January 10th, 2008

Now that I've built up a head of steam, I want to keep this going. Today is part 3 of How the West Was Lost. But this one's a wee bit difficult to wrap my brain around. I mean, the thought is there, and the impression is true, but I haven't quite got the words yet to express it.

So, naturally, I use an analogy first, sort of as a way of spiralling in on the truth. (Well, the truth as I see it :) )

Let's first think about popular music in North America. In the 1970s and 1980s I used to listen to the same latest pop songs everyone else did, including those by BTO, Supertramp, Fleetwood Mac, Queen, etc. etc. etc. Now, for the time, those bands were popular because they had something new (or retro-new) and fresh-sounding. Whatever their schtick was, they were at the forefront of music because their sound or their songwriting, maybe just their image (a lá Bowie or Madonna) was new and somehow exciting and different. They may have spawned a million imitators, but they got there first. That "first arrival" was critical to their success.

But ten years after, if the bands themselves didn't innovate, they became yesterday's news. They could write exactly the same kinds of songs using the same chords, notes, lyrics, and sounds as before, but they were suddenly not so interesting. By, say, the early 90s, people were no longer interested in music of the 80s (and not yet ready for 80s nostalgia) so a new set of bands emerged, like Nirvana or Pearl Jam or Green Day, Spice Girls (heaven help us), or Britney Spears (heaven help her) etc. etc. etc.

And, ten years after that, the grunge or 90s pop sound itself became passé. Those bands who didn't innovate are finding the most popular of their songs from the last decade slowly making their way onto the "classic rock" playlists. But their new material, if it sounds the same as ever, is disappointing to fans and themselves. Their time came and went, not because they changed, but because the popular ear grew tired and accustomed to them. Too bad, so sad, hope you enjoyed your time in the sun.

OK, so the same can be said of entire empires, albeit on a much larger scale. The examples abound. The British Empire had something special: Britannia ruled the waves—not necessarily because they were the first, but because they were the biggest and the best by creating then applying the British Naval Tradition. Which was an extension of culturally-advanced social science thinking around the time, led by British philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes (read his work Leviathan if you ever get a chance ... you'll see just how little people have changed in the last 500 years).

They were Imperially-minded, sure, but that's nothing special: all folks from the greatest leaders of great empires down to the poorest and dirtiest beggars wallowing in the dust of the smallest and most pointless of two-bit nations all want to expand their horizons. No, ruling the waves gave the British Empire the edge in order to be expansionist, not its aspirations to expand.

But after a few dozen or so years—a century, tops—their Naval Rule over the world lost its glitz and glitter, so to speak. Heck, everyone had ships and went off to find foreign lands to occupy. The world was running out of poor savages to be saved from themselves. Worse, some of those territories were getting stroppy and wanting their independence back (e.g., India, Ireland always) or (heaven help us) autonomy (e.g., America, Canada).*

And, as I already said, by then they had ships of their own! There goes the neighbourhood; Britannia no longer ruled the waves, and thus her decline from empire status began.

Empires before had gone the same route and following the same pattern, though, of course, the details are always different. The point is, once that edge that allows empires to grow and flourish is gone, the empire crumbles.

Say, you know what the Western Empire's great advantage over the rest of the world was? I do. You should think about it yourself before you read the next paragraph ... if for no other reason, than to see if (or how much) you think along the same lines that I do.

OK, ready? It's not engineering or "high" technology (communication especially), though that's certainly part of it. It's not broad resource-based expansion, though that's part of it too. It's not greatly-improved transportation, though ... well, that made it possible. Nope, it's formalization of production ... what we sometimes simplify as "mass production" (though that's really only part of it too). The Great White Western Empire learned how to build ... stuff ... really well and really quickly. And now all us middle class folks have lots of that stuff. And because of all that stuff (and people buying it), a free-enterprise democratic loosely-couple religious society like America, Germany, or Britain can rise and temporarily flourish.

Anyhow, the Western Empire has already ceded world dominance in this category. The Western Empire no longer is the only show in town when it comes to Building Stuff for Consumers. And because of that it's becoming the 1980s pop music of the empire business. Simply everyone, dahling, has highly-efficient factories at the head of fast delivery chains held together by well-maintained communication channels. The West is no longer special in that regard and, because that was the currency it grew on and stayed strong with, it is a logical—and inevitable—conclusion that the West has started its decline into decrepitude.

* I'm not saying they actually did get their independence right away, I'm just saying that they started wanting it more -er- vocally.

That's it for today, but I'm glad I'm getting these ideas down. My rants have proven invaluable to me in clarifying, for my own edification, what I think is going on in the world. Part 4 coming soon.

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