Simone Seymour
Can Western Civilisation be saved? Likely not. A deceased, long-ago USA newspaper editor and nominal acquaintance of mine once said of his country:
“As a nation, we lost our senses, collectively and simultaneously;
To regain them as a people, slowly, one person at a time.“
Whether Charles was being his usual creative self, or re-quoting, matters not. Is that not the reality of our time?
All things contain the seeds of their own destruction. Including a democracy. So inferred the Scottish jurist, Prof. Alexander Tytler [1747–1813]. He reportedly said:
A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.
From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public purse, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.
The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence.
Where now is New Zealand on the cycle?
Add in Popper’s Paradox of Tolerance and the almost inevitable fall of Western civilisation is plain to see.
Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If people extend unlimited tolerance to those who are intolerant; if people are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant; then the tolerant will be destroyed and tolerance with them.
Astute and informed readers of The BFD will quickly see the relevance of what’s quoted.
The questions then are:
1) Can Western civilisation be saved?
2) Is it futile to even try?
He that has eyes to see, let him see.
