[Kalkin]

Posting does not constitute a blanket endorsement of the ideas presented. Only that they're interesting. I agree in part.

A Post Western World? A Disturbing Interview With Prof. Harry Redner

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In our view, this all ties into a major cycle of history that has been with us for some time, and which has been gaining traction since the 1990s: the end of Western Civilization and the transition towards a globalized society. There is some confusion between the two terms, where the latter is often perceived as the continuation of the former, but in reality the two have been in conflict for almost 100 years.

Right. Globalized society was to replace "western" society. Arguably, also Chinese civilization, Japanese civilization, Indian civilization, etc. The ones that remain outside the NWO might survive if nuclear war is avoided.

The model I would have in my own mind would be the Soviet Union, where European culture was replaced wholesale with soviet culture. The major difference being economic more than cultural. Both the soviet union and the NWO ultimately producing soul-destroying art, literature, music, etc.

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There is a syndrome of features, most of which these early civilizations display, more or less completely in each case, such as the rise of cities, the formation of states, class differentiations, the invention of methods of writing and organized religion, together with a mythological creed or pantheon.

The class differentiation is problematic. In a hunter-gatherer society, the man with the highest status and the man with the lowest status go hunting together. And you don't get status without earning it in some sense relevant to hunter-gatherers (possibly by assassinating your predecessor...but perhaps also by defending the members of your group and keeping them fed...).

Contrast with civilized empires where there are emperors who are mentally ill or cognitively deficient, and geniuses who are stuck in slavery. The longer a civilization lasts, the bigger the disconnect between power and competence seems to get. People inherit--through various mechanisms--wealth that they did not, and could not, create.

This tends to manifest as parasitism. The parasitism increases over time.

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However, my interest is not in these early civilizations but only in the later, more developed ones, those that survived until the start of the twentieth century. These are the so-called post-Axial Age civilizations....

These have mostly lasted till our time. But since the start of the twentieth century at the very latest they were undermined and came under attack from many quarters in a general disruption of established traditions all over the world.

The question is why they came under attack. He doesn't answer in this interview. It seems as though it were something like the French Revolution, when the revolutionaries who took over the government thought that they no longer needed potentially competing institutions that its predecessors had partnered with. It seems as if private institutions are absolutely necessary for a healthy culture.

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The key text of this civilization is and remains the Judaeo-Christian Bible, which is why it is often referred to as a Judaeo-Christian Civilization.

There is no such thing. The Jewish bible does not contain the New Testament. The Christian canon does not include the Talmud or the Kabbala.

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Politically, what made European Civilization so unusual was that it never unified into a single empire, as all the others had done at one time or another...This meant that no single authority could ever maintain complete control over all of Europe and no single orthodoxy in respect of anything could prevail everywhere.

Past tense. Most of it is now consolidated into a single shadow empire. The problem with a global empire is that one mistake at the top dooms the whole civilization, instead of just one corner of it.

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ET: It can be said that Western Civilization reached its pinnacle just before the First World War. Clearly the subsequent loss of entire generations of would-be scientists, teachers, civil servants, doctors, priests, engineers, patriots, mothers, fathers and children in devastating conflicts was something the West never really recovered from.

HR: Certainly the First World War was the proximal inciting cause for a process of civilizational destruction in Europe and the rest of the world that is still going on.

It was not so much the killing in itself, though that was bad enough – a large part of a generation of young men was sacrificed – as the demoralization and loss of faith in the enlightenment values of liberalism and democracy by which Europe had been guided in the nineteenth century and towards which most countries were moving.

He drank the kool-aid. Genetics matter. Part of the impetus for the wars was to replace the livestock that built the infrastructure with new livestock. The assumption is that once the infrastructure is built, it lasts forever and can even evolve on its own.

NB the meaning of "Liberal" has changed over time and space. Used to mean something approximately like modern concept of Libertarian. Then in 20th century USA was used as a synonym for Socialist. In some countries it's even cloudier since they assume that 18th century Liberals really would have evolved into Socialists.

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...the First World War was an accident of history...

Another swig of kool-aid.

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the Great Depression. In a sense, the latter, too, was the outcome of an accident of economic history, just like the Global Financial Crisis we have recently experienced.

Apparently he's a historian not an economist. In particular the current economic crisis was an inevitability that has been widely foreseen. Even Alan Greenspan realized it was coming, though he was arrogant enough to think he could do something tricky to prevent it.

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You also talk about the role that some prominent European philosophers played in the formation of these destructive ideologies

This part of the discussion got a little weird for my tastes. I disagree with pretty much all of this part. I am aware that the Nazis gave lip service to various German philosophers but it was for purely tribal/nationalistic reasons. I'm pretty sure that Hitler never actually read Fichte.

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Marxism is a very broad church which can accommodate a huge variety of thinkers, social movements and political parties.

They're all socialist, which is all that matters. Any flavor of socialism will accelerate cancerous government that civilization eventually dies of. There is no nice, warm, fluffy version that will keep things running smoothly. Dream on.

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The relation between Marxism and Christianity is an extremely complex historical issue that went through many phases from outright hostility to mutual accommodation.

It's never mutual. Christianity is sometimes infused with Marxism. Marxism is never infused with Christianity. Marxism won, full stop.

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On the other hand, state education seems to have been largely a failure and has led to considerable miseducation in many respects

Right. This is necessarily so, as government by its very nature is prone to "dirty goals" where the original goal starts getting subverted by competing goals. For example, using schools to generate employment, thereby creating vast and inefficient bureaucracies that would be hard to manage even with competent management--which is usually not the case, because you get government jobs by profiling correctly, not by being particularly competent.

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ET: In addition to developing its own brand of destructive political philosophies, the West unleashed upon the world the Forces of Modernity, as you call them. These are generally perceived as an extension of Western Civilization, but you contend that they are now destroying it. Can you describe these forces and why they are problematic for civilization?

HR: By the term “Forces of Modernity” I mean the crucial economic, political, cognitive and technical respects, according to which nearly all societies in the world are now organized and managed, namely modern capitalism, the modern state, science and technology.

Hmmm...sort of...yes modernity is a cancer that will destroy civilization, but I don't think he's defined it quite right.

For comparison, contrast, and a different perspective on the same issue, I recommend

Biohistory: Decline and Fall of the West Kindle Edition

by one of his compatriots, Jim Penman.

[nomadbrah]

Interesting, but try to add an introductory paragraph summing up what we're looking at and your thoughts and brief conclusions, it's a bit difficult to follow if you haven't read it.

[Max Henrich]

Keep in mind: The various non-white people also dislike each other. There's no need to think that they'll form a big anti-white coalition one day that fights us to death.