Have we as a civilisation actually made any progress ?

Permabear wrote: »

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I would say it depends on how one looks at power and influence PB. Yes political and military empire building power has ebbed from the west, but it's ebbed as a trend anyway. As a way of growing economies it's gone the way of the dodo(for now anyway). You don't require army garrisons around the world to trade/move money and resources anymore.

On that score the west has declined much less. The West overall is still the largest consumer market. Yes it has farmed out the production side to cheaper areas, but the west is largely in control of that too. China has grown massively in two odd decades because of a demographic spike of cheap labour. Western companies took advantage of that. If tomorrow Chinese production costs jumped(and that tomorrow will come IMH), the same western companies could and would go elsewhere. While local Chinese industry is moving forward with their own design and innovation, most of what they produce is western in design and innovation and much of the cash goes west too.

Cultural influences worldwide are almost entirely western in nature, with some local flavour thrown in. Fashion, music, film and other cultural media is western(even political systems). A Chinese businessman drives to work in a car that's either western or aping same, wearing a three piece suit, listening to western type music on the radio, working in a western style business environment and going home to watch western type TV or films. If a martian landed tomorrow I'd bet they'd report back that most of the world is Western in nature and practice.

Permabear wrote: »

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Oh certainly PB the west, particularly Europe faces some serious challenges. For me anyway the demographic shift is the biggest threat. The young drive the economy. More young people means more workers who are cheaper and more entrepreneurship. I would say that is even above political systems. I mean China was hardly a political system that encouraged individual entrepreneurs, yet China has boomed. Their demographics drove it and their demographics will slow it too. Never mind the Chinese government cooking the economic books, their demographics and the vacuum following that will tell way more. Check out the stats for primary schools. Half have shut down because the kids aren't there like they were. The move from the countryside won't address this as the demographic shift down is pretty much countrywide.

Again, that has been true -- but it is also changing. Note the growing influence of China on the Hollywood film industry, for example.

And in the 1980's when Japan was the economic miracle Hollywood rushed to add in Japanese angles too. Hollywood as ever plugs into trends. It's good business. Russians were baddies, then they were goodies, then it was the AAArabs etc, but IMHO that doesn't say much for the longterm.

Torakx wrote: »

I think China is just using a more long range tactic overall. The east is generally more "right brain" dominant. Which means future thinking and less instant progress.

That's somewhat of a fallacy though. Historically China has innovated incredibly at times, but that innovation nearly always stagnated. China at its heart is an empire not a country and that colours things. It means centralisation, tradition and dissent from the provinces. Through the ups and downs in its economic history this has always been the case. Consider a peasant in China in 1000 AD. His lot would show very little difference to a Chinese peasant in 1900 AD. When Western powers started making inroads into China in the 18th and 19th century they found a culture that was pretty much medieval in nature. Now consider a peasant in Europe across that time period. Monumental changes by comparison. China has been here before. They were a powerhouse of trade in the 18th century, but within a generation that reduced massively.

The west, why did it keep "winning"? Complex factors indeed, but much of it IMHO was down to internal competition alongside some nebulous feeling of belonging to a wider "west". We see this in Europe in a big way. Rome, the empire(like China, cool, but pretty stagnant after a while) falls. To be replaced by individual kingdoms ready and willing to compete with each other. However, they also had a binding factor in Christianity, an empire of the soul by any other name. It's not called the Roman church for nothing. You had that separation of church and state and that separation came early. "My kingdom is not of this earth" etc. Now the separation ebbed and flowed but it allowed for continuity and diversity all at once. Even when the reformation came it just meant two continuities at play* and competition and innovation went batshít at that point.

And that's before we get to social mobility. Europe - particularly after the various plagues that decimated populations - had more social mobility. The actual American dream, but awake and in practice and wide practice with it. A man could through his innovation and graft go from peasant stock to the doge of Venice within a generation(that happened. Thrice). Hell in Rome that happened. IIRC it was Cicero(maybe Seneca) who sniffily bitched like a toga'd up Gore Vidal that the Roman senate was full of descendants of slaves. One of the big hitters in Pompeii was the son of a slave. That happened far less in the rest of the world, especially in China.

So I would say - if we're going the right/left brain route(which I don't quite buy into) - The West/Europe worked both and that's the best route, so long as you have the demographics to back it up.

OK I'm rambling. I've been awake for 18 hours, so I beg your indulgence. If I get more rest and read this back I'll likely agree with ye that I was talking without recourse to my mouth...


*again IMHO that's why the EU is a bit of a failed concept and will contnue to be in its present form, it tries to marry the two. To become the state and "religion" of Europe and does neither the local, nor wider Europe that much good. We may feel European, but in a weird way we don't always want to act European.