Western Civilization Hangs in the Balance, and it's Not Looking Good

Flopping Aces ^ | 11-29-30 | Vince

[Starman417]

When he embarked on his journey to discover a path to India Christopher Columbus’ lead ship was the Santa Maria. Built in 1460 it measured 62 ft with a crew of just 40, the Santa Maria would take Columbus to the New World and would change the course of human history.

Half a century earlier there was another man who sailed ships who didn’t change the course of human history. His name was Zheng He and he commanded the Chinese navy during the early 15^th century. His Treasure Ships were not only larger than the Santa Maria, they were more than six times the size, measuring 440 feet long with a crew of 600. And Zheng had an armada of them at his disposal during his seven Treasure Journeys between 1405 and 1433 that took him as far away as the Red Sea and the east coast of Africa.

Zheng’s navy was by far the most powerful the world had ever seen and he used it to explore and initiate trade and tribute routes. And what did the Chinese do with this extraordinary power? Nothing. After Zheng’s death, the Treasure Journeys stopped. The Chinese had traditionally been an inward-looking society and after Zheng’s 30-year exploration aberration, the old tradition returned.

Why are we not speaking Chinese today? Why didn’t the Chinese conquer the world (or at least try) when they had a navy exponentially superior to anything else in the world? Why did the kingdom that gave us paper and gunpowder not go on to dominate the world of commerce or ideas? Because the Chinese had very little competition in the area of said ideas. Ruled by an emperor who was all-powerful, competition in the realm of ideas was rarely tolerated in China for most of its history, and nevermind flourished. What the emperor said was gospel. And the emperor said we stay home.

Similar kingdoms held dominion over wide swaths of land yet had a very limited impact on the world beyond. The Mongol empire comes to mind, which was the largest contiguous empire in human history or the countless Muslim empires, up to and including the Ottoman Empire. Robust competition of ideas did not exist in those empires any more than it did in China, and indeed most of us do not speak Mongol nor Arabic nor Turkish.

Now compare that to the West. At one point the British Empire covered a quarter of the world’s landmass and a quarter of her people. Today more people speak English than any other language on the planet. There may be a billion people speaking Chinese, but 95% of them live in China while 95% of the English speakers don’t live in England. Similarly half a billion people speak Spanish and less than 10% of them live in Spain.

Beyond that, almost every aspect of life for most people today is the result of Western ideas. Cars, phones, planes, elevators, televisions, cameras, computers, MRI machines, DNA testing, heart transplants, nuclear power, space travel, fracking, movies, advanced agriculture and much much more. For all intents and purposes, the West developed the modern world. And for all of its current deprivation, it is extraordinary.

So what accounts for the difference in the impact between what the Chinese accomplished over the last thousand years and what Europe did? Simple. Competition. And, in particular, the competition of ideas.

Competition, more than any single thing, is responsible for the advances of the West. Between countries, there’s been competition. Within countries, there’s been competition. Within religions, there’s been competition which sometimes split sides across countries and between them. And the competition was relentless, frequently resulting in bloodshed and oftentimes in war, sometimes lots of both. In addition, alliances shifted regularly between countries and within them. There was rivalry, there was espionage and of course, there was betrayal and treachery.

The real competition that helped to create the world we live in evolved in the centuries following the collapse of the Roman Empire. What we know of today as France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and Britain didn’t exist then. They formed over hundreds of years of competing tribes, towns, and estates that evolved into domains and then into kingdoms.

Initially, chieftains would compete with one another for the loyalty of local peasants in an effort to increase their power and holdings using such incentives as more food in exchange for their labor or fealty. Those chieftains would eventually evolve into local nobility and continue to expand their lands. Later, particularly in times of more instability dukes or kings would compete for the allegiance of local nobility by offering lower taxes or more freedom than their opponents.

The reality of this can be seen in the evolution of European nations, particularly France, Italy and Germany. The ebb and flow of borders over the 1500 years since the fall of Rome has been nothing less than stunning. And each of those nations, plus Britain and Spain were the core drivers of the evolution of civilization over the last 500 years.

[MinorityRepublican]

I think the Golden Age of the West is over. And we’re going to head in the Dark Ages. We won’t see much advances in technology. Just take a look at Saudi Arabia.

[aquila48]

“I must disagree with this as well. Unrestricted liberty has no downside.”

Really? So you think someone being free to drive recklessly down the road, run red lights with impunity, help himself to whatever he can at a store, beat up on some weak victims, rape the nearest girl when he gets horny, etc, etc, all those “liberties” have no downside? There shouldn’t be restricted by the force of law??

Unrestrained freedom in a society can be just as evil as total restriction. There is a middle ground that works best, and the fight for defining that middle ground is what most of politics is all about. It’s the tug of war between the left (who wants more control of individuals) and the right (who wants less).