So, Western Civilization...

[Whoha]

Is it collapsing now, or what? I'd really like to know in advance.

It could be a long and drawn out affair. Don't hold your breath.

[Barnabas]

The Euro was a bad idea. Europe is not the USA, a single country in which everybody speaks the same language and moving from one State to another State is not traumatic. In Europe you have lots of nation states with different language, and most with a history that goes back over a thousand years. And the economies are very different.


The period which begun in 1492 of European Preeminence is ending right now, I think that once Europe ends up failing, non westerners will feel free to disregard many of the post french-revolutions social and political innovations. For example, Singapur may abandon the pretense of being a modern parlamentarian democracy.

The fact that Europeans barely breed doesn't help their case.

[Barnabas]

dp

[giblets]

I think Europe stopped being preeminent quite a while ago.

[Barnabas]

The economy of the European Union generates a GDP of over €12,279.033 billion (US$16,242.3 billion in 2010) according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), making it the largest economy in the world. The European Union (EU) economy consists of a single market and the EU is represented as a unified entity in the World Trade Organization (WTO)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy...European_Union

But you are right, the first big sign of the fall of Europe was when the Russians and the USA forced France and the UK to get out of Egypt when they tried to reconquer the Suez Canal

[Heraclitus]

That's ****ing stupid, the west is a much better place now than it was a hundred years ago.

Just because Mexico is a better place than 500 years ago dosen't mean that Aztec civilization is still around.

well that's one view. i mean people live longer, healthier lives, have good education, healthcare, a welfare state, advanced technology and more free time to enjoy it, but it also has more black people, or something, which probably makes it worse.

That's conflating technological progress for the civilization that existed from the early middle ages right up till the 19th and early 20th centuries. I mean sure there is a civilization today that is kind of Western, in the same sense that the palaces of Knossos or the Etruscan's where "Western" or in the sense of Egyptian civilization still being around. But this probably wasn't the meaning the OP was going for.


And in any case unless you haven't noticed I was talking about humanity being choked under the memetic corpse left by Western civ, not Europeans. I take joy in the rising power of China, the decline of American and European power and the anti-Western cultural sentiments of Africa, the Middle East and India, because I hope that they will find a different way to modernity and a different mode of coexisting with advanced technology. I hope they won't be sucked into the death trap. I hope there will be diversity of ideas and values in the future, lest mankind be damned to stagnation and eventual extinction.

Western derived values are today fundamentally anti-life when extrapolated to their logical conclusions.

[giblets]

Just because Meixco is a better place than 500 years ago dosen't mean that Aztec civilization is still around.

If you pointed out that Aztec civilization died five hundred years ago and called Mexico's present civilization a "stinking eldritch abomination of a corpse" and someone pointed out that Mexico is a much better place now than five hundred years ago it would make you look pretty silly. Also it seems like you made up your own definition of "western civilization" that probably doesn't exist in any dictionary. And how WWI is supposed to analogous to Cortez escapes me.

That's conflating technological progress for the civilization that existed from the early middle ages right up till the 19th and early 20th centuries. And in any case unless you haven't noticed I was talking about humanity being choked under the memetic corpse left by Western civ, not Europeans.

That's funny because humanity in general seems to be doing fine. Well, there's still billions of people in extreme poverty but I don't see how the "memetic corpse left by western civilization" is responsible for that.

[C0ckney]

That's conflating technological progress for the civilization that existed from the early middle ages right up till the 19th and early 20th centuries. I mean sure there is a civilization today that is kind of Western, in the same sense that the palaces of Knossos or the Etruscan's where "Western" or in the sense of Egyptian civilization still being around. But this probably wasn't the meaning the OP was going for.

you're saying that the society (or civilisation as you put it) in the early 20th century was more similar to that in the middle ages, than the society today. that's a ridiculous view. how are you defining western civilisation?

And in any case unless you haven't noticed I was talking about humanity being choked under the memetic corpse left by Western civ, not Europeans. I take joy in the rising power of China, the decline of American and European power and the anti-Western cultural sentiments of Africa, the Middle East and India, because I hope that they will find a different way to modernity and a different mode of coexisting with advanced technology. I hope they won't be sucked into the death trap. I hope there will be diversity of ideas and values in the future, lest mankind be damned to stagnation and eventual extinction.

Western derived values are today fundamentally anti-life when extrapolated to their logical conclusions.

no i didn't notice that because what you wrote was a load of pointless guff, much like the post above. humanity has come a long way in the last 200 years or so, under the leadership of 'western civilisation'. people live longer, healthier lives, they have more, are more tolerant of one another etc. life is better for the vast majority of human beings alive today than it was 200 years ago. so when you say that western values are 'anti-life' (without providing any metrics or even an explanation of what you mean) you look a bit silly.

[Uncle Sparky]

Fortunately Islam is on the rise, so the better parts ofthe Arts and Sciences will be preserved in our next dark age.

[Barnabas]

How much of Europe was ruled by Emperors before ww1? Russian Empire, Austro-Hungarian and German. If we don't count England. Were Austria or Germany less developed than other European countries because of their Emperors?

[KingCold2]

Collapsing is a pessimistic way of looking at it. Western civilization used to be united by the belief that human relations come before material needs. Since industrialization, there's been a reversal and the importance of satisfying material needs is put in the forefront, creating a consumer society. So many of us are now think that once we have the money to satisfy our material needs, improvements to other areas of our lives will immediately follow, and this is evident in the advertisements we're exposed to on a regular basis (buy this brand of cologne and you'll have a love life, etc.).

As long as a civilization has a common set of beliefs, then it will not collapse. In the case of modern Western civilization, we are told how we can fit in normally with our society, and are informed on what trends are, and a mass society, which seeks direction, picks up on this propeganda. The bond is different, but it's still there.

[Dominikos]

. oops

~ Dominikos ~

[The Mad Monk]

Elok, buy twenty cases of Campbell's Chunky Soup, NOW.