The Great Decline of Western Civilisation

Introduction

The fundamental question concerning the West today is not one which can be delegated to the governing institutions: it is one, rather, which requires a decisive answer from all the Western populace. As we stand at the forefront of the world, we are today face-to-face with the false institutions, false idols, and false progress of our society. With the decline of the West, there has been a corresponding rise of all that which, in previous times, was considered an assault on mankind’s very own character. Such includes the flagrant exhibition of the immoral, the cherishing of the hedonistic, and the bartering of truth for falsehood. Thus, there remain but two options for today’s Westerner: either allow the sands of history to consume their society, or do their righteous duty and save it. Should they choose the latter, they must take it as an obligation to the future existence of the West to examine the origin of the decline, its consequences, and furthermore, what measures must be taken to end the decline. Such is what will be answered in the following essay, keeping in mind throughout that fundamental question concerning today’s Westerner—where to from here?

On the Origin of the Decline

There are several factors that have contributed to the ongoing decline of the West and, to be certain, too many to give sufficient depth for each as fits in the scope of the following essay. As such, I will focus on but one factor, though one which is of the utmost significance to the subject matter; that is: the paradigm shift in the roles of Church and State insofar as it relates to the power transfer that occurred between the two from the Mediæval period to the Modern. The paradigm shift is the result of centuries of struggle between the two and in which, by the dawn of modernity, the State emerged absolutely, overwhelmingly, and undeniably supreme. It was with the Avignon papacy, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment that victory all but fell into the State’s lap.

One may trace the internal tensions within the Church back to the Avignon papacy, in which papal power in Europe became influenced to a significant extent by the French king. The authority of the French king with regard to the papacy was such that, during the Avignon papacy—from 1309 to 1376—all seven of the popes were French. Such was the beginning of the Church’s subsumption into the State; such was the beginning of the State’s victory in its struggle with the Church. Furthermore, while we are speaking of internal tensions, another such tension that would later lead to the Reformation in the 16th and 17th centuries was that of the perceived or real corruption, material excess, and doctrinal error in the Church. Such a perception of the Church was held by vast swathes of the Western Christian population and resulted in the Protestant countermovement that was the victor of a pyrrhic victory. For, the sheer success of Protestantism resulted in the destabilisation of the Church at large as well as, thereby, in the growing influence of the State in the West.

A further cause of the West’s decline was the effect had by the Enlightenment. It was with Enlightenment thought that a new scientific ideal was forged in the West: one built upon a new conception of morals that rejected the spiritual in favour of the apparently “rational.” Such thought was central in what was, more or less, the last blow to the power of the Church. It was, in essence, the codification of the State’s principles and morals, constructed in order to topple the centuries-old morals of the Church. That codification of thought was then applied to several new governments in the West, including both the United States and the First French Republic following their respective revolutions in 1776 and 1789. In the aftermath of the latter’s revolution, the “Reign of Terror” was unleashed by the government, in which counter- revolutionaries, the nobility, and the clergy were all subject to execution at but the will of the State. Such may well be regarded as the end of the Church’s authority.

All of these causes contributed to the decline of Western civilisation because, with the power transfer that occurred during the Mediæval and early Modern periods, there resulted in the uprooting of the West itself wherein the temporal took precedence over the spiritual in the wake of the State taking precedence over the Church. Such was the result of the three causes, where the Avignon papacy delegitimised papal authority in Europe, the Reformation divided the Church in two (thereby diminishing its power relative to the State), and the Enlightenment codified and applied the State’s own doctrine in the West. With the Church, once the bearer of morals, being devastated thus, it resulted in the State becoming the bearer. That has created a problem for—in a liberal democracy such as was prescribed by the Enlightenment thinkers and what is today the mode of Western governance—the State can only bear those morals that have support among the populace. The State can only bear those morals popular with the general populace because political legitimacy in such a system as a liberal democracy supposedly rests with the people. However, the populace being of an inherently selfish, often hedonistic mindset, will want only those morals which satisfy their selfishness and their hedonism. Such is the fatal flaw of the liberal-democratic system and the Western experiment called freedom.

To conclude the first section, with the decline of the Church the nature of the Western mode of governance has itself resulted in the great paradox of the West: in our becoming free from supposed clerical tyranny, the Western populace has imposed upon itself another—one from which liberation will not come so easy. For, where the former “tyranny” was enforced externally, the new tyranny requires no such enforcement, its mechanism for survival being already inherent in the nature of every man and woman. Far from liberating the masses, it has been seen that democracy has, rather, made each a slave to their own immoral passions.

On the Decline

The decline of the West is no secret. It has manifested itself clear to see—yet but few notice; perhaps for good reason as, to be certain, taking advantage of the era’s immorality for one’s own benefit would certainly be a more comfortable pursuit than to field an opposition to the decline in any capacity. Even to simply disregard the decline as how it has always been would be more comfortable than the alternative. However, the ills of the West will soon be too great to ignore; though by the coming of that time the West will have been long in the ground.

Freedom is the hallmark of the Western decline: we Westerners possess the “freedom” to do whatever we please, so far as it does not disturb others in their capacity to do the same. It is itself the hallmark of the Enlightenment philosophy that was, as noted, prescribed for the West in the absence of the Church’s moral authority. Such a notion, despite its admirability, has had disastrous consequences for the West. The underlying problem with the notion is of its not accounting for the societal shift in morals, such as what is occurring at the present day and which has been occurring for several centuries. In a generally civilised society, the notion would be entirely correct in at least practice; if the majority of the populace were of moral disposition they simply would not tolerate the immorality of the minority and the latter would cease their misconduct—not necessarily because it is immoral, as the theory may put it, but because they are of the minority. However, the situation is quite completely opposite in the modern West: for the vast and growing majority are of an immoral disposition, while a small minority are of a moral disposition. The Enlightenment-era notion of how one should act unto others, though, would be nothing if not for democracy. For in our liberal-democratic system, the political power of the immoral majority has been reinforced with the further notion that we all have our “rights”—that we each owe our conduct to ourselves and to nobody else, and that nobody can tell us otherwise. It no longer matters in the present Western age how harmful, how indecent, or how debauched one’s conduct is—nobody has the “right” to intervene or otherwise thwart them in their pursuit of pure, unadulterated hedonism. That is save for it being against the law, which is again but the consolidation of the majority’s will in the West’s liberal-democratic system. Yet, such a will of the majority is the will of an immoral majority: thus that immoral majority is judge, jury, and executioner of the moral minority.

That thin boundary such as exists between moral conduct and unadulterated hedonism has long been trampled over in the latter’s direction. That thin boundary is fading away in the sand, obscuring even the moral minority’s understanding of their morals. If the West is to see a tomorrow, that thin boundary must be rediscovered for all and be unobscured by the sand; the means by which follow.

On the Solution to the Decline

In spite of the decline being at the core of the modern West, there is, to be certain, a solution to the fundamental misjudgments on which the West has been based. As has been said in previous sections, the decline of the West has been part and parcel with the decline of the Church in relation to the State. Though, that does not mean that the restoration of the Church’s Mediæval authority is the solution. Such a restoration of the Church’s formerly-held power would be futile, for its authority rests in the spiritual and not the temporal. The way forward is with the unity of Church and State and in being separate from the other so far as such unity allows. What that entails is the reinterpretation of the State and the abolition of the liberal-democratic system that has been the cause of the great decline. That means a new mode of governance by which the West can be rebuilt.

Such a new State must be brought about with instantaneous haste and be based upon the traditional, organic order of the West. In doing so, the struggle between Church and State, one-sided as it may be, can end and henceforth promote harmonious relations between those two sources of authority in the West. I am speaking of a government without government: of a new mode of governance in which the executive is no longer hindered by the legislative and judiciary branches. Such a form of governance is the manifestation of a regenerative Western tradition, in which today’s moral minority can become the moral majority. That means, on the part of the executive, the deliverance of swift, decisive, and unyielding action through which the complete transformation of the West can be enacted. That new mode of governance would require the organs of the government to be populated by those of a moral disposition, so that they may enact their own disposition into the law. With that law being of an organic—that is to say, undemocratic basis—the will of an immoral populace would play no part whatsoever in the decision-making process. In such a way, the executive branch, being unhindered by the separation of power present in the liberal-democratic system, will exert its authority over not only an entirely malleable legislative and judiciary, but over the populace on the whole, so as to ensure the regeneration of Western civilisation.

Such a solution is, to say the least, not one based upon political moderation: it is safe to admit on my part of the radical notion inherent in the proposition that precedes. However, in a time such as what we are living through in the West—and in recognising the fatal flaws in the current liberal-democratic system that has been the catalyst of the decline—we are thus obliged to recognise, that to continue where we are headed will cause, not only further decline but the end of the West itself. Where we are headed we cannot continue; where we cannot continue, we must forge a new path—not for ourselves, but for all those that follow.

Conclusion

The decline of Western civilisation has, in the course of the preceding essay, been discussed and analysed comprehensively, and we now have a strong understanding of how the decline began, and how it can be resolved. That fundamental question put forth in the introduction we now can answer with certainty—that of: where to from here?—and we can conclude that, if we do not fundamentally transform the Western mode of governance, there will no longer be a West to speak of within the next fifty years. If the liberal-democratic system endures, it will be seen that we do not. If we continue to embrace modernity in all its corrupt sickness, even those of a moral disposition—that fading minority—will fall victim to the sickness, and there will no longer be even the hope of the West returning to its former glory. Only with the return to tradition will the West rise again.