Editor’s Note: The following piece builds on the reflections of civilizational decline outlined in Peter Wood’s “Death Wish,” in which he argues that Western civilization is in decline, primarily due to internal cultural decay. Various signs of this decay include moral confusion, widespread violence, lawlessness, and the erosion of traditional values. According to Wood, the decline of the West today is unique because it stems from a self-destructive cultural attitude rather than from military or ideological enemies. The loss of moral clarity, the breakdown of the family structure, and the rise of permissiveness and relativism in sexual and social behaviors drive this decline.
When I have fears that we may cease to be … I am one of many people who fight hard to preserve the ideals and institutions of Western civilization, not least as incarnated in our colleges and universities. But sometimes, I wonder if Western civilization suffered its fatal wound before I was born. God in his providence may have determined that while we may struggle valiantly, we will not win. Our role then must be Roland’s, to sound the olifant to make the welkin ring, as the paynim strike us down.
If we wish to be pessimistic, we can look to a great many causes. A host of termites work to undermine Western civilization, from so many directions and with such vigor that repelling all of them seems hopeless. Five perils to Western civilization strike me as particularly formidable—although these by no means exhaust the causes for despair.
The Dark Curtain: Western civilization depends upon an elite dedicated to its preservation. In our time, that elite is housed overwhelmingly in the university. But the corruption of the university is now generations old, and the number of professors who know and value Western civilization is shrinking fast. Indeed, the great winnowing seems to have happened thirty years ago and more: there are far too few professors less than 50 years of age—far too few professors less than 70—who can transmit the knowledge of the West. When this aging cohort retires, they may have no successors. I think of a professor specializing in high medieval political thought, of retirement age, who may be the last person who ever will write on John of Salisbury—and another piece of memory of the West disappears with every such professor who retires. The lights go out over the West, one by one. When memory of the West disappears from the world in general, how can it hope to survive long in redoubts such as Hillsdale? To be provincial is a death sentence deferred; Sumerian civilization died from inattention, not destruction, as a province of larger civilizations that no longer cared about the old stories in cuneiform. So easily may be the fate of the West.
The Ancien Regime: Western civilization is not solely dedicated to liberty. We always have had an alternative—Alexander rather than Athens, Augustus rather than Cicero, order without liberty. In more modern times, France’s ancien regime was always a powerful alternative to England’s liberty—bureaucracy rather than republican self-government, a deferential cooperation of elites who articulated a large amount of the country’s component groups and interests, just without liberty. Our own elites, as most elites throughout history, seem happy enough to rule by means of absolutist bureaucracy rather than indulge the people with liberty. And if they shuck the chaos of woke ideology—or if they submit to leadership from China, whose evils are rational—then they will preserve law and order, if not liberty. The body of the West might then endure, if not its soul.
Highland Landlords: A keynote of Western civilization has been some essential sympathy between rulers and ruled, masses and elites. The panjandrums of the Orient may regard their people as cattle, but King Hal walks with his soldiers on Agincourt eve. But our own elites have hardly been immune to the temptation to sell out their people for a mess of pottage. Adam Smith wrote of Highland chiefs who abandoned their clans for the pleasure of a manor house in London—and those chieftains children would depopulate whole districts of their kin, to make a sheep-run and increase their rents. So too far too many of our own elites, who prize the profits of globalized investments above the welfare of their poorer countrymen. And against the lure of profit, can any love of country long endure?
Spoiled Brats: Some large part of the woke project is to disassemble male puberty rituals—above all, to eliminate all voluntary, communal endurance of pain. Hence the hatred of fraternities and hazing, and the wish to disassemble any same-sex environment for young men. Wokeness is not least about preventing the maturation to adulthood, especially the maturation of boys to men. But many elites often have resisted letting their children suffer the dangers of such rituals—England was extraordinary, and England ruled an empire, not least because it knew its rulers must be men, and not just—as were the leaders of so many places they conquered— wealthy spoiled brats. But tender hearts and squeamish fears are common—and many boys would rather not take risks and become men. Manliness may not be natural—and without manliness, and masculine virtues, can the West endure?
The Pleasure Principle: Many people would rather be entertained than be free, or preserve the memory of their past, or anything. Bread and circuses, the internet, all the lobotomies of modern life—they’re fun, and maybe they’re more fun than Western civilization. Humanity might freely choose to be happy brutes.
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These are prime causes for pessimism. We still must fight for Western civilization, for liberty, for all that is best in humanity. Perhaps the Long Night is coming, and nothing we do can prevent that. Read Isaac Asimov’s Foundation books: we can shorten that Long Night, and light candles until the dawn. Read Poul Anderson’s Flandry novels: every year we put off the Long Night is valuable, and a year worth fighting for, even if there never will be another dawn.
We fight for the light, whether or not it endures. The luster is worth the fight, in defeat or victory.
John of Salisbury. (2024, November 26). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_of_Salisbury
