The West Should Stop Being Ashamed of Its Success And Stop Committing Cultural Suicide

I used to debate one of my teachers about culture.  As a fan of Rome I posited it was the greatest and most consequential civilization in human history.  He queried me about why. It’s laws, its size, its economy, its longevity? I suggested the clearest proof was the fact that there may be more Roman ruins remaining than from any ancient civilization in the world.

He disagreed, believing there were African empires whose cultures were equal if not superior to Rome's. The grandest of such being the Mali Empire in West Africa. Lasting from 1226 to 1670, it’s greatest king was Mansa Musa, who is sometimes said to be the richest man who ever lived.

He pressed me on others, stating that architecture and its survival might not be the best measure by which to measure a culture’s greatness.

Wondering if he might be right, I looked a bit more into some of those other societies about which I knew less than Rome.  There were the Incas, the Aztecs, the Egyptians, the Qin and Han Chinese, the Mongols, the Abbasid and Umayyad Caliphates and aforementioned Malian Empire.  All were fascinating.  The Mongols had the largest landlocked empire in history, but left very little in the way of architecture.  There were the Qun and Han dynasties who controlled a quarter of the world’s population some 2000 years ago and built the longest sections of China’s Great Wall. The Abbasid caliphate, which is considered the Islamic Golden Age, was considered to be the most advanced society of its time in reference to things like science, astronomy, math, and medicine.  The Egyptians not only left the Pyramids and Abu Simbel, but their papyrus was the earliest known paper. The Median and Achaemenid Empires of modern day Iran left extraordinary ruins that go back 500 years before Christ. 

Depending on how one wants to characterize them there have been thousands of cultures and civilizations and dynasties throughout human history.  As much as we might know about them, it’s likely there are even more about which we know nothing.  Which brings me back to my original point… how does one measure what a great culture is?  Is it the language they left, is it the ruins they left, is it how much of the earth or her population that it controlled?

It's possible to make an argument for any one of those, but the reality is that given the differences in time, geography and populations, it’s impossible to draw a hierarchical chart that defines “Greatness” with precision, particularly given the differences in what’s left of them.

Nonetheless, I stand by the opinion of my 15-year-old self about Rome being the greatest civilization of the ancient world.

That being said, there’s nothing in the ancient world to compare with what we have in the 21^st century.  And the world of the 21^st century was built by Europeans.  As much as Europe is in the midst of committing cultural suicide, it might be helpful to examine what that European culture has produced.

Yes, it has been cruel, barbaric at times, sanctioned slavery and resulted in bloodshed of native peoples in far off lands.  All those things are true.  But none of them are unique to Europeans.  Depravity is a mark that mankind shares across civilizations and has been constant from one degree or another across the space and time of human existence.

With that out of the way, back to western civilization. It’s brought the world democratic governance. It’s brought the world individual liberty, individual rights ordained by God, limited government and capitalism.  Together those things set the stage for the greatest advancement in the condition of man in all human history.

From the moment most of the people on the planet today wake up until the moment they lay their heads down at night, almost everything they do or interact with is a result of western civilization. Here is a short list of just some of the inventions western civilization has produced:

Automobiles. Telephony. Mobile phones. MRI machines. Plastic. Nuclear power. Bessemer Process steelmaking. Gasoline. Vulcanized rubber. Television. Radio. Elevators. Computers. Flight. Rockets. Electric light. Mechanical reaper. Heart transplants. Vaccines. The Internet. Sewing machines. Skyscrapers. Railroads. The steam engine. Internal combustion engines. Electric washing machines. Barbed wire. Air conditioning. Satellites. Movies. Submarines. Microwaves. Radar. Lasers. Artificial knees and hips. Robots. The movable-type printing press. Antibiotics. Batteries. Refrigeration. And much more.   

Then there are innovations that western civilization has produced:  Containerized shipping. DNA discovery and sequencing. Stock markets. Social media. GPS. Advanced farming. Google maps. Space travel. Blood transfusion. Constitutional Democracy. Individual freedom. Limited government. X ray machines. The assembly line.  Mars landers and solar system probes. And again, much more.

And then there’s science. Of the approximately 800 Nobel Prizes that have been handed out since 1901 in fields like Physics, Chemistry, Economics & Medicine (not including Literature because it’s so subjective and Peace, which after giving one to Barack Obama, has about as much credibility as the UN) Europeans and their offshoots have won approximately 750, including 350 for the United States alone.  

This is the world of the 21^st century and it’s been built by the west. Aside from lost tribes or primitive societies who live like their ancestors did thousands of years ago, there’s virtually not a thing people around the world do on a daily basis that hasn’t been developed by the west.  The west won on the field of battle of ideas and power.  To pretend otherwise is simply fiction.

But that which the west has built is under assault… mostly from within. From citizens who became fat, dumb and happy during the prosperous times to the invitation into their nations tens of millions of people who don’t share their culture, most of whom come from cultures anathema to it.

Prosperity is a two edged sword.  On the one hand it has created a civilization greater than anything in history, but the beneficiaries of that prosperity have lost sight of the hard work, sacrifice, risk and perseverance it takes to create prosperity or how difficult it is to maintain. 

As a result, many, if not a majority of western citizens detest their own culture.  They have tunnel vision, focused with a modern day perspective on their forefathers’ flaws while creating a fictional nirvana-like perspective on every other civilization in history.  The self loathing is rampant within the west.

It's one thing to tolerate or even encourage self reflection in the pursuit of self improvement.  But that’s not what the left does. Like a 78 pound college student suffering from anorexia who looks in the mirror and sees herself as a “fat cow”, western liberals see the sins of their fathers or focus on the imperfections of their society and believe it’s evil, and like the anorexic, they engage in self sabotage, only in this case, it’s the culture they harm.

Culture and civilization are fragile, hard to build and harder to maintain. It’s particularly difficult when the youth of a nation despise their birthright, disrespect its legacy and actively undermine its foundations. Combine that with elites who are the fountainhead from which that disdain arises, and you have a dire future.

The left accuses Trump and the MAGA adherents of being racist nationalists. We’re not.  Charles de Gaulle perhaps said it best: “Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism is when hate for people other than your own comes first.”  America and the west will not survive the rest of this century if their citizens don’t become patriots.  Indeed, Osama bin Laden saw the writing on the wall:  “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse.” Self loathing may communicate many things, but strength is not one of them.