Tag: civilization

I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve heard Western civilization disparaged, in everything from street talk to written screeds to intellectual circles. It would have to be thousands of times at least. In fact, it’s something that people (including people who should know better) repeat endlessly, always confident that they’ll receive a pat on the back for it.

Criticizing the West passes for enlightenment these days.

Except that it’s false. Western civilization (and by that I mean European civilization and its offshoots, from the breakup of the Western Roman Empire to today… the civilization based upon Judeo-Christian ethics and scientific progress) is, by far, the most productive in human history. To criticize it in broad terms is not a sign of enlightenment, but of delusion.

Let Us Begin

Have you ever seen the Scuola Grande di San Rocco in Venice? The scuole (and there were several in Venice) were what we call “confraternities”: voluntary associations of Christian lay people, most commonly merchants, who promoted charitable works.

Take a look at their main room on the second floor of the scuola:

Source: Wikpedia

This room (and there’s more in this scuola) wasn’t built by rulers celebrating their own magnificence or even a religion celebrating its magnificence(( Though they did authorize it.)). It came from individuals in a charity league.

What you’re seeing are the fruits of commerce, Christian ethics, and civilizational self-confidence. The art in this building is stunning. So much so that you need a mirror to carry around for viewing the ceiling: Your neck couldn’t take all the craning it would have to do to see even a fraction of it.

Here’s the interior of a church in Rome called San Giovanni in Laterno:

Source: Wikipedia

These sculptures are amazing, and again, this is just one part of a larger building.

Here are just a few of Bernini’s sculptures that you can find in a museum set in the middle of a park in Rome:

Source: Wikipedia

Source: Wikipedia

Source: Wikipedia

And please trust me; you need to see these things in person to really appreciate them.

The Point Here

I could go on, and I will in future columns (though spread out over time). The real point here is not that the people of the West are inherently superior. It’s that they had a civilization that permitted their talents to function. Often, the critical moments came when the talented people were young, and developing their talents required the society to keep doors open to them long before they reached anything resembling full growth.

Western civilization, as Aristotle might have put it, provided a set of ideas, and a people molded by them, in which talented lives found sufficient scope to produce wonders.

Western civilization never had a monopoly on human greatness – all humans are potentially great – but this culture, this shared set of ideas, was an environment especially suited to the thriving of talent… a nurturing condition in which great talents and works could thrive and did thrive.

* * * * *

As it turns out, history was never too hard to understand; they just told you the wrong story.

Comments from readers:

“This is the most amazing little book I have read on history in 36 years of reading history.”

“It will change the way you look at nearly everything.”

“I will flat out say that this is the best history book I have ever read… I am fairly well read, but I learned a tremendous amount that I hadn’t known before or hadn’t aligned so that it made sense.”

“This is the best and clearest description of the history of Western civilization I have ever read.”

“Packed with insights on every page concerning how the world came to be the way it is and what we might expect in the future.”

Get it at Amazon or on Kindle.

* * * * *

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com

A small roll of pages showed up in my mailbox last week, printed on an odd size and type of paper. They appeared to have been ripped from a history book entitled 2000–2150 AD: The Emergence of Modernity. I’m repeating the text here verbatim, sans the header, which mentions only the title of the book. (Or perhaps it’s the title of a chapter.)

Make of this what you will.

In the late 20^th century it began dawning on the heirs of Western civilization that the archaic forms of rulership they lived under (and which they had held as the ultimate form of human organization) were actually enormous parasites. The first people to grasp this tended to be socially ostracized and were punished in a variety of ways, mostly informal. But they persevered and found comfort in the writings of likeminded men and women of the past, who had the good fortune to live beneath milder incarnations of parasitic hierarchy.

Soon books were being written on the subject and circulated among a small but devoted readership. Slowly, something of an intellectual movement began to form. The first great expansion came with the rise of the internet in the 1990s. The new ideas began spreading beyond small intellectual circles and into the minds of productive people worldwide.

The ideas advanced slowly. People of the era were, after all, forcibly schooled by those same parasitic regimes, and breaking away from a nearly universal system of thought was difficult, no matter how obvious the system’s barbarity.

Still, humans have always been clever and self-referential creatures, as well as being gifted with effective memories. Little by little the new ideas, like so many seeds, began to grow. One person here spread the concepts to one or two elsewhere, who – a few years later when the seeds in them had matured a bit – spread them to still others. With a geometric certainty, the seeds began filling mankind.

But while this appears as an inevitable process from our perspective, it seemed desperately slow and uncertain to the people involved. Many of the earliest adopters died before they saw the fruit of their labors, which didn’t appear in any significant concentrations until 2015 or so.

Restraints and Releases

The great restraint to these ideas, during the era of their first emergence, was the internet’s corporate parasitism, running from roughly 2002 through 2024. The primary transaction under this model was for people to accept “free” services in return for granting the corporation complete access to their most private lives. No such service was truly free of course, and people did understand this at some basic level. But Westerners of that era were well schooled in the fear of scarcity (even though very few lived in conditions of actual privation), and all were bombarded with fear day and night by “news stations.”

In that condition, the offer of “free” service was all but irresistible to them, and so they closed their eyes to the ongoing sale of their intimate lives.

This of course was before people learned to treat fear as mind pollution. At that time, embracing every new fear was considered a show of vitality.

And so people flocked to “free” services, allowing those services and their spy agency partners to conduct deeper and more pervasive surveillance than could have been imagined in any previous era. This, as we know, resulted in the greatest systems of manipulation in world history. The monstrosities we see as Descartes’s Demon were possible only because of scarcity fears among people who faced little or no actual scarcity.

The first great release from parasitic systems was the decentralized digital economy, beginning with Bitcoin in 2009. By the time cryptocurrencies accounted for 10% of world currency volume (that is, by 2020 or so), decentralization was firmly rooted in the realms of money and economic infrastructure, and it was clear that it would not be easily stopped. The Crypto Massacres in India and Turkey claimed several thousand lives, but they also turned most Indians and Turks against their murderous “leaders,” leading to the end of both regimes within two years.

Nonparasitic Cooperation

What decentralized economics slowly taught the world was that their parasitic structures had been unnecessary. People had, from what seemed time immemorial, believed that violence-based hierarchies were necessary for cooperation… that without them, human life would become, as was proclaimed by a very famous author, “nasty, solitary, poor, brutish, and short.”

The world’s historical record didn’t support that statement of course, but nearly all history books after 1900 AD were written for and purchased by parasitic systems, and so those portions were left out.

Nonetheless, once decentralized systems were part of everyday life for the bulk of the populace (by 2050 or so), it became clearer and clearer that parasitic systems weren’t actually necessary.

Finding ways to organize in nonparasitic ways took time, however. A first problem was that many Westerners still thought systems of organization had to be monopolistic, that a single system involving everyone was necessary. But by 2060 this idea was fading, primarily because no system could maintain sufficient violence to force everyone into it. Millions of people were honestly surprised to learn that multiple systems could operate simultaneously and successfully.

I’ll stop here this week and complete my transcription next week.

* * * * *

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• Such a tour de force, so many ideas. And I am amazed at the courage to write such a book, that challenges so many people’s conceptions.
• There were so many points where it was hard to read, I was so choked up.
• Holy moly! I was familiar with most of the themes presented in A Lodging of Wayfaring Men, but I am still trying to wrap my head around the concepts you presented at the end of this one.

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* * * * *

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com

When Western Civilization began to form at about 500 AD((Western Civilization does not include Greece or Rome. Those were civilizations based upon slavery, a very different model.)), it was full of purpose. In particular, it was devoted to bringing the light of Christ into the world: to overcome the ancient darkness and to replace it with righteousness.

But please don’t imagine that when I say “bringing the light of Christ” and “500 AD,” I’m talking about the reign of the Roman Catholic Church and the “Dark Ages.” First of all, the capital-C Church didn’t exist at that time. The Rome-based church had just lost the sword of the emperor in the West. There was still an emperor in the East, but he ordered the church around more than did favors for it. Furthermore, the Rome-based church had serious competition from Arian Christianity and lesser competition from a host of smaller versions.

Second, the popular idea of the Dark Ages is mostly a myth. 500–1000 AD was a terribly rough time for rulership, but it was a good time for farmers. As historian Peter Brown noted:

[I]f anyone was happy in the early Middle Ages, it was the peasantry. Freed at last from the double pressure of landlords and tax collectors, they settled back to enjoy a low-profile golden age.

Whatever we might say about their specific beliefs, the people of early Western civilization were devoted to something… something supremely good. Their new civilization had a goal. It had purpose. There was something for everyone – rich, poor, old, young – to work for. And the civilization they created produced more benefit for mankind than any other civilization in human history, and by a huge margin.

Fast Forward to Today

What does civilization in the West hold as a goal today? Is there anything we can really point to?

At best, the “leaders” of our hyper-political age claim to serve “freedom.” But what does that really mean? Can any of these leaders define it clearly? Do they even try?

Freedom, in the modern political context, simply means stasis: what we have now, without end. In other words, it’s propaganda for the maintenance of the existing regimes.

So, what are the West’s goals? For the rest of the world to acknowledge our greatness? To force them into our image?

Where I live in the US, a “politics almighty” culture has divided the populace in two, the goal of each half being to defeat the other half. After the other half is defeated, they suppose, the magnificence of life will prove that they were right all along… hooray for us! This is not only juvenile, it provides no civilizational goal whatsoever. But all through the West this type of mindset, or something resembling it, reigns.

Politics of course is strictly parasitic. Bricklayers and nurses and farmers produce; politicians skim and punish. Politics literally cannot produce. And without production, there is no forward movement for a civilization.

Residues of Purpose

Some purpose remains of course. Young people usually want to mate and reproduce, for example, and all of us want to live in comfort. These, however, are limited goals. They neither satisfy nor motivate beyond their limits.

And then there are the dark goals of status, power, and lust for the sake of lust. (Think Harvey Weinstein, his many protectors, and many like them who’ve not yet been exposed.)

For a civilization to thrive, however – and for limited goals to have real force behind them – big goals are necessary.

Have you noticed the falling birth rates in the West? (And this with sexual images being pumped into everyone’s life 24/7.) Did you know that the same thing happened as Rome declined? Have you noticed it in an aging and purposeless Japan?

While I can’t prove this, I can say with some assurance that these things substantially result from a lack of purpose… from having no compelling vision of the future.

Have you noticed that religious people still have babies? And the more religious, the more babies? Religious people, you see, have some sense of purpose in their lives. As a result, they believe in the future and embrace it. The purposeless people around them tend to hunker down and enjoy whatever they can on their way to the grave.

A few of you may have noticed that young people in the new world of cryptocurrencies are tending to have babies. These people believe in the future too.

The Verdict

I could go on, but I’ll jump to the conclusion instead. And that is this:

Western civilization no longer has any purpose, save for self-congratulation.

Please understand this situation is perfect for those who are strip mining our civilization: the states who skim away half our produce; the corporations who, in partnership with the states, skim most of what remains; the pharmaceuticals, academia, central banks, and Wall Street. All of these thrive when people lack an outside standard by which to judge their actions. The victims live inside a bubble maintained by the strip-miners and cannot see outside of it.

With no purpose, there is no view to the outside.

Islands of Purpose

While Western civilization in the overall has no valid purpose, there are islands of purpose springing up in it. I’ve written often of the cryptocurrency movement, which is, very clearly, a rising island of purpose. Beyond the value of cryptocurrency technologies, there are scores of thousands of people who have become devoted to the principle of decentralization through them. These people have gained a purpose: constructing a better, decentralized world.

Likewise homeschoolers, whose goal is not only to escape centralized schooling, but to populate the earth with better children. This also is a worthy purpose. And there are others.

What Happens Next?

Wherever you see people suffering to live a better way, you’re seeing islands of purpose rising in the midst of a purposeless culture dedicated to itself.

It will take time to see what comes of this. If these islands grow and eventually converge, Western civilization will renew itself. This is what “should” happen.

As the status quo culture is seen as purposeless and barren – and as the new islands are seen as dynamic – emotionally healthy people will leave the moribund way and join the life-embracing way.

The status quo and its profiteers remain as obstacles of course, but their deceptions and distractions are starting to fade. Their ability to call forth violence remains, but even that rests upon the automated compliance of the masses, which may not endure.

So, please find a deep, meaningful purpose for your life. To live without it is to waste a precious gift.

* * * * *

A book that generates comments like these, from actual readers, might be worth your time:

• I just finished reading The Breaking Dawn and found it to be one of the most thought-provoking, amazing books I have ever read… It will be hard to read another book now that I’ve read this book… I want everyone to read it.
• Such a tour de force, so many ideas. And I am amazed at the courage to write such a book, that challenges so many people’s conceptions.
• There were so many points where it was hard to read, I was so choked up.
• Holy moly! I was familiar with most of the themes presented in A Lodging of Wayfaring Men, but I am still trying to wrap my head around the concepts you presented at the end of this one.

Get it at Amazon ($18.95) or on Kindle: ($5.99)

* * * * *

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com

Every civilization has its own peculiar characteristics, and because of them, each has its own vulnerable areas… areas that a clever adversary can take advantage of. Our Western civilization is no exception.

And most unfortunately, we’ve been under a sharp attack for many years by people who found our weakness and are exploiting it. I’ll explain how and what we need to do about it.

Our Foundations

Western civilization was built upon the Judeo-Christian tradition… and primarily on the Christian tradition. Anyone who claims differently simply doesn’t understand the civilization or doesn’t want to. Whether or not the doctrines of Judaism and Christianity are true, these are the foundations of our civilization((To be clear: Greece and Rome are not part of Western civilization. Those civilizations were based upon slavery, which Western civilization removed because of its new morals. Did we borrow from them? Sure. Just like we borrowed writing from the Sumerians and the alphabet from the Phoenicians.)). That can’t really be disputed.

These principles – things like compassion for the outsider, forgiveness, and loving your neighbor – are demands for enlightened and righteous action in the world.

So, how do you subvert people in a culture centered on righteous action? You convince them of sin of course. You find one way after another to make them feel like they – and their civilization – have failed to be righteous; that’s the weak point. Then you convince them that they need to absolve themselves in ways that suit your agenda.

Have you noticed that the guilt slingers always have a preset conclusion for you… a single thing you must do to absolve the guilt they tossed upon you?

Here’s an example: An imposer of guilt says that your community has allowed sewage to be poured into the river. And along with that comes an either/or solution: A new regulatory agency must be given sweeping powers… and if you don’t agree, you favor sewage in drinking water!

This trick has been eviscerating the West for decades. There’s even a well-known school of thought known as critical theory that promotes this. These people have dedicated themselves to criticizing everything possible about Western civilization… and have prospered by it.

Their tool is weaponized guilt… the West’s Kryptonite.

So, if we’re going to survive as a civilization – and I think we really, really should – we must stop being suckers to everyone with a fresh criticism. These people are not trying to build; they’re trying to tear down.

Stated differently, we must stop believing that we suck. Because we don’t.

How to Ditch the Guilt

We ditch our guilt by facing up to what we’ve done in the past. And we can start that process by giving ourselves credit for the good things we’ve done. We’re not supposed to pretend that those things never happened; we’re supposed to feel good about them.

Secondly, we need to face the things we’ve actually done wrong and fix them. If you were unfair or cruel or whatever, gather up your guts and fix it. Go to the person you hurt and apologize. Make a public statement if you must. Restore what was lost any way you can. If that’s hard or embarrassing, tough. Do it anyway.

We become suckers for guilt when we leave our errors in an unfixed state. We can fool others, but we know what we’ve done and we know what we haven’t repaired. That state of mind makes us vulnerable to guilt.

So face your errors and fix them.

Adding to our troubles is the fact that huge swaths of modern Christianity focus on telling people how badly they suck. It’s how they “evangelize.” I’ll pass up a dissertation on how Christianity has strayed from its roots, but I’d like you to understand that Jesus’s message was not “You suck.” In one place he repeats and defends the saying, “You are gods.” In another he says that God loves us as much as God loved him (Jesus).

But regardless of theology, we need to ditch the guilt. If you’ve done something bad, fix it. Then fix yourself so you don’t repeat it. But after that, stop complying with people who trade in guilt.

Guilt Mixed with Politics Is Nothing but a Weapon

Please remember that guilt plus politics is a toxic mixture. It serves to dethrone reason and transfer power to clever abusers. Don’t concede good intentions to people who wield this weapon against you. They aim to chop things down, not to repair them.

Let me make this very clear:

Guilt mixed with politics is poison. It’s a weapon designed to destroy Western civilization.

So repair your errors and then reject the guilt.

* * * * *

A book that generates comments like these, from actual readers, might be worth your time:

• I just finished reading The Breaking Dawn and found it to be one of the most thought-provoking, amazing books I have ever read… It will be hard to read another book now that I’ve read this book… I want everyone to read it.
• Such a tour de force, so many ideas. And I am amazed at the courage to write such a book, that challenges so many people’s conceptions.
• There were so many points where it was hard to read, I was so choked up.
• Holy moly! I was familiar with most of the themes presented in A Lodging of Wayfaring Men, but I am still trying to wrap my head around the concepts you presented at the end of this one.

Get it at Amazon ($18.95) or on Kindle: ($5.99)

* * * * *

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com