It’s number 7 on the Global Economic Forums - 8 Predictions for the world by 2030’s:
Western values will be tested to a point of breaking. In the Fate of Empires by Sir John Glubb, he maps out the arc of empire development to decline. After the initial thrust of conquering, there ensues a period of “The Age of Affluence.” He states:
There does not appear to be any doubt that
money is the agent which causes the decline
of this strong, brave and self-confident
people. The decline in courage, enterprise
and a sense of duty is, however, gradual.
The first direction in which wealth injures
the nation is a moral one. Money replaces
honour and adventure as the objective of the
best young men. Moreover, men do not
normally seek to make money for their
country or their community, but for themselves.
Gradually, and almost imperceptibly,
the Age of Affluence silences the voice of
duty. The object of the young and the
ambitious is no longer fame, honour or
service, but cash.
Education undergoes the same gradual
transformation. No longer do schools aim at
producing brave patriots ready to serve their
country. Parents and students alike seek the
educational qualifications which will
command the highest salaries. The Arab
moralist, Ghazali (1058-1111), complains in
these very same words of the lowering of
objectives in the declining Arab world of his
time. Students, he says, no longer attend
college to acquire learning and virtue, but to
obtain those qualifications which will enable
them to grow rich. The same situation is
everywhere evident among us in the West
today.
While the “West” is a constellation of nations with different histories and locations, the values which rousted their development arose from similar values, such as rights of individuals. Therefore the arc of the western nations are not only sharing values such as democracy, they are also sharing the same trajectory of the pattern for failing empires.
Gustave Le Bon, in his book The Crowd - A Study of the Popular Mind, states: "The dissolution of worn-out civilisation is the work of the crowd…(xiii) History tells us, that from the moment when the moral forces on which a civilisation rested have lost their strength, its final dissolution is brought about those unconscious and brutal crowds…When the structure of a civilisation is rotten, it is always the masses that bring about its downfall. (xviii)
Another contemporary of Le Bon and Glubb, Friedrich Nietzsche, in his parable of The Madman assigns the demise of civilization to the same forces – that of the marketplace, where the thirst of money is “killing” God without conscience or consideration for the consequences.
Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: “I seek God! I seek God!” – As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated? — Thus they yelled and laughed.
“Whither is God?” he cried; “I will tell you. We have killed him — you and I. All of us are his murderers.
But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.
“How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us — for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto.”
Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. “I have come too early,” he said then; “my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than most distant stars – and yet they have done it themselves.
It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his requiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but: “What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?”
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882, 1887) para. 125; Walter Kaufmann ed. (New York: Vintage, 1974), pp.181-82.]
Sir Arthur Glubb agrees as he states:
That which we may call the High Noon of
the nation covers the period of transition
from the Age of Conquests to the Age of
Affluence: the age of Augustus in Rome, that
of Harun al-Rashid in Baghdad, of Sulaiman
the Magnificent in the Ottoman Empire, or
of Queen Victoria in Britain. Perhaps we
might add the age of Woodrow Wilson in the
United States.
All these periods reveal the same
characteristics. The immense wealth accumulated
in the nation dazzles the onlookers.
Enough of the ancient virtues of courage,
energy and patriotism survive to enable the
state successfully to defend its frontiers. But,
beneath the surface, greed for money is
gradually replacing duty and public service.
Indeed the change might be summarised as
being from service to selfishness. (9)
Edgar Cayce, a great American psychic/prophet when repeatedly asked what the greatest sin was/is, he always replied, “self.”
According to Le Bon, a crowd is formed when special characteristics appear, such as “the turning in a fixed direction of the ideas and sentiments of individuals composing such a crowd, and the disappearance of their [conscious] personality—The crowd is always dominated by considerations of which is unconscious—The disappearance of brain activity and the predominance of medullar activity—The lowering of the intelligence and the complete transformation of the sentiments. (2)
He goes on to describe how the “...most savage members of the French Convention were to be found in- offensive citizens who, under ordinary circumstances, would have been peaceable notaries or virtuous magistrates. The storm past, they resumed their normal character quiet, law-abiding citizens. Napoleon found amongst them his most docile servants.”(4-5)
Carl Jung, another contemporary, describes this process as enantiodromia, where that which was on top is now on the bottom. A pole reversal occurs between opposites. The members of the crowd essentially allow the conscious mind, which is the critical thinking mind to drop into the limbric system, where feelings rule behavior and thinking, not the logical mind or facts.
In addition, the repository of unconscious material emerges and takes over with all the unprocessed patterns, beliefs, attitude, which includes similar experiences and sentiments. Here is the fertile ground for where the individual ego identity shifts to a group ego identity, which includes a sense of empowerment due to the increase of sheer numbers and similar sentiments, experiences, beliefs and attitudes. This allays the fears of being an isolated individual.
Le Bon states, that “crowds do not admit doubt or uncertainty, and always go to extremes—Their sentiments always excessive.” (15) As well, crowds have an “instinctive need of all beings forming a crowd, [which] is to obey a leader, they alone can endow crowds with faith and organize them,” acting as the agent of the crowds “will.” And these types of leaders succumb to [their] own idea, [which] has taken possession of him to such a degree nothing exists outside of it. (112-113)
Many names come to mind which exemplify crowds and their leaders. Hitler, Heaven's Gate, Donald Trump, etc. They are a polarity and always travel in pairs. The collapse of the ideal holding a society together is the match lighted to the brush. As civilizations age, there is a shift in priorities and a transfer of authority from the individual to an outer one.
Currently the underlying loss of the ideal in the west is partly due to the nation state being overwhelmed by sheer numbers of population. Government has become ineffective, unable to mange the needs of society and to keep the order. Add dwindling resources, climate change, extremely poor economic policies and deteriorating health, “the individual is bound to seek outside himself the forces he no longer finds within him...The state becomes an all-powerful god...[and] experience shows that the power of such gods was never either very durable of very strong.” (215)
This seems to be what's happening now. And those using the pandemic to insert their agenda know exactly what all the historical records contain.
One more point, “With the definite loss of its old ideal, the genius of the race entirely disappears; it is a mere swarm of isolated individuals and returns to its original state—that of a crowd. Without consistency and without a future, it has all the transitory characteristics of crowds. Its civilization is without stability.” (218) It is therefore incumbent upon us to rekindle, recreate, remind ourselves of what is important. To find the new uniting symbol as Joseph Campbell would say, which is the ideal. And hopefully it will arise from an organic source, not from an unnatural one, such as trans-humanism, which is the contagion at this time.
