History Where did Western Civilization go wrong?

[Deleted member 88]

So in light of recent events, I have thought quite a bit about an important question, when did Western Civilization go wrong? This is an important if somewhat circlejerky question. Because to answer this we can better diagnose the disease of modernity. I do not want this thread to descend into blaming a particular individual, or group but many have been blamed over the past two hundred years.

To start with we must determine by what we mean by wrong. Is it when the West became nihilistic? When it rejected nihilism? When? When it embraced Christianity? Rejected Christianity? When it became capitalistic? During the scientific revolution? After? Before?

To give a few stock explanations of when modernity began and the West went wrong.

1789-the french revolution and the birth of the liberal ethos. There is quite a strong argument to be made for this, it weakened the traditional order and brought chaos, it schismed the West and destroyed its Christian confidence.

1517-The Reformation is another contender. It destroyed Christian unity in the West and promoted inter confessional wars that led to the development of the modern state system and Europe's eventual secularization.

1815-the dream of a European empire was dashed by the coalition against Napoleon, thus leading to an unstable balance which indeed in 1848 collapsed.

1914-The First World War more than many other events shattered Europe's faith in itself, and led to the emergence of Bolshevism and Fascism.

1945-the discrediting of Nazism and by extension nationalism or third positionist or anti capitalist and anti Marxist politics brought a world dominated by the material and the dialectic of capitalism-communism, which were neither salvation or paths to renewal.

370 AD-Christianity is itself the problem. It according to Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, was something that rendered the world a more mediocre and ugly place, destroyed the European aristocratic spirit, and enshrined the triumph of the mediocre, the slave, and presaged the egalitarianism of later eras.

Other possible dates might include the execution of King Charles I in England, or the Great Schism, or perhaps the failure of the Romans to incorporate Germania into the Empire. To throw some other dates around, it might be when Alexander died in Babylon and was unable to go West and install himself and his heirs as a universal dynasty of the Occident. Maybe Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates are to blame. Maybe the philosophical foundations of civilization were intrinsically faulty or within their machinery would inevitably bring ruin.

While I do not subscribe to a few of the ideas listed, I do think debating them is worthwhile.

It is clear somewhere in the past perhaps two thousand years, something has gone very wrong. Maybe it was always going to decline, maybe its the end of the ages, and their ever spanning cycles. It is clear to me regardless that what we call Western civilization is unsalvageable, and has failed.

Else we would not be where we are now.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Commentary?

 

[Marduk]

I would suggest the 1920's-1960's period, with continuing theme of vast underestimation of the threat Marxism and its mutations pose, constantly being two steps behind its evolutions and schemes.
First underestimating the economic revolutionary aspect, then the military aspect of Soviet Union, and once these issues started to get handled, the cultural subversion answer of the Trotskyites that escaped to the west in the 1920's started to show fruits of decades of undisturbed work. The rest is just simple cause and effect follow up of these events.
If Soviet Union didn't collapse under the weight of its ideologically self-inflicted economic dysfunction, the west would have been in big trouble now. And it still may be, with China taking the role of a less ideological, more cynical, but equally power hungry and ruthless semi-communist contender who was willing to learn from their neighbor's fall and heavily prune their variant of communist ideology of some more unpragmatic fragments.

Why not earlier? Because during the earlier 200 or so years the western civilization was objectively at the height of its power, with no one able to compete, European empires directly or indirectly ruling all places even remotely worth ruling and then some, culminating with breaking the Ottoman Empire, the last remotely close holdout of distinctly non-western power. With a position like that, it had to be doing a lot of things right, from self interested point of view at very least, and the maneuvering area had to be wide enough to at least allow solutions to any rising problems, if there was will and foresight to implement them.

 

[AnimalNoodles]

we committed suicide in the mud of France.

 

[Deleted member 88]

Then perhaps a specific date might be 1969? Though the Frankfurt School and the trotskyists in the West had layed the groundwork for the previous twenty to thirty years.

1965-1969 is a good period though. It was when birthrates began falling in earnest, when degeneracy conquered the academy, and West tottered under both the strains of decolonialism and the march of the left worldwide. And its various movements.

we committed suicide in the mud of France.

I am inclined to agree, Western Civilization committed immolation at the Marne.

 

[Marduk]

Then perhaps a specific date might be 1969? Though the Frankfurt School and the trotskyists in the West had layed the groundwork for the previous twenty to thirty years.

1965-1969 is a good period though. It was when birthrates began falling in earnest, when degeneracy conquered the academy, and West tottered under both the strains of decolonialism and the march of the left worldwide. And its various movements.

Too late. Its the point where subversive efforts have started showing undeniable, large scale effects, large scale enough to be called a revolution even.
It would be like a ship trying to evade a torpedo when it has already hit, exploded, and water is just starting to flood in. Damage control is all that can be done by then.
That's why the earlier 20-30 years you mentioned would be the critical moment to deal with this incoming torpedo to western culture.

I am inclined to agree, Western Civilization committed immolation at the Marne.

Europe's empires had nasty wars before. I for one think it was still a salvageable situation then, though the countries that would need to do the salvaging had different interests and priorities, while underestimating threats that should not have been underestimated.

 

[Deleted member 88]

Europe's empires had nasty wars before. I for one think it was still a salvageable situation then, though the countries that would need to do the salvaging had different interests and priorities, while underestimating threats that should not have been underestimated.

When I speak of where Western Civilization I mean more in a spiritual or moral sense, rather than foreign policy or statecraft.

 

[Marduk]

When I speak of where Western Civilization I mean more in a spiritual or moral sense, rather than foreign policy or statecraft.

Through the nature of issues discussed, their causes, and their effects, we can see that there is no clear separation line between these, and there never really was.

 

[Cherico]

World war 1 pretty much broke European culture, pretty much every nightmare of the 20th century stems from that bloodbath in some form or another.

 

[Skallagrim]

So in light of recent events, I have thought quite a bit about an important question, when did Western Civilization go wrong?

It didn't. When we witness the excesses of the current era (total war; totalitarian and/or all-suffusing government; industrialised genocide, etc.) we may say that we are in a time of considerable issues. Sure. But that's a feature, not a bug.

Because to answer this we can better diagnose the disease of modernity.

Modernity is not a disease upon the culture; no more than a stormy, rain-drenched autumn is a disease upon the year. There are plenty of reasons to find it unpleasant; sometimes in the extreme. This still doesn't make it somehow unnatural, or a historical error. It's simply a phase that was to be expected.

As to when it started:

I would suggest the 1920's-1960's period, with continuing theme of vast underestimation of the threat Marxism and its mutations pose, constantly being two steps behind its evolutions and schemes.

1945-the discrediting of Nazism and by extension nationalism or third positionist or anti capitalist and anti Marxist politics brought a world dominated by the material and the dialectic of capitalism-communism, which were neither salvation or paths to renewal.

we committed suicide in the mud of France.

1914-The First World War more than many other events shattered Europe's faith in itself, and led to the emergence of Bolshevism and Fascism.

These are all symptoms of the present times, rather than causes. As they are symptoms, the cause must be further back, and altering any of these things would not intrinsically change "modernity" at all. Just its particulars.

1815-the dream of a European empire was dashed by the coalition against Napoleon, thus leading to an unstable balance which indeed in 1848 collapsed.

This is an interesting argument, although I'd say that Napoleon was the first great tyrant of modernity. His success would have ushered in a very different modernity, but a modernity nonetheless. The key ideas and political revolutions were already loosed upon the world.

As I have argued elsewhere: to me, Napoleon is to the Western World what Alexander was to the Classical World. (And modernity is to us what the Hellenistic period was to them. I stress again: this is not a culture "going wrong". This a culture going through a very natural identity crisis, which will be very naturally -- albeit bloodily -- resolved in due time.)

I'd like to mention that I have a strong suspicion, which I share with the author Frank Herbert, that unity and the security of a civilisation (e.g. of a united empire) is inherently self-undermining. People need challenges to retain dynamism. If too secure, they become stagnant and vulnerable. (See also Toynbee on the hypothesis of challenge-and-response.) So a Napoleonic victory may not have been the desirable outcome. It is my understanding that a 'modernity' end when the ragged culture collapses into a Universal Empire. At that stage, it is literally the only legitimate option left. Which is why it cannot fail. If the Empire is, however, established by force, three centuries 'early', it will lack that critical legitimacy.

I think we have an example of that in Chandragupta Maurya: the Napoleonic/Alexandrian figure of the Dharmic World. He established his Empire because his contemporary, Alexander himself, had just thrown the nearest, biggest foreign threat into utter disarray. They gave Chandragupta a free hand. His son was average. His grandson was another titanic figure... but had to rule by establishing one of the most elaborate universal police states seen up until that point in history. Basically: he faced Dominate-typical problems in what should have been the Empire's early Principate.

The Maurya Empire didn't last long after that. And India fell back into competing states. One ocasionally gained regional dominance, but there was no unification. There was no expansion of the Dharmic culture. In fact, those Dharmic thinkers outside of India became absorbed into foreign cultures (e.g. Chinese Buddhism), and were otherwise utterly vanquished by invaders (e.g. Islamic conquests). Even India itself was overrun by Islam, and then conquered by Britain. It is now independent, and -- having shorn off considerable Islamic regions -- is no longer at serious risk of Muslim domination. But it still has a considerable identity problem, in that it houses more Muslims than Pakistan, and thus cannot safely and securely re-orient itself as a unified empire encompassing "dharmic civilisation" (Hinduism/Buddhism/Jainism).

I imagine that the long-term outcome of a "Napoleonic victory scenario" would have yielded similar results in the West. Fascinating to speculate upon, but I'm not sure anyone here would consider it as being less of a case of "gone wrong" than actual history...

1789-the french revolution and the birth of the liberal ethos. There is quite a strong argument to be made for this, it weakened the traditional order and brought chaos, it schismed the West and destroyed its Christian confidence.

Now we get to the meat of it! If we just want to identify the start of modernity, this is it. Although the development of the increasingly radicalised Enlightenment ideas that led to such political consequences is naturally more fundamental, so we should probably say "the second half of the eighteenth century".

As far as an answer to your question can be presented, think this is as close as we get.

But that, of course, leads us further back: what caused the Enlightenment, then?

Other possible dates might include the execution of King Charles I in England

This, and other major issues in European history (e.g. the Thirty Years' War, which killed a third of Germany) can be traced right back to earlier developments. But compare how the Athenians killed certain leaders on dubious pretexts in the same phase of their history.

And is the Thirty Years' War not simply our Peloponnesian War?

1517-The Reformation is another contender. It destroyed Christian unity in the West and promoted inter confessional wars that led to the development of the modern state system and Europe's eventual secularization.

Which brings us here. Yes. To be sure. This played a role. Which rather undermines the "things went wrong" narrative. It's a long chain of events, and some outcomes are less than desirable. but it's all woven together. You can go back as far as you want to, but I really feel that every High Culture will eventually have its own "modernity" to compain about.

O tempora! the wise will exclaim. O mores!

And they are right to do so. But that doesn't change the fact that the culture hasn't "gone wrong". Difficult times are baked into the product, I'm afraid.


----------------------


Then there are a few suggestions that have nothing much to do with the particulars of the West, as such, but are really about Classical Culture.

370 AD-Christianity is itself the problem. It according to Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, was something that rendered the world a more mediocre and ugly place, destroyed the European aristocratic spirit, and enshrined the triumph of the mediocre, the slave, and presaged the egalitarianism of later eras.

This is, how do I put this, one of the biggest loads of bullshit ever. Christianity saved Rome from utter evaporation. Most of what remains of Rome was carried through the night by Christianity.

The West, as we call it, should in fact more properly be called: Christendom. Christianity is not a flaw in the West; Chistianity is the West. In a world without it, Rome would still decline and fall (as all High Cultures do). And what would then come therafter? Not the West that we know. Not the intrinsically Christian culture that did arise in our world.

But the Religio Romana was fading already. There is a reason it was supplanted. So whatever followed Rome would not be "Rome 2.0" -- rather, it would be something much like the West, but founded on different traditions. Now, which contenders look viable? I know which one looks viable to me. It's the transmutation and codification of the old traditions, infused by Neo-Platonic philosophy, that Julianus Apostata wwas trying to develop. Contrary to popular thought, his scheme was very carefully thought out: he imitated the successful structures and elements of Christianity.

Philosophically, the Gnostics operated in the same corner of the philosophical spectrum. In fact, they represent an attempt of thise broader philosophy to infiltrate and co-opt Christianity. It didn't work out. In a world without Christianity, we are looking at a world where that kind of thinking becomes the mainstream. The basis that survives Rome and becomes the foundation for the successor culture...

Without Christianity, I picture a nightmare world dominated by something we might call the Anti-West.

or perhaps the failure of the Romans to incorporate Germania into the Empire

This pertains to Classical culture, and specifically its final phase (the Roman Empire). It would again have had major effects on the West; probably by preventing it from existing in a recognisable form. As far as Rome in concerned, though, incorporating the bulk of Germania (as well as several other choises regarding geography) could have had the major effect of Romanising so much of Europe that any successor culture after Rome's fall really would have been a "Rome 2.0".

Which still doesn't count as stopping the West from "going wrong", except insofar as "never starting" means you can also never go wrong. And remember: there is no guarantee that a civilisation that manages to successively fall apaet and fall back together will somehow become more refined and perfected. Egypt and China are real-world examples. They are fascinating, but not perfect. (And Egypt ended up getting conquered, and its ancestral culture liquidated utterly.)

it might be when Alexander died in Babylon and was unable to go West and install himself and his heirs as a universal dynasty of the Occident

Same as with the aforementioned Napoleonic example. Alexander is the classical iteration of that particular scenario. I love the idea of Alexander establishing a "Western China" -- an eternal empire -- but the more probable outcome is that it lasts a few generations (like the Maurya dynasty) and then crumbles.

At which point the course of Classical culture has been effectively derailed, and we can be sure that the West as we know it will never come into existence.

Maybe Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates are to blame

I see them as the Classical counterparts to "our" Enlightenment thinkers, so yes: they are definitely to blame. They were also brilliant, and a pretty diverse bunch. And much as with the Enlightenment thinkers: it's the times their brought them to the fore. Without them, someone else would have stepped into their shoes.

(Note that Aristotle even tutored Alexander, just as Napoleon's thinking was critically formed by Enlightenment ideas, and just as Chandragupta was a pupil of Chanakya.)

 

[Marduk]

These are all symptoms of the present times, rather than causes. As they are symptoms, the cause must be further back, and altering any of these things would not intrinsically change "modernity" at all. Just its particulars.

If a disease was light on symptoms, would anyone complain much about it at all?

You seem to be underestimating how much the cultural subversion of the marxists of all stripes has changed the west over that time, culminating in events known as 60's revolution.
We don't have much of a set of non-western cases of countries undergoing "modernity" in techno-economic sense similar to Western Europe and USA to compare to, but we do have Japan. They have a number of culturally native issues not present in the west, shocking lack of some of the issues present in the west, and some shared ones that can easily be tied to the shared material effects of "modernity". As such its a not a 1:1 example of what the west could be like without marxist influences being the main driver of changes in its culture, but its a demonstration of how much and in which areas major divergences would have happened.

 

[LifeisTiresome]

If a disease was light on symptoms, would anyone complain much about it at all?

You seem to be underestimating how much the cultural subversion of the marxists of all stripes has changed the west over that time, culminating in events known as 60's revolution.
We don't have much of a set of non-western cases of countries undergoing "modernity" in techno-economic sense similar to Western Europe and USA to compare to, but we do have Japan. They have a number of culturally native issues not present in the west, shocking lack of some of the issues present in the west, and some shared ones that can easily be tied to the shared material effects of "modernity". As such its a not a 1:1 example of what the west could be like without marxist influences being the main driver of changes in its culture, but its a demonstration of how much and in which areas major divergences would have happened.

There is this woman named Camille Paglia who talks that in later stages of a culture, they are all for trans, the emasculation of men and masculinity. And the site about Oikophobia talks that as a culture ages, oikophobia aka hatred of your own nation or culture increases.

We are trapped in the civilizational cycle and cannot escape it. Lol

 

[Skallagrim]

If a disease was light on symptoms, would anyone complain much about it at all?

You seem to be underestimating how much the cultural subversion of the marxists of all stripes has changed the west over that time, culminating in events known as 60's revolution.
We don't have much of a set of non-western cases of countries undergoing "modernity" in techno-economic sense similar to Western Europe and USA to compare to, but we do have Japan. They have a number of culturally native issues not present in the west, shocking lack of some of the issues present in the west, and some shared ones that can easily be tied to the shared material effects of "modernity". As such its a not a 1:1 example of what the west could be like without marxist influences being the main driver of changes in its culture, but its a demonstration of how much and in which areas major divergences would have happened.

I would not say that I under-estimate the more recent historical developments. I merely attempt to place them in their context. The comparison to Japan strikes me as out of place, since Japan is not the West. The situations cannot be easily equated.

My point is that, drastic as things seem from "ground level", so to speak, as we look at it from right in the middle of this teeming anarchy, the fact remains that every "modernity" has its gaggle of cultists and conspirators. And yes, they typically do move right through the institutions. Or are we to believe that Marcuse and his buddies invented that trick? Look at the late Roman Republic, and the cultist affiliations of members of all the powerful families. Look at the weird, secretive rites and the labyrinthine social connections this entailed. The way they helped each other advance in power, to serve a multitude of agendas.

And most of those agendas look incomprehensible to us now. Even meaningless. In the same way, the current agendas and controversies will seem unimportant and vague to future observers. A storm in a glass of water, as we say. Yes, these times are full of strange ideologies. But I don't expect them to survive this century. Their counterparts in earlier cultures didn't make it, either. They proliferated, they enraptured, they drove men to frenzy... and then they perished when their hour had passed.

 

[Marduk]

I would not say that I under-estimate the more recent historical developments. I merely attempt to place them in their context. The comparison to Japan strikes me as out of place, since Japan is not the West. The situations cannot be easily equated.

Yes, exactly, that's the point of that comparison. It's not the west, yet in terms of "modernity" has all the things (wealth and widespread society changing modern technologies) west does, but not necessarily the same ideas.

My point is that, drastic as things seem from "ground level", so to speak, as we look at it from right in the middle of this teeming anarchy, the fact remains that every "modernity" has its gaggle of cultists and conspirators. And yes, they typically do move right through the institutions. Or are we to believe that Marcuse and his buddies invented that trick? Look at the late Roman Republic, and the cultist affiliations of members of all the powerful families. Look at the weird, secretive rites and the labyrinthine social connections this entailed. The way they helped each other advance in power, to serve a multitude of agendas.

Of course they didn't invent that. The main difference between them is not in the means, but in the massive goal and the modern tools being used to achieve it.

And most of those agendas look incomprehensible to us now. Even meaningless. In the same way, the current agendas and controversies will seem unimportant and vague to future observers. A storm in a glass of water, as we say. Yes, these times are full of strange ideologies. But I don't expect them to survive this century. Their counterparts in earlier cultures didn't make it, either. They proliferated, they enraptured, they drove men to frenzy... and then they perished when their hour had passed.

Would not be so sure about that. This is the test case of such things happening in a world of mass global communications and many other technologies that could have impact on such processes by themselves. Information age is no joke.
Of course these ideologies won't survive in their current day form, but i would not bet that some variations and further evolutions of them won't stick around for centuries here or there.

There is this woman named Camille Paglia who talks that in later stages of a culture, they are all for trans, the emasculation of men and masculinity. And the site about Oikophobia talks that as a culture ages, oikophobia aka hatred of your own nation or culture increases.

We are trapped in the civilizational cycle and cannot escape it. Lol

No idea about the former one, but the latter just misses the meeting point with reality.
Lets say this rule is true.
So, what non-western cultures are now so aged that they hate themselves as much as the western one (disregarding the implications of the intensity of this phenomenon being distincly affected by both Iron Courtain and also some sociocultural differences like clannishness)?
Surely out of the whole world, some would happen to be in a similar stage of the cycle.
What are the chances they wouldn't?

 

[Skallagrim]

Of course these ideologies won't survive in their current day form, but i would not bet that some variations and further evolutions of them won't stick around for centuries here or there.

Oh, on that, I agree. Everything has an afterlife. Some things ever get resurrections. But what is at the fore-front now will be a fringe phenomenon in later ages. It is a mistake to think that the peculiarities (whether virtuous or lamentable) of our age are somehow unique. In fact: that kind of presentism is a typically modernist way of thinking. "We are special. It's different this time."

But no, it's not. It's special for us, because we're living though it. But it's not special in the wider frame of history.

No idea about the former one, but the latter just misses the meeting point with reality.

On this point, I must disagree. All High Cultures demonstrate certain patterns in their development. This is not determinism, but it must be pretty firmly rooted in human nature, to show the degree of constancy that it does. I've outlined my thoughts on it in anoher thread on this site (which is still ongoing), particularly in this post and this post. But this post and this post happen to go into the specifics regarding "modernity", and might thus be particularly relevant to this line of discussion.

(Those are lengthy posts; I don't expect you to just read them. The simple fact is that I've already written down what I might write here in an attempt to convince you of the merits of macrohistorical analysis. If you're interested, those links can be of use. If not... then we shall agree to disagree on this, and time will tell.)

So, what non-western cultures are now so aged that they hate themselves as much as the western one (disregarding the implications of the intensity of this phenomenon being distincly affected by both Iron Courtain and also some sociocultural differences like clannishness)?
Surely out of the whole world, some would happen to be in a similar stage of the cycle.
What are the chances they wouldn't?

The chances of there not being such a culture in that same stage are very high, because High Cultures aren't just a dime a dozen. At present, we can identify:

-- The West. Our own culture is presently, per my estimation, at a stage analogous to the late Roman Republic in the Classical world; the Hyksos domination and competing dynasties of the Second Intermediate Period of Egypt; the third stage of the Warring State Period in China.

-- China. Completed its own historical cycle in AD 220, and has since followed a pattern of falling apart and falling back together. (Egypt did the same thing since the dawn of the first millennium BC, until foreign conquest destroyed its native culture definitively.)

-- The Islamic World. Intellectually screwed itself over in the tenth century, but recovered admirably, and was then geopolitically scewed over by the West. To some extent, they are in the same basic phase we are in (competing states; ideological frenzy; lack of fundamental legitimacy in existing power structures). But not exactly at the same stage of it. They currently blame the West for everything, and it's hindering their potential to recover.

-- India. As I mentioned, their analogue to Napoleon/Alexander managed to succeed in his conquest (thanks to Alexander himself happening to live at the same time, and beating up the biggert foreign threat). It screwed over the potentil for a Universal Empire enompassing the Dharmic World (as it the existed), and India's been trying to get its groove back ever since. Problem: every time it gets close, some foreign bastard shows up to mess it up. Foreign bastards have notably included Mohammad Ghori, Babur, and Robert Clive.

And that's pretty much it, as far as High Cultures go, in the present day and age. One might include Japan and Korea, but those have been peripheral to China for most of their history, and it's not improbable that it'll be the case for most of their future, too. The Jews? A diasporic people who have carved out a state in the most recent of times; the life expectancy of which undertaking remains to be determined. Maybe Russia and Latin America could be called peripheral to the West, and capable of developing into separate High Cultures in their own right (in due time). But I think it's more likely that they'll be faced with a choice: who to join. And then there's Sub-Saharan Africa, which was nowhere near the establishment of an encompassing cultural complex when the Europeans first got there, and is still nowhere near it now. The African Charlemagne will surely arise someday, but clearly not yet.

So really, is it to be expected that there will be a culture in the exact same stage as we are in, at the exact same time? No, not really. It already happened once befoe in history that two cultures (Classical/Hellenic and Dharmic/Indian) did that, and that was because they were both founded at roughly the same time, under generally comparable circumstances, by descendants of the same Indo-European people. It's a pretty big miracle that Mohammed and Charlemagne -- founding fathers of Islamic and Christian/Western culture, respectively -- lived so relatively close together in time. To expect the West and Islam (or the West and any other culture) to line up exactly would be a lot to ask.

To clarify: the number of High Cultures, even historically, is just not that immense. These things do have to find the time and the opportunity to properly coalesce. Definite examples of (now-extinct) High Cultures include: Classical, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Persian, Meso-American, Andean. That's a mere six, in addition to the present four. (And that's one more than Spengler counted, but that was because he had some weird Orientalist hang-ups. For which we can hardly blame him, since he was a child of the nineteenth century.)

There was also the Mississippian culture. How developed were they? Should they be counted? A lot depends on interpretation. To what extent may the Levantine/Phoenician world be seen as one unified whole? Does that qualify as a historical example Either way, they're both long gone. Similarly, we may ask whether Minoan culture, Sumerian culture and Harappan culture must be seen as relatively minor antecedents to the Greeks, Mesopotamians and Vedic Indians, or whether they could be ranked as High Cultures in their own right. (Just ones that got trampled underfoot by more successful neighbours.) Again, they are extinct.

In the present day, we have Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand (previously strong religious and cultural influence from India), and Vietnam (was suborned to China for a long time). Are they High Cultures? Are they in the process of becoming such? Are they living in a mere interregnum, before the superpower civilisations next door move back in and assert authority? Too soon to tell.

Even if you count very generously, that's still not all that much. culture really does take effort. And reaching the final stage of cultural development, wherein the whole of the cultural sphere is politically united and a civilisation is born... that's even more of an achievement. But I do believe that the West is well on track to realise that achievement for itself. I don't think Marcuse and his intellectual heirs really stand a chance against the full weight of history. The cult of postmodernism is about as likely to derail Western history as the cult of Isis was to derail Roman history.

 

[Marduk]

Oh, on that, I agree. Everything has an afterlife. Some things ever get resurrections. But what is at the fore-front now will be a fringe phenomenon in later ages. It is a mistake to think that the peculiarities (whether virtuous or lamentable) of our age are somehow unique. In fact: that kind of presentism is a typically modernist way of thinking. "We are special. It's different this time."

Sometimes it is different. Hard to say if this is one of these times. Sometimes these peculiarities fade into total obscurity, sometime they live on as some variation in a relatively small community, and sometimes they become the new norm.

On this point, I must disagree. All High Cultures demonstrate certain patterns in their development. This is not determinism, but it must be pretty firmly rooted in human nature, to show the degree of constancy that it does. I've outlined my thoughts on it in anoher thread on this site (which is still ongoing), particularly in this post and this post. But this post and this post happen to go into the specifics regarding "modernity", and might thus be particularly relevant to this line of discussion.

(Those are lengthy posts; I don't expect you to just read them. The simple fact is that I've already written down what I might write here in an attempt to convince you of the merits of macrohistorical analysis. If you're interested, those links can be of use. If not... then we shall agree to disagree on this, and time will tell.)


The chances of there not being such a culture in that same stage are very high, because High Cultures aren't just a dime a dozen. At present, we can identify:

-- The West. Our own culture is presently, per my estimation, at a stage analogous to the late Roman Republic in the Classical world; the Hyksos domination and competing dynasties of the Second Intermediate Period of Egypt; the third stage of the Warring State Period in China.

-- China. Completed its own historical cycle in AD 220, and has since followed a pattern of falling apart and falling back together. (Egypt did the same thing since the dawn of the first millennium BC, until foreign conquest destroyed its native culture definitively.)

-- The Islamic World. Intellectually screwed itself over in the tenth century, but recovered admirably, and was then geopolitically scewed over by the West. To some extent, they are in the same basic phase we are in (competing states; ideological frenzy; lack of fundamental legitimacy in existing power structures). But not exactly at the same stage of it. They currently blame the West for everything, and it's hindering their potential to recover.

-- India. As I mentioned, their analogue to Napoleon/Alexander managed to succeed in his conquest (thanks to Alexander himself happening to live at the same time, and beating up the biggert foreign threat). It screwed over the potentil for a Universal Empire enompassing the Dharmic World (as it the existed), and India's been trying to get its groove back ever since. Problem: every time it gets close, some foreign bastard shows up to mess it up. Foreign bastards have notably included Mohammad Ghori, Babur, and Robert Clive.

That's a bad case of fitting the observations to the model with liberal application of a hammer.

Yeah, China is "falling apart and back together" in general terms, but what stage of that cycle its on right now?

Islamic world is in an observably different relationship with its tradition than the west is right now. Their "ideological frenzy" is not some upstart idea that hates its own civilization and wants to remake it into something completely new, instead it is ultra-traditionalism often compared to its conquests of 7th century. And if not for the geopolitical and other material considerations, if their civilization had state of art armies and economic power to sustain them right now, there probably would have been conquests. But as things are, their lagging behind the West in material development has caused their armies generated by such doubling down on the 7th century, which back in the day would have been nearly unstoppable waves of fanatical warriors, to first be mowed down by the proverbial Maxim guns, and now, blown up by smart bombs dropped from far beyond the reach of rusty AK totting guerillas.

And that's pretty much it, as far as High Cultures go, in the present day and age. One might include Japan and Korea, but those have been peripheral to China for most of their history, and it's not improbable that it'll be the case for most of their future, too.

Good observation that necessitates pointing out before i talk of India. Its a case of telling apart what has been, and what is.

Japan, carried by the effects of Meiji restoration, has by all measure succeeded in joining the great powers of the world. Third largest economy in the world, second most powerful navy, notable cultural influence regionally and recently even beyond, that's not something one can ignore. If they continue on that route and somehow dodge a major crisis related to economy and birth rates, they will effectively create a sort of split-off "alternate China" civilizational orbit around themselves including Korea, Taiwan, and parts of Southeast Asia that will continue to diverge.

In comparison, Dharmic World seems like more of a has-been. India is a massive country that is however underdeveloped and disunited, with a large chunk of population wanting to be in the Islamic World instead, a story not unheard of in several other Dharmic World countries either, while on the other side it is squeezed by the expansionist ambitions of China. However, it still lacks the weird cult or self hate problems of the West, its problems are more analogous to those i've ascribed to the Islamic World, more a matter of means rather than will.

The Jews? A diasporic people who have carved out a state in the most recent of times; the life expectancy of which undertaking remains to be determined.

I'd put them on the same "similar but not the same" periphery of western civilization as Russia and Latin America. Unlike the latter two though, they have no perspective for assimilating their neighbors to own civilization for all sorts of reasons. Meanwhile Latin America is spreading demographically into the Pacific neighboring parts of Western Civilization, while Russia was always interested in the Central and South European parts of it.

So really, is it to be expected that there will be a culture in the exact same stage as we are in, at the exact same time? No, not really.

My point is, if we count "periphery" civilizations like Russia, Japan or Latin America as separate entities, we do see that they are not in the same place as the main ones, which in turn implies that they should be counted separately, as they are obviously capable of going their own way to some degree. Yet even then, we don't see any of them in the same place either.

It already happened once befoe in history that two cultures (Classical/Hellenic and Dharmic/Indian) did that, and that was because they were both founded at roughly the same time, under generally comparable circumstances, by descendants of the same Indo-European people.

Don't forget China too. That's 3 at the same time.

It's a pretty big miracle that Mohammed and Charlemagne -- founding fathers of Islamic and Christian/Western culture, respectively -- lived so relatively close together in time. To expect the West and Islam (or the West and any other culture) to line up exactly would be a lot to ask.

It was a a time and region which was geopolitically suitable to such feats, letting it be known as the age of warrior kings, which both of them were.
As for why? The geopolitical void left after Roman Empire was something that had to be filled, and as such, someone was bound to do it.

To clarify: the number of High Cultures, even historically, is just not that immense. These things do have to find the time and the opportunity to properly coalesce. Definite examples of (now-extinct) High Cultures include: Classical, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Persian, Meso-American, Andean.

Curious list... The most obvious observation is that they either got reformed or assimilated into a different one (Classical into Western, Egyptian into Classical and then conquered by Islamic), or on account of being utterly crushed on battlefields over and over again, and then forcibly assimilated by another one.

There was also the Mississippian culture. How developed were they? Should they be counted? A lot depends on interpretation. To what extent may the Levantine/Phoenician world be seen as one unified whole? Does that qualify as a historical example Either way, they're both long gone. Similarly, we may ask whether Minoan culture, Sumerian culture and Harappan culture must be seen as relatively minor antecedents to the Greeks, Mesopotamians and Vedic Indians, or whether they could be ranked as High Cultures in their own right. (Just ones that got trampled underfoot by more successful neighbours.) Again, they are extinct.

Seems like ancient equivalents of today's questions of whether Japan should be pinned into China's civilization, or Russia into Western civilization.
Naturally it comes to mind that back then, due to far less capable means of transport and communication, there was much more "room" for separate cultures to develop, sometimes over even relatively small geographic distances, than there is today, so it could be said that there were few more "high civilizations" then, and vastly more "periphery" ones.

In the present day, we have Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand (previously strong religious and cultural influence from India), and Vietnam (was suborned to China for a long time). Are they High Cultures? Are they in the process of becoming such? Are they living in a mere interregnum, before the superpower civilisations next door move back in and assert authority? Too soon to tell.

That raises a question of whether we qualify "high cultures" by some kind of absolute terms, or by terms relative to their current competing claimants of such a title of either their region, or the whole world.

For these countries, i'd say periphery parts of what you call Dharmic Civilization, but now contested, into possibly becoming the periphery of China, or in case of some small parts of them, Islamic World.

Even if you count very generously, that's still not all that much. culture really does take effort. And reaching the final stage of cultural development, wherein the whole of the cultural sphere is politically united and a civilisation is born... that's even more of an achievement.

That brings up two major points.
Firstly, the amount of cultural goods and ideas being produced has been changed in an unprecedented way since the industrial age, as it has freed up a vastly larger part of any population to potentially do so.
And now on top of that we are barely beginning the middle of information age, which is going to have no less monumental effects on such matters.

Secondly, as Western civilization proves, and earlier Hellenic too, and elsewhere in the world, Japan, political unity is not a necessary condition for a civilization to be born.
The lack of it though is conductive to creation of distinct "periphery" variants.

But I do believe that the West is well on track to realise that achievement for itself.

Lolnope. EU is merely quarter to half of western civilization depending on how you count, and even that is not looking too good right now.

I don't think Marcuse and his intellectual heirs really stand a chance against the full weight of history. The cult of postmodernism is about as likely to derail Western history as the cult of Isis was to derail Roman history.

As things stand now, hard to say. It does create a certain amount of weakness, which in turn would be an opportunity for a capable and expansionist competition.
Islamic World is more than willing, but lacking in capabilities, still it is doing what it can, while it can.
China is willing and capable, but too far away to do more than chip at West's peripheries in Russia and Pacific at most.
If anything, the West's own peripheries that have some resistance to cult of postmodernism may be best positioned to take advantage.
Looking at that, Western Civilization will survive more or less, possibly with its center of mass shifted to former peripheries, but may lose some peripheral holdings and get put under more pressure from Islamic World.

 

[Skallagrim]

Sometimes it is different. Hard to say if this is one of these times. Sometimes these peculiarities fade into total obscurity, sometime they live on as some variation in a relatively small community, and sometimes they become the new norm.

Sometimes, everything is different. Repeat an experiment long enough, and you'll see every possible outcome. But what is likely? I can only go by what has happened before, which (for reasons I'll elaborate upon a little further down) I certainly don't consider to be "fitting the observations to the model".

I see that in China, the Hundred Schools of Thought (including some with remarkable similarities to fascism and socialism) proliferated during the Warring States Period. The brief rule of Qin marked the supremacy of the quasi-fascist ideology, and the ruthless suppression of the competition. Stuff like Mohism? Dustbin of history. What survived? The Old Ways™. Taoism and Confucianism. Qin rule didn't survive the empire's founder by very long at all, and the Han dynasty was established. Stability and tradition prevailed, whereas a mere fifty years before, they had been utterly absent. (To the point that many people literally believed the world was ending and all was doomed) And, as I pointed out in the thread I linked to earlier, the Han dynasty fused the traditional sources of morality and piety into an newly-minted amalgam that was expertly given the legitimising veneer of great age and venerability. Cultism certainly continued, although with new cults being successful than the ones that had enjoyed success in the preceding era. Ultimately, though, these cults were outcompeted. When Buddhism arrived, the dynasty embraced that into the mix as well, setting up the basis for the official religion/ideology that would survive the fall of the Han dynasty. The religious reform was later blamed for weakening the empire, but the fact that the religion survived while the state collapsed suggests otherwise.

I see that in Egypt, the foreign ideologies and cultism of the barbarians proliferated during the Second Intermediate Period, and then got kicked out ruthlessly when the Eighteenth Dynasty got its groove on. The rule of Queen Hatshepsut marked the pinnacle of persecution and intolerance. Those nasty foreign ways? Dustbin of history. What survived? The Old Ways™. But Hatshepsut was really keen on that... before she was removed in a palace coup and Thutmose III took over. Stability and tradition prevailed, where they had been utterly absent. Guess what? He was way more practical than stepmommy had been, and deliberately fused the traditional sources of morality and piety into an newly-minted amalgam that was expertly given the legitimising veneer of great age and venerability. Cultism certainly continued, although with new cults being successful than the ones that had enjoyed success in the preceding era. Ultimately, though, these cults were outcompeted. Particularly after the embarrassing Amarna period (where one Pharaoh embraced a weird cult that nobody else liked), traditional religion was reformed to include elements counter to those of said cult. In this way, Amun became increasingly more important to the cosmology of Egypt. This was the basis for the religious tradition that survived the end of the New Kingdom. The religious reform was later blamed for weakening the empire, but the fact that the religion survived while the state collapsed suggests otherwise.

I see that in Rome, a wide variety of cults (mostly foreign mystery cults) proliferated during the last three centuries of the Republic, which was (again) tied to escalating troubles and violence and eroding trust in the existing order of things. Caesar ruled too briefly to really make a mark (which is why the Qin Emperor is known as one of the worst tyrants in history, while Caesar is remembered as a hero). But the ascent of Augustus returned Rome to stability and tradition. Adherence to that cultism? Eh, out of fashion. Dustbin of history. What survived? The Old Ways™. Augustus, too, was a practical man, and deliberately fused the traditional sources of morality and piety into an newly-minted amalgam that was expertly given the legitimising veneer of great age and venerability. Cultism certainly continued, although with new cults being successful than the ones that had enjoyed success in the preceding era. Ultimately, though, these cults were outcompeted. Just as foreign Buddhism made a mark on China, foreign Christianity spread through Rome. The Caesars ultimately embraced it, setting up the official religion/ideology that would survive the fall of the Dominate. This religious reform was later blamed for weakening the empire, but the fact that the religion survived while the state collapsed suggests otherwise.

...Now I don't know about you, but these similarities strike me as rather more than just random co-incidence, or a case of
"fitting the observations to the model". The analogies are indeed hard to miss. And they point at the same thing. The cultism of the "Time of Troubles" (if you will) does not survive the birth of the Empire. I know, I know -- you expressed strong doubts about that idea, too, but I'll get into that as well.

That's a bad case of fitting the observations to the model with liberal application of a hammer.

That's merely a statement, and -- with respect -- has no argumentative value. The posts I linked to contain lengthy lists of comparisons, which do not seem to me to be guilty of the charge. Nor do I believe the above comparisons to be forced in any way. I just call them as I see them. I can certainly understand that the claim itself (that cultures go through recognisable and to some extrent predictable cycles of development) may not seem automatically credible. But I do have a considerable list of arguments to back it up.

Yeah, China is "falling apart and back together" in general terms, but what stage of that cycle its on right now?

Last period of civil war and division ended in '49, after lasting 37 years. Before that, 229 years of dynastic rule. Before that, 39 years of internal strife and crisis. Before that, 276 years of dynastic rule. Before that? You guessed it, short period strife where they had to kick out the Mongols.

So... little over 60 years into a period of unification that one might expect to last until AD 2200, give or take a few decades. After that, a few decades of strife again. After that, the smart money says new dynasty.

Islamic world is in an observably different relationship with its tradition than the west is right now. Their "ideological frenzy" is not some upstart idea that hates its own civilization and wants to remake it into something completely new, instead it is ultra-traditionalism often compared to its conquests of 7th century.

The "modernity" of the West was and is also a period of competing states/regimes. (As was the Warring States Period, as was the Hellenistic era, as was the Second Intermediate Period, as is the current situation in the Islamic World.) It has not escaped my notice that the Western states, in this period, were quite aggressively imperialist. Little (and some not-so-little) nation-empires that trampled others underfoot. No judgement on my part, but neither will I judge another culture for doing the same thing.

And if not for the geopolitical and other material considerations, if their civilization had state of art armies and economic power to sustain them right now, there probably would have been conquests. But as things are, their lagging behind the West in material development has caused their armies generated by such doubling down on the 7th century, which back in the day would have been nearly unstoppable waves of fanatical warriors, to first be mowed down by the proverbial Maxim guns, and now, blown up by smart bombs dropped from far beyond the reach of rusty AK totting guerillas.

No doubt that if they had the means, they would conquer. Would we not? Of course we would. We did! Besides the appeal to inhibiting dogmatism, that is also a factor in why the Islamic world ended up so crippled. And they know it. In fact, that's what is making the radicalism and the violent anti-Westernism so unusually attractive to them right now. In their shoes, I'd feel the same way.

Japan, carried by the effects of Meiji restoration, has by all measure succeeded in joining the great powers of the world. Third largest economy in the world, second most powerful navy, notable cultural influence regionally and recently even beyond, that's not something one can ignore. If they continue on that route and somehow dodge a major crisis related to economy and birth rates, they will effectively create a sort of split-off "alternate China" civilizational orbit around themselves including Korea, Taiwan, and parts of Southeast Asia that will continue to diverge.

As you said: we must keep in mind the distinction between what was and what is. But also between what is and what might yet become.

Let me first make absolutely clear that in the scheme of things that I outline, "being a great power" and "being a High Culture" are not the same thing. The High Culture represents, in the tradition of Spengler, the largest scale -- beyond the national. Christendom (or, in secular terms, "the West") represents a High Culture. Within it, there are certainly nations, with national cultures of their own. But these are not High Cultures. These are parts of an encompassing High Culture. Perhaps I am saying this superfluously, and this was already crystal clear, but I can't tell from the way you worded the above -- so I'm stressing it, just to be sure. No matter how great a (national!) power Japan makes itself, it will still not be a High Culture because of that. Just as the British Empire was not a High Culture but a national empire, even when it ruled a quarter of the planet. It was still a part of Christendom.

The second part of your paragraph does point at a very real possibility. Regions can become divorced from the High Culture in whose orbit they existed, and either be absorbed by another, or contribute to the formation of a new one. It is possible that, in the face of Chinese hegemony, a coalition of Japan, Korea, Taiwan and potentially a number of South-East Asian nations will join forces. If this situation persists long enough, their union with each other and their opposition to China can indeed lead them to become a sphere unto themselves. An incipient High Culture.

Note that the resultant High Culture would presumably be unified by a figure such as Charlemagne or Mohammed, and will not mean that "Japan (or whatever) has become a High Culture". On the contrary: Charlemagne's rule didn't mark the ascension of France, but of Christendom as a High Culture. So what you posit would effectively mean that Japan melts into a (new) High Culture. For which we do not yet have a name.

We should keep in mind that, if the West has ecalating troubles ahead of it, this whole scenario may simply end up being prevented due to China swooping in and asserting control as Western security guarantees become hollow and meaningless. I'd consider that the more likely scenario. (Albeit perhaps the less interesting one.)

In comparison, Dharmic World seems like more of a has-been. India is a massive country that is however underdeveloped and disunited, with a large chunk of population wanting to be in the Islamic World instead, a story not unheard of in several other Dharmic World countries either, while on the other side it is squeezed by the expansionist ambitions of China. However, it still lacks the weird cult or self hate problems of the West, its problems are more analogous to those i've ascribed to the Islamic World, more a matter of means rather than will.

As I described previously, India has been "overrun" repeatedly. Although unified, it is still reeling from this. To succeed, it must find its footing. Its identity. That boils down to solving the Muslim issue. Either re-invent the Indian identity as something that can include Muslims... or get rid of the Muslims. (Alternative scenario: Muslims get their shit together first; subdue the region; get rid of the Hindus; India subsumed into Islamic world. But that's, again, not the most probable one in my estimation.)

I'd put them on the same "similar but not the same" periphery of western civilization as Russia and Latin America.

Russia and Latin America are both Christian. That's the core thing that binds the West together. I stress again: "The West" is shorthand. The more correct way of describing the High Culture is "Christendom". The Jews do share a part with Christianity -- that's inevitable! -- so are indeed by default similar. But in a Western context, they are a diasporic people with a presence in the West. The relation towards the West is fundamentally different than that of defined, geographic regions on the periphery.

Unlike the latter two though, they have no perspective for assimilating their neighbors to own civilization for all sorts of reasons.

This seems to refer to Israel. When I refer to the Jewish people, I don't mean Israel as such. The Jews have existed for millennia. Israel has existed for a mere 72 years. Note that the Kingdom of Jerusalem existed for two centuries, and still didn't make it in the long term. Israel may well be a fleeting thing. Again, the troubles in the West that I expect would presumable void any protection the West presently guarantees to Israel. Which one might expect to have consequences.

Meanwhile Latin America is spreading demographically into the Pacific neighboring parts of Western Civilization, while Russia was always interested in the Central and South European parts of it.

The nations that are irrefutably within the West have likewise competed geographically for quite a bit. In any event, Putin won't live forever. Russia should be lucky to survive in one piece after he is gone. I think it's more likely for European Russia to be dragged (or, more charitably, embraced) fully into the West than the for any meaningful parts of Europe to be nabbed up by Russia. (Long-term, that is. Some bits and pieces my well change hands a few time ere we arrive at a more final state of things.)

My point is, if we count "periphery" civilizations like Russia, Japan or Latin America as separate entities, we do see that they are not in the same place as the main ones, which in turn implies that they should be counted separately, as they are obviously capable of going their own way to some degree. Yet even then, we don't see any of them in the same place either.

If we count them as what? I certainly won't count them as separate High Cultures. Potential (parts of) future High Cultures, certainly, but at present, they're not there.

What do you mean by "in the same place"? Do you mean to suggest that you believe Russia or Latin America to be at a fundamentally different stage in their development than "the West proper"? Because I don't agree with that reading, to be sure.

Your last sentence is unclear to me. I don't know what you mean.

Don't forget China too. That's 3 at the same time.

At the time Alexander and Chandragupta lived, China was already two centuries into its Warring States period. So while these cultures co-existed at the same time, China was not "lined up" with the other two, the way they were with each other. China was some 200 years ahead of them.

It was a a time and region which was geopolitically suitable to such feats, letting it be known as the age of warrior kings, which both of them were.
As for why? The geopolitical void left after Roman Empire was something that had to be filled, and as such, someone was bound to do it.

This is true; well said. Much the same as Alexander and Chandragupta being contemporaries because their respective cultures were founded at about the same time, due to the same event (Indo-European expansion). I do think i's quite remarkable that Rome's fall left behind a void that allowed two different "founders" to arise, and both in the peripheral regions on opposite sides of the fallen empire. That's historical poetry, right there.

Curious list... The most obvious observation is that they either got reformed or assimilated into a different one (Classical into Western, Egyptian into Classical and then conquered by Islamic), or on account of being utterly crushed on battlefields over and over again, and then forcibly assimilated by another one.

If you live long enough and grow old enough, there's a good chance that someone younger will show up and defeat you in the end.

I do wish to dispute the idea that the West is either a literal reformation of Rome, or somehow assimilated Rome. That's really stretching the continuity thesis, I feel. Rome fell, and the West arose upon the ruins. (Well, upon part of the ruins, anyway, and parially branched out into the wilds. Meanwhile, Islam came from the wilds and settled upon the other part of the Roman Empire's ruins.)

Seems like ancient equivalents of today's questions of whether Japan should be pinned into China's civilization, or Russia into Western civilization.
Naturally it comes to mind that back then, due to far less capable means of transport and communication, there was much more "room" for separate cultures to develop, sometimes over even relatively small geographic distances, than there is today, so it could be said that there were few more "high civilizations" then, and vastly more "periphery" ones.

To some extent, it is the same question. Certainly a question of the same order. But do note that Minoan culture, Sumerian culture and Harappan culture all outright preceded the later cultures in that region, and were more-or-less replaced. To what extent was this a process of assimilation? To what extent was there cultural cross-influence? It's very hard to tell, so the validity of any continuity thesis in those cases is simply very hard to judge.

As far as the Mississippian culture and the Levantine/Phoenician/Carthaginian culture is concerned: they issue is whether they were really united. Not just politically, but culturally. Especially with the former, that's a big question mark. I think the Phoenicians and the Carthaginians were no more different (perhaps less) than people of various Western European countries right now. So I'd call that a High Culture. One that got crushed by Rome. Others feel differently, though.

That raises a question of whether we qualify "high cultures" by some kind of absolute terms, or by terms relative to their current competing claimants of such a title of either their region, or the whole world.

I'm sure it's always relative to some extent. Egypt and China do the same thing, historically, walk the same path -- but exist on vastly different scales.

For these countries, i'd say periphery parts of what you call Dharmic Civilization, but now contested, into possibly becoming the periphery of China, or in case of some small parts of them, Islamic World.

I agree. Of course, here we also have the possibility that you raised in regards to Japan et al. -- of them growing closer together in an attempt to keep the neighbours out. (But here, too, that's not the likeliest outcome.)

That brings up two major points.
Firstly, the amount of cultural goods and ideas being produced has been changed in an unprecedented way since the industrial age, as it has freed up a vastly larger part of any population to potentially do so.
And now on top of that we are barely beginning the middle of information age, which is going to have no less monumental effects on such matters.

This, I see as another example of presentism. The heavy plough, the horse collar, the gun... even paper... they have changed the world in ways that were no less fundamental and earth-shattering. It doesn't seem like that in retrospect, but it was very much the case. Yet they have not altered the basic course of human culture. Nor do I believe that the industrial age or the information age will have that effect. They will affect the particulars, but not the universals.

One reason why I believe that, besides observations from history regarding similarly important game-changes as they pertain to other ages, is that they don't change human nature. And that, I think, is the ultimte source for any historical patterns. Individual humans react to situations in individual ways, but most humans will react to a given situation in a certain way. I would like to call this "average human behaviour". Devations (individual behaviours that are different) don't typically matter to the course of history at all, because of regression to the norm.

Humans gonna human. That is the iron law of culture and history. So crude, so simplistic, and yet that's it. Unless and until you change the fundamental situation or the fundamental nature of the species, the current patterns will persist. And something like the industrial revolution? Not fundamental. The neolithic revolution was fundamental. That was the basis for all organised culture. And we are still living in that paradigm. All economic though, for instance, is concerned with the division of scarce goods. Now, if you technologically achieve post-scarcity... then you have changed the paradigm of the last ten thousand years. Then, the known patterns cease to be meaningful. Likewise, if you achieve transhumanism to such a degree that the resulting beings no longer think or act or perceive like humans... then you have hanged human nature, and the known patterns likewise cease to be meaningful.

We aren't there yet. Not by a long shot.

Secondly, as Western civilization proves, and earlier Hellenic too, and elsewhere in the world, Japan, political unity is not a necessary condition for a civilization to be born.
The lack of it though is conductive to creation of distinct "periphery" variants.

I disagree, but this is a terminology issue. When I say "civilisation" I explicitly mean "the Unification of all, or nearly all, of a High Culture under the aegis of one polity". This is commonly called the Universal Empire. Every High culture that survives up to that point eventually collapses into one. And the West, as I have argued, is getting very close to that point.

In any event, political union is very much a necessary condition for a civilisation (as I use that term) to be born. In fact, it's a truly defining aspect of a civilisation.

Lolnope. EU is merely quarter to half of western civilization depending on how you count, and even that is not looking too good right now.

The EU? That's not what I'm talking about. That's like saying the petty leagues of Hellenistic monarchs are shaky, and that's why the Roman Empire is impossible. Or the anti-Qin alliances are loose and ever-changing, so therefore the Han dynasty can't possibly exist.

The EU will die a bloody death, as will the entire political order of modernity. The 21st century will make the 20th look tame, by the end. And then, when the most ruthless of politicians have visited their naked ambition upon the world and torn it half to shreds in the process, a tyrant will come. And he, too, will be removed -- or his despotism will not survive him long. After that, when all other options have exhausted and debased themselves, only the legitimacy of tradition will remain. And that's when the Empire is founded.

The EU--! Yeah, that's a "lolnope" indeed. The EU is a joke.

But the Empire is not. It's just unthinkable for most denizens of modernity... right up until the moment where it becomes inevitable.

As things stand now, hard to say. It does create a certain amount of weakness, which in turn would be an opportunity for a capable and expansionist competition.
Islamic World is more than willing, but lacking in capabilities, still it is doing what it can, while it can.

I agree with this. There is weakness. There is also the possibility that Islam will gain enough strength to thrive... in Europe. I outlined that as a long-shot scenario in the other thread I linked. One wherein not Christianity, but Islam provides the traditionalist legitimacy that returns order to parts of the West (the parts being, presumably, Western Europe).

Yeah, that's possible. Outcome's still the same: Euro-Islamic Caliphate as a Universal Empire inheriting strains from both. That would, hilariously, solve all of Islam's outstanding philosophical problems completely. But it's very much a long shot.

China is willing and capable, but too far away to do more than chip at West's peripheries in Russia and Pacific at most.

Again, I agree! I mentioned that I expect Russia to fracture, and I wouldn't be surprised if China asserts hegemony over the Asiatic parts. Likewise, I already expressed that I don't believe Japan, Korea, Taiwain and South-East Asia will be very safe from Chinese ambitions. (And further expansion in the Pacific is entirely conceivable.)

If anything, the West's own peripheries that have some resistance to cult of postmodernism may be best positioned to take advantage.

Whatever happens to Europe, for instance, France is going to get a harder kicking than Poland. I wouldn't be surpised if Eastern Europe becomes way more dominant in the aftermath. At the very least, the old legacy of communist exploitation will be completely evened out.

Looking at that, Western Civilization will survive more or less, possibly with its center of mass shifted to former peripheries, but may lose some peripheral holdings and get put under more pressure from Islamic World.

There will be power shifts, to be sure. Some are inherently impossible to predict. Whether the Islamic World will be a lasting threat is another matter. Part of the reason why an "Islamic victory" model is so unlikely is that their oil-despotism is on borrowed time. If they are to win, it will have to be by repeating Christianity's big success, and overtaking a big part of Europe. Make that the new centre of the Islamic world and rule the Caliphate from Paris or something.

If that fails, or doesn't materialise... they're screwed. They'll still be a bunch of parvenu states, owning worthless sand. Punching bags for greater powers. That'll probably be the end of Islam as we know it. A defeat like that tends to break a culture utterly. (Also, in that scenario, there's a Christian Empire next door, and the early Empire is always expansionist. So they'll have a very bad time, and may find that very religious men showing up to behaad you if you don't convert is not funny when it happen to you.)

 

[Marduk]

Sometimes, everything is different. Repeat an experiment long enough, and you'll see every possible outcome. But what is likely? I can only go by what has happened before, which (for reasons I'll elaborate upon a little further down) I certainly don't consider to be "fitting the observations to the model".

This, I see as another example of presentism. The heavy plough, the horse collar, the gun... even paper... they have changed the world in ways that were no less fundamental and earth-shattering. It doesn't seem like that in retrospect, but it was very much the case. Yet they have not altered the basic course of human culture. Nor do I believe that the industrial age or the information age will have that effect. They will affect the particulars, but not the universals.

I was specifically talking about the modern status of the theory. Pre-industrial, i would say it was quite accurate, as no equivalents of industrial revolution happened. You can bring up things like horse collar or advances of steel making, but in sheer scale they don't compare to the industrial revolution - which was effectively arrival of thousands of such inventions in a timespan of roughly a century, and even more of derivate ones in the following one. Quantity has a quality of its own, as they say.

Compared to that, history before the industrial revolution was easy to make models for.
Most people in any notable civilization probably make food, probably by farming, they feed themselves, and give some surplus to feed craftsmen, rulers and armies when such were needed, who in return provide protection, tools and some degree of guidance. Naturally that makes the people who own the farmland important and recognized as such.

That description was applicable to most, if not all remotely significant civilizations of the world, since settled civilizations existed... up until the industrial revolution itself. That's why we're talking of industrial revolution, not gunpowder revolution, or stirrup revolution.
Since then the amount of farmland and peasants anyone has is no longer on the minds of military leaders - after all, if your nation can consider yourself a remotely major power, then mere couple percent of population or less can farm enough food to feed it more or less without much issue, and if they know what they are doing, then by historical standard feed it lavishly.

As such nations could throw vastly larger amounts of men into their military and for longer times than before, as before doing so would mean there would be no one to farm and everyone would be starving. But then again, as much as warm bodies with rifles, even more important was coal and steel, to make cannons, tanks, battleships and so on, because everyone could notice that the warm bodies who had many of these things could defeat significantly larger numbers of warm bodies who didn't.
But we're way out of that period already. Even in these things, quality is becoming a more important than sheer numbers. No one wants a thousand T-55's or Shermans anymore, which we could build relatively cheaply, because everyone knows that mere 50 T-90's or M1A3's are going to turn them into scrap with contemptuous ease, and require far less manpower to staff anyway - so with late industrial\early information age, warfare is heading again into a quality (and all the industrial and scientific support infrastructure that allows it) over numbers focus, as people are increasingly more valuable to the war effort farming food building, developing and maintaining increasingly more capable war machines than being yet another levy conscript in the army.
Yes, history rhymes, but in that case barring a full on movie scale apocalypse, some big things did change. We're in unknown waters now. Unknown doesn't mean that none of the previous observations will apply. Perhaps some will. But we don't know that for sure, and we don't know which ones will they be.

The "modernity" of the West was and is also a period of competing states/regimes. (As was the Warring States Period, as was the Hellenistic era, as was the Second Intermediate Period, as is the current situation in the Islamic World.) It has not escaped my notice that the Western states, in this period, were quite aggressively imperialist. Little (and some not-so-little) nation-empires that trampled others underfoot. No judgement on my part, but neither will I judge another culture for doing the same thing.

That definition of "modernity" applies to all time since Rome fell.

No doubt that if they had the means, they would conquer. Would we not? Of course we would.

That's what you would absolutely expect to be true...
The big aberration is however, that at this moment it clearly isn't.
Because surely the West with some of the world's most powerful armies is not lacking for the means. It is limited mostly by own population's mores and customs.
If one day the whole West decided that they want to act in the world old style and demand that the whole North Africa cease all migrant and Islam related shenanigans, shut up, and pay tribute, or else they will all be regime changed and then be given some combination of Xinjiang\Chechenya treatment if they try guerilla warfare, no one could do anything about it.

We did! Besides the appeal to inhibiting dogmatism, that is also a factor in why the Islamic world ended up so crippled. And they know it. In fact, that's what is making the radicalism and the violent anti-Westernism so unusually attractive to them right now. In their shoes, I'd feel the same way.

That's kinda correct, but misses the temporal and geographical context - after all the Islamic World was not lacking in "violent anti-Westernism" before the west crippled it as such.
It also isn't lacking in violent anti-Dharmaism, violent anti-Persianism, violent anti-Hellenism...
Point being, Islamic World may be considerably more aggressive about bulldozing over cultures it conquers than the average.

Let me first make absolutely clear that in the scheme of things that I outline, "being a great power" and "being a High Culture" are not the same thing. The High Culture represents, in the tradition of Spengler, the largest scale -- beyond the national. Christendom (or, in secular terms, "the West") represents a High Culture. Within it, there are certainly nations, with national cultures of their own. But these are not High Cultures.

Which raises a major criteria problem. If all nations within a High Culture assimilate to a single national culture, does it stop being a High Culture? That would be pretty ridiculous.
Do they stop being a High Culture if they get forced into a single polity, even if they resist assimilation to its national culture?
Or do they stop being a High Culture only if they both join a single polity and share a culture?
A highly developed nation of such cultural independence that it resists the pressure from all neighboring High Cultures to follow them should for all practical purposes be considered one too.

These are parts of an encompassing High Culture. Perhaps I am saying this superfluously, and this was already crystal clear, but I can't tell from the way you worded the above -- so I'm stressing it, just to be sure. No matter how great a (national!) power Japan makes itself, it will still not be a High Culture because of that. Just as the British Empire was not a High Culture but a national empire, even when it ruled a quarter of the planet. It was still a part of Christendom.

It is a good example, but one also perfectly suitable for my argument. Its the divergence between these cultures that make the distinction, not their scale or history.
China, due to its current characteristics, is heading in a certain direction, and taking rather extreme steps to isolate itself from outside influences that would take it elsewhere.
Meanwhile Japan absolutely doesn't want to follow China, while being more influenced by the West.
How does that compare? Was the Britain of Empire times that much culturally different and getting increasingly different from its more and less imperial fellow western powers? Not really. In fact, considering the very fact that we are communicating in its language, through the use of invention of its rebellious colony, i would say quite the opposite - the massive success of the British Empire has made the whole West a bit more like Britain.

The second part of your paragraph does point at a very real possibility. Regions can become divorced from the High Culture in whose orbit they existed, and either be absorbed by another, or contribute to the formation of a new one. It is possible that, in the face of Chinese hegemony, a coalition of Japan, Korea, Taiwan and potentially a number of South-East Asian nations will join forces. If this situation persists long enough, their union with each other and their opposition to China can indeed lead them to become a sphere unto themselves. An incipient High Culture.

Yup, that looks like a quite possible scenario.

Note that the resultant High Culture would presumably be unified by a figure such as Charlemagne or Mohammed, and will not mean that "Japan (or whatever) has become a High Culture". On the contrary: Charlemagne's rule didn't mark the ascension of France, but of Christendom as a High Culture. So what you posit would effectively mean that Japan melts into a (new) High Culture. For which we do not yet have a name.

That is a comparison completely ignoring the very relevant circumstances of the times of Charlemagne and France. There was no "French" culture as we understand it now. Galia was just one of many provinces of Rome, with its own many local customs and cultures, and with Roman influences appropriate to a land held by Rome for so long. Christendom, as a matter of "facts on the ground", existed since Rome adopted and spread Christianity through its holdings. Everything after that is just massive and chaotic administrative reorganization, ending up with much more decentralized rule, at least in terms of "reign of kings", while the capital of the "reign of souls" has remained in Rome itself despite all that.

We should keep in mind that, if the West has ecalating troubles ahead of it, this whole scenario may simply end up being prevented due to China swooping in and asserting control as Western security guarantees become hollow and meaningless. I'd consider that the more likely scenario. (Albeit perhaps the less interesting one.)

China is going to try.
Overall its gonna be up to Japan itself, no matter how much or how little support the West provides.

As I described previously, India has been "overrun" repeatedly. Although unified, it is still reeling from this. To succeed, it must find its footing. Its identity. That boils down to solving the Muslim issue. Either re-invent the Indian identity as something that can include Muslims... or get rid of the Muslims. (Alternative scenario: Muslims get their shit together first; subdue the region; get rid of the Hindus; India subsumed into Islamic world. But that's, again, not the most probable one in my estimation.)

The obvious solution is to try to assimilate the Muslims... If they emigrate in outrage, problem solved. If they die fighting in rebellion, also problem solved. And if they stop being Muslims, then they no longer have much to do with the Islamic World, and problem is gone yet again.

One thing to watch out for here i think is excessive significance ascribed to religion as sole determination of culture here, especially in cases closer to modern times. After all, half of the Christendom is now agnostics, atheists and some variations of such, disproportionally in the ruling class and other culturally influential parts of populations, and the other half is split across so many different sub-variants of Christianity that most extreme outliers have nothing but few general theological generalities in common.

Russia and Latin America are both Christian. That's the core thing that binds the West together. I stress again: "The West" is shorthand. The more correct way of describing the High Culture is "Christendom". The Jews do share a part with Christianity -- that's inevitable! -- so are indeed by default similar. But in a Western context, they are a diasporic people with a presence in the West. The relation towards the West is fundamentally different than that of defined, geographic regions on the periphery.

In light of the above, i'd like to note that until more recent times in the West itself, when religion was relegated to playing second fiddle in politics of the West, when the Pope called Christendom to do this or that, Russia and the rest of the Orthodox periphery would generally not be expected to answer.

This seems to refer to Israel. When I refer to the Jewish people, I don't mean Israel as such. The Jews have existed for millennia. Israel has existed for a mere 72 years. Note that the Kingdom of Jerusalem existed for two centuries, and still didn't make it in the long term. Israel may well be a fleeting thing. Again, the troubles in the West that I expect would presumable void any protection the West presently guarantees to Israel. Which one might expect to have consequences.

Yup. It is yet another good example of how the consideration of being a High Culture is most reasonably in the end based on a certain type of cultural self-reliance and independence, including in religious area.

The nations that are irrefutably within the West have likewise competed geographically for quite a bit. In any event, Putin won't live forever. Russia should be lucky to survive in one piece after he is gone. I think it's more likely for European Russia to be dragged (or, more charitably, embraced) fully into the West than the for any meaningful parts of Europe to be nabbed up by Russia. (Long-term, that is. Some bits and pieces my well change hands a few time ere we arrive at a more final state of things.)

Putin is just the foremost among a coalition of oligarchs and generals. Sure, it may collapse into infighting, but it also can find another reasonable capable replacement from among themselves. One thing is certain, this coalition is uninterested in "being dragged into the West", because if it was, Putin would not be able to do what he is doing. Maybye if the West handles its ideological hiccups, they may reevaluate, but as it is, they won't bet on a sick racehorse, and try to keep their own away from it.

If we count them as what? I certainly won't count them as separate High Cultures. Potential (parts of) future High Cultures, certainly, but at present, they're not there.

What do you mean by "in the same place"? Do you mean to suggest that you believe Russia or Latin America to be at a fundamentally different stage in their development than "the West proper"? Because I don't agree with that reading, to be sure.

I meant place in the rise-decay cycle. If they are not in the same place in it, then the cycle system has an exception for "perihpery" civilizations, or they are a nascent separate one overall.

This is true; well said. Much the same as Alexander and Chandragupta being contemporaries because their respective cultures were founded at about the same time, due to the same event (Indo-European expansion). I do think i's quite remarkable that Rome's fall left behind a void that allowed two different "founders" to arise, and both in the peripheral regions on opposite sides of the fallen empire. That's historical poetry, right there.

Big empire leaves a big void that with the geographic constraints of the time was impossible to consolidate by one "founder" at one edge of it before someone tried the same on the other edge.

If you live long enough and grow old enough, there's a good chance that someone younger will show up and defeat you in the end.

I do wish to dispute the idea that the West is either a literal reformation of Rome, or somehow assimilated Rome. That's really stretching the continuity thesis, I feel. Rome fell, and the West arose upon the ruins. (Well, upon part of the ruins, anyway, and parially branched out into the wilds. Meanwhile, Islam came from the wilds and settled upon the other part of the Roman Empire's ruins.)

Rome fell, but we can still see clear chunks of its culture and even political administrations up until today, as the people who used to be Romans as much as they were before its fall (which for many was partially at most), and didn't one day totally forget and change everything about their societies just for the hell of it. There are republics all over the West, wonder where did they get that idea...

To some extent, it is the same question. Certainly a question of the same order. But do note that Minoan culture, Sumerian culture and Harappan culture all outright preceded the later cultures in that region, and were more-or-less replaced. To what extent was this a process of assimilation? To what extent was there cultural cross-influence? It's very hard to tell, so the validity of any continuity thesis in those cases is simply very hard to judge.

As far as the Mississippian culture and the Levantine/Phoenician/Carthaginian culture is concerned: they issue is whether they were really united. Not just politically, but culturally. Especially with the former, that's a big question mark. I think the Phoenicians and the Carthaginians were no more different (perhaps less) than people of various Western European countries right now. So I'd call that a High Culture. One that got crushed by Rome. Others feel differently, though.

The fog of time does leave a lot of room for doubt and speculation for these.

I agree. Of course, here we also have the possibility that you raised in regards to Japan et al. -- of them growing closer together in an attempt to keep the neighbours out. (But here, too, that's not the likeliest outcome.)

As things stand, even if they did, they still wouldn't have sufficient means, unless India really steps up to becoming the next Asian Tiger and uses that power to be their block's champion and guardian.

One reason why I believe that, besides observations from history regarding similarly important game-changes as they pertain to other ages, is that they don't change human nature. And that, I think, is the ultimte source for any historical patterns. Individual humans react to situations in individual ways, but most humans will react to a given situation in a certain way. I would like to call this "average human behaviour". Devations (individual behaviours that are different) don't typically matter to the course of history at all, because of regression to the norm.

Humans gonna human. That is the iron law of culture and history. So crude, so simplistic, and yet that's it. Unless and until you change the fundamental situation or the fundamental nature of the species, the current patterns will persist. And something like the industrial revolution? Not fundamental. The neolithic revolution was fundamental. That was the basis for all organised culture. And we are still living in that paradigm. All economic though, for instance, is concerned with the division of scarce goods. Now, if you technologically achieve post-scarcity... then you have changed the paradigm of the last ten thousand years. Then, the known patterns cease to be meaningful. Likewise, if you achieve transhumanism to such a degree that the resulting beings no longer think or act or perceive like humans... then you have hanged human nature, and the known patterns likewise cease to be meaningful.

You are right, but as i said in the beginning of my post - yes, i still argue it was fundamental. In how you put it, the neolithic revolution was the basis for all organised culture, but industrial revolution switched out some important details of that organization.
Namely, in the division of the scarce good, as i said, the notable fact is that since neolithic revolution up until industrial revolution, food and the means of producing it (for largest scale, fertile lands) were THE scarce goods which civilizations were organized around on every level.
Now we call countries for which this is still remotely true third world, and measure strength of empires in different goods, something unthinkable before. Things have changed.

We aren't there yet. Not by a long shot.

Of course not, and when we will be there, that will be yet another revolution.

I disagree, but this is a terminology issue. When I say "civilisation" I explicitly mean "the Unification of all, or nearly all, of a High Culture under the aegis of one polity". This is commonly called the Universal Empire. Every High culture that survives up to that point eventually collapses into one. And the West, as I have argued, is getting very close to that point.

In any event, political union is very much a necessary condition for a civilisation (as I use that term) to be born. In fact, it's a truly defining aspect of a civilisation.


The EU? That's not what I'm talking about. That's like saying the petty leagues of Hellenistic monarchs are shaky, and that's why the Roman Empire is impossible. Or the anti-Qin alliances are loose and ever-changing, so therefore the Han dynasty can't possibly exist.

The EU will die a bloody death, as will the entire political order of modernity. The 21st century will make the 20th look tame, by the end. And then, when the most ruthless of politicians have visited their naked ambition upon the world and torn it half to shreds in the process, a tyrant will come. And he, too, will be removed -- or his despotism will not survive him long. After that, when all other options have exhausted and debased themselves, only the legitimacy of tradition will remain. And that's when the Empire is founded.

That seems like a quite specific prediction that could go all sorts of ways considering the scale involved.

But the Empire is not. It's just unthinkable for most denizens of modernity... right up until the moment where it becomes inevitable.

Impossible to say at that point. With the major world powers being well aware of each other, it cheapened in some ways.

I agree with this. There is weakness. There is also the possibility that Islam will gain enough strength to thrive... in Europe. I outlined that as a long-shot scenario in the other thread I linked. One wherein not Christianity, but Islam provides the traditionalist legitimacy that returns order to parts of the West (the parts being, presumably, Western Europe).

Yeah, that's possible. Outcome's still the same: Euro-Islamic Caliphate as a Universal Empire inheriting strains from both. That would, hilariously, solve all of Islam's outstanding philosophical problems completely. But it's very much a long shot.

Islam may gain enough strength to set up enclaves in Europe... But these will thrive only as long as the rest of Europe lets them.
On the other hand i don't think the Islamic World's kind of legitimacy is something that Europeans have a hunger for. If they did, they would be fine with the locally available equivalents already, but they hate those.

Again, I agree! I mentioned that I expect Russia to fracture, and I wouldn't be surprised if China asserts hegemony over the Asiatic parts. Likewise, I already expressed that I don't believe Japan, Korea, Taiwain and South-East Asia will be very safe from Chinese ambitions. (And further expansion in the Pacific is entirely conceivable.)

Russia i don't think would fracture, at least not in that part of itself, the southern republics with their certain reputation would be one possible exception, and hard to say whether aside for national pride perspective, it would be such a bad thing for Russia...
If it loses the Asiatic parts, its gonna be by external force.

Whatever happens to Europe, for instance, France is going to get a harder kicking than Poland. I wouldn't be surpised if Eastern Europe becomes way more dominant in the aftermath. At the very least, the old legacy of communist exploitation will be completely evened out.

Perhaps...
A situation like that would cause a very chaotic rearrangement of powers around the center of Europe, which could go all sorts of funny ways.

There will be power shifts, to be sure. Some are inherently impossible to predict. Whether the Islamic World will be a lasting threat is another matter. Part of the reason why an "Islamic victory" model is so unlikely is that their oil-despotism is on borrowed time. If they are to win, it will have to be by repeating Christianity's big success, and overtaking a big part of Europe. Make that the new centre of the Islamic world and rule the Caliphate from Paris or something.

Won't work. Islam doesn't have an equivalent of the legacy of Rome and its support its launch from. For all practical purposes Christianity as we know it was built up in the late stage of Roman civilization, molded to fit it. Despite the cultural weakness of the West, the number of natives converting to Islam is absolutely laughable, and is overwhelmed by the number if Muslims getting secularized, even if that number is not too impressive either.
Half of the westerners view Islamic World as poor victims of history that need to be delicately enlightened to the better ways of progressive liberalism, while the other half views them as barbarian invaders they always were that ideally should be treated accordingly. Neither view is conductive to adopting their religion with all its mores that encompass most parts of life.

If that fails, or doesn't materialise... they're screwed. They'll still be a bunch of parvenu states, owning worthless sand.

Parts of it. The peripheries of Islamic World, Turkey, Iran and Pakistan have better perspectives though. 2 of these aren't even dependent on oil. And then there's Africa.

Punching bags for greater powers. That'll probably be the end of Islam as we know it. A defeat like that tends to break a culture utterly. (Also, in that scenario, there's a Christian Empire next door, and the early Empire is always expansionist. So they'll have a very bad time, and may find that very religious men showing up to behaad you if you don't convert is not funny when it happen to you.)

Would not be sure of that at all, if only because the West already did conquer them once, yet they are still around, expansionist as ever.

 

[Deleted member 88]

IS and Al-Qaeda are both attempts to restore the confidence of Islamic civilization through the driving out of western influence, destruction of secular governments in the region and Israel.

If they achieved that, the Islamic world would unite under them and the caliphate would be restored. Thus re uniting the Umma again.

While driving out the west is impossible and destroying Israel would invoke the Samson option(if Israel was about to be overrun by some Neo Caliphate-it would take the caliphate down with it), destroying the secular Arab regimes and gaining control of Mecca would revitalize the Islamic world’s confidence in itself.

If IS had somehow managed to conquer Baghdad and Damascus and then go south and take Mecca and overthrow the Saudi monarchy, that could have been the Islamic World’s charlemagne moment. Obviously that would have been extraordinarily implausible but if it had, we might have seen the collapse of non Caliphate governments and the revitalization of the Dar al Islam.

 

[Marduk]

IS and Al-Qaeda are both attempts to restore the confidence of Islamic civilization through the driving out of western influence, destruction of secular governments in the region and Israel.

If they achieved that, the Islamic world would unite under them and the caliphate would be restored. Thus re uniting the Umma again.

While driving out the west is impossible and destroying Israel would invoke the Samson option(if Israel was about to be overrun by some Neo Caliphate-it would take the caliphate down with it), destroying the secular Arab regimes and gaining control of Mecca would revitalize the Islamic world’s confidence in itself.

If IS had somehow managed to conquer Baghdad and Damascus and then go south and take Mecca and overthrow the Saudi monarchy, that could have been the Islamic World’s charlemagne moment. Obviously that would have been extraordinarily implausible but if it had, we might have seen the collapse of non Caliphate governments and the revitalization of the Dar al Islam.

I don't see the jump from bringing down a couple failed state governments and defeating their meme tier Arab armies to "revitalization of the Dar al Islam.".
Sure, it would massively raise their morale...
But as a certain very modern saying goes, overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer, not a valid substitute for tanks, submarines and missiles.
Lets be honest, with confidence at that level they couldn't stop themselves from picking fights all around themselves.
And then they will have a Mahdist War moment all over again when they pick a fight poorly.
And if they are lucky, its gonna be against some western power rather than someone else.

 

[CarlManvers2019]

I don't see the jump from bringing down a couple failed state governments and defeating their meme tier Arab armies to "revitalization of the Dar al Islam.".
Sure, it would massively raise their morale...
But as a certain very modern saying goes, overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer, not a valid substitute for tanks, submarines and missiles.
Lets be honest, with confidence at that level they couldn't stop themselves from picking fights all around themselves.
And then they will have a Mahdist War moment all over again when they pick a fight poorly.
And if they are lucky, its gonna be against some western power rather than someone else.

That or they pick a fight with China, whom even without an army as good as the USA

Will have one thing over the USA and all the other Western Nations.

A complete and utter lack of mercy