B & W: Zeichen des Niedergangs

Geschrieben von Andreas am 20. April 2003 22:47:23:

Quelle: http://www.darkage.fsnet.co.uk/WorldContradictions.htm

	19th century	20th century	Self-deceit
Imposing order	European empires directly ruled subject nations. They imposed their own laws and taxes. A substantial peace prevailed throughout the world.	The United States exerted influence through covert operations and economic pressure. Much of Africa that was well-ordered in colonial times degenerated into turmoil.	"We have the United Nations--that will keep the peace." (Reality: The UN is ineffectual. Whatever authority it has is parasitic on American power.)
Creating wealth	Industrialists created world-spanning enterprises. In Britain they set up a great cotton industry (though the country grows no cotton), buying raw materials in America, and selling finished goods in Asia.	Manufacturing declined before modern technology reached many poor countries. The world lacked entrepreneurs capable of bringing off an industrial revolution in its increasingly forsaken regions.	"We are now globalised--great prosperity will follow." (Reality: In relative terms, world trade has contracted since 1900. Firms try to get rich quick by exploiting cheap labour abroad.)
Maintaining legitimacy	Leading nations believed in the superiority of their culture and religion, and promoted them, without hesitation, around the world. Lesser countries emulated western ways and values.	Leading nations lost faith in the rightness of their conduct. Other peoples, e.g. in East Asia and the Islamic world, were increasingly vocal in rejecting western morals and behaviour.	"We are tolerant and enlightened." (Reality: Moral freedoms have their downside, in the form of selfishness and alienation. Many people need boundaries and a sense of purpose.)

The declining trends of the present era can be divided firstly into the processes of disintegration, disorganisation

and discohesion, and secondly into the processes that operate internally within each society and those that operate

on the international level affecting the world order as a whole.

Internal disintegration

• Despite larger police forces and prison populations,
  
  crime has increased since 1900 and clear-up rates have tended to fall. What were once serious crimes, like using
  
  obscene language, are now considered trivial.
  
  
• In Britain, police officers are more likely to
  
  be attacked than in the past. There are some forty unofficial 'no-go' areas. In the US crime rates have eased recently
  
  but nearly 1% of the male population is in jail. 'Zero-tolerance' policing, which was proving effective, is being
  
  attacked by campaigners.
  
  
• In many African countries, government control
  
  has disappeared in the last 20 years. Russia is plagued by a severe crime wave.
  
  
• Societies have become too complex to govern. The
  
  bureaucracies have a life of their own. The executive seems to be in charge but is relatively powerless.
  
  
• In Europe, governments are overruled by the European
  
  Commission and the European Court of Justice and so are no longer masters of their own destiny.
  
  
• Terrorism is rising again. Technological developments
  
  are tipping the balance back towards the individual malcontent, making it easy to wreak havoc with Semtex or home-made
  
  nerve gas. Computer networks are very vulnerable to disruption.
  
  
• CCTV technology has worked in favour of the authority
  
  but its impact is limited. Demonstrators have begun wearing gas masks, reducing the usefulness of tear gas for
  
  crowd control.
  
  
• The free flow of information, with modern media
  
  and communications technologies, makes it easier to spread dissent and harder for the authorities to divide and
  
  rule.
  
  
• Democratic ideas have taken root and challenge
  
  government authority. Such pressures are threatening the Arab monarchies. In the west, public policy seems to be
  
  perennially failing as people demand, and politicians promise, the impossible.
  
  
• The police are increasingly likely to find themselves
  
  in court for exceeding their powers. Respect for teachers and other authority figures is diminishing. School indiscipline
  
  is an epidemic throughout the developed world.
  
  
• Transnational corporations transcend borders and
  
  find it easy to defy national governments, avoiding tax and regulation. The biggest firms can practically dictate
  
  policy to weaker nations.
  
  
• The world's money supply is now out of the hands
  
  of any government, which has been a boon to organised crime. Private financial interests have access to huge funds
  
  that overwhelm the resources of individual governments.
  
  
• International non-governmental organisations have
  
  proliferated and maintain a persistent critique of governments large and small.
  
  
• Existing countries are breaking up. About a third
  
  of the world's nations face some kind of separatist demand.
  
  
• Frustration with existing political institutions
  
  is helping the popularity of politicians who present themselves as outsiders while embracing authoritarian and
  
  nationalistic platforms.
  
  
• Private security firms are undergoing a boom,
  
  indicating the failure of the political authority to guarantee order.
  
  
• Gated communities (residential areas surrounded
  
  by 'city walls' with guarded gates) are increasingly common, even in some developed nations. These also reflect
  
  government failure to keep order.
  
  
• Western militaries are increasingly hampered by
  
  the culture of rights. As robust military attitudes are subordinated to all the concerns and sensitivities of the
  
  day, recruitment, retention and combat readiness are plummeting. The protective capacity of these armies is being
  
  eroded.
  
  

Internal disorganisation

• Despite statistics suggesting great economic growth,
  
  people in many countries live worse than they did a few decades ago. According to the UN there were 70 countries
  
  in which average incomes in 1995 were less than in 1980.
  
  
• Absolute living standards may have grown overall,
  
  but the gap between rich and poor has expanded massively.
  
  
• In the rich countries, there is evidence of penny-pinching
  
  in such areas as school meals or the pay and conditions of public officials. This is dressed up as thrift and economic
  
  good sense.
  
  
• Private and public debt has grown, so that there
  
  is a growing gap between fantasy (debt) and reality (productive activity).
  
  
• The financial markets are getting larger, more
  
  complicated and less stable. Pension funds are huge pools of footloose capital that slosh about the system exaggerating
  
  economic movements.
  
  
• In Europe, pensions represent a growing burden
  
  that will become acute in the coming decades and that has been said to be capable of bankrupting the continent.
  
  
• The government bureaucracy has grown far faster
  
  than population. It is not entrepreneurial. Some government expenditure is beneficial, providing order and regulating
  
  economic activity, but the developed countries seem to be moving into an increasingly parasitic regime.
  
  
• Government regulation in such areas as health
  
  and safety is an increasing difficulty for businesses. The industrial revolution could never have got started under
  
  modern restrictions.
  
  
• Throughout the world, unemployment is higher than
  
  it has ever been, indicating a failure of entrepreneurship. Large numbers of people are on sick pay for stress-related
  
  illness.
  
  
• Although people generally imagine that technology
  
  is changing with increasing rapidity, the great days of innovation are long over. Modern gadgets are mostly superficial
  
  and do not compare with things like radio, aircraft and the motor car.
  
  
• Space exploration is failing to live up to its
  
  promise. Some technologies, like genetic engineering and nuclear power, are failing to make headway in the face
  
  of active opposition. They are condemned as unsafe despite being far safer than more familiar things that people
  
  accept every day.
  
  
• Environmentalist concerns have become mainstream
  
  and promote a mentality of stasis and equilibrium, in opposition to economic growth.
  
  
• The quality of education is increasingly under
  
  threat. Teachers are becoming hard to recruit and the sanctions they used to maintain order in the classroom have
  
  been all but completely removed. Even at university level, among the staff as well as the students, there is evidence
  
  for deteriorating standards. Literacy is declining and science courses, which pass on some of this civilisation's
  
  most characteristic knowledge, are proving hard to fill.
  
  

Internal discohesion

• Art is more concerned with confronting orthodox
  
  values than with promoting them. It is characterised by cheapness and hastiness. It is the art of gimmickry, or
  
  creativity without skill.
  
  
• Taste and fashion have become fragmented. People
  
  are compartmentalised by a proliferation of lifestyle choices.
  
  
• The notion of assimilating people to a single
  
  culture has been given up even as an ideal. Minority groups are encouraged to preserve their separate values and
  
  identities. Racists and multiculturalists share the same wrong-headed view that (for example) a black person, no
  
  matter what, can never be truly English.
  
  
• The 1980s saw individualism promoted as a political
  
  creed, and selfishness and social irresponsibility were almost held up as virtues. This may have been toned down
  
  lately, but selfishness persists in less ideological forms. Putting oneself first is seen to be desirable and something
  
  to be proud of.
  
  
• The amount of effort people invest in helping
  
  each other has been declining (although this sociological finding is disputed). People are less likely to socialise
  
  with their neighbours.
  
  
• Citizenship has been reinterpreted as being about
  
  rights rather than duties. People are no longer bound together in a framework of mutual and morally constraining
  
  duties, but set against each other in a framework of competitive and morally liberating rights. They are encouraged
  
  to feel aggrieved and seek redress.
  
  
• Selfishness is evident in the growth of personal
  
  injury litigation. Far from accepting suffering for the good of the community, people do not even expect to suffer
  
  for what they have largely brought upon themselves.
  
  
• Welfare entitlements are being cut back. Museums
  
  are less likely to be free. Philanthropy is in decline.
  
  
• The individualist philosophy dictates that the
  
  star players, in business, football or the arts, receive a larger share of the rewards.
  
  
• Every kind of social pathology--suicide, alcoholism,
  
  murder, mental disorder--has been on the rise over the last twenty years. These reflect the alienation, purposelessness
  
  and generally low respect for other human beings that go with individualism.
  
  
• Laws and taxes are increasingly invaded around
  
  the world, showing a sense of irresponsibility towards fellow citizens. Corruption among public servants is on
  
  the increase. In every walk of life, dishonest and venal behaviour is increasingly familiar. There has also been
  
  a rise in general crime.
  
  
• Technologies like recorded music and the home
  
  video have replaced more communal activities. The internet brings people together from all corners of the world
  
  but reduces the need for them to interact with their own household.
  
  
• There has been a weakening of the bonds between
  
  adults and youngsters. The family, the starting point for all social ties, is being discarded and downgraded. Illegitimate
  
  births have been increasing almost everywhere. The breakdown of the family is related to a whole host of other
  
  social defects, such as child poverty, child abuse, and juvenile crime.
  
  
• Male-female relations have become increasingly
  
  strained and difficult. Mixed workplaces are a minefield of potentially inappropriate behaviour. As women intrude
  
  on their former roles, men have been left looking somewhat superfluous.
  
  
• Meritocracy has helped to rupture social bonds
  
  between less privileged and more privileged. Competitive individualism has encouraged the notion that the poor
  
  are to blame for their failure.
  
  
• Separatist sentiments threaten what once seemed
  
  to be homogeneous populations. Most of these movements are barely a hundred years old. They are self-consciously
  
  regressive and not lingering hangovers from the past.
  
  
• Racial conflict is rising throughout the world.
  
  In many European countries, right wing parties are thriving again.
  
  
• The influence of the church is diminishing. Television
  
  is now a stronger presence in most people's lives and it projects a largely neutral perspective on most moral issues.
  
  People still need spiritual sustenance but they are finding it in a myriad of cults rather than in a communal church.
  
  Individualism has spread to religion.
  
  
• The church is also abandoning its own doctrine,
  
  to eliminate moral/repressive aspects. Adapting and becoming 'relevant' has not helped church attendances--quite
  
  the reverse. Islam is winning converts among young people, mostly women, who praise it for not shifting the goal
  
  posts.
  
  
• Western civilisation is being delegitimised as
  
  hopelessly oppressive and corrupt, being blamed for racism, sexism and imperialism. Past heroes, who made the west
  
  what it is, are demonised. Traditional institutions are less likely to be seen as a source of pride and more as
  
  bastions of shameful elitism.
  
  

International disintegration

• The European empires have broken up and the number
  
  of nations states has quadrupled.
  
  
• Western countries are losing the resolve to slaughter
  
  foreigners in the effort to impose their authority. The 'CNN factor' makes it necessary to limit even enemy casualties.
  
  
• The United States is increasingly less keen to
  
  bear the costs of global hegemony.
  
  
• The coherence of the western bloc is in question,
  
  with NATO being weakened by Europe-only defence initiatives.
  
  
• Contrary to common perception, the interventions
  
  in Kosovo and against Iraq's occupation of Kuwait reveal the limitations on western power. These operations against
  
  small, weak states both required a significant fraction of NATO assets and did not end with the west achieving
  
  its original demands.
  
  
• While the west has recently used aerial bombing
  
  to achieve (apparent) successes, it has had a hard time dealing with small, out-of-control militias, in Africa
  
  and elsewhere, that do not abide by known rules of warfare.
  
  
• Subordinate regions, especially East Asia, are
  
  increasingly ready to challenge western authority. Japanese people are dissatisfied with their status. China is
  
  growing rapidly in capabilities and self-assertion.
  
  
• The world is not standing still. Non-western countries
  
  are continually learning from western operations, developing their arsenals and tactics so as not to be the Serbias
  
  or Iraqs of the future.
  
  
• There is a less easy peace throughout the world.
  
  Many countries in Africa and elsewhere are tearing themselves apart while the western powers make little or no
  
  effort to intervene.
  
  
• Private soldiering services are a growth industry
  
  in an increasingly unstable world.
  
  
• The United Nations is no substitute for a peacemaking
  
  hegemony based on geopolitical power. It has no independent authority and no military forces other than those that
  
  are loaned to it. Its members can apply opprobrium rather than force. The UN could not discipline the US and other
  
  prominent members.
  
  
• The UN is essentially a way of leveraging American
  
  power--instead of dominating the world directly, the US dominates the UN agenda, which is an easier task. NATO,
  
  the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund operate in a similar way.
  
  
• Western technologies have spread to every corner
  
  of the planet, eroding the west's advantage. Information technologies, which are commercially and militarily important,
  
  are inherently cheap and ubiquitous. They are also peculiarly vulnerable to small-scale, terroristic groups.
  
  
• International organised crime is increasing, reflecting
  
  the weakness of international control. The drugs organisations are world players and pose a growing challenge to
  
  western hegemony. Piracy is returning to the high seas.
  
  
• Western armies have been shrinking while those
  
  of other regions have been expanding.
  
  
• Nuclear weapons are beginning to proliferate.
  
  The US and China are working on more usable forms of nuclear wepaons. The enthusiasm for missile defence shows
  
  that nuclear war is perceived as a returning threat.
  
  
• There are numerous potential war triggers emerging,
  
  ready to spark conflict if the west's peacekeeping capacity declines. The World War Two losers are beginning to
  
  question the settlement that arose from it, and are reopening the issues over which it was fought.
  
  
• European integration is creating growing tensions
  
  both in member countries and in aspirant member countries that feel their candidacy is being treated with insufficient
  
  seriousness.
  
  

International disorganisation

• In relative terms, i.e. taking into account population
  
  size and overall national product, most countries are less economically interdependent today than they were in the
  
  nineteenth century. A proliferation of regional common markets has made trade more compartmentalised, less global.
  
  
• The west's prosperity is increasingly based on
  
  credit and the entrepreneurship of others. Some countries are losing faith in western credit-worthiness.
  
  
• Crises in Russia and East Asia have revealed deep
  
  strains in the system of international finance. The world may have bounced back from recent threats of economic
  
  meltdown but George Soros argues that this has only left the underlying situation deeply unsound.
  
  
• Businesses are treating the liberalisation of
  
  trade (removal of tariffs and of restrictions on capital movement) as an opportunity to get rich quick. Instead
  
  of creating jobs in great new industries, they export old jobs to where labour is cheap. The trends that critics
  
  denounce as 'globalisation' are really attributable to this lack of international entrepreneurship.
  
  
• The economic co-operation zones inhibit trade
  
  as much as promote it. Like Imperial China, the European Union imposes safety restrictions and standardisation
  
  in a way that stamps out diversity, initiative and originality. Its Common Agricultural Policy quite deliberately
  
  pays farmers to destroy crops and leave land idle.
  
  
• There is an underlying tide of protectionism throughout
  
  the world, despite the existence of the World Trade Organisation. Tariff barriers have fallen dramatically but
  
  trade is restricted by quotas, technical standards, and health and safety regulations. Trade sanctions are an increasingly
  
  popular instrument.
  
  
• The wealth gap between the richest and poorest
  
  nations is large and growing larger. The third world's relative poverty is a recent phenomenon and is by no means
  
  inevitable.
  
  
• Despite decades of concern with development, at
  
  the United Nations, World Bank and other organisations, little progress has been made and poverty, famine and civil
  
  strife persist. Western aid has been of questionable value and motivation, being used as an instrument of foreign
  
  policy and with the real beneficiaries being western contractors.
  
  
• The poor countries now owe enormous sums to the
  
  rich. They have little to show for the massive influx of funds, which were largely stolen by dictators or spent
  
  on white elephant projects. All the major debtors are in default. Debt forgiveness helps the western financial
  
  institutions by giving them a face-saving way out of the situation created by their own ill-judged lending decisions,
  
  at the expense of western taxpayers. It does not help the third world populations for whom debt is not forgiven
  
  completely but simply made less ludicrously disproportionate.
  
  

International discohesion

• The long-standing tendency for the size of social
  
  units to increase has stalled. Despite their membership of the European Union, France, Britain and Germany show
  
  no signs of merging into a common form with a common language and common tastes. Countries may be queuing up to
  
  join the EU, but not to lose their national identities--some aspirants (e.g. Slovakia) have only just broken away
  
  from larger units.
  
  
• Associations that have bound nations together
  
  across cultural boundaries are becoming less convincing, and nations are reverting to type. America's ties with
  
  Japan, South Korea and Pakistan are all weakening.
  
  
• Relations between nations at the United Nations
  
  have become increasingly conflictual as membership has grown.
  
  
• The spectacle of Muslims allying with the west
  
  to turn back Iraq's occupation of Kuwait suggested international cohesion. However, Muslim populations were actually
  
  equivocal about western involvement despite the victim being Muslim as well as the aggressor.
  
  
• Ethnic conflict has been rising steadily around
  
  the world. Old enmities are flaring up--Greek/Turkish; Malay/Chinese; Islamic/Christian; Arab/Israeli.
  
  
• East Asians are growing resentful at the patronising
  
  treatment doled out by the west, while China and Japan are increasingly serious rivals.
  
  
• Contrary to popular assumption, the spread of
  
  democracy and the free market does not make countries inherently pro-western. When the west seemed all-powerful,
  
  countries did indeed adopt its values as they adopted its techniques. Yet they have no desire to be permanently
  
  subordinate and they have been gaining renewed confidence in promoting their own cultural values.
  
  
• The west's ability to apply moral pressure in
  
  the international system is undermined by its transparent hypocrisy. Its ethical record is deplorable, not only
  
  in the era of colonialism but also more recently when it has tolerated oppressive regimes so long as they pursue
  
  policies broadly favourable to western interests and destabilised popular ones for not doing so.
  
  
• A mutual enmity between the Islamic and Christian
  
  worlds is increasingly felt on both sides. Westerners regard Muslims as brutal, violent and repressive. Muslims,
  
  with arguably greater justification, have much the same view of the west. Islam is not inherently extremist. Its
  
  modern fundamentalism is a form of cultural resistance.
  
  
• There is a divergence of interest between relatively
  
  rich and poor nations. As Francis Fukuyama observes, people in rich countries seem to care more about baby seals
  
  than mass starvation in Africa. Aid is shrinking as a proportion of national product. As the disadvantaged countries
  
  become better off in absolute terms, their ability to defy the west is growing and the clash of interests has potentially
  
  serious consequences.
  
  
  
  

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