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Why the West Rules

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Clarissa

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Usually, at the World Cup I root for any or all Latin American teams. But now I’m rooting against them. They aren’t supportive of Ukraine and are acting all pouty and unnecessary.

We are seeing the answer to the question of “why West rules” right before our eyes. Nobody else takes the initiative. Nobody else is proactive. China, India, Latin America, the Middle East – they have no ideas, they don’t attempt to take the leadership role. Then they’ll moan about colonialism but it’s obvious to everybody that their subjected status is of their own choosing.

10 responses to “Why the West Rules”

  1. PaulS Avatar
    PaulS

    Historic oppression definitely existed, but at some point new ideas are needed.
    https://www.politicsweb.co.za/opinion/a-country-losing-its-mind

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Great article! That’s exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about. Pouting, pouting, pouting, stoking their sense of self-importance. This ensures that the past is never over and the future never comes.

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      1. PaulS Avatar
        PaulS

        It’s hard to let go of the past when you use it to justify why you have a job.
        https://www.politicsweb.co.za/opinion/the-unravelling-of-the-anc

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        1. methylethyl Avatar
          methylethyl

          I am curious how this clinging and re-hashing of the past jibes with being “progressive”. These people are the most regressive thing going on right now– civil rights have been a done deal for longer than I’ve been alive, but they desperately want to resurrect Jim Crow so they’ll have a monster to fight. Couldn’t find any real monsters?

          I think we’re seeing the failure of Progressive ontology. They’ve got this internal model of how the world is, where everything just keeps getting better all the time– technology gets better, lifestyles get better, we all become more prosperous, people become more enlightened, life gets easier, etc.– the trajectory is upward, forever.

          Meanwhile out in the physical world where matter doesn’t care what you think, oil extraction has peaked. It gets more expensive from here out, and that has downstream effects on everything. There’s not enough cobalt and lithium on the planet to realize the dream of fully-automated luxury space communism. Will we discover some heretofore-unknown source of cheap energy? Maybe. But we haven’t yet, and there’s no guarantee we will… and everything about our modern civilization depends on cheap energy.

          In good times, it’s easy to believe that everything is getting better, and will continue to get better forever. It gets harder and harder to hold up that fantasy, the further out we get from peak resource extraction. Like stringing out taffy. Maybe the current crazy is what you get when you keep insisting on the future your prophets promised you, even as it becomes more and more clear that’s not going to happen. It’s like splinter adventists waiting for the rapture. Keep setting a date, that date passes without event, set another date… and all the while the cult just gets weirder and weirder, people start leaving, embezzlement sets in as a matter of course, the leader starts confiscating other members’ wives and daughters…

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  2. mitchellporter Avatar
    mitchellporter

    “We are seeing the answer to the question of “why West rules” right before our eyes. Nobody else takes the initiative. Nobody else is proactive. China, India, Latin America, the Middle East – they have no ideas, they don’t attempt to take the leadership role. Then they’ll moan about colonialism but it’s obvious to everybody that their subjected status is of their own choosing.”

    I’m not sure what you’re talking about here. The West (Europe, originally) has a lot of interlocking traits built up over centuries which have given it tremendous and ongoing cultural dynamism, and which also translate to a lot of hard-power and soft-power advantages, enough to militarily conquer most of the world during the colonial period.

    But the rest of the world always had forces who were trying to go their own way, and very often they were suppressed by force, even after decolonization. In the Middle East – which countries did try to take a leadership role? Nasser’s Egypt, which only gave up after losing four wars with Israel. Saddam’s Iraq, which was only beaten by open American occupation. Gaddafi’s Libya, which (in its final ideological incarnation) aspired to lead a geopolitically independent Africa, but was toppled by Islamist youth backed by NATO warplanes, during the Arab Spring. The Iran of the ayatollahs, which knows America will have to be expelled from the region if its own alternative imperium is to have any chance.

    Looking further afield, the world is now full of wannabe regional powers and great powers, and regional associations of nations, which are trying to pursue their own plans. Usually it’s some combination of catching up with the forms and powers of modernity, while preserving some form of cultural authenticity and autonomy… That’s nationalism, and it’s hard enough in itself. As for transnational-scale thinking, there is some of that but it either blends well enough with evolving western ideas that it gets considered of a piece with western values, or else it is considered at odds with western values and falls into the “clash of civilizations”.

    To repeat, I don’t know what kind of alternative leadership you think is missing.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      They have absolutely no position other than vapid, reductive pouting on the most important event of our time which is Russia’s war against Ukraine. They also had absolutely no position other than vapid parroting on the previous most important issue which was COVID. They had no position on the preceding most important issue which was the global economic crisis of 2008.

      They have produced no interesting thinkers, no philosophy, no insight into any of these issues.

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      1. mitchellporter Avatar
        mitchellporter

        Hmm. It’s funny, but part of what you’re saying reminds me of remarks by a Russian nationalist on Telegram. He says the reason the “Anglo-Saxons” are “masters of the world” is that they “know how to change”:

        https://t.me/komissarischezaet/196

        I guess I’m not sure if it’s possible to keep up with the West by just not being stuck in the past psychologically. Like I said, the West has a number of interlocking features that keep it changing and moving ahead. And also, like I said, if anyone attempts to develop power independent of the West, the West really does attempt to either assimilate them or undermine them.

        I would comment more on the recent history that you mention (the war, Covid, the financial crisis) but need to think further about it.

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          It’s like that joke about the man who prayed daily for 40 years for God to let him win the lottery. Finally, God couldn’t take it anymore and yelled, “You bastard, you never even bought a lottery ticket in all this time!”

          I haven’t seen anybody try to show anything remotely resembling leadership outside of the West. It’s all just excuses and nothing more. “Yeah, but if we tried, we’d be undermined, we are such victims.” That’s not a way to achieve anything in life.

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  3. cliff arroyo Avatar
    cliff arroyo

    “Nobody else takes the initiative”

    I’m reminded of Europe in the early 1990s when Yugoslavia was decaying and it all went to hell in Bosnia and the EU did… about as close to nothing as possible.
    France did a lot of shrugging of shoulders, Germany (which mostly had made things worse) didn’t do much more…
    Nobody wanted the US to do anything but the US was the only country willing to try to do anything…

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Exactly. And then they complain why they are in a dependent, subjected position globally. Don’t act like a dependent, subjected pawn, and maybe then things will change.

      Always somebody owes them the leadership role, the recognition, the power. I’m so tired of this victimhood.

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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