(Originally published September 22, 2021.)
Western civilization is over. It may live on in some of us, but at the public level it has been replaced. Every major institution has thrown in with the new civilization.
The question facing us, then, is what this new civilization is like. And so, with the usual caveats, here are the essential components of the new boss, Post-Western civilization:
Governance: Democracy may remain as a sort of talisman, but fewer and fewer changes of power will be forthcoming. Already Europe is controlled by unelected apparatchiks and the United States is ruled by executive order. (Canada has perhaps been worse and Australia has very definitely been worse.) Resistance has been minimal. Public information has been censored and police forces have been willing to enforce almost anything.
Commerce: Stakeholders (giant corporations, states and a few others) have taken control. Small businesses have been destroyed en masse and the middle class has been hollowed out. Commerce and state are no longer separated.
Debt: Debt would normally be considered part of commerce, but over the past two decades it has been universally available and Westerners have used it to maintain an illusion of prosperity. This left them unable to resist a usurping civilization. To put it simply, Westerners have been silenced by a variant of Coach Lombardi’s dictum: Debt makes cowards of us all.
Property: Home ownership is now passe. All ownership is passe. The houses of America are being bought-up by pension funds, hedge funds and giant corporations (aka, stakeholders). The burden of property is no longer something for “the people” to bear; they are expected to rent everything.
Law: Post-Western civilization features the pre-Christian model of two legal classes. Bear in mind that the Greek and Roman names for these classes were citizens and slaves. The new model employs the terms stakeholders and people, but the difference is almost entirely semantic. Once you have two separate legal classes, with different obligations and privileges, slavery is more or less a given, especially once the concept of profit has been demonized. Certainly the word “slavery” will not be used, but stakeholders will be privileged and people will not. Already the spokesmen for post-Western civilization are saying, “You’ll own nothing, and you’ll be happy.” The new boss will be very much like the ancient boss.
Public rhetoric: Convincing masses of people that your ideas ought to be followed is essential in every civilization, and post-Western civilization has moved to a new model of public rhetoric. As we’ve seen, that model is outrage. Facebook and Twitter broadcast the call, a thousand surplus intellectuals find clever ways to demonize the designated heretics, and the group coalesces around that which they hate. This is why, among other things, racism is back, this time in whiteface. It’s all driven by outrage, which routes around both tolerance and reason.
Education: Quality in education is pretty well over. Lockdown-schooling is a failure, which is useful if you like unchallenged power. For the moment, homeschooling and private education remain, but the new system will eventually turn it’s attention toward them. (It will maintain a few elite schools for itself.)
Religion: With Christianity ejected from the West, replacement religions have arisen. Greenism (by whatever name) is the dominant new religion, especially in Europe. Socialism remains a popular compliment. Man’s soul abhors a vacuum, and these are religions in every way that matters. They have clear dogmas, heretics and even inquisitors. Church and state have rejoined.
Philosophy: Philosophically, post-Western culture is anti-rational. Post-modernism is flatly ridiculous (“We’ll use arguments to convince students than no argument really means anything”), but it’s firmly in place. It’s cousins, critical theory and deconstruction, have combined with it to produce millions of surplus intellectuals who know only how to tear down, and who despise the old ethic of production.
Science: Science in post-Western civilization has a new epistemology. That is, it no longer believes that truth comes from rigorous testing and verification. Rather, truth comes from institutional consensus. Break with it and you’ll lose your job. Knowledge and state have rejoined.
The press: The purpose of the press in post-Western civilization is to “protect the people from bad information.” This was necessitated by social media, and it will be tightened further over time. Censorship is the new norm and disgraceful intellectuals are lining up to defend it.
Money: “Honest money” is over. Money is now created (in any amounts) by state-aligned networks. Bitcoin and gold still exist, but they are either demonized or ignored. And so long as compliance continues, a cashless and fully controlled money system will be enforced, combined with a social credit score. The Lords of Wall Street will either be eliminated in a night of the long knives, or else will be given privileged seats at the table.
So…
So, there’s a first outline of the new civilization. Whether we like it or not, this is what now stands in the public square.
**
Paul Rosenberg
freemansperspective.com