Western Civilization in slow but sure decline

Every once in a while a society figures some things out, something seemingly beneficial for mankind, some new ways of doing things, of organizing ourselves and our collective consciousness.
It may be a new religion, technological innovations, a new form of government, or economic innovations.
It may be all of these things.

Egypt, especially Sumeria, and the Indus valley civilization taught the rest of the world how to do agriculture right, on a grander scale, and many other things.
Depending on how you define science, while western civilization didn’t invent it, there was always physics, chemistry, and observations of and experimentation with these phenomena, but it certainly refined it, made it more rigorous, took it down different directions, new and bold, which gave it many technological advantages over other civilizations like India and China.

Now, India, China and other economies are rapidly developing, for better or for worse, a la Japan and South Korea. There’s this group of countries called the E7, or emergent 7.
By comparison, western nations are hardly growing at all.
In terms of population, the white death rate surpassed the white birth rate decades ago, our population growth is wholly dependent upon immigrants, and I suspect even white economies would probably be in decline if it weren’t for immigration.
White people are probably working less, innovating less, and are probably less productive when they are working than they were half a century ago.
Again, for better or for worse, could be interpreted either way.

We, as individuals and via our government can take measures to correct this, relying on immigration to stay competitively growing in today’s global market, seems to be the measure government has taken, or, we can let ourselves stagnate, and decline.
Relying on immigration has its advantages and disadvantages, and I’m reminded of Rome, how they relied on immigration, like from Germany and other nations on its fringes, to keep their economies and military strong, but then the Germans turned on them, and overtook the empire.
But as they overtook it, it collapsed, they did not know how, nor care to maintain it, and so the dark ages ensued.

I wonder if immigrants, especially from the mid east, but also from Mexico, Asia and Africa, will eventually overtake us?
Perhaps they won’t even have to take us over by force like in a revolution.
As more and more of them attain positions of economic wealth and political power, and as white people become first the largest minority, and then one of the smaller ones, they will just run things more to their advantage.
Government is already running a lot of things to their advantage at our expense, hence political correctness and so on, all the social programs available to them.

I think in countries where Asian immigrants are dominant, like Canada and Australia (I remember laughing man posted a similar thread on this topic), the transition of power from whites to nonwhites will be nonviolent, not so hostile, where as in countries where Arab/Muslim and Mexican immigrants dominate, like in western Europe and the US respectively, there may even be a civil war, and we shall see who wins.

But things are definitely changing, that much is certain, and change isn’t always for the better, civilizations rise and fall, they have a life span, just like individuals and species have a life span, and I don’t think our civilization will be any different.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Europe and North America were the undisputed masters of the world.
At the turn of the 21st century, we now have to share some of the world with the E7.
If there’s any world left in the 22nd century, if we don’t blow ourselves up sky high in nuclear war, and we may, due to resource shortages, or over old cultural and racial feuds (think Europeans, Jews and Arabs), class warfare and so on, things of that nature, than I suspect the E7 will have caught up to, maybe even surpass western civilization.
Abroad, and even at home, western civilization will no longer be running things in all likelihood, and then it will be up to Eastern Europe and Russia to carry the torch, Russia also being part of the E7, thou in many ways Russians are in decline too, but they aren’t so pro-immigration like we are.

It’ll be an interesting world, of that I’m sure.
What will culture look like when whites are no longer running things?
What new religious movements and philosophies will arise to meet the challenges ahead?

While I suspect the E7 will catch up with the west, I don’t think they’ll enjoy quite the same level of peace or prosperity as we did, it won’t be so much them growing, as us declining, that’ll equalize things, and after that I think the whole world will decline, and a dark age will ensure.
The west might finally be conquered by a dictator, Napoleon and Hitler almost succeeded in that.
During all the upheaval that will probably come to pass in the west, dictatorships will likely arise, and then during or a century or two after that, things will really start to plummet.

I wouldn’t be so quick to throw India, China and Brazil up above the US and Europe in terms of economic and cultural productivity and importance. India and China are basically work-labor nations for globalism, where the west outsources much of its menial work (think Foxconn); Brazil is primarily a services economy, much like the US, but the US actually produces more per capita than Brazil does, and the US economy exists an entire order of magnitude greater than that of Brazil even despite the fact that the US produces more as a percentage of GDP.

Contrary to popular myth, the US is the second largest exporter in the world. Behind only China (again, China just turned itself into the menial labor-camp for the world’s cheap goods, much like India did for the world’s cheap services).

I’m not too worried about the BRICS nations overtaking the US and Europe.

But you are right in the general trend of your post, that western civilization is indeed in some kind of decline. The decline comes from within the west, from conflicts in our own paradigms and philosophical principles. Currently the Marxist-leftist paradigm is struggling to overtake the more proper national-based model of free market capitalism, sovreignty and cultural self-value. Communism is quite attractive to damaged personalities, which of course includes the so-called ‘elites’ who are currently using communism as a weapon against humanity at large. But there is plenty of resistance to this on our part, and truth only cares for what works and disregards what does not work. The west represents the philosophical tradition of reason, sanity and knowledge, the ideals of progress and freedom, in other words the conditions most natural to and required for beings such as ourselves to survive and thrive… whereas leftism-Marxism represents slavery, psychopathology and souldeath. So really there is just the trick of finding the balance between these extremes, both of which are quite strong at the moment. It is a balancing act of sorts, an experimentation over time to find the correct forms; I wouldn’t write off western civilization just yet if I were you.

Immigration is all fine and good, assuming immigrants are wanting to work hard and produce net value for your society, and provided that they have a desire to integrate more or less into your extant culture. Having massive welfare states such as exist in Germany, France and other European nations makes this impossible since the immigrants you’re going to get are just economic migrants eager to get a lot of free shit at your own expense. But the rising tides of rational nationalism in Europe are just the beginning signs that the European people are just about fed up with all that. Although I would agree that western people should have more kids and bulk up their own native cultural population. The push against having kids and families is just another consequence of the mindrape that Marx inflicted on humanity.

I’m definitely not a capitalist, and I think economic decline is inevitable, and a good thing.

More on this later.

I agree with a lot of that but I’ll just pick you up on this point…

Given that britain has invented 54% of everything in the world [according to the Japanese dept of trade and industry circa 2005], and 71% of everything in Japan, I’d suggest that as Japan is more advanced than the general world [because the averages with less developed nations included], then that suggests to me that innovation in the west is increasing. Not decreasing.

Does it matter?

If yes … why?

I think innovation is decreasing, I mean other than phones and computers, 1891-1917 was arguably a bigger leap technologically than 1991-2017.

It matters to people who want to understand where the world has been, and where it’s likely headed.
Also sometimes the future can be prepared for, and sometimes it can’t, it depends.

Let’s focus primarily on China for now, since it has the best chance of catching up with and even surpassing the west, of the E7.

China already has the 2nd biggest GDP in the world.
However its GDP per capita (person) is 78th in the world according to the IMF after factoring in their cost of living, so they have a lot of catching up to do.
Basically quantitatively they’re on top, but qualitatively they’re somewhere in the middle.

Let’s compare China to Japan and South Korea, since they’re its neighbors, and already match the west economically.

Japan had a decades long head start, as China’s economy was centralized, and while China’s economy is still probably more centralized than Japan’s, the government has since taken major steps to liberate it, free it up, resulting in China rapidly outpacing Japan’s sluggish growth.
It’s only a matter of time before China uses the profits it made from its menial jobs, as you put it, to invest in and develop more sophisticated ones.

It’s appetite for economic growth and material affluence is voracious.
They want the west has, they want to be number one at everything.
China was number one or two throughout much of history, even at times when Europe was in the dark ages and North America was 99%+ wilderness, it’s only in the last few centuries that they’ve happened to occupy a subordinate position.

China is roughly the same ethnicity/race as the Japanese, South Koreans, and exactly the same race/ethnicity as the people of Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and Singapore, so even from a biological/cultural standpoint, I don’t see why they can’t pull it off, barring some worldwide calamity like nuclear warfare, which’s also on the table. I suspect some of the other E7 will be able to catch up as well.

I’ll address the rest of your post another time.

Perhaps ‘civilization’ as a metric is misleading. History is clear … civilizations rise and fall … the fall being proportionate to the rise.

Masculine energy … as manifested in dominant civilizations … patriarchal societies … may be on a slow but sure decline.

If so … feminine energy is on the rise.

I’m not talking about men and women … rather the major characteristics … qualities … of men and women.

Feminine energy is predisposed to empathy, compassion, cooperation, sharing, caring … all necessary attributes for nurturing offspring.

On this basis … which civilization(s) in the world is most “feminine” … both historically and currently?

Eastern and middle eastern civilizations?

Your conception of feminine or masculine energy is just (and only) what you perceive to be the relevant traits in the culture you live in. The idea that a culture could somehow be feminine outside of it’s own conception of femininity is absurd. It would be like asking which of two dogs tastes more like chocolate. Sure, you can try to invent metrics by which to judge their taste but you will ultimately fail in making any headway due to yourself getting in the way of any meaningful analysis.

You can ask if a given culture is more comfortable for the women living there, that would make sense. But the idea of one culture being more feminine when femininity has to be defined within the concept of that same culture doesn’t make sense.

If anything, you should just be asking which cultures have demonstrated the qualities of empathy, compassion, and what not.

Another thing, China has far more resources to draw from than both Japan and South Korea combined, many times over.
It also has a much bigger population to draw from.
If the world keeps going like it is, I’m projecting and many people are projecting that China may very well surpass the US.

China is also homogeneous, racially, culturally, is that an asset?
Well with the exception of Tibetans, Turks and Mongols on its fringes, and a few others.
Difficult to say, I’m not especially conservative or liberal minded about that.

Homogeneous countries like Japan, South Korea and western Europe until recently have done very well for themselves, but on the other hand, Canada, the US and Australia have also done very well for themselves, but then until recently, most of North America and Australia’s immigration came from Europe, importing population groups from further abroad could prove problematic.
Different races and cultures have strengths and weaknesses, I think they can add and/or subtract form their host nation, some might be more conducive to their host nations development, where as others might be parasitical, or just a hindrance, incompatible.

As Mexicans become the new majority population in the US, especially in ‘Aztlan’, they might try to secede and join Mexico, or form their own country, and if Islamic terror continues to proliferate, then this could spell disaster for the US and western Europe, and no doubt China and others will be there to take advantage.

The one child policy in China that favored male children over female children has created a shortage of female singles available for marriage for generations to come. Already, 30 million bachelors, many are looking to Western women to become wives. The face of China is literally in the process of changing. A Western-looking China should be interesting.

All that being said, in my view, I don’t think China will ever be as innovative as the west is, or rather once was.

Althou there have been times when China has been more affluent or industrious than the west, it’s never been as innovative as we were during the latter half of the second millennium, nowhere near.
If China ends up equaling the west in innovation, it’ll mostly be because the west has slowed down, in terms of innovation and other things, not because China has sped up.

What the west represents in my mind is innovation, change, which is fraught with both risk, and reward.
China is learning from the west, first it adopted communism, or at least communism in theory, in practice it was really a totalitarian dictatorship, not even remotely close to communism, and now it has adopted consumer capitalism.

Ultimately thou I think the Chinese are a more conservative, traditionalist people, it’s just it’s been humiliated by western economic and technological superiority, and in the process temporarily forgotten its core Confucian and Chan values, which’re now in the process of being revived and reinvigorated.
They’ve been foolhardy as of late, instead they should be approaching the question of western dominance more cynically, pragmatically and skeptically, realizing there are things that work about our systems, and things that don’t, advantages and disadvantages, instead they’ve dived in head first with them, which’s been disastrous with ‘communism’ and I think in the long run with their modified form of capitalism too.

Eventually they’ll likely regain their sense of themselves, take some of the things about the west that make sense, for them, and discard the rest, and there’s a lot to discard, but for now, they’re bedazzled, bamboozled and bewitched, to their detriment, cause we don’t have it all figured out, not by a long shot, modernity is going to be a big, flash in the pan, in my view.

Yea I tend to think so.

I’m not sure if masculinity is declining, or if that’s a bad thing.

The masculine/feminine dichotomy hasn’t been very central to my thinking as of late, and I find it tends to be overly simplistic in practice.
Like as if every aspect of society or difference between societies could be reduced to masculinity/femininity.
I mean is there nothing it can’t encompass, are there no asexual or gender neutral characteristics?
It’s the philosophical equivalent of like French and Italians assigning sexuality and gender to inanimate objects - this table is masculine, that window is feminine… it’s kind of absurd.
Sometimes it has merit, but it’s overplayed.
It’s like people who try to make everything into a left/right thing.
Sometimes it helps to apply such terms, sometimes it’s meaningful, but often it hinders, obscuring their true identity.

Perhaps you could just as easily say that femininity is declining, women aren’t giving birth as much as they used to, and everything that went along with that, like nursing children, which is a large part of, if not the essence of what it means to be feminine, and they’re also working outside the house more than ever.
Althou they still wear makeup, they rarely wear dresses anymore, they’re tattooing themselves, working out, playing sports, and other traditionally masculine activities, in the west at least, but are men adopting traditionally feminine activities, are they wearing makeup, or dresses, ballet, knitting?
Hardly.

While you could say both sexes are becoming more androgynous lately, I think this is more true of females than males, and therefore, you could say there’s been more of a reduction of femininity than masculinity.
After all, feminism, especially first and second wave, tried to make women more like men, so they didn’t need them anymore, among many other things, but there was no equivalent movement that tried to make men more like women, MRA and MGTOW are nothing like feminism in those regards, I rarely, if ever hear them saying, men should stay home more, raise/rear children and perform domestic duties like cooking and cleaning while women work more and support them financially.
And why not, there’s a lot of benefits to such a lifestyle?
Working 9-5, 5 days a week ain’t easy.

Boys are still frowned upon for playing like girls, and while tomboys can still be given a hard time, I don’t think it’s as true to the same extent.

Patriarchy is definitely declining thou.
But what was patriarchy, was it a masculine institution, or rather, did it help define what it meant to be both masculine and feminine, assigning specific gender roles for both females and males, feminizing females and masculinity males, according to social norms, hyperfeminizing girls and hypermasculinizing boys?
When viewed that way, the dissolving of patriarchy was sort of the annihilation of both male and female gender roles, and so rather than feminizing society, you could say it’s desexualizing it.
And it makes sense to some extent that we would do that, because as man becomes more urbanized, both masculine and feminine instincts and abilities, as well their amplification and development by institutions like patriarchy, have become somewhat obsolete, and must be replaced with more artificial behaviors conducive to postindustrial, consumer capitalist society/values.

I find females have some empathy and compassion for people and things that’re perceived as weak, but those that’re perceived as strong, like some men, they don’t feel anything for, they just use them as a resource to exploit, and condemn or belittle them when they’re not willing to share their resources.

That’s a big subject, which civilizations are more masculine/feminine?
Unlike that other poster, I don’t think masculinity/femininity are entirely socially constructed, it depends.
I think it’s obvious there’s some biological basis for masculinity/femininity, but then culture comes along and attempts to amplify, redirect or repress these energies in various ways, and overlays them with things that aren’t masculine/feminine at all, but which’re believed to be, so it’s complicated, it’s objective and subjective, it’s nature and nurture, as always, but some characteristics are more rooted in the former or latter.

I don’t think there’s an easy answer to this question, like the west is masculine, in every respect, and the east feminine, that’s absurd.
There are some things about the west and east that have nothing to do with sexuality, and there are some things that do.
It’s never going to be black/white, one might be a little more feminine than the other overall, even by its own measure, like I read a book where a Chinaman compared east with west and himself concluded that the east was more feminine, more yin, and he was very, very prochinese, thou he did admit China had a lot to learn from the west, he thought that it must follow its own vision of things too.

Take a trait like innovation, first thing that came to mind, is it more masculine or feminine?
Normally we associate it with being masculine, is that culturally constructed, or biologically rooted notion?
Let’s just assume it’s objective for now.
That would make the west more masculine.
But then the west has all these things like political correctness, egalitarianism, democracy and so on we normally associate with femininity, where as places like the mid east, do not.
So I hope that you can see now it’s a huge subject.

The rightwing prides itself on being the party of tradition, conservatism, but if innovation is masculine, than wouldn’t that make tradition and conservatism feminine?
To whimsically assign an entire people a gender, a sex, without putting much needed thought into it, seems absurd to me, and this is coming from someone who, I wouldn’t say I’m very political correct, and I’m open to thinking about such things, but let’s put a little more thought to it, acknowledge the obvious limits to simplistic binaries like feminine/masculine, yin/yang, good/evil, etcetera.

Also, patriarchy declining (barely) isn’t causing less masculinity. It’s that our patriarchy defined masculinity and femininity poorly, and in a maladaptive way. The way we conceptualize gendered behavior is abhorrent. The end result makes men look like rutting murderers and women look like pregnant shriekers. The reality is that neither is even close to the truth, but patriarchy has created and sustained these perceptions.

Yet again … words are such a poor proxy for communication … seems the words masculine and feminine triggered an avalanche of words … none … or at least very few of which … are relevant to the suggestion I made.

I referred to “energy” … perhaps even “psychic energy” … not gender or human constructs around gender.

Perhaps I should have used the terms “Yin” and “Yang”.

Some time ago Trixie wrote … paraphrasing … “without the dominance of ‘yang’ energy we would still be shitting in the sand in Africa.”

I absolutely agree … it was … and largely still is … Yang energy … ergo: male aggression … that is driving humanity into the future.

Read the news … where is this dominant Yang energy taking humanity? There is only one possible outcome … self destruction.

The survival of the species requires a shift to Yin energy … looking back 100 years there is lots of empirical evidence suggesting an epoch shift is in play.

The more Yin civilizations will more easily adapt to this epoch change and as a result … if a leadership role is still required … it will likely happen by osmosis.

Name a Yin civilization and describe why it’s Yin.

Not so sure that’s a thing.