![]() ![]() At some point Thor might have been involved. I think it included things like dancing around maypoles and copying Latin manuscripts. I am pretty sure there was, at one point, such a thing as western civilization. But in this case, he’s become hopelessly confused without it. This is an easy distinction to miss, since demons often kill their summoners and wear their skin. I worry that Caplan is eliding the important summoner/demon distinction. Given half a chance, it survives, spreads, and conquers. But do traditionalists seriously believe that freshman Western civ classes are the wall standing between us and barbarism? Have they really failed to notice the fact that Western civilization flourishes all over the globe, even when hostile governments fight it tooth and nail? It is time for the friends of Western civilization to learn a lesson from its enemies: Western civ is a hardy weed. In a world of seven billion people, you can’t expect Western culture to win everywhere everyday. Traditionalists’ laments for Western civilization deeply puzzle me. It just tempts them in a hundred different ways until they tacitly convert. It doesn’t make fans of competing cultures formally recant their errors. Picture how contemporary Christian fundamentalists’ consumerism and gender roles would have horrified Luther or Calvin. Even its nominal detractors will be Westernized in all but name. By the time Western culture commands the globe, it will have appropriated the best features of Asian and Islamic culture. When it encounters competing cultures, it gleefully identifies competitors’ best traits – then adopts them as its own. Anti-Western governments from Beijing to Tehran know this this to be true: Without draconian censorship and social regulation, “Westoxification” will win.Ī big part of the West’s strength, I hasten to add, is its openness to awesomeness. Given a choice, young people choose Western consumerism, gender norms, and entertainment. Why? Because, as fans of Western civ ought to know, Western civ is better. ![]() In virtually any fair fight, it steadily triumphs. The truth is that Western civilization is taking over the globe. At minimum, Western civilization can and does perpetuate itself the standard way: sheer conformity and status quo bias.īut saying that Western civilization is no more fragile than other cultures is a gross understatement. There is absolutely no reason to think that Western civilization is more fragile than Asian civilization, Islamic civilization, or any other prominent rivals. They’re always worrying about it being threatened by Islam or China or Degeneracy or whatever, but in fact western civilization can not only hold its own against these threats but actively outcompetes them: He argues that “western civilization”‘s supposed defenders don’t give it enough credit. Someone recently linked me to Bryan Caplan’s post A Hardy Weed: How Traditionalists Underestimate Western Civ.
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