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C. R. Wiley's avatar

I think this is generally correct. Something I’ve been ruminating on is whether or not we will see the return of the holy man in the spirit of Elijah, John the Baptist, or Anthony of the Desert. They were living rebukes to worlds that stood apart from.

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Spouting Thomas's avatar

A lot to agree with, but if I was going to challenge any of these points, it would be "West to East". If I understand the point correctly, it's that Russia and China and perhaps some other Asian societies offer some sort of global model amidst the West's decadence. I do think they offer a political model and alliance structure for autocrats, but their decadence is as deep as ours, if not deeper. In that sense, maybe the danger of focusing exclusively on the challenges of Western civilization is that much of the present civilizational crisis is, in fact, global.

The Ukraine War has done a lot to tarnish Russia's image. Not only for its aggression, but perhaps even more so, for its incompetence. Whatever there was to admire in fascism or Communism prior to WW2 (and for many people, there was a lot), there is far, far less of it in today's Russia. Or for that matter China. In terms of state capacity, Russia is vastly diminished compared to its capabilities for most of the Cold War, and this has little to do with its reduced population. Their system simply doesn't work.

Something missing in this discussion is fertility. Which I expect to be one of the defining features of the age to come, if not THE defining feature. China is already facing a declining population. It's looking as though the East (or at least the Far East) will be hit harder than the West on this dimension, and in short order, the West will look to the East primarily as a picture of its own future as a senescent and dwindling people.

This is actually where "the Global South" is still a relevant way to think about things, because while sections of it have been hit as hard by the fertility collapse as the "Global North", many other sections have not, and they will perhaps bottom out at a higher level.

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