The Course Of Western Civilization . . .

[Wake-up!]

. . . according to Butler Shaeffer. Below are a few excerpts from a long post.

. . . It is not a coincidence that the collapse of Western Civilization is being accompanied by a rampant mindlessness and reptilian reaction to events so contrary to the means by which this culture was created. Civilizations are created by individuals; they are destroyed by collectives. Creative acts do not simply happen, but require energized minds capable of focusing on subject matters often over extended periods of time . . .

. . . Whether Western Civilization can be considered extinct, in a terminal state, or simply on a downhill course, is subject to differing interpretations. Suffice it to say that our culture is beset by rigor mortis, including its organizational systems; its creative vibrancy is gone; it no longer produces the values necessary for its survival; nor does it continue to meet the expectations of those who have embraced its qualities or purposes in benefitting human beings . . .

. . . Civilizations are sustained only by maintaining respect for the inviolability of the individual and his or her interests, the conditions that were essential for the creation of cultures. They begin to collapse into divisive and undifferentiated collectives wherein autonomous individuality is transformed into group identities and purposes, with human energies and resources subject to centralized, coercive direction. Violence and other dehumanizing behavior give a false impression of liveliness and resiliency to the destabilizing forces of change . . .

. . . As the brain and its creative mind are what most distinguishes the human species from other life forms, it is evident that there may be an incompatibility between individualized and collective purposes. Because thinking is unavoidably an individual, personally-controlled activity, the ends and actions of millions of human beings generate diverse patterns of human behavior . . .

. . . In contrast, collective systems are premised on obedience to uniformities of thought and action, prescribed and coercively enforced by vertically-structured authorities. Individually-directed organizations that generate horizontal networks in service to diverse interests, are inconsistent with the uniformities upon which collectives depend to maintain their monopolies over human behavior. Epistemological anarchy, in which individuals are free to think, speak, ask questions, and communicate with one another, disrupt the invariability necessary to maintain established interests and systems. In order to overcome this incompatibility, large, collective systems have created the political state, which has been invested with a legal monopoly on the use of violence to enforce their collective interests . . .

. . . It should surprise no thoughtful person to discover that, as Western Civilization goes through its terminal state, so many men and women are unable to respond with intelligent questioning. With minds so long anesthetized by opinion polls, bumper-sticker slogans, censorship, and other substitutes for rational, empirically analyzed, and spiritually grounded thinking, one would expect to see the true believers in the ideologies of state power return with proposals to solve every social problem – whether real or imagined. The more disordered the consequences of centralized power, the more insistent statists are for placing as much coercive authority in the hands of people like themselves, over the lives of others . . .

. . . With the 2020 presidential circus arising, the true believers in the ideologies of collective power once again loose upon a dupable public a gaggle of nearly two dozen men and women who share an ignorance of history as well as an economic illiteracy. Those whose intellects rise no higher than to mouth empty bromides or engage in name-calling, find a faux intellectual respectability in such socialistic sloganeering as "justice," "fairness," "equality," and "free" goods and services of every stripe . . .


The complete article is found here;  https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/05/butler-shaffer/thinkin-rots-the-mind/