The fall of western civilization

[Shaka_Khan]

I think you’re being pessimistic because you're used to having the West as being the lone superpower, which is now losing that status. If China or India becomes a superpower, that doesn't have to mean the West will no longer be one. It could mean that the West is no longer 1st place, but I don't think that's a bad thing.

It’s true that China and India have the potential to become the most powerful countries. But I don’t think the West will be way behind if that happens. The world is more connected economically and with information than it was before. It’s not like when the West surpassed China. China didn’t know what was going on with Europe. So China thought there'd be nothing wrong if she went on an isolationist path and not gain outside ideas in the future. Nowadays, the West would know if China or India becomes dangerously powerful. If that happens, the West will wake up and do something with themselves. Also, countries like the US are heavily connected economically with the world. If that country suffers economically, then much of the world will feel the shockwave.

And Asia has a weakness too. I used to think that the West was in decline and would be surpassed by Asia. But then, Asia suffered from a financial crisis. Later on, many Western countries recovered from a long recession and had a long period of robust economies.

If there is another world war between the Western powers, then that will bring a great decline to the West. But it doesn't look like the West is looking for another WW. The 21st century is different from the past. If the world continues to work together, then the whole world will survive on and on.

1. trying to get as many enemies as possible around in the world, at a time when we're losing economical power to China and India, i.e. a time when we should rather seek to decrease our number of enemies

I think it's too early to consider China and India as our future enemies. There's enough time to avoid a bad relationship.

2. we are allowing immigration of people who already hate us because of no.1. When they come to our countries, we throw them away in ghettoes, where they a. start hating us even more, b. often become criminals, so that we start hating them even more, and in return they hate us even more. The percentage of population in our countries who hate our countries are getting close to 50% or higher.

Immigrants have been entering the US for a long time. From the Africans to the Irish to the Mexicans, a lot of them started their life in America with a difficult life. The US is still doing fine now.

3. those who still pretend to be patriots are not patriots, but expansionists who wish for more wars in order for their shares in weapons manufacturers to increase in value, or for being able to rape foreigners, or to be able to listen to the news and hear of battle victories for the country, to be able to deny its decline on the strategical level, even though these battle victories make the strategical level decline go faster and makes it impossible to turn around

I feel sad for the soldiers who are in the war zone, but overall, it's Iraq and Afghanistan who are suffering. Western countries are being untouched, and terrorism is quite rare in those countries.
In addition, the technological gap of weapons is much greater than when Rome faced her enemies. If the terrorists win, they win because the Western powers no longer have the stomach for war. The Western military won't be beaten in a major battle.

4. totalitarian tendencies are rising, the anti-terror laws in Britain, the "Patriot act" in USA, and a rise of surveillance all over Europe and America. More and more people get arrested without a crime, and disgusting camps are kept open despite that they are publically known about.

China is not a democratic country. But like you said before, China is rising. Democracy is of course the desirable way. But as China and many other countries have proven us, a non-democratic country can grow stronger too.

5. education and motivation among younger people increased up to the 80ies or so, but now it's declining. People are immensely unmotivated and uneducated. The society system gives most people a sense of hopelessness. The technological edge of the western countries is being lost to China, India and others

It’s because countries like the US are wealthy, so kids don’t feel eager for education as much as a Chinese or an Indian student would. If more and more Americans can’t get a decent job, I’m sure the students will wake up and start studying. I heard that in the old days of Western countries, you could get a decent job without college. Meanwhile, people in 3rd World countries needed a good education to avoid a poor life (and in a worst case to avoid starvation). And Chinese and Indian parents tend to push their kids more in education.

6. an upper class has developed that is neither well educated, morally strong, or patriotic. It is prepared to destroy its own country to make its family richer in the short term. This upper class, as all upper classes, has great influence over the politics of the country. Additionally, politicians of today are increasingly often full-time politicians, than people who have experience of normal life, and thus they know little about the things they make decisions about. They close the political arena to all but themselves. You have to be rich from start to get into this. Until you've risen in position high enough you have no salary, so they can easily keep you out by making sure every political duty takes your full time - so you can't have another work at the same time. Most politicians of today are sons of politicians a generation ago. The feeling of these "clans" that the state is their hands is getting stronger and stronger. The politicians of opposing parties feel more in common with each other, than with the groups in the people their party's ideology is to represent

It’s difficult for an entrepreneur to start a new business in an advanced country because of the competition with big businesses that are already there. Anyway, I don’t think this has anything to do with the decline of the West.

8. the conservatives are no longer people who want to conserve the culture, but people who have less knowledge of our culture, than of the models of guns our weapons manufacturers produce. Likewise, the non-conservatives put honor into looking at the own culture with contempt. And those who do like our culture, find that our greatest works of art were made before the era of democracy and freedom from ww2 to the 80ies, and will too steer us away from these good things.

While I think it’s good to conserve the culture, I don’t think losing it will bring a decline to a country. Look at how much culture that the wealthy Asians lost.