Friday, September 04, 2015

Secular, Post-Modern Self Destruction

Going in a Marxist direction, we've decided that history is moving inexorably towards socially liberal democracy. With this in mind, we helped topple the governments of Libya and Egypt and have sat by idle while Syria and Iraq have collapsed. To intervene with the necessary large numbers of infantry would be so very 19th Century, you know.

We did away with being judgmental so we no longer see wealth and income as markers of behavior. Instead, they're symbols of inequality and we spend lots more than we earn working hard to make outcomes more equal. We borrowed in pursuit of this, so we're now all heavily in debt with most post-modern nations running about 100% of GDP in national government debt.

War is no longer necessary as we've decided that we can coerce other nations into doing our bidding through economic sanctions, so, other than the US, the post-modern west is completely disarmed.

Babies are a choice, pregnancy something to be avoided, sex is beautiful in all its forms and marriage a relic of a bygone age. The post-modern West now has minuscule birth rates and declining populations.

And finally ...

National borders were deemed oppressive and judgmental, so we did away with those in all but the most theoretical sense. We've now got unfettered migration from war-torn and impoverished hell holes into our enlightened, post-modern nations.

And the result is ...

Hundreds of thousands of refugees from places with no cultural similarity to the post-modern West are rushing through undefended borders to populate lands that the West is evacuating through attrition. They are adding financial commitments to countries who can't pay the ones they have right now. Those same nations are currently dealing with the first fiscal domino, Greece, who is both bankrupt and insolvent.

Something tells me that the secular, progressive, post-modern West hasn't much longer to go.

3 comments:

Ilíon said...

"sex is beautiful in all its forms [... *except* "old-fashioned" non-kinky sex between committed husband and wife ...] and marriage a relic of a bygone age."

fixed that for ya'

Ilíon said...

"Something tells me that the secular, progressive, post-modern West hasn't much longer to go."

It's like the so-called Leaning Tower of Pisa, which is actually -- as are all buildings -- collapsing. Buildings always collapse slowly ... until a point comes when they collapse quickly.

Trigger Warning said...

Forgive them for being stupid, KT. They are young enough to believe that electricity and packet-switched networks are like air... ubiquitous. Marshall McLuhan (I think) once said, "We don't know who invented the concept of water. We just know it wasn't the fish."

And Ilion's right about time and collapse. I didn't realize until after I bought my first home that the damn thing starts falling down the moment the last nail is driven. All human creations are the same. It's an exponentially-accelerating process that can be retarded by careful maintenance, but we can only hope we don't live long enough to see the tail go vertical.