There must be some way out of here ... surely? Well yes, there is. There must be, unless as the Kingston Trio ended a song, "...someone will set the Bomb off and we will all be blown away." There is a way. Will it be a way we favor? For that we must wait and see. I was struck by your description of the ruling class with their money and their power, illusion of power(?), and it recalled a quotation from William Gibson's novel Count Zero, " ... for an instant she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human." That seems an apt summation. When the Gaza atrocities began and for some time thereafter, I would write to my representative in the US Congress decrying the utter immorality of the actions of the state of Israel and the complicity of the United States in standing foursquare with Israel and supplying the means , as the US does to this day. The Congressman was in lockstep with the Party line. The word moral was not in the vocabulary of his canned responses. Today the immorality has descended to depraved indifference in describing Gaza as a wonderful real estate opportunity as the people are being starved to death in full view. Ansar Allah, the Houthi, are apparently the only persons, government, capable of being morally offended by genocide and taking action against it. Lastly, your two essays on existentialism recalled me to that philosophy, to which I was attracted as a teenager in the 1950s, and to a reading and rereading of Camus, Sartre, and others. It is not out of bounds to declare that the world today is absurd. Camus, when asked why go on in the face of absurdity, replied, "Keep going, without hope but without despair." I have that and the Tao to face the day. Thank you.
John Ham, Yes - going, no hope, no despair. But... in the dismay of Trump world.. I have found more community groups reaching out for allies, for more contact. What if... the silver lining is that we "Don't mourn, but organize." Here in SF bay area, I see more local coming together of community groups. Young people, not just old hippies and boomers. It's like the Covid lock down has born a yearning for joining with others. We sang "Solidarity Forever" and the young folks easily joined in. I could see their eyes lighting up.
I totally resonate with this. I think a lot of people do - they've been writing about the downfall of this set-up for a long time, and been amazed at how long it has held up. Inertia is a powerful force.
Not so familiar with the European world as I am with the North American. But there's the same "system" fragility, especially cities. Definitely a loss of competence in a lot of areas - education has suffered badly over my lifetime.
The expectation that all would be wonderful forever was never realistic. Maintenance, of both infrastructure and world view, requires not only work, but poorly compensated competence, and the financialization of everything put bright and shiny fake values on things that don't have intrinsic value. They're beginning to totter. More than time, they've been held up against all odds. Other parts of the world are disengaging, and well for them that they are. We will have to see whether the resilience that has kept homo sapiens going is intrinsic, or a passing function.
I'm in my late 70s - through sheer luck, I was born early enough to have had the best of the post war years. We were never wealthy, but my husband as an engineer could make a decent living. I, as a polio survivor, didn't attempt a career but held jobs when needed - there were lots of jobs and we didn't mind what we did. We built our first home ourselves, sold it when we had to move to another job and another part of Canada, rebuilt another one while we were in it, then when retired, sold again and moved to a tiny community and built another one. (Most of the people in this community built their own places - a lot of elderly hippies around.)
This all worked because of when we were born, not only into a system still in its prime, but also because we had family roots in much tougher times. My grandfather was fortunate to have kept his job as an engineer through the depression. Talking of doing things because they're the right thing to do, he kept his whole neighbourhood in coal, people in houses that would have been foreclosed on and the occupants turfed out, except that the banks couldn't cope with the sheer volume of empty houses to look after. My grandmother was a nurse and invariably looked after anyone who came into her ambit.
Since retirement, my husband and I threw ourselves into volunteer work for the community, which needs actual hands-on work - because we're considered rural and remote, our taxes go towards keeping the cities and towns going. Here, we build and pay for our own community centre and fire hall. In extreme weather, it's everyone with a chainsaw or a shovel out there keeping roads clear. The province does do a minimal job on the roads, but we have to fight for it, and in fact, there are enough plows and other big machinery to keep things going if we had to (until we run out of fuel, of course). Then there's the trails, I guess - they just take a machete to keep going. So once again, just damn lucky. There's a small farm nearby, and everyone has gardens. Lots of deer. People know each other. This is, imo, a natural state for humanity, and all I can do is hope that it reasserts itself when it's the only option for surviving. The only reason I'm not going down with "survivor's guilt" is because I hope that we're maintaining a prototype for communities that work well. Undoubtedly, the resilience of the Russian people under all the sanctions the west could throw at them, came from their recent incredibly tough times after the collapse of the USSR. So, maybe, "fourth turning" in the rear view mirror, there will be a rebuilding of what matters?
I will continue to hope, because I can, and will help as much as I can for as long as I'm around. And I appreciate all, like Aurelien, who also throw what they have to offer into the ring - experience, points of view, possibilities, blunt reality. We need it all.
The Russians know where they're going and so do the Chinese. I tried your path but the rot of redundant soggy ideas has captured most brains and only a few can grow things and chop their own wood because we have all become slaves to mindless consumerism. In my area - remote and rural by English standards - it is the wealthy that are moving out. They have big cars and modernise their houses so they can live just like they do in urban areas - but with views and fewer neighbours and less anti-social behaviour.
The more accessible you are to the cities, the harder it is. We have the housing affordability issue here too (Canada has huge issues in this regard) but inconvenience provides at least a buffer. The majority around us here, even if much more self-sufficient than most, still tend to believe mainstream narratives about the world. But the recognition of mutual interdependence keeps us off politics and mostly just seeing each other as humans. I weep for rural England. I hiked and thumbed my way around Britain in the 60s, and could stop and chat with people working in their own gardens. We revisited the same routes in 2014, and while it looked the same superficially, there were maintenance trucks parked around, and people in uniforms doing their "jobs". It was like a movie set. I hope Starmer's hapless pretense of wartime framing doesn't force that scenario. I’m hoping reality wins, not "in the end", but well before it. Leadership is in a PMC vacuum throughout the west now. There's a popular TV series in Canada called "Still Standing", where a Newfie humourist visits very small communities across the country, focusing on what they've had to do to survive, and highlighting both the resilience, and the sense of humour and ability to laugh at ourselves, that gets us through. There's a lot of material - it's been going for about ten years now, I believe. These are universal human capacities, but it seems to take catastrophe to dig them out, and hardship to hone them. Doesn't bode well for the immediate future.
1. "Politics today is about climbing the greasy pole to the exclusion of everything else. Much as, once again, in the eighteenth century, it’s about finding and attaching yourself to a patron who will reward your loyalty with favours: if you lose an election, there’s always a think-tank somewhere."
Did not Sam Kriss teach the masses that, contrary to received wisdom, Kamala Harris is not "bad at politics". She is, in fact, very good at politics. The problem is that politics is the only thing she exhibits any competence at.
2. "But I think it goes a lot further and deeper than that. I’m not a psychiatrist, but I have to say that words like “psychopathic,” “sociopathic” and “autistic” for once seem entirely appropriate for our political class, the acolytes of the Professional and Managerial Caste (PMC) who serve them, and the wealthy, powerful and influential generally."
I have said for years now, that we are ruled by humans whose behavior is indistinguishable from that of sociopaths. But I'll do you one better:
If the standard of living for, say the bottom 50% of western citizens fell to African levels, but the top 10% and especially the top 1% were somehow able to maintain their living standards, then society would continue to stumble along, with the oligarchs and their minions formulating ever more ridiculous narratives to keep the underfed multitudes disunited, clueless and thoroughly under control.
3. "In other words the ruling class (including those who identify with them) is capable of understanding progress only in the fulfilment of its own selfish wants."
Let's just say, that these are people who will not take being denied what they want. If they have to institute WWIII in order not to lose their perches, they themselves can bugger off to New Zealand or whatever. As for the little people well, too bad for them.
Ever seen "Don't Look Up!"? Remember, we are ruled by sociopaths. This is inevitable, BTW, as sociopaths are the humans who will do whatever it takes to get power.
Kriss, as a Brit, did not understand Harris. As a California, I do. Here's the story: we have single-party majorities in about 3/5 or 2/3 of the states, depending on how you count. In these states, politics is entirely machine politics: a successful politician almost never has to appeal to the Other Party, as those people have no influence. Harris is a product of such a machine. She had no ability to appeal to Republicans or the great undecided middle. She did not know how to function in a roughly evenly divided electorate.
That is sort of Kriss' point. Harris is good at politics, int eh sense of ingratiating herself with the right bigwigs. Voters are just a pesky hurdle to overcome or avoid.
I'm a regular Ecosophia reader (John Michael Greer), who has for years predicted the terminal decline of Western industrial society in general and European culture in particular. However, it's quite a shock to have you state so bluntly that the disintegration of European society is inevitable and will presumably be almost total. Even out here in a rural village in south-west England - typical old middle-England - I've been seeing the signs of collapsing morale, a sort of exhausted, depressed apathy spreading through more and more people.
You may have come across many YouTube videos on the prognostications of Prof David Betz, who says all the conditions for a civil war in the UK are in place. I don't believe it for a minute, for the same reasons you say rule out the emergence of an effective political party which could address the problems. There is not the mechanism, organisation or energy available to enable it. All that's likely is continued decline, fragmentation and eventually some kind of impoverished Balkanisation. I have infant grandchildren and hate to think what they'll grow up into.
As long as the elites are united, there will be no civil war in England or anywhere else.
Civil wars happen when elite factions are divided amongst themselves. Revolutions happen when elites are divided and disaffected elite factions start to cast about for allies.
"Move fast and break things" might be a great philosophy for a startup internet company, but it is catastrophic for a nation state. I don't know how we will get out of it as the West looks shot but other examples exist in China and Russia which we might follow, albeit with reluctance.
Thanks Aurelien, steps will eventually be taken, one at a time.
Russia is an interesting example though I think for another reason than you are implying.
It's population now is smaller than it was 35 years ago. It's demographics are worse than just about everywhere in Europe except Ukraine.
It has gone from being a major industrial power to a country that largely depends upon the export of natural resources to keep It's economy afloat. And as such it is just as much part of the global economy as everywhere else. The price it gets for these exports are now effectively dictated by China and India.
It has made a slight recovery aince it's nadir in the 90s. But it is now at a much lower level of devlopment and culture than it was before that decline started. And if the global economy breaks up it will plunge lower again.
And of course it has got itself involved in a war against a mich weaker country, that it has failed to end in 3 years. 11 if you count the civil war in Ukraine that started in 2014. It certai ly isn't about to be defeated. But it is chewing up it's economy and population and the vast inheritance of Soviet military equipment has been significantly reduced.
You are just spewing Western propaganda. If this was truly true, the USA wouldn't be seeking out truce with Russia. And if that was true, the EU wouldn't be so desperate for a war with the USA
And what have i said that is false? Has russia failed to defeat a much weaker country in three years? Has it or has it not burned through a significant amount of it's equipment stockpile? Most of which was made before the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Has it or has it not had to accept a lower price for itsoil and gas than it did from European countries?
It's demographics issues are certainly not propaganda. Nor is the fact that it largely depends upon exports of raw resources for It's economy.
None of this means it is losing the war. And none of it is propaganda.
The Russian economy is far more basic than it was at the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Check out Russia's agricultural sector. Back in Soviet times, the USSR was a major grain (wheat) importer. Now it usually is the No. 1 or No. 2 wheat exporter. The numbers seem to flip back and forth. IIRC, it is now China's largest source of pork.
It's aviation industry is so decrepit today that it is bringing two medium-haul airliners into production. The Yakovlev MC-21 has been a bit delayed as Russia has decided that <i>everything</i> that goes into building it must be produced in Russia but it should be certified and in service by the end of this year or early 2026.
Have you had a look at the Kerch bridge, the one the Ukrainians keep trying to destroy. It's only a 19km multi-model bridge opened fol limited use In a little over 2 years and in full operation for motor vehicle, freight and passenger rail in roughly 4 years.
I believe that the USA is expecting to replace the 2.6km Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, wreaked in March 2024, by the fall of 2028.
Russia is facing a demographic problem but this is really no different than almost any country in the developed world. The USA has a slightly higher fertility rate than Russia's (1.665 to 1.416) but both are well below replacement values. Japan looks well on its way to zero population (fertility rate 1.26).
Note Fertility figures are Word Bank figures for 2022.
We are born into this time and must bravely follow the path to the destined end. There is no other way. Our duty is to hold on to the lost position, without hope, without rescue, like that Roman soldier whose bones were found in front of a door in Pompeii, who, during the eruption of Vesuvius, died at his post because they forgot to relieve him. That is greatness. That is what it means to be a thoroughbred. The honorable end is the one thing that can not be taken from a man.
Yes we can hold hands and contemplate our doom as the corrupt and increasingly unequal system inevitably crashes and burns … OR we could try lending our support to DJT who for all his many faults and vanities is the only political alternative to the horrible globalist establishment and its Party.
This is a very insightful and thoughtul rant. When in the old Syria, before the recent war's destruction, I noticed that regardless of how much wealth one accumulate living conditions were not great. The same flies that spread disease to the poor also flew to the rich. There was no recognition that improving everyone's life affected all. Our "elite" miss this point also. What amazes me is the continual general lack of past/present/future thought amoung our leaders. History clearly shows that the current progressive government trends don't last and backfire on leadership. In the present we observe that the darling of the left Tesla is suddenly a symbol of doom. Imagine a progressive virtue signaller buying the number one climate change approved electric car watching his colleagues turn on him. But worse of all, can't the leaders recognize that moral decay and robber baron actions doom their grandchildren.
History tells us that religion is the glue of civilization, and "rationalism" is the solvent. (Aurelian seems to recognize this, though he doesn't put it quite that way.) Spengler points out that every civilization in decline experiences what he calls a "second religiosity," in which there is at least somewhat of a return to the faith of the founders. He also notes that this never saves the civilization from further decline and fall. I'd respectfully submit, however, that a sufficiently strong and widespread "second religiosity" can meaningfully slow the decline of a civilization. This would be more possible in America than in Europe, I think.
I could have written this (but it is irredeemably 'western'). And 'we' in the west are in decline. The lack of vision and clarity is a function of that. China is the future.
Interesting literary references: Metamorphosis; Man Without Qualities; Waiting for Godot.
All by excellent writers watching, living through, the last gasps of dying Empires.
I've been noticing lately in all the new right political spaces I watch to understand the vector of the far right bubble Von Mises is everywhere: here I postulate that Austrian Economics is in fact the organizing principle of Imperial Collapse.
If you read Quinn Slobodian's "Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism" you will discover von Mises and Hayek were both profoundly revanchist antidemocrats who despised the nationalist uprisings in Eastern Europe which followed WWI and yearned for a return to the Austrian-Hungarian empire of their youth. I loathe them and their followers ...
I read that and agree with you almost. Hayek was a brilliant and idealistic mathematician who later began to have doubts about how his thoughts were being used. We have contemporaries like Nassim Taleb who owe a great deal to him and do do good with his work.
Von Mises, on the other hand, was of the old aristocratic mold our new oligarchs are trying to re-boot with their view of the general population as a feedstock to their money making. It's this view of money making as an end in itself, with no understanding whatsoever that money itself is a social construct, that allows the market price of money to be held as a higher value than the society that produces the money in the first place.
This hard money vision turns the joint social constructs into Ouroboros where the socially created value starts consuming the value creating society, thus Misian economics as the organizing principle of Imperial Collapse.
A ruling class which had values and mores of scant relevance to the vast majority of residents of the polity and which experienced only formal identification with them, resembles the Royal-Imperial Austro-Hungarian government in the years following its expulsion form co-rulership of Germany by Bismarck.
Its casual brutality was repeatedly depicted in its literary works.
There must be some way out of here ... surely? Well yes, there is. There must be, unless as the Kingston Trio ended a song, "...someone will set the Bomb off and we will all be blown away." There is a way. Will it be a way we favor? For that we must wait and see. I was struck by your description of the ruling class with their money and their power, illusion of power(?), and it recalled a quotation from William Gibson's novel Count Zero, " ... for an instant she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human." That seems an apt summation. When the Gaza atrocities began and for some time thereafter, I would write to my representative in the US Congress decrying the utter immorality of the actions of the state of Israel and the complicity of the United States in standing foursquare with Israel and supplying the means , as the US does to this day. The Congressman was in lockstep with the Party line. The word moral was not in the vocabulary of his canned responses. Today the immorality has descended to depraved indifference in describing Gaza as a wonderful real estate opportunity as the people are being starved to death in full view. Ansar Allah, the Houthi, are apparently the only persons, government, capable of being morally offended by genocide and taking action against it. Lastly, your two essays on existentialism recalled me to that philosophy, to which I was attracted as a teenager in the 1950s, and to a reading and rereading of Camus, Sartre, and others. It is not out of bounds to declare that the world today is absurd. Camus, when asked why go on in the face of absurdity, replied, "Keep going, without hope but without despair." I have that and the Tao to face the day. Thank you.
John Ham, Yes - going, no hope, no despair. But... in the dismay of Trump world.. I have found more community groups reaching out for allies, for more contact. What if... the silver lining is that we "Don't mourn, but organize." Here in SF bay area, I see more local coming together of community groups. Young people, not just old hippies and boomers. It's like the Covid lock down has born a yearning for joining with others. We sang "Solidarity Forever" and the young folks easily joined in. I could see their eyes lighting up.
I figured out a long time ago that we are ruled by sociopaths. Humans, but without a soul.
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/
The above link is long, but there is not a dull word in it.
I totally resonate with this. I think a lot of people do - they've been writing about the downfall of this set-up for a long time, and been amazed at how long it has held up. Inertia is a powerful force.
Not so familiar with the European world as I am with the North American. But there's the same "system" fragility, especially cities. Definitely a loss of competence in a lot of areas - education has suffered badly over my lifetime.
The expectation that all would be wonderful forever was never realistic. Maintenance, of both infrastructure and world view, requires not only work, but poorly compensated competence, and the financialization of everything put bright and shiny fake values on things that don't have intrinsic value. They're beginning to totter. More than time, they've been held up against all odds. Other parts of the world are disengaging, and well for them that they are. We will have to see whether the resilience that has kept homo sapiens going is intrinsic, or a passing function.
I'm in my late 70s - through sheer luck, I was born early enough to have had the best of the post war years. We were never wealthy, but my husband as an engineer could make a decent living. I, as a polio survivor, didn't attempt a career but held jobs when needed - there were lots of jobs and we didn't mind what we did. We built our first home ourselves, sold it when we had to move to another job and another part of Canada, rebuilt another one while we were in it, then when retired, sold again and moved to a tiny community and built another one. (Most of the people in this community built their own places - a lot of elderly hippies around.)
This all worked because of when we were born, not only into a system still in its prime, but also because we had family roots in much tougher times. My grandfather was fortunate to have kept his job as an engineer through the depression. Talking of doing things because they're the right thing to do, he kept his whole neighbourhood in coal, people in houses that would have been foreclosed on and the occupants turfed out, except that the banks couldn't cope with the sheer volume of empty houses to look after. My grandmother was a nurse and invariably looked after anyone who came into her ambit.
Since retirement, my husband and I threw ourselves into volunteer work for the community, which needs actual hands-on work - because we're considered rural and remote, our taxes go towards keeping the cities and towns going. Here, we build and pay for our own community centre and fire hall. In extreme weather, it's everyone with a chainsaw or a shovel out there keeping roads clear. The province does do a minimal job on the roads, but we have to fight for it, and in fact, there are enough plows and other big machinery to keep things going if we had to (until we run out of fuel, of course). Then there's the trails, I guess - they just take a machete to keep going. So once again, just damn lucky. There's a small farm nearby, and everyone has gardens. Lots of deer. People know each other. This is, imo, a natural state for humanity, and all I can do is hope that it reasserts itself when it's the only option for surviving. The only reason I'm not going down with "survivor's guilt" is because I hope that we're maintaining a prototype for communities that work well. Undoubtedly, the resilience of the Russian people under all the sanctions the west could throw at them, came from their recent incredibly tough times after the collapse of the USSR. So, maybe, "fourth turning" in the rear view mirror, there will be a rebuilding of what matters?
I will continue to hope, because I can, and will help as much as I can for as long as I'm around. And I appreciate all, like Aurelien, who also throw what they have to offer into the ring - experience, points of view, possibilities, blunt reality. We need it all.
The Russians know where they're going and so do the Chinese. I tried your path but the rot of redundant soggy ideas has captured most brains and only a few can grow things and chop their own wood because we have all become slaves to mindless consumerism. In my area - remote and rural by English standards - it is the wealthy that are moving out. They have big cars and modernise their houses so they can live just like they do in urban areas - but with views and fewer neighbours and less anti-social behaviour.
The more accessible you are to the cities, the harder it is. We have the housing affordability issue here too (Canada has huge issues in this regard) but inconvenience provides at least a buffer. The majority around us here, even if much more self-sufficient than most, still tend to believe mainstream narratives about the world. But the recognition of mutual interdependence keeps us off politics and mostly just seeing each other as humans. I weep for rural England. I hiked and thumbed my way around Britain in the 60s, and could stop and chat with people working in their own gardens. We revisited the same routes in 2014, and while it looked the same superficially, there were maintenance trucks parked around, and people in uniforms doing their "jobs". It was like a movie set. I hope Starmer's hapless pretense of wartime framing doesn't force that scenario. I’m hoping reality wins, not "in the end", but well before it. Leadership is in a PMC vacuum throughout the west now. There's a popular TV series in Canada called "Still Standing", where a Newfie humourist visits very small communities across the country, focusing on what they've had to do to survive, and highlighting both the resilience, and the sense of humour and ability to laugh at ourselves, that gets us through. There's a lot of material - it's been going for about ten years now, I believe. These are universal human capacities, but it seems to take catastrophe to dig them out, and hardship to hone them. Doesn't bode well for the immediate future.
1. "Politics today is about climbing the greasy pole to the exclusion of everything else. Much as, once again, in the eighteenth century, it’s about finding and attaching yourself to a patron who will reward your loyalty with favours: if you lose an election, there’s always a think-tank somewhere."
Did not Sam Kriss teach the masses that, contrary to received wisdom, Kamala Harris is not "bad at politics". She is, in fact, very good at politics. The problem is that politics is the only thing she exhibits any competence at.
2. "But I think it goes a lot further and deeper than that. I’m not a psychiatrist, but I have to say that words like “psychopathic,” “sociopathic” and “autistic” for once seem entirely appropriate for our political class, the acolytes of the Professional and Managerial Caste (PMC) who serve them, and the wealthy, powerful and influential generally."
I have said for years now, that we are ruled by humans whose behavior is indistinguishable from that of sociopaths. But I'll do you one better:
If the standard of living for, say the bottom 50% of western citizens fell to African levels, but the top 10% and especially the top 1% were somehow able to maintain their living standards, then society would continue to stumble along, with the oligarchs and their minions formulating ever more ridiculous narratives to keep the underfed multitudes disunited, clueless and thoroughly under control.
3. "In other words the ruling class (including those who identify with them) is capable of understanding progress only in the fulfilment of its own selfish wants."
Let's just say, that these are people who will not take being denied what they want. If they have to institute WWIII in order not to lose their perches, they themselves can bugger off to New Zealand or whatever. As for the little people well, too bad for them.
Ever seen "Don't Look Up!"? Remember, we are ruled by sociopaths. This is inevitable, BTW, as sociopaths are the humans who will do whatever it takes to get power.
Kriss, as a Brit, did not understand Harris. As a California, I do. Here's the story: we have single-party majorities in about 3/5 or 2/3 of the states, depending on how you count. In these states, politics is entirely machine politics: a successful politician almost never has to appeal to the Other Party, as those people have no influence. Harris is a product of such a machine. She had no ability to appeal to Republicans or the great undecided middle. She did not know how to function in a roughly evenly divided electorate.
That is sort of Kriss' point. Harris is good at politics, int eh sense of ingratiating herself with the right bigwigs. Voters are just a pesky hurdle to overcome or avoid.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/historical-analysis-of-the-global-elite-ransacking-the-world-economy-until-youll-own-nothing/5805779
I'm a regular Ecosophia reader (John Michael Greer), who has for years predicted the terminal decline of Western industrial society in general and European culture in particular. However, it's quite a shock to have you state so bluntly that the disintegration of European society is inevitable and will presumably be almost total. Even out here in a rural village in south-west England - typical old middle-England - I've been seeing the signs of collapsing morale, a sort of exhausted, depressed apathy spreading through more and more people.
You may have come across many YouTube videos on the prognostications of Prof David Betz, who says all the conditions for a civil war in the UK are in place. I don't believe it for a minute, for the same reasons you say rule out the emergence of an effective political party which could address the problems. There is not the mechanism, organisation or energy available to enable it. All that's likely is continued decline, fragmentation and eventually some kind of impoverished Balkanisation. I have infant grandchildren and hate to think what they'll grow up into.
As long as the elites are united, there will be no civil war in England or anywhere else.
Civil wars happen when elite factions are divided amongst themselves. Revolutions happen when elites are divided and disaffected elite factions start to cast about for allies.
Balkanisation certainly.
I have recently spent a couple of days in the English Midlands…wow.
"Move fast and break things" might be a great philosophy for a startup internet company, but it is catastrophic for a nation state. I don't know how we will get out of it as the West looks shot but other examples exist in China and Russia which we might follow, albeit with reluctance.
Thanks Aurelien, steps will eventually be taken, one at a time.
The only thing worse is private equity's "move fast and loot things" ...
We are in Northrop Frye's "Winter" phase ...
Russia is an interesting example though I think for another reason than you are implying.
It's population now is smaller than it was 35 years ago. It's demographics are worse than just about everywhere in Europe except Ukraine.
It has gone from being a major industrial power to a country that largely depends upon the export of natural resources to keep It's economy afloat. And as such it is just as much part of the global economy as everywhere else. The price it gets for these exports are now effectively dictated by China and India.
It has made a slight recovery aince it's nadir in the 90s. But it is now at a much lower level of devlopment and culture than it was before that decline started. And if the global economy breaks up it will plunge lower again.
And of course it has got itself involved in a war against a mich weaker country, that it has failed to end in 3 years. 11 if you count the civil war in Ukraine that started in 2014. It certai ly isn't about to be defeated. But it is chewing up it's economy and population and the vast inheritance of Soviet military equipment has been significantly reduced.
You are just spewing Western propaganda. If this was truly true, the USA wouldn't be seeking out truce with Russia. And if that was true, the EU wouldn't be so desperate for a war with the USA
And what have i said that is false? Has russia failed to defeat a much weaker country in three years? Has it or has it not burned through a significant amount of it's equipment stockpile? Most of which was made before the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Has it or has it not had to accept a lower price for itsoil and gas than it did from European countries?
It's demographics issues are certainly not propaganda. Nor is the fact that it largely depends upon exports of raw resources for It's economy.
None of this means it is losing the war. And none of it is propaganda.
The Russian economy is far more basic than it was at the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Check out Russia's agricultural sector. Back in Soviet times, the USSR was a major grain (wheat) importer. Now it usually is the No. 1 or No. 2 wheat exporter. The numbers seem to flip back and forth. IIRC, it is now China's largest source of pork.
It's aviation industry is so decrepit today that it is bringing two medium-haul airliners into production. The Yakovlev MC-21 has been a bit delayed as Russia has decided that <i>everything</i> that goes into building it must be produced in Russia but it should be certified and in service by the end of this year or early 2026.
Have you had a look at the Kerch bridge, the one the Ukrainians keep trying to destroy. It's only a 19km multi-model bridge opened fol limited use In a little over 2 years and in full operation for motor vehicle, freight and passenger rail in roughly 4 years.
I believe that the USA is expecting to replace the 2.6km Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, wreaked in March 2024, by the fall of 2028.
Russia is facing a demographic problem but this is really no different than almost any country in the developed world. The USA has a slightly higher fertility rate than Russia's (1.665 to 1.416) but both are well below replacement values. Japan looks well on its way to zero population (fertility rate 1.26).
Note Fertility figures are Word Bank figures for 2022.
And by GDP-PPP Russia is now the 4th largest economy in the world, before Germany.
We are born into this time and must bravely follow the path to the destined end. There is no other way. Our duty is to hold on to the lost position, without hope, without rescue, like that Roman soldier whose bones were found in front of a door in Pompeii, who, during the eruption of Vesuvius, died at his post because they forgot to relieve him. That is greatness. That is what it means to be a thoroughbred. The honorable end is the one thing that can not be taken from a man.
As an engineer of fifty years experience, politics is hard!
The late writer Fred Jameson apparently summed it up best ‘it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism’.
Yes we can hold hands and contemplate our doom as the corrupt and increasingly unequal system inevitably crashes and burns … OR we could try lending our support to DJT who for all his many faults and vanities is the only political alternative to the horrible globalist establishment and its Party.
This is a very insightful and thoughtul rant. When in the old Syria, before the recent war's destruction, I noticed that regardless of how much wealth one accumulate living conditions were not great. The same flies that spread disease to the poor also flew to the rich. There was no recognition that improving everyone's life affected all. Our "elite" miss this point also. What amazes me is the continual general lack of past/present/future thought amoung our leaders. History clearly shows that the current progressive government trends don't last and backfire on leadership. In the present we observe that the darling of the left Tesla is suddenly a symbol of doom. Imagine a progressive virtue signaller buying the number one climate change approved electric car watching his colleagues turn on him. But worse of all, can't the leaders recognize that moral decay and robber baron actions doom their grandchildren.
History tells us that religion is the glue of civilization, and "rationalism" is the solvent. (Aurelian seems to recognize this, though he doesn't put it quite that way.) Spengler points out that every civilization in decline experiences what he calls a "second religiosity," in which there is at least somewhat of a return to the faith of the founders. He also notes that this never saves the civilization from further decline and fall. I'd respectfully submit, however, that a sufficiently strong and widespread "second religiosity" can meaningfully slow the decline of a civilization. This would be more possible in America than in Europe, I think.
In a nutshell of going nowhere; while I was somehow reminded of certain works from Escher.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ab/8f/25/ab8f250bf00c2cb5795c6c59f5317674.jpg
I could have written this (but it is irredeemably 'western'). And 'we' in the west are in decline. The lack of vision and clarity is a function of that. China is the future.
Let's invite President Xi to help us.
That's silly
Interesting literary references: Metamorphosis; Man Without Qualities; Waiting for Godot.
All by excellent writers watching, living through, the last gasps of dying Empires.
I've been noticing lately in all the new right political spaces I watch to understand the vector of the far right bubble Von Mises is everywhere: here I postulate that Austrian Economics is in fact the organizing principle of Imperial Collapse.
If you read Quinn Slobodian's "Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism" you will discover von Mises and Hayek were both profoundly revanchist antidemocrats who despised the nationalist uprisings in Eastern Europe which followed WWI and yearned for a return to the Austrian-Hungarian empire of their youth. I loathe them and their followers ...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36738613-globalists
I'd been reading this earlier in the day when I wrote my first comment:
https://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2025/04/the-bastards-of-neoliberalism
I read that and agree with you almost. Hayek was a brilliant and idealistic mathematician who later began to have doubts about how his thoughts were being used. We have contemporaries like Nassim Taleb who owe a great deal to him and do do good with his work.
Von Mises, on the other hand, was of the old aristocratic mold our new oligarchs are trying to re-boot with their view of the general population as a feedstock to their money making. It's this view of money making as an end in itself, with no understanding whatsoever that money itself is a social construct, that allows the market price of money to be held as a higher value than the society that produces the money in the first place.
This hard money vision turns the joint social constructs into Ouroboros where the socially created value starts consuming the value creating society, thus Misian economics as the organizing principle of Imperial Collapse.
A ruling class which had values and mores of scant relevance to the vast majority of residents of the polity and which experienced only formal identification with them, resembles the Royal-Imperial Austro-Hungarian government in the years following its expulsion form co-rulership of Germany by Bismarck.
Its casual brutality was repeatedly depicted in its literary works.
Would you consider "The Good Soldier Svejk" to be of that oeuvre? I will never forget reading that.
Yes, one of them. I was also thinking of Der Mann Ohne Eigenschaften and The Radetsky March by Joseph Roth.
On the vulnerability of cities, just a small example was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Auckland_power_crisis in New Zealand. That was a real shock at the time.
It looks like 1998 was a good year for disasters. The Great Ice Storm of 1998 was a bit tramatizing for a lot of Eastern Canadians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_1998_North_American_ice_storm.