Tragedy and Hope

[zarus tathra]

"Tragedy and Hope" is a history of the world, and especially, of Western civilization, written by Carroll Quigley, a professor of history at Georgetown University who had served as Bill Clinton's mentor. In it, he outlines the economic and social factors that have caused civilization to develop the way it has and comments heavily on the "current" state of American society, which he perceived to be in decline.

An important feature of his historiography is his theory of the 7-part cycle that civilizations go through.

The first is the formation of the civilization, in which the ideology of the culture is just being formed. The culture doesn't yet have a strong identity; it is little more than an admixture of neighboring cultures at this point.

The second is the solidification of the culture and its identity. Basic forms of life at all levels are being solidified and people are diligently going about the business of fulfilling their civilization's potentital.

The third is the age of expansion, in which the civilization grows in size and intellectual sophistication.

The fourth is the age of conflict, which is brought about when the institutions that had served the civilization so well become solidified and ineffective, causing great unrest amongst the populace. This results in efforts by the ruling classes to oppress the people and turn their aggression towards foreigners.

The conflicts of the fourth age ultimate result in the victory of one state over all others, which brings about a universal empire that rules all the formerly warring territories. This is remembered as a "golden age" by future generations, who suffer through the sixth age, that of decline.

Finally, after centuries of decay, the civilization comes into conflict with foreigners, who pillage it without much difficulty.

Quigley believed that the World Wars were signs of an enduring age of conflict, and that only a drastic reorganization of the implements of expansion and improvement would put us into another age of expansion. What was probably more likely in his opinion was that Western civilization would end up being dominated by America's Universal Empire, resulting in decline and invasion by a foreign force (probably Russia or China).

One of my favorite quotes:

But by 1900 or so, these dislikes and likes became ends in themselves. The liberal was
prepared to force people to associate with those they could not bear, in the name of
freedom of assembly, or he was, in the name of freedom of speech, prepared to force
people to listen. His anti-clericalism became an effort to prevent people from getting
religion, and his anti-militarism took the form of opposing funds for legitimate defense.
Most amazing, his earlier opposition to the use of private economic power to restrict
individual freedoms took the form of an effort to increase the authority of the state
against private economic power and wealth in themselves. Thus the liberal of 1880 and
the liberal of 1940 had reversed themselves on the role and power of the state, the earlier
seeking to curtail it, the latter seeking to increase it. In the process, the upholder of the
former liberal idea that the power of the state should be curtailed came to be called a
conservative. This simply added to the intellectual confusion of the mid-twentieth
century, which arose from the Irrational Activist reluctance to define any terms, a
disinclination that has now penetrated deeply into all intellectual and academic life.

Here's the link

[stromboli]

Awesome! Thanks for the link.

[zarus tathra]

And you know what? Accepting that there is such a thing as "legitimate national defense" actually HELPS anti-war activism, at least for the people who live in the US, Russia, and China. Because right now, we don't really face conditions under which we really need to defend ourselves. Pretty much everything post WWII has been a sham war, and many would say WWI and WWII were also sham wars from an American perspective. I mean, mutually assured destruction is here to stay until the day that every military power opens up their weapons systems to public inspection and agrees to draw down their arms.

I just came to a realization: real conflict is almost never motivated by fear and is almost always motivated by greed of some kind. WWI was motivated by Germany's desire to seize British-owned territory and to challenge her position as the premier imperial power. Ditto for WWII. The South's secession in the Civil War was motivated in large part by the desire of the slaveowning states to have influence over more territory in the Union and their failure to achieve it. And of course we have European imperialism.

That's why nukes have yet to be a cause of war. Nukes are weapons whose usage can only be a result of fear. You can't conquer with nuclear weapons, you can only destroy. To use nuclear weapons to seize territory and resources is like a robber melting all the gold in a vault.

[zarus tathra]

Another win quote:

Most crucial have been the demands of the modern industrial and business system,
because of advancing technology, for more highly trained manpower. Such training
requires a degree of ambition, self-discipline, and future-preference that many persons
lack or refuse to provide, with the result that a growing lowest social class of the social
outcasts (the Lumpenproletariat) has reappeared. This group of rejects from our
bourgeois industrial society provide one of our most intractable future problems, because
they are gathered in urban slums, have political influence, and are socially dangerous.

In the United States, where these people congregate in the largest cities and are often
Negroes or Latin Americans, they are regarded as a racial or economic problem, but they
are really an educational and social problem for which economic or racial solutions
would help little. This group is most numerous in the more advanced industrial areas and
now forms more than twenty percent of the American population. Since they are a self-
perpetuating group and have many children, they are increasing in numbers faster than
the rest of the population. Their self-perpetuating characteristic as a group is not based on
biological differences but on sociological factors, chiefly on the fact that disorganized,
undisciplined, present-preference parents living under chaotic economic and social
conditions are most unlikely to train their children in the organized, disciplined, future-
preference and orderly habits the modern economic system requires in its workers, so that
the children, like their parents, grow up as unemployables. This is not a condition that can
be cured by providing more jobs, even if the jobs are in the proper areas, because the jobs
require characteristics these victims of anomie do not possess and are unlikely to acquire.

[Solitary]

History will always repeat itself for the same reason, mankind trying to survive at any cost.

[zarus tathra]

Rebellion against this rat race has already begun, not from the lower middle class who
are just entering it and still aspire to it, but from the established middle class who have, as
they say, "had it." On the whole, the efforts to find a way out while still retaining a high
standard of material living have not been successful, and the real rebellion is coming, as
we shall see later, from their children. These have expanded the usual adolescent revolt
against parental dominance and authority into a large-scale rejection of parental values.



One form that this revolt has taken has been to modify the meaning of the expression
"high standard of living" to include a whole series of desires and values that are not
material and thus were excluded from the nineteenth-century bourgeois understanding of
the expression "standard of living." Among these are two we have already listed as
disconcerting elements in the Africans' understanding of standard of living: small group
interpersonal relationships and sex play. These changes, as we shall see, have come to
represent a challenge to the whole middle-class outlook.

[zooma]

Among these are two we have already listed as disconcerting elements in the Africans' understanding of standard of living: small group interpersonal relationships and sex play.

This has only gotten more relevant with time, including the reference to the African mindset. The sex play part isn't necessarily THAT disconcerting, but the diversion away from meaningful cultural and technological development is.