Stuart Jeffries
Friday May 19, 2006
The Guardian
There are two books entitled Suicide of the West. One was written 42 years ago and, unfortunately, its thesis proved disastrously wrong. The other is just out and hopefully will be equally misbegotten.
James Burnham's 1964 book contended that effete liberalism would cause the collapse of western civilisation. He envisaged an assisted suicide, with gleeful Soviets pressing a pillow into our decadent, possibly pop culture-addled, faces. His book was at least beautifully written: the Englishman described liberalism as "a swansong, a spiritual solace of the same order as the murmuring of a mother to a child who is gravely ill". The seeming swansong, though, was a song of the sirens, luring Trabants to cross the iron curtain. Communism, not the west was doomed.
The new book is not so well written. Former culture secretary Chris Smith and businessman Richard Koch have collaborated on a book that contends "a drift toward collective suicide is evident". We have lost confidence in our civilisation, liberal values, scientific achievements, our commitment to growth. Bin Laden is too feeble to suffocate the west; it is our old friend, dwindling self-esteem, that will be our undoing. Can one drift towards suicide, you ask? Hold that thought.
This is not a book that will have critics sharpening their disembowelling cutlasses as they did for Smith's 1998 literary foray, Creative Britain, which provoked possibly the harshest review ever. "This is an appalling book, a small tragedy of a book," wrote George Walden in the Sunday Telegraph. "No words can convey the depths of his fatuity, except his own."
Smith has crawled from this literary drubbing to posture as one part Oswald Spengler, the German Cassandra who thought the west was in decline, and two parts Blairite Pollyanna, arguing: "Guys! We must recover our nerve! Enough victim mentality and corrosive cynicism! Don't you see?" It is a literary sub-genre hitherto monopolised by male conservatives who don't like the way the world is going and often write for the Daily Telegraph saying so.
What is Smith, self-styled democratic leftie, doing in the tradition of Spengler, Burnham and Roger Scruton, whose post-9/11 meditation, The West and the Rest, is used as a chapter heading (although the author is not cited)? One good thing Smith does is to round on ex-colleagues whose anti-terror legislation is part of a "reinforcing cycle of terrorism and domestic authoritarianism". He's surely right about that, if nothing else.
The book is at least timely. It comes when some think that to safeguard our civilisation we must assert what we stand for, preferably in bullet points on one side of a single sheet in big type. This week, the higher education minister, Bill Rammell called for British values to be taught in schools, so that children can understand why our polity is worth defending. Rammell hasn't specified what those values are yet, which might prove a problem for teachers.
By contrast, Smith and Koch boldly cite six factors that made the west allegedly the best civilisation there has ever been: Christianity, science, growth, optimism, individualism and liberalism. They aren't values, but maybe they could be part of Rammell's new curriculum: double optimism on Wednesdays would be a hoot.
When told by Smith that western civilisation was founded on Christianity, Islamic thinker Tariq Ramadan fumed on the Today programme earlier this week. Weren't Judaism and Islam instrumental? Afraid not. Smith and Koch regard Christianity as "the world's first individualised, activist self-help movement" and thus uniquely able to fire up the self-reliant, ingenious western types who eat other civilisations for breakfast.
They don't consider that western civilisation is oxymoronic: I looked under G in the index for Gandhi, pointlessly. The Mahatma, certainly, did not think western civilisation incarnated the ideals the authors claim for it, including abolishing poverty, relieving suffering, human rights for all, ending hierarchy. When will these civilised values be widespread? How about never? Is never good for you? None the less they, too, could become core curriculum subjects. Expect high truancy rates for Relieving Suffering, though.
Smith and Koch must hope history doesn't repeat itself. How sad if their thesis proves as misconceived as Burnham's. Maybe they have got everything wrong - including the title. To justify that, they cite Chambers Dictionary's definition of suicide: "The bringing about of one's own downfall, often unintentionally." It's hardly authoritative: the Concise OED defines suicide as "the action of killing oneself intentionally". As Smith and Koch know, though, The Calamitous Consequences of Unwitting Western Self-Neglect Considered would not have been as catchy.
They hear the west's swansong everywhere - instead of the noble silence of deferred gratification, we have the racket of consumption; instead of responsibility to others, narcissistic victimhood; not reason, but emotion; not wisdom, but experts; not role models, but vapid celebrities. The problem with these juxtapositions is that each latter term risks being overstated, harking back to a non-existent halcyon age, and together they make up only a grab bag of moans that have no coherence as critique.
Suicide of the West argues that we need more old-style optimism, but I take succour from, say, the philosopher John Gray's lack of faith in western technological progress. Consider what Stewart Lee, author of Jerry Springer: The Opera, said about the difference between Christianity and Islam. He described the latter as more "conscientious about protecting the brand". But such conscientiousness is not strength. The west is, precisely because of its ability to doubt itself, in ruder health than these tendentious authors dare imagine. In 42 years' time, death permitting, I will return to this subject and clinch the point. Won't Smith and Koch look silly when I do?
If only Arsenal had won the European Cup. Then we would have been treated to more imaginative flights from football's adorably hysterical announcers. Mark Saggers introduced the Wednesday soiree on Radio Five thus: "There's only one TH I want to be chasing the Holy Grail, and it's not Tom Hanks in Cannes. It's Thierry Henry in Paris."
This week Stuart saw Undercover Surrealism at the Hayward. "A maddening jumble of rubbish (mostly French) and beautiful things (mostly African or by Picasso) in a cleverly curated show." Stuart downloaded music for the first time. "Will it get me down with the techno-savvy kids? It was Vivaldi's Dixit Dominus, so what do you think?"
Blingeron
May 19, 2006 5:16 AM
"The west is, precisely because of its ability to doubt itself, in ruder health than these tendentious authors dare imagine."
I hope you are correct. But anyone who had the displeasure of witnessing the exchange between Blair and Cameron at prime minister's questions this week might disagree. It was like a competition to see who could show the most contempt for an individual's presumption to exist in an entirely personal and unique set of circumstances. People were being bandied about the world like crates of bananas. It seems that what we are building is a consensus where freedom is a privilege and not a right. We are absorbed in the construction of a hegemony where terrorism is met not with defiance, but with a withering away of our own liberties and a bounty on the head of innocent peoples from distant countries. In this climate a great deal more self-doubt can only be encouraged.
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MrBullFrog
May 19, 2006 7:16 AM
Sounds like a good choice to me - my own first was vol 2 of Suzuki's reading of the Cantatas. Hope you didn't use i-Tunes though - ridiculously expensive and outrageously restrictive. ---------- Oh, and Western Civ, whatever it might be, will be gone one day, but is it really worth worrying about its demise?
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Dave69
May 19, 2006 7:57 AM
'Freedom' is not a right. It is emphatically not the 'natural' condition of humanity, but the ongoing product of struggles that have been esentially continuous for centuries. If you think it can be protected by bleating about the fact that it ought to be, you should get out more.
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Karl123
May 19, 2006 8:29 AM
How does Jeffries get to write for the Guardia, when he writes such rubbish? Last week he called socialism fascism, one logical argumentwa that the Nazis called themselves national socialists. We need grown up discussions, not school playground arguements.
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pathologist
May 19, 2006 8:32 AM
WE SHOULD BE PROUD OF OUR WESTERN VALUES AND ACHIEVEMENTS.. WE IN THE WEST eradicated Homo, fauna and flora of north America, became immensely rich from Atlantic slave trade and, en passant, dumped tens of thousands of sick negroes in the ocean. WE killed 100 millions of our phenotype in two world wars. We We gassed 6 million Jews and now are painting the green planet in dark brown. WE and only WE proudly are annihilating phyla and genera that messed up this planet for four billion years. Every time we drink ENGLISH tea, ENGLISH coffee or ENGLISH wine we should feel the adrenalin of pride. God bless OUR wheat, OUR corn, Our tomatoes, OUR potatoes, OUR Rhododendrons, OUR Camellias, OUR roses and OUR Queen. WE and ONLY WE domesticated the laboratory mouse and E. elegans. WE should force the rest of the backward world to learn and adopt OUR numerals, OUR algebra, and OUR algorithms.
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kmir
May 19, 2006 8:43 AM
Isn't the search for the "primitive" (Picasso) precisely an indicator of the profound boredom (ennui) of "the west"? The need for the "exotic" , for adventure and "escape" are , perhaps, not unrelated to what some see as a levelling down in a bourgeois society.
(Hugh Brody would talk about the omnious implications of western 'restlessness')
the ability to doubt and question has no doubt been a cause of great creativity (but uncertainty and questioning have also existed WITHIN faith:anselm, Ghazali..some might say that the whole creative endeavour of Islam or civilisation is about its interaction with absence or the hidden ("ghayb")...on the lines of Gerorge Steiner, real presences); the point is whether the "radical doubt" of the west has not led to nihilism (as I think Nietzsche said); whether the problem with materialistic monism is that it hasn't in fact led to "indifference" and "dangling men" and sensualism, hedonism , as a reaction.
Let's leave the casual dismissal of Islam (or other traditions) to one side....nothing new there.
For me, one unresolved question would be whether western civilisation (in its modern guise) is really JUST about the search for the truth or if there are aspects of it that are about looking for "sameness" (via capitalism colonilaism, materialism)and homogenity? Levinas would say that western philosophy has never got away from "totality" or "being".
So, the next time we look at a newspaper, let's think about how the travel section is called "escape", and perhaps we could also think about how many freedoms are ending up as compulsions, and how culture is now an industry, inextriably linked with the markets and the market mentality. Perhaps then we will start to doubt (as Kenneth clarke did ), and ask whether maybe, just maybe, there isn't something odd in the story of the progress of western civilisation....
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sentinel
May 19, 2006 8:52 AM
The 'West' will undoubtedly survive, even it is in a form we, of the early twenty-first century, wouldn't recognize. Trouble is, why do we think it is the western nations who can lay claim to bringing 'civilized' values to the world? The ancient Greeks, Romans, Chinese, Mayans, etc. etc. were building great cities, scientific and cultural organizations long before we in the West gave up wearing woad. Supreme arrogance on our part, methinks. But will we suicide as an ethos? No, we'll just fade into insignificance before some other creed. The whole deal is as old as history itself. Top dog one minute, bottom of the heap the next.
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Pestysnide
May 19, 2006 10:53 AM
Western Civilisation as we know it is being wiped-out as we speak. That is no bad thing, for all the benefits of Western Civilisation it is unable to end its addiction to genocide of "brown, black, yellow, red" people. Western Civilisation is only able to surive, we are told by our current leaders, if we engage in an unending sequences of genocides in the Middle East. With the completely (thankfully) unstoppable out-racing of Westerners by non-Western immigration it is simply a matter of time before the Western Powers are Post-Western. Western Civilisation will reap what it has sown.
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Adamastor
May 19, 2006 12:36 PM
Burnham had been predicting the death of "the west" for a long time before that. Orwell wrote an interesting essay about him.
"western civilisation was founded on Christianity"
Actually, the values of the Greeks, Romans and Anglo-saxons and a few other peoples- pagans all- had quite a lot to do with it too. Christianity probably damaged it.
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Adamastor
May 19, 2006 12:42 PM
Burnham had a long record of prophesying the death of "the west". There's an interesting essay on him by Orwell.
"western civilisation was founded on Christianity"
Actually Greek, Roman, Anglo-Saxon and other cultures- pagans all- had rather more influence. Chrsitianity probably damaged western civilisation.
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Tallyman
May 19, 2006 1:41 PM
Karl123. Mr. Jeffries is exactly right about that equation. Fascism = Socialism + Snazzy Uniforms.
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DiogenesAX
May 19, 2006 3:32 PM
Didnt read this, no intention of reading it, probably wont read it. Its bound to be rubiish, that Stuart Jeffrey-s is a waste of space and generally drools a lot. If you see some individual scurrying in the darkness, muttering, covered in spittle, generally your classic 60's acid taker turned naughties "white lightning" drinker, (yep thats the over-sized can) please put him out of my misery. Many thanks.
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RedOnFire
May 19, 2006 9:12 PM
Here we go again......from spengler on we've had this obsession with western decline in true chicken licken fashion. The 'decline of the west' is merely a concept put about by liberals absolutely desperate to prove that capatalism is a vile evil rather than an essential engine of democracy . Discuss.
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Karl123
May 19, 2006 10:27 PM
tallyman. Your comments are ignorant and stupid. It is politically ignorant. Fasciam and socialism are opposed. You've been spending too much time reading the bourgeosie press. Jeffries supports capitalism because he is middle class, has never suffered poverty and has a powerful position of a voice in the media. Ofcourse he is going to support capitalism which has given him all this.
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AOliver
May 19, 2006 10:51 PM
The west as culture which needs preserving is a strictly secondary issue to maintaining the west as a place for the westerners who alone will cherish their civilisation. At least that is how other civilisations view the demographic/immigration question. Who is the wiser? Where are the limits of ethnic altruism?
>And Gandhi shouldn't lecture anyone about civility - he was a racial supremacist who supported apartheid and the caste system. The near saintly status he is afforded by uninformed or dishonest commentators is a gross sin, that they are the same commentators who pose as anti-racist is only compounds their crime.
"The Myth of Mahatma Gandhi" by Arthur Kemp (online) is worth a read.
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DrAngus
May 20, 2006 8:23 AM
If western civilization is going to die, then my money is on the systems and people who thrive by the exploitation of this planet and it's peoples. I predict "super-cide" rather than suicide, as we will take alot of other civilizations down with us. In short, I think it will be a physical thing, not some ideological thing. The ideological death of western civilization presumes that the civilization will live on and that it will no longer be 'Western'. I'm more pessimistic then that.
Some early posters wrote about freedom. I don't like freedom. I prefer liberty. It seems to me that freedom is something that a person posesses, while liberty is something we access, a more abstract quality. Freedoms are granted and taken away. Liberty is God-given.
I would like to say more, but as an American citizen, I haven't been exposed to much in the way of rational discourse since the year 2000. So I'm a little rusty.
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nicodagger
May 20, 2006 7:16 PM
Hi Mr. Stuart...Hey, how are you? I'm fine......I live in America, so we don't git too many guys like you who use all them big words and shit, so I waren't used to all that shit you was saying about....whatever that was....didn't really git it...i really don't git stuff unless it's on the tv, usually Bill O'Reilly breaks it down real simple for me, but this was the first time I read something English because my girlfriend said I talk too much shit and i should learn from you people cause you know all about words and shit, and you have a bunch of big ideas and everyone gets all fired up and talks about shit and whatever, so i read your thing you wrote just now and even though i don't really understand what you was saying i can tell from all the big words that it meant somethin real important so i feel pretty good right now that i read it cause it's like i did something important even though i don't know what it is...i wish you could come to America and be on the tv with Bill O'Reilly, then everybody over here would know what you was saying!
Thanks a lot! Thanks for your time!
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jigen
May 20, 2006 11:01 PM
Socialism is nothing like fascism. Equating the two usually happens in small minds who have been told both are bad and have never had a moment's intellectual curiosity to find out what they are and how they differ. Fascism is actually closer in spirit to capitalism - except that the capitalists, or corporations, are the true leaders under fascist regimes. America, where I live, is a good example of how a nation can walk the line between the two (yet veer dismally toward the less desirable one). George W Bush, failed capitalist, has pushed a variety of acts through allowing him to spy on his own people (like a fascist). He is more interested in passing laws that help corporations than laws that protect people or society. The argument goes, what's good for business is good for people. Utter nonsense. Since when are people allowed to police themselves, break laws or hide profits, the way corporations do? Restrict people, cease the restrictions on corporations; that's where capitalism and fascism sadly overlap. Both socialism and capitalism have their good points, but when they are presided over by crypto-fascists like Stalin or Bush, it makes it hard to see the goodness in either. Unfortunately it makes it easier to equate both with fascism.
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whatzup
May 21, 2006 8:35 PM
Wow! Sounds just like the KKK talkin! Don't forget to put your hood on when you go on preachin about your superiority.
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Unpeeled
May 22, 2006 5:23 PM
Hallo,
Sorry to barge in, but...
Why has the comments section been removed from under the lovely item on that twat Bono?
Could it have anything to do with the fact that he's an insufferable twat?
Or was it because 99.9% of those commenting thought him a twat?
Have a care Mr Graunidad, you don't want to be mistaken for The Times now, do you?
Cheers,
Shane
@ Unpeeled
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