Dear Spengler, There is
truth in your articles. Have you already tried to
address your thoughts to dying tribes to your own
country? If there isn't any possibility not to die,
isn't the extinction easier to bear if you continue to
try to work against it? To give you some hope: I am part
of the younger generation. I want to survive, if not in
person, at least as part of the cultural heritage.
Besides writing the truth to a global audience, couldn't
you use some of your intellectual power to push the
project of survival in your own country? This is not
against other countries. Is not the survival of all
tribes a question of wise politics, only? Ge Si
Wen (Mar 9, '04)
Dear Spengler, I happened to stumble
over an old editorial of yours, Why Europe chooses extinction
[Apr 8, '03], in which you state that "in 200 years,
French and German will be spoken exclusively in hell".
Not at all unlikely. However, considering that the not
so "prosperous and peaceful nations" of that future age
who choose to do business as usual and be fruitful and
multiply and industrialize will have turned the planet
into an overcrowded, war-ridden ecological wasteland, it
is not impossible that, 200 years from now, all
languages will be spoken in hell. Bernd
Ohm Berlin (Mar 10,
'04)
Dear Ge Si Wen, To act,
rather than to complain, is an outstanding trait of
Chinese culture. You shame me, a Westerner, by asking
what I do to turn back the tide of extinction in my own
country. Bernd Ohm (letter above) shows just how
difficult it may be for some tribes to survive. In the
face of evidence that they will disappear, most
Europeans, like the glum Mr Ohm, aver that nothing can
be done to prevent it. Others, eg, the Nigerian Muslims
who unleashed a polio epidemic rather than use American
vaccines, do not consciously seek their own doom. But
their paranoia (in this case the delusion that polio
vaccine is an American plot to make them sterile)
accomplishes the same thing. Not so much the "clash of
civilizations", in Samuel Huntington’s sense, but rather
the death of civilizations, will dominate the agenda of
the 21st century. Civilizations that choose to disappear
will not act rationally upon their interests, because
they have no enduring interests for which to act.
Survival, as you say, is a question of wise politics,
but wisdom long since has deserted those who do not wish
to survive.
Contrary to Mr Ohm, it is not the
end of the world, but only the end of him. European
civilization (in both its Western and "Orthodox"
branches) stands in extreme peril for demographic
reasons. That does not preclude a last, embittered stand
for survival. As the French ban on wearing Muslim
headscarves in public schools suggests, old Europe will
at some point draw a line. Whether Islamic extremists
planted the March 11 bombs in Madrid I do not know, but
an Algerian War of sorts fought out on European soil
remains possible some time during the next several
years. African civilization is in peril for a variety of
reasons. While Muslim birthrates now are among the
world's highest, the Islamic world feels a dreadful
sense of vulnerability, leading in some cases to
self-destructive desperation, as in Nigeria. The same
can said of the suicide bombers.
Cultural
heritage is a different matter. Classical Athenian
tragedy now belongs to all mankind, although no devotees
yet live of the old Dionysian rites. The ancient plays
are performed in translation before audiences who never
will feel the solemnity and dread of the original
audience. Something irreplaceable has been lost, namely
the living connection to the artistic material. For that
matter, European classical music flourishes among
Asians, who comprise half of the student population at
America's best music conservatories. In the last
generation Asians have entered the ranks of the great
interpreters. Yet Asians never will hear J S Bach's
St Matthew Passion the way German churchgoers
still can on rare occasions: as sacred music-drama
enacted by themselves in their own Church.
America is the object of the world's
fascination, but America itself suffers from amnesia
brought on by the traumatic shock of its Civil War.
American conservatives blatulate about the virtues of
Western Civilization, but cannot quote a line of Homer
or Dante in translation, let alone in the original. They
feel a vague sense of responsibility to tradition and
authority, but would not recognize WC if it crawled up
their pants-leg. "Western Civilization" is dying, as it
eventually must. Western Civilization to begin with was
an unstable amalgam of mutually irreconcilable elements
drawn from Greek and Hebrew traditions. America itself
is not a product of Western Civilization, but the result
of extremist rejection of Western Civilization by
English Puritan separatists, who chose the Hebrew over
the Greek aspect.
For Asians who wish to learn
what America might teach them, today's Americans are a
poor source of information. Last week I provided one
example (Mel Gibson's Lethal Religion,
March 9, 2004). America's founders as well as the
instigators of all of America's major Protestant
denominations forbade making images of Jesus, for
identification of Jesus with a specific ethnic group
undermined Christianity's aspirations to be a universal
religion (and by implication, America’s aspirations to
be the home of the New Israel). A few serious Calvinists
know this quite well, and still preach against idolatry
in general and Mel Gibson's awful film in particular.
For the most part, leaders of America's religious
denominations have lost interest in the intellectual
foundations of their religion. Getting the believers in
the door and keeping off the chill wind of secularism
are the extent of their concerns. For them, Gibson's
application of Hollywood techniques to religion is a
gift horse into whose mouth they do not look too deeply.
Some day Chinese universities will hire Western
cultural historians and Chinese graduate students will
attempt to make sense of what all of this was about.
Until then these issues will remain murky.
To
return to your question, what will foster survival or at
least delay extinction in the West? It is easy to get
the undivided attention of the Americans, at least for a
moment or two, when their cultural limitations manifest
themselves as strategic weakness (Why America is losing the intelligence
war, Nov 11, 2004). It may be somewhat easier
to get the attention of the Europeans if indeed the
terror war will be fought on their soil. Too much
historic memory may be lost, however, to expect
Westerners to work through the deeper problems that
brought them to the present crisis. We all will play
such roles as the stage permits us in the unfolding
drama of our times. I thank you for your challenge and
wish you good luck in yours.
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