But Hope Still Exists For Founding A New Civilization
It has been nearly eight decades since Oswald Spengler penned his grand view of the cyclical nature of human history.1 When I first became entranced with this vision, in the early 1980s, the two volume set, titled "The Decline of the West," was still in print.2
The essential thoughts I wish to convey in this work are: 1) the
West has continued to decline as those many decades have gone by; and
2) just because the West is declining does not mean that mankind
has no hope at all for a better future. In fact, it would appear that
mankind is on the brink of the possibility of achieving the true
greatness for which all humans have given their lives so far.
It is difficult indeed for
anyone with a "contemporary" education to read Spengler. It is even
more difficult to contemplate that Spengler was taught in our high
schools back in the 1920s and 1930s. To understand what Spengler is
writing about takes a breadth of knowledge which our modern educational
system has ceased to convey. Only a few of the most intellectually
gifted among us will ever gain the requisite understanding needed to
critique Spengler in detail. Still, for those who wish to challenge
their minds, and also expand their horizons, a trip to "the horse's
mouth" is highly recommended.
But most of us (including,
admittedly, me) will never have the intellect and patience to sift
through nearly a thousand pages of highly boring text. However, the
essential thoughts for all of us to grasp are actually quite easy to
comprehend. Setting those down again is one goal for this book.
At this point I must insert a
vocabulary note about the deliberate distinction which I mean to imply
between "Culture" (with a capital "C") and "culture" (without it), and
also in the same way, between "Civilization" and "civilization." We
have our own natural meanings for those words, and when I mean to imply
the natural meaning, I use the word uncapitalized. Spengler had very
specific meanings for those two words, and when I mean to imply
Spengler's meanings, I use the word with a Capital "C."
Spengler did more than merely
recording a history of the past. He also indulged a bit in predicting
the future. After over seven decades, it ought to be possible to
examine how well he did. Setting down that record is yet another goal.
My own conclusion is that, so far as Western Civilization goes,
Spengler's predictions continue unabated: the West still declines. In
fact, as Spengler asserts, the West began declining centuries ago, and
there seems to be nothing anyone alive today can do about it.
As death follows life for all
known living organisms, so does the decline and eventual death of the
Civilization follow the birth and growth of its Culture.
And this is the main "problem"
with Spengler: his thesis leads us to a thoroughly demoralizing
conclusion that Western Civilization is going down the drain, and there
is just about nothing we can really do about it (other than, perhaps,
to delay the inevitable).
This overall view of decline
and eventual death for our Civilization has tended to give a hugely
morose cast to what would otherwise be an unemotional and scholarly
dissertation. The moroseness is inherent in many people as they
approach their own death, so it should not be surprising to find it in
our civilization as it approaches its own death. In fact, many
civilizations develop morose and fatalistic philosophies late in their
existence. Western Civilization is certainly not unique in that regard.
But this book is also about
hope. In order to understand the source of that hope, I have included a
Section which takes apart Alvin Toffler's book "Future Shock."
The essence of his thesis is that we are currently going through the
greatest change which mankind has ever experienced, and that change can
lead to severe psychological disorders. I assert that he was just over
half right: we are clearly undergoing a major change in the meaning of
what humans are, and uncontrolled change could lead to major
psychological problems. But unless those changes are forced upon an
unwilling mankind by an outside force, man will naturally accept only
such change as is psychologically digestible. Furthermore, the record
of the 25 years since Toffler's book was published discloses a clear
reversal of several of the trends which he warned against. But his
thesis about mankind undergoing a great change remains oh so very true.
For roughly two million years,
mankind was little different than the savage beasts. But about ten to
thirty thousand years ago, in widely divergent regions of our planet
Earth, we began to farm. This was the first great divide in human
history. It forced mankind to put down roots and stay in one place. It
forced us to plan and scheme to coerce a crop out of the ground, and in
our spare time, we commenced to plan and scheme for the greater glory
of mankind, or at least the strongest of each little band of humans.
The second great divide in
human history is upon us now. It began as something called the
"Industrial Revolution," but it now seems clear that label is far too
narrow. I would call it the "Technology Revolution," because it is the
technology affecting virtually all fields of endeavor, not just
"industry," which is now undergoing massive and dramatic changes. Such
technology is entirely out of character for a civilization in our
current state of decline. It must be true, then, that the technology
springs from a much deeper well.
While Spengler developed his
dramatic (and essentially accurate) characterization of civilization as
a cyclical rise-and-fall, he did not see (or chose to ignore) an
underlying incoming tide of technology. As Toffler asserts, change only
becomes obvious when it is compared relative to something else.
Spengler's own charts clearly show that each successive civilization
has moved technological progress forward by some degree.
In our current Twentieth
Century, it appears that the technological dam has burst with full
force. The rush of new developments is what motivated Toffler to look
for some reactions to all of these inrushing changes. Toffler found the
tide which Spengler had ignored, but he reached some essentially
erroneous conclusions by ignoring the results which Spengler did reach.
This book, then, is an attempt
to synthesize together these two views of humanity into a coherent
whole. It is also an attempt to create a hopeful path for mankind away
from the cyclical doom of Spengler. That can only be accomplished by
using the underlying forces of technological change to damp out the
cultural cycles of Spengler.
The hope, then, is to use the
forces of dramatic change which Toffler identified to break out of the
recurring cycles of Culture and Civilization which Spengler identified.
Stock market cycles tend to disappear whenever a popular book analyzes
them in detail. Thus, I would hope that a wide audience for this book
will dampen the current "down" cycle which Spengler clearly saw, and
which I still see destroying our civilization today. We should,
instead, choose to ride the rising tide of the Technology Revolution,
and build a new home for mankind out of an abundance which will flow
from a free economy. Accordingly, it is my strong desire that, even
considering the immense depth of our current troubles, "this, too,
shall pass away."3
RIVERSIDE, CALIFORNIA; DECEMBER 5, 1995.
1 The author claimed to have it mostly done by 1914, and to have the first edition fully written by 1917, although the first edition of the first volume was not published until July of 1918. The second volume was published in 1922, and an extensively revised Second Edition appeared in 1923. Even measured from this essentially "final" version, it has still been more than seven decades.
2 And it may well STILL be in print. It is not possible for me to keep up with this, but check with the publisher, Alfred A. Knopf. My personal copy is dated as published in 1983.
3 Abraham Lincoln, speaking on September 30, 1859 to the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society.