The Downfall of Western Societies ?

Originally posted by Omar al Hashim (1) Pick a map of the world you will notice that most people of Europe, the Americas, Subsaharan Africa, India, Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific speak one Indoeuropean language, particularly: Spanish, Portuguese, French or English. Besides, the lingua franca of the world is English. Leaving all the Arabs, 1.3 billion people in South Asia, 1.6 billion in East Asia, all of Russia and all of South East Asia, not speaking a European language.

But the point made, that virtually the entire New World is linguistically the child of four European languages, hold true. English is the language of commerce, and we live in a capitalist world.

Originally posted by Omar al Hashim 1/3 are Christians, which is the religion of the West. Actually Christianity is middle eastern.

Middle Eastern in origin, though truly modern Christianity has been adapted to Western culture. As early as the split in the Roman Empire, Catholicism moved away from the more mystical, eastern focus of the religion towards a more legalistic focus typical of the West Roman tradition of law and social order.

Originally posted by Omar al Hashim Yes. But the syndrome of the fall of the West is part of Western mentality since its beginning. The west has always beeing falling down, during Greek times, Rome, during the Black Death, WWI and WWII, etc. The West has always being in the edge, close to collapse. However, somehow it has managed to survive. The roman empire being the exampe in case.

The institution of a centralised Empire in the West under the command of Italians may have vanished in the 5th century, but truly Rome survived in a number of forms. Byzantium stayed alive for another thousand years and contributed its learning and culture back into the West, Roman theological organisation persists to this day, Roman law persists in all European nations aside from England (and even there it has considerable influence), Roman urbanisation and public works continued after Roman imperial power ended and provided the impetus for further progress in many nations of the former Western Empire.

Rome only ever fell as a political entity, she was a mere component of Western civilisation, not its total embodiment. The West continued after Rome, built upon its strengths and came back stronger than ever once it recovered from the barbarian attacks.

Originally posted by Omar al Hashim And Jesus is more famous than the Beatles Yet the beatles infamously said they were more popular.

Let's wait a couple of thousand years and see what their popularity is like then .


Edited by Constantine XI - 21-Oct-2006 at 23:15

Yes. But the syndrome of the fall of the West is part of Western mentality since its beginning. The west has always beeing falling down, during Greek times, Rome, during the Black Death, WWI and WWII, etc. The West has always being in the edge, close to collapse. However, somehow it has managed to survive.

I dissagree.

Actually, what we are living is the end of the West, but also of the East, and of the North-South division, too.

The West has always beein in peryl of decline. It was invaded since the beginning by the barbarians, and once in a while by middle easterns and also berbers. It lost lot of battles. It has suffered terrible dissasters like the Black Death that killed 1/3 of its population.

i believe that docyabut might be correct, i mean, with this bird flue a recent threat, it is only possible that a strand of a virus would show up and we would not be able to stop it, or create a vaccine. that would truly be frightening.

It all depends on how many acres per person is wasted. If everyone today lived as Americans you would need about three planet earths to support that lifestyle. Generally though scientists believe that around 10 billion people is where the critical population is. We could reach this number with the current growth at around 2030 so yes we are very near it.

Well today it is known for a fact that the population of humans is reaching saturation levels in this planet.  Free trade and the technological explosion of this last century have given us people in the West a pretty good life, materialistically speaking. We advertise our products and life in many different media outlets and the people of the East aspire to be like us because they think we are more "progressed" than them. The question is has modernization and globalization  made our life more meaninful by continually destroying the traditional views on life of each nation? I don't think so...

Throughout history there are times when one or more nations are so powerful that they are more in danger and eventually cause their own downfall. It doesn't seem like it's going to change anytime soon because the great saying goes: "History repeats itself."

In our times, it all just depends on who has the most powerful bombs and who those nations think is the most powerful to try to take over. Whether their plan backfires or not determines the fate of others, leading to wars which has repeated since the dawn of time.

I personally think that the first nation that someone will try to take over is the US, it's just a matter of time before yet another civilization falls. However nessessary it is for other nations to expand, I hope that no more wars come from wanting power.

Of course, it is only a hope because as long as humans walk, they will want power, and there will be war, desease, death and downfall.

I think that civilizations (if the whole west can be termed as a that in the first place) approah a time whereby they must either reinvent themselves or die. I don't think what has been dubbed very losely as the "West" has reached that stage yet.