And now, following overwhelming popular demand, here is the Ask Me Anything which I promised would be published before the pause this month.
Is the West a doomed civilisation? Are you a genuine long-term pessimist or do you really believe we can turn ourselves around and find spiritual, social and economic contentment?
- Richard Ferguson
I’m a cultural pessimist, techo-optimist, to use my friend Paul Morland’s phrase. Technology will free us of everything except our tendency to make bad decisions. I don’t know about contentment - I think a huge amount of spiritual malaise is down to an oxytocin deficit caused by leading lives contrary to our communal nature, especially when it comes to exercise and ritual.
I suppose you could argue that the West no longer really exists as a civilisation, or at least, it’s not really the same civilisation as the one my parents were born into. If you look at most characteristics of a ‘civilisation’, such as sexual morality or sacred issues, they are two totally different cultures - and a visitor from before this great shift would find our entire worldview baffling. Even with the practice which archaeologists usually use to differentiate cultures – how they bury their dead – you would find a complete transformation between the old and the new. (A century ago, 99.4 per cent of people were buried; last year it was less than 17 per cent.)
The buildings are mostly there, and the institutions still carry the same names, but they aren’t really the same thing anymore. In some cases the huge change has left odd anomalies, like the Church of England’s theoretical position. As one anonymous WSoH reader observed, England is the only country where it’s a crime to proclaim the teaching of the established religion. When the older generation dies out, this will change become even starker.
On the other hand, technology is now speeding up at such a rate that it’s really hard to know what will happen. I would also add that, while I’m sceptical about a ‘quiet revival’ of religion in Britain, I think it may be happening in France, the most important country in Europe.
Does the UK have a long-term future?
Yes, I’m just not sure about its short or medium term future. I don’t think we’re going to get invaded anytime soon, so there will still be a ‘United Kingdom’ at the UN, and I don’t think Scotland will break away. Britain is not uniquely hopeless, and other western countries are in worse situations, but I think the current order, however you define it, has run out of road. We cannot continue on our current trajectory.
‘Cometh the hour, cometh the man’. Somewhere out there is a politician or political force that has not yet come to the fore but will when our current travails turn into a full-blown crisis. Who or what might that look like?
I think I broadly agree with the great man of history theory, that some developments were not at all inevitable but for one individual. France’s history may have looked very different without Charles de Gaulle. Singapore might well have had a bleak future without Lee Kuan Yew, although the counterpoint is that the other two non-communist states with Chinese majorities, Taiwan and Hong Kong, also became rich.
Most politicians go with the grain; Tony Blair had a tremendous impact on the liberalisation of British society, but he was riding the wave of social changes that had already occurred. He was immensely popular for that reason. Others arise out of periods of crisis, often wartime, when the system has been found wanting.
There is obviously an opening for a politician who can articulate discontent against a failing system - it just depends on whether than consensus is broken by the left or the right. The fact that the state has run out of money severely restricts what the former can do, while the latter will have the tailwinds of continental populism behind them.
A major problem with British politics is that many people still act and behave as if this is the Britain of the 1990s. Conservatives talk of a civic patriotism in which British heroes of the past will be venerated in London schools, which might have worked very well in 1996 or even 2006, but not today. Labour can barely stomach welfare reform, when we’re faced with an information revolution which makes the old system obsolete.
I think that we will see someone emerge, someone who is perhaps around 30 now, who sees the problems facing the younger generation but hasn’t stepped into politics yet. Whoever they are, they will be articulate and telegenic, but the most important quality he or she will need to possess is courage, both moral and physical. Perhaps they are even a subscriber to this substack.
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