is more likely to make the West "fall".

Run Forest Run

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120405722#Comment_120405722

This is chatter from the masses you are referring to Wibbs. (mostly anyway)

Why have successive US administrations, for example, been obsessed with the faults they see in other regions of the world... while giving comparatively little attention to the growing problems within their own borders? And they seem to have a bottomless pit of money for wars and military spending, but yet struggle to give affordable education or healthcare etc to their own citizens. The west has a bizarre fixation on what others are doing... a distorted sort of voyeurism!

dxhound2005

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120406171#Comment_120406171

The clue is in their ancestry. Until the Spanish, German, Polish, English, Irish and the rest went over, there were only savages there. They come from stock which has always regarded themselves as being superior to other races.

Wibbs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120406171#Comment_120406171

The US ≠ the "West". An all too common mistake and perception, especially of those outside the West who dislike even hate America. Never mind those inside the West buying into the sackcloth and ashes of our sins, ironically importing that stuff from America. Most of Europe, which y'know is in the West, has free healthcare and education among a host of other social supports that many in the US would brand damned near communism.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120406210#Comment_120406210

And the Chinese don't? Or the Japanese? Or Indians, who have such a horn for superiority they developed and codified a caste system of superioriy among themselves? Ask any Black African who's lived in or visited such nations outside the West where they were more likely to experience overt racism and othering and in most cases there are no local laws to protect against that. Hell a load of Chinese scientists have been at pains to prove for years that modern human Chinese evolved locally and aren't African in origin.

As for the native populations in the Americas(and elsewhere in the "New World"), they suffered from the double edged sword of European thought. On the one hand the exoticism of the Noble savage, on the other the savage in need of civilising. The realities weren't so simple. From the Aztecs tearing the hearts out of thousands of people in blood sacrifices to their sky fairies, enslaving and raping smaller groups, while disemboweling homosexual men, lesbians were strung up. Adultery of any sort being a death sentence of course. Other societies killed kids as sacrifices to their sky fairies. The Aztecs would pick a woman for sacrifice, pass her around as a sex toy and then flay her alive so that a prriest could wear her skin and channel one of their female sky fairies. A grand day out.

And don't forget the noble Native Americans fighting near constant internecine battles among themselves. Indeed when European settlers showed up with better weapons tribes often used them as allies to subdue their local enemies. The Sioux had a good go of massacring the Pawnee among others. While colonisation was anything but good for the natives the Noble Savage peacefully praying to the Great Spirit ruined by the White Man only existed in the pages of fairy stories and only gets wheeled out now by the gullible or those from those backgrounds looking for an understandable fair shake in modern America.

dxhound2005

That's what I said in the other post, none of the "civilizations" around when Europeans didn't know about them were very civilised. I had the Aztecs sort of in mind. The reason behind their savagery is wealth and power, sometimes dressed up as religion. The wealthy familes exerted their control, by making human sacrifices of the lower classes.

Here is a nice line from the American Constitution, which asserts that all men are created equal. Complaining about the King.

He has excited domestic Insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the Inhabitants of our Frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known Rule of Warfare, is an undistinguished Destruction, of all Ages, Sexes and Conditions.

niallpatrick

80 years ago using nuclear elements for weapons or power was unthinkable, too dangerous we're not God and we shouldn't tamper with the power of the sun inside a bottle. Nuclear power nuclear bombs whats next on the list? quantum computing once thats cracked I think it will be the end of us all. Not terminator rise of the robots more like a reaction is started that can't be stopped.

silliussoddius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120405141#Comment_120405141

I'd sooner listen to a flat earther than Comrade Galloway.

riclad

i,d be more concerned about climate change or a war where atomic bombs are used, the americans left behind in afghanistan 1000s of weapons, included missiles that could be used to shoot down planes ,

FROM cnn

Aircraft worth $923.3 million remained in Afghanistan. The US left 78 aircraft procured for the government of Afghanistan at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul before the end of the withdrawal. These aircraft were demilitarized and rendered inoperable before the US military left, the report states. The US military conducted its non-combatant evacuation from Afghanistan in August, primarily through that airport.

A total of 9,524 air-to-ground munitions, valued at $6.54 million, remained in Afghanistan at the conclusion of the US military withdrawal. The “significant majority” of the “remaining aircraft munitions stock are non-precision munitions,” the report states.

Over 40,000 of the total 96,000 military vehicles the US gave to Afghan forces remained in Afghanistan at the time of the US withdrawal, including 12,000 military Humvees, the report states. “The operational condition of the remaining vehicles” in Afghanistan is “unknown,” the report states.

More than 300,000 of the total 427,300 weapons the US gave to Afghan forces remained in Afghanistan at the time of the US military withdrawal, according to the report. Less than 1,537,000 of the “specialty munitions” and “common small arms ammunition,” valued at a total of $48 million, are still in the country, the report states.

“Nearly all” of the communications equipment that the US gave to Afghan forces, including base-station, mobile, man-portable and hand-held commercial and military radio systems, and associated transmitters and encryption devices also remained in Afghanistan at the time of the withdrawal, the report states.

“Nearly all” night vision, surveillance, “biometric and positioning equipment” totaling nearly 42,000 pieces of specialized equipment remained in the country, the report adds.

the taliban could sell these weapons or ammunition to north korea or any extremist group if they need money as the economy declines .

thinkabouit

Our technology & inability to manage complexity, egos & greed will be our undoing.

crusd

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120401588#Comment_120401588

China is in a demographic hole far worse than Europe or the us. Within a generation they will have a massive older population and dwindling working population. Population has just started falling. Projected to fall 50% this century. Married couples freed from the one child policies of the past are now choosing not to have children as the have both sets of parents to mind and no money to look after children as well.

Jinglejangle69

Russia, China and Iran have come together as allies against the West and have promised to produce more manufacturing, more weapons etc etc

America and the EU have come together to tackle climate change.

Where are our leaders?

dxhound2005

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120409013#Comment_120409013

Will it be a rapid collapse or a slow fade out, as per the question posed in the OP? Vague terms. My interpretation of a rapid collapse would be in 5,000 years time. I like to take the long view, and ignore the small current stuff which won't even be remembered in 100 years time.

thinkabouit

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120409057#Comment_120409057

I’d be surprised if we have 100 year’s left.

We’re already seeing the results of desertification of the land.

All symptoms of biodiversity loss because of our agriculture policy’s & management.

War’s off the future will be fought harder than any war before in history for resource’s like water & agricultural land in non brittle environments (like Ireland & uk)

we need to change from the ground up, government’s & institution’s will never change it has to happen at ground level.

dxhound2005

So at "ground level" do away with greed and egos. Then there would be no wars. Who is going to design this new human race?