Civilizational Decline and Apologies
Posted: Thu May 28, 2015 11:41 am
Prompted by the apology stuff in the "Texas Rising' Thread, but doesn't really belong there.
When one read Victor Davis Hanson's stuff related to the changes in California's Central Valley over time, you realize that we are seeing the replacement of a superior culture by an inferior one. The civil society and the Rule of Law no longer apply there. I doubt that we will ever see an apology by the victorious culture there.
He has written numerous columns (and books) about this. Of all his writings, this is the area that I find most interesting. The following is from his most recent column on that topic.
http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/th ... pocalypto/
some interesting pull quotes.
>>>I’ve lost count of how many pumps have been vandalized over the last decade. Some people play golf after work and weekends, but out here the pastime is to drive out to the countryside to wreck things for a few dollars of copper and bronze. It reminds me of the Ottomans in Greece, who pried off the lead seals over the iron clamps that had held together the marble blocks of ancient Greek temples and walls. The Turks, who could make little but scavenge a lot, got their few ounces of lead for bullets. In the exchange, the exposed iron marble clamps rusted and fell apart, ruining the antiquities that had theretofore survived 2,000 years of natural wear and tear. One civilization builds and invests, quite a different one destroys and consumes.
When these things happen, no one calls the sheriff, the insurance company, or any authority. The problem is so ubiquitous, and the old civilized infrastructure so ossified, that it is impossible to address the vandalism and chronic violation of civilization’s basic tenets.
I think that we’ve come full circle in California: from the premodern Wild West of the 19th century to a decadent postmodernism that is every bit as feral, though the roughness of ascension is always preferable to its counterpart in decline.
When one read Victor Davis Hanson's stuff related to the changes in California's Central Valley over time, you realize that we are seeing the replacement of a superior culture by an inferior one. The civil society and the Rule of Law no longer apply there. I doubt that we will ever see an apology by the victorious culture there.
He has written numerous columns (and books) about this. Of all his writings, this is the area that I find most interesting. The following is from his most recent column on that topic.
http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/th ... pocalypto/
some interesting pull quotes.
>>>I’ve lost count of how many pumps have been vandalized over the last decade. Some people play golf after work and weekends, but out here the pastime is to drive out to the countryside to wreck things for a few dollars of copper and bronze. It reminds me of the Ottomans in Greece, who pried off the lead seals over the iron clamps that had held together the marble blocks of ancient Greek temples and walls. The Turks, who could make little but scavenge a lot, got their few ounces of lead for bullets. In the exchange, the exposed iron marble clamps rusted and fell apart, ruining the antiquities that had theretofore survived 2,000 years of natural wear and tear. One civilization builds and invests, quite a different one destroys and consumes.
When these things happen, no one calls the sheriff, the insurance company, or any authority. The problem is so ubiquitous, and the old civilized infrastructure so ossified, that it is impossible to address the vandalism and chronic violation of civilization’s basic tenets.
I think that we’ve come full circle in California: from the premodern Wild West of the 19th century to a decadent postmodernism that is every bit as feral, though the roughness of ascension is always preferable to its counterpart in decline.