The ascendant (or declining?) current state and future of western culture

[ummester]

Oh, Castel - watching a bit of the doco again - it's not the Gladiators that got massive wage bumps, the charioteers did in the second century. So I guess 200AD is for enough into Rome's decline for all to agree on?

My bad, Gladiators, Charioteers, Beach Volleyballers - I'm a nerd, they're all jocks to me

[Gorn]

There are several foundations upon which all "strong" cultures are based. These are:

- Lack of overwhelming outside pressure (either military or cultural). This depends on world events and is outside of culture members' control.

- Tradition of cultural/religious tolerance and pluralism, or cultural/religious homogenity which would help avoid internal conflicts.

- Legalistic and/or religious traditions which assure orderly succession on top, either through elections (in democracies) or through dynastic inheritance laws (in monarchies). They also make it unthinkable for an ambitious general/politician/nobleman to seize power in times of crisis and establish himself as dictator.

- Stable economy, which provides sufficient life opportunities for general population to avoid popular revolutions.

- Sufficient natural resources for economic needs.

- Efficient bureaucratic system which provides good management and compensates for potential incompetence of leaders on the top.

[ummester]

3 minutes ago, Gorn said:

There are several foundations upon which all "strong" cultures are based. These are:

1 - Lack of overwhelming outside pressure (either military or cultural). This depends on world events and is outside of culture members' control.

2 - Tradition of cultural/religious tolerance and pluralism, or cultural/religious homogenity which would help avoid internal conflicts.

3 - Legalistic and/or religious traditions which assure orderly succession on top, either through elections (in democracies) or through dynastic inheritance laws (in monarchies). They also make it unthinkable for an ambitious general/politician/nobleman to seize power in times of crisis and establish himself as dictator.

4 - Stable economy, which provides sufficient life opportunities for general population to avoid popular revolutions.

5 - Sufficient natural resources for economic needs.

6 - Efficient bureaucratic system which provides good management and compensates for potential incompetence of leaders on the top.

1 - Well, no-one is directly challenging the West ATM. So the West is still strong there - unless you count terrorism.

2 - I think that's a big fail in the West ATM - socially conservative and progressive ideals are clashing quite a bit.

3 - See Trump  Which is why I got onto this whole topic - I don't think the establishment is on his side..

4 - Umm, yep, I think that's kind of failing globally ATM.

5 - Yep, also failing globally. We are in direct competition with sharks for fish in the ocean ATM, so either we need a culling or another planet full of edible animals.

6 - I am part of one of those systems in the West and I can guarantee you there is direct conflict between workers that want to service society and leaders that don't ATM.

 

So Gorn, you still haven't offered your opinion - is Western Culture in decline or not?

[Gorn]

2 minutes ago, ummester said:

1 - Well, no-one is directly challenging the West ATM. So the West is still strong there - unless you count terrorism.

2 - I think that's a big fail in the West ATM - socially conservative and progressive ideals are clashing quite a bit.

3 - See Trump  Which is why I got onto this whole topic - I don't think the establishment is on his side..

4 - Umm, yep, I think that's kind of failing globally ATM.

5 - Yep, also failing globally. We are in direct competition with sharks for fish in the ocean ATM, so either we need a culling or another planet full of edible animals.

6 - I am part of one of those systems in the West and I can guarantee you there is direct conflict between workers that want to service society and leaders that don't ATM.

 

So Gorn, you still haven't offered your opinion - is Western Culture in decline or not?

I don't  I think we are closest to failing on #5, but the rest are still looking good IMO.

1 - I agree there, no-one is directly challenging the West yet.

2 - I disagree - current level of collision is nothing compared to clashes between fascists and communists from the last century, or between Catholics and Protestants from a couple of centuries ago. The West survived both and came of out those conflicts stronger than before.

3 - Again, the small chances of Trum winning the presidency and the reaction of establishment prove that the tradition is strong in that respect.

4 - Maybe, but this is far from the point where revolutions start. People join revolutionary movements because their children are starving to death, or because their ethnic/religious/political identities place them in direct physical danger, not because they cannot afford a better car.

5 - I agree on this one.

6 - I can't really comment on this one - the system is failing in my country, but the situation is much better in other Western countries.

[Castel]

33 minutes ago, ummester said:

To be fair I did point the finger more directly, like an overindulgence and spending on pleasurable pastimes and not so much Christianity as changes in what the population believed.

Arguably all culture is ill suited to dealing with Empires.

This does bring me back to another more pointed indicator I mentioned originally - when there is a movement of of the population towards the city/civilisation centres and away from the rural areas.

And, another one that has just come to mind, debasement of the currency, which, as I understand it happened both in Rome and now the modern West.

Of course, when comparing history to the present, things can always be debated because we do not have an exact understanding of history. And of course, what represents debasement, or decadence can also be argued over interpretive differences.

But I don't think the trends can be argued.

I'm not so sure. It's easy to pluck whatever points of seeming resemblance you want out of vastly different societies than span literal millenia,but that doesn't necessarily make a strong psychohistorical theory. 

[ummester]

1 minute ago, Gorn said:

4 - Maybe, but this is far from the point where revolutions start. People join revolutionary movements because their children are starving to death, or because their ethnic/religious/political identities place them in direct physical danger, not because they cannot afford a better car.

Yes, I agree - this is very important. The majority of people in the West haven't been pushed far enough to revolt yet - we are all still one meal ticket away from chaos or revolution, as they say.

This said, revolutions or constant civil strife is generally the end game for cultural decline, not the start of it.

I guess that does explain what opinion in this thread comes down to a bit - it's not far enough along, so it's not in decline yet vs it doesn't have to be a long way along to know where it's headed.

[Pro Augustis]

A lot of what is being cited as evidence of Rome's decline was present throughout. 

5 hours ago, ummester said:

We live for now and our societies are structured more for today than tomorrow. A ascendant society looks to the future, a culture in decline looks to the past.

Rome was a deeply conservative culture, and its art and ideals always looked to the past. For some Late Republic/Early Empire indications of this, look at the examples from earlier history in Cicero, Horace's poems about a golden age, and the moralistic/adulatory depiction of Rome's bygone heroes in Livy. 

5 hours ago, ummester said:

Consolidation of populations into cities and the ever increasing disrepair of those cities is another sign of cultural decline. No civilisation, ever, lasts forever, they all crumble - but they start to come apart at the seams (perhaps surprisingly) when the masses head into the most populace areas and not away.

This also does not fit the large-scale arc of Roman civilization. Graeco-Roman civilization, when contrasted with other ancient peoples (e.g. Gaul, Spain, etc) was highly urbanized and spread that urbanization with them wherever they had dominion. Remember that Rome was the largest city in the ancient world for hundreds and hundreds of years. As antiquity drew to a close, however, the trend of urbanization began to reverse. Rome's population in the fifth century was a shadow of what it once was. The Greek city of Aphrodisias also shows a pretty clear arc of expanding and then contracting in urban population over the course of the Classical age.

 

As for athletes, it's worth noting that the adulation of athletics didn't start with later Rome—it went back to the Olympic winners, who achieved great status and wealth in Classical Greece and throughout antiquity. 

 

More fundamentally, I am leery that history is really so linear that decline over several centuries can be a meaningful concept. Rome did not simply descend from AD 1 to AD 450 or whatever metric we choose. Moreover, that misses how many high points existed in those times—the run of "good emperors" in the mid second century that Gibbon (arch-proponent of the whole decline idea in the first place) referred to as the best time to be alive, the astonishing military power of Septimius Severus or Diocletian, philosophers like Plotinus and (though from a very different tradition) Augustine, and writers of fiction and history like Apuleius and Ammianus Marcellinus. 

 

[Commodore]

the idea of social contract as a vehicle for protecting individual liberty has died with this election cycle

people who believe in that idea are a tiny and shrinking minority, and always have been and always will be

there is very good reason to be fatalistic

reasons for optimism might be that technology can succeed where social contract has broken down

The Internet is the best example; it has protected free speech better than any social contract or constitution or standing army.

Bitcoin and 3D printing are emerging technologies that can perform the same role in finance and manufacturing. 

[ummester]

4 minutes ago, Castel said:

I'm not so sure. It's easy to pluck whatever points of seeming resemblance you want out of vastly different societies than span literal millenia,but that doesn't necessarily make a strong psychohistorical theory. 

Well, no theory is possible to prove until after the fact, is it?

It's easy to deny trends in favour of faith in an ailing system, also.

This is ultimately something that time will tell - I might have to revisit the discussion after the US elections. I recon Trumps going to shit it in - and no, I don't like the guy at all, I just think it's part of a change that has already started.

[Chaircat Meow]

Arguably culture is more than movies/songs. Although it is true that if we look at the entertainment industry, and in other areas such as food, America might be dominant in virtue of having its products doing very well in foreign markets, this doesn't necessarily mean the culture of the US is in a good way.

Culture is ultimately about the symbols, practices and beliefs that create a community/city or nation, and impart to it a sense, both of purpose and of its place in the world. Traditionally religion always served as the golden thread binding all aspects of culture together. Currently Christianity in the west is in decline and western culture along with it. Thinking about my own country, the UK, there is a very notable fracturing of society since at least the 1980s, if not before. Working class culture, in particular, has been stripped of its more positive attributes. The middle classes are now largely irreligious, and art/architecture is not really serving as any kind of replacement for Christianity (one only has to look at the state of modern art to see why). The connection with their own past forged through appreciation of classical and biblical literature and poetry is also disappearing within the middle classes.  

The western world is also experiencing a clash of cultures within its own civilization. Large portions of the western elite (except the Japanese and some East Europeans) do not believe their countries ought to have any distinctive culture, favouring instead the doctrine of multiculturalism, which suggests common cultural ties, which have usually underpinned nations and civilizations, can be replaced with the more loose and vague 'universal values.' It is of course possible that this will work in societies with large culturally progressive and university educated populations ...

Moreover, particularly in the US, we see a strong clash of cultures between those elements which still cling to some vestige of the old Christian civilization and those who embrace a globalist liberalism. In the UK the Brexit vote illustrated similar divisions. Those who voted Remain tended to feel positively about feminism, multiculturalism and immigration while those who voted Leave largely did not. So there are now huge divisions within western culture.

The main sign that out societies are unhealthy though is the collapsing birth rate. Commentators like Rousseau and Burke had no problem with identifying the ability of the population to replace itself as the chief indicator of the civilization's success. Now for a combination of reasons, mainly the collapse of religion and lifestyle changes, almost all western countries are on totally unsustainable demographic trajectories. This puts the west's immigration policies in perspective. Although it is true that mass immigration might be one short term way to counter this challenge other periods of mass immigration took place when the native (or 'original settler' in the case of the US) population was also increasing, so new immigrants only supplemented the population. In Europe a policy of mass immigration from Africa and the near/middle east will actually lead to the replacement of the declining population by members of a different culture and thus the collapse of western culture in areas of the host nations. This assumes, of course, that immigrant population do maintain their cultural distinctiveness, but given their numbers and the weakness of western culture this seems likely in the main. I do not know whether Hispanic immigration to the US poses the same problems.

I do not think the Roman example is helpful here at all. It was always going to be very difficult to maintain control of the empire established by Caesar and Augustus. Only the collapse of the west in the fifth century is very remarkable and many provinces had been lost to rebels and barbarians before. Rome's foes became stronger as the empire went on. The political system did change, and became increasingly unstable, but Augustus is considered talented to have brought stability from 30 BC onwards so the challenge was hardly new. The potential for a disaster stemming from civil war was always there. The collapse of the Eastern Roman Empire in the 7th century (and its transmogrification into middle age Byzantium) is even more understandable: it was the result of an epic 1/4 century war with Persia (an empire only slightly weaker than ER). 

[SeanF]

Given luck, or better leaders, the Western Empire could very well have survived the crisis of the Fifth Century (as it did the crisis of the Third).  All the weaknesses that were present in the Fifth Century were present at any point over the previous 500 years.  I don't think one can point to the Western Empire's timescale of being one of relentless decline - but rather of ups and downs, until the final swift collapse.  The Eastern Empire also had plenty of ups and downs.  It faced a perfect storm in the 7th century, but weathered that storm, and flourished again from about 850 to 1050.  The Empire recovered from the crisis of 1071-1100 in the Twelth century, although the Fourth Crusade delivered the death blow.

If Western societies collapse, then future historians will point to all kinds of weaknesses (low birthrates, decline of Christianity, growing inequality, multiculturalism, overtaxation) that apparently made that collapse inevitable, but none of these are necessarily terminal.

[ummester]

I think your post is well written and insightful Chaircat Meow and I agree with many points. I have noticed the same fracturing of society in Australia - but from the late 80s and into the 90s, We're a little bit behind down under and always come in late after the US and UK - our housing market still hasn't crashed, can you believe that? I brought one coz I got bored waiting

Especially, also, the unsustainable demographic trajectories. The boomers are still at work, just, but will be leaving in the next 5 years - our countries are not going to be able to cope with the shift. It's almost 40% of the staff where I work, all on sweet govvy pensions - and my dept is huge.

 

[Castel]

33 minutes ago, ummester said:

Well, no theory is possible to prove until after the fact, is it?

It's easy to deny trends in favour of faith in an ailing system, also.

This is ultimately something that time will tell - I might have to revisit the discussion after the US elections. I recon Trumps going to shit it in - and no, I don't like the guy at all, I just think it's part of a change that has already started.

It's not faith in a system, it's skepticism. I haven't made many strong positive claims about the "system' have I? 

And given the claim that these trends hold throughout history, not just America's future (at least, that's the thesis of the linked documentary), it should be well proven already. Yet I don't see historians bragging about discovering psychohistory. 

Not that the future is the only thing that can test a theory. 

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

1 hour ago, ummester said:

It is, in part - but not entirely.

I would say everyone is better off than they were 100 years ago - but the poor are not relatively better off. An ascendant society would diminish the divide over time, rather than increase it - and not out of any sense of morality or equality but because it is more socially stable and therefore more forward thinking. Inequality is directly proportional to instability, regardless of what ism you subscribe to.

 

Depends on the level of equality. Inequality itself isn't a problem, its natural, not everyone should earn the same or have the same amounts. The rich shouldn't only be there to help the poor. Whats important is a meritocratic society and equal opportunity. The real problem now I think isn't inequality its unequal opportunity. You need to know that you can work hard and get the same level of wealth as anyone else and there is nothing stopping you. Arguably that has gotten worse in the last couple of decades. 
 

Quote

No one has commented on our artistic culture becoming mostly repetitious and unimaginative though - which was the first argument I pur forward. In ascendant society imagination is nurtured and praised - doesn't really feel like it is now.

I don't know how true this is. Even if it was true, how would you say that western culture was unimaginative. If you were looking at mainstream 'for the masses' culture then yes you could have an argument, but then for the masses entertainment has always been lacking in artistic merit, from the beginning of time. Go back to the 50s and listen to pop music or watch their movies. AWFUL. 
That doesn't mean that there isn't a HUGE amount of interesting artistic amount of material out there, I'd argue we have more of it now than ever in the history of man, people are being more creative, more interesting and individual than ever before. Technology has enabled that in some ways. I just urge you to go out and find it.
 

[Swordfish]

21 hours ago, Kalbear said:

We're getting close to China doing so. 

China isn't winning culturally via movies or music - what we  tend to think of as culture - but they are winning in electronic use. Things like AliBaba and their system for paying for basically everything via phone have taken off and only the US being backwater has made it so it's not really here. It's become a massive defacto model in Africa as well.

Furthermore, China is becoming far more influential as a market. Western movies once looked at local box office as the way to gauge success; now they look at worldwide, and China success is the biggest piece there. We've seen a bunch of movies cater to Chinese marketing, some subtly and some completely horribly unsubtly (the most recent Transformers come to mind). 

It's not quite there - Chinese culture is still remarkably insular and introverted - but we're starting to see a lot more extension. 

But these are examples of China rising, and in fact, moving closer to the western model, aren't they?

[Kalbear]

Yeah, I always get a bit shirty when people are comparing how Rome collapsed to a modern day society as if there's any reason to think that they are remotely comparable. 

As pointed out by David Brin, one actual sign of a major issue is that we're due for another class warfare fight unless things get changed by the oligarchy. FDR ended up essentially avoiding an entire generation of class warfare due to socialist practices, but the next generation did not - and chances are good that if this generation also does not the inequity that results is going to result in major disruption.

[White Walker Texas Ranger]

4 hours ago, Castel said:

Society being able to spend more on sports entertainment isn't necessarily a sign of decline. Especially if growing economies and populations also want a  share of the product. 

Also: is the gladiator thing a consensus opinion in history? Cause that also has bearing on this idea and I want to deal with it.

First, I don't see why people always bring up gladiators when they talk about Rome. Gladiators were long gone by the time the Western Roman Empire disappeared, mostly because Christians didn't like them.

The real analogy would be to chariot racers. Chariots racing was almost always bigger than gladiator combat.

But regardless, this entire discussion is really, really stupid.

It's true, in a lot of ancient empires, you see a cycle of strength from adversity and austerity, growth, decadence, decline, and replacement by another group of people who had strength from adversity and austerity. Or maybe not, and we actually only see that cycle because ancient historians loved to moralize.

Either way, that cycles broken now. It doesn't matter how much tougher the average goatherder in Afghnistan is than the average American suburbanite. The wealth and luxury that makes us 'weak' also let's us build drones that fly tens of thousands of feet in the air, and drop 500 hundred pound bombs accurate enough to hit a soda can.

[White Walker Texas Ranger]

4 hours ago, ummester said:

Only thing I can find at a quick glance:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladiator

Between 108 and 109 AD, Trajan celebrated his Dacian victories using a reported 10,000 gladiators (and 11,000 animals) over 123 days.^[44] The cost of gladiators and munera continued to spiral out of control. Legislation of 177 AD by Marcus Aurelius did little to stop it, and was completely ignored by his son, Commodus.^[45]

I take it we can agree Rome was in decline between 1AD and 300AD (as a broad range)?

Um, not really.

Trajan is widely considered one of the peaks of the Roman Empire, to the extent you can define peaks and troughs.

[Chaircat Meow]

I liked this article. It has some relevance to my post above.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/11/opinion/campaign-stops/is-trump-wrecking-both-parties.html?ref=opinion&_r=1

[FalagarV2]

6 hours ago, ummester said:

Oh, Castel - watching a bit of the doco again - it's not the Gladiators that got massive wage bumps, the charioteers did in the second century. So I guess 200AD is for enough into Rome's decline for all to agree on?

My bad, Gladiators, Charioteers, Beach Volleyballers - I'm a nerd, they're all jocks to me

Nah, sorry man. As Pro Augustis pointed out, one should be wary of too linear trajectories. The empire recovered quite well in the 4th century, and the east actually became more prosperous (thus its longevity). The Diocletian reforms et al. fundamentally changed how the empire functioned, but they also in many ways inaugurated a period of relative stability and growth. Population decline was real, but probably less marked and more uneven than previously thought; the urban population waned in the west, but actually saw growth in the east; old institutions (such as the city councils) disappeared, but were replaced by (admittedly more vertical) power structures which strengthened the imperial bureaucracy. Costs increased, but so did central control. And so on. Btw, human-to-human gladiator games were officially banned in the late 320s under Constantine, IIRC (arguably a cultural improvement).

I don't necessarily think Gibbons was wrong in marking the 2nd century as in many ways the high-water mark, but there's no straight line downwards from there, and no inevitable fall which can be ascribed to internal factors alone. In fact, the wide dissemination of advances imitated by and/or developed under the Romans (tech & organizational) to neighboring areas probably played a large role; the 'fall of Rome' reflected less Roman decline than the rise of others. Not to forget that Roman culture remained influential even among its inheritors. In a sense the empire became a victim of its own success.

The significance of its example for today's world is probably not terribly great. There may be some very general lessons (probabilities rather than laws); e.g. the last point above indicates that the entity called "western culture" is probably not going to be replaced wholesale, but rather in some form become part of whatever political/ideological order comes next. Which of course is of little consolation if that order is fascistic and/or totalitarian.

As to the rest of the debate, a better definition of what is meant by 'Western culture' would probably make it run more smoothly. Are you talking about the economical/military shape of western nation states, global consumption of cultural products from these states, or the dissemination of institutional practices and/or secular progressive values? In the latter case, I'd say they're likely more widespread now than at any point in the 20th century - which is also why they now find more organized opposition. The 'loss of meaning'-critique of modern secularism has followed it since the early years.