the decline of western civilization criterion

For these reasons, government in a two-party system better mirrors the trial-and-error process found in science, leading to better public policy. Ideally, elected officials would be drawn from the class of educated gentlemen, who would be best fit to hold positions of leadership owing to their superior character, judgment and experience. Just as a meteorologist can forecast the weather, but not alter it, the same holds for social scientists, historicists believe. This approach is what gives Popper’s political thought its particular philosophical interest and originality—and its controversy, given that he locates the roots of totalitarianism in the ideas of some of the West’s most esteemed philosophers, ancient as well as modern. But Popper was nonetheless successful in drawing attention to potential totalitarian dangers of Plato’s utopianism. through mid-20th century's Samuel Beckett. The Soviet Union soon morphed into a brutal dictatorship under Stalin, criticism of the leadership and their programs was ruthlessly suppressed, and the various ambitious social projects were bedeviled by massive unintended consequences. In addition, such projects are dangerous because they tend to justify extreme measures, including severe human suffering in the present, as necessary measures to secure a much greater human happiness in the future. However things pan out, almost nobody thinks the outlook for the West is good. (And, in any event, he said, “the people do not rule anywhere, it is always governments that rule” [All Life Is Problem Solving, 93]). 1, 182). His critique of utopian engineering at times seems to echo Edmund Burke’s critique of the French Revolution. As we saw above, the primary role of the public in Popper’s democracy is to render a verdict on the success or failure of a government’s policies. Much of it is difficult reading. Failure to understand why this is so represented a deep philosophical error. : “’Even if only a few of us are capable of devising a policy or putting it into practice, all of us are capable of judging it’.” Popper added, “Please note that [this view] discounts the notion of rule by the people, and even of popular initiative. Unwin’s three main predictions — the abandonment of rationalism, deism, and absolute monogamy — are all well underway, which makes the ultimate prediction appear to be credible … the collapse of Western civilization in the third generation, somewhere in the last third of this century. Nonetheless Popper expressed the hope that public opinion and the institutions that influence it (universities, the press, political parties, cinema, television, and so forth) could become more rational overtime by embracing the scientific tradition of critical discussion—that is, the willingness to submit one’s ideas to public criticism and habit of listening to another person’s point of view. The productive power unleashed by new technologies and factory production under capitalism was ultimately incompatible with capitalism as an economic and political system, which was marked by inefficiency, instability and injustice. Western civilisation is a similarly slippery concept. For Popper public policy is not to be created through the kind of inclusive public deliberation envisioned by advocates of radical or participatory democracy. The Mamluk class came to an end under the rule of Muhammad Ali in Egypt. Although Forms are eternal and unchanging, Plato held that the imperfect copies of them that we encounter in the sensible world invariably undergo decay. To illustrate, suppose you were to start from Berlin and walk to Amsterdam, covering about ten miles every day. He provided two arguments that he said demonstrated its impossibility. This, Popper argued, was the deep aim of the utopian society developed in the Republic—a newly fabricated closed society as the solution to natural tendency toward moral and political decline. But it has gained a new urgency with recent political events, not least the election of US president Donald Trump. Early Greek versions of historicism held that the development of cities naturally and necessarily moves in cycles: a golden age followed by inevitable decay and collapse, which in some versions paves the way for rebirth and a new golden age. 1, 157). But, because of their unwarranted faith in their historical prophesies, the utopian engineers will be methodologically ill equipped to deal with this reality. Joseph Tainter, an anthropologist at Utah State University, and author of The Collapse of Complex Societies, offers a similarly bleak outlook. Authoritarian societies are in turn hostile to any public criticism, which deprives the planners of needed feedback about the impact of their policies, which further undermines the effectiveness of utopian engineering. Most of his published work addressed philosophical problems in the natural sciences, especially physics; and Popper himself acknowledged that his primary interest was nature and not politics. He sees the worst-case scenario as a rupture in fossil fuel availability, causing food and water supplies to fail and millions to die within a few weeks. Be aware, this is not like a set of college textbooks. Thus Popper’s rejection of positive utilitarianism becomes part of his broader critique of utopian social engineering, while his advocacy of negative utilitarianism is tied to his support for piecemeal social engineering. Scientists, historians and politicians alike have begun to warn that Western culture is reaching a critical juncture. This is why even utopian projects that officially embrace democracy tend towards authoritarianism. When the Roman Empire broke up, new societies emerged, but their hierarchies, cultures and economies were less sophisticated, and people lived shorter, unhealthier lives. That said, it should be noted that in later editions of The Open Society, Popper grew somewhat more leery of direct state intervention to tackle social problems, preferring tinkering with the state’s legal framework, if possible, to address them. Further, he warned of the dangers of unbridled capitalism, even declaring that “the injustice and inhumanity of the unrestrained ‘capitalist system’ described by Marx cannot be questioned” (Ibid.). Social systems can never be isolated and stationary, however. “It is the price we have to pay for being human” (Open Society Vol. Going further, Plato sought to provide a way to arrest this natural tendency toward decay. 1, 285.). Plato’s holism, Popper argued, was reflected in his view that the city—the Greek polis—was prior to and, in a sense, more real than the individuals who resided in it. In addition, he argued, it easier to reach political agreement to combat suffering than to increase happiness, thus making effective public policy more likely. Classists rose to Plato’s defense and accused Popper of reading Plato ahistorically, using dubious or tendentious translations of his words, and failing to appreciate the ironic and literary elements in Plato’s dialogues. Indeed, his most important political texts—The Poverty of Historicism (1944) and The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945)—offer a kind of unified vision of science and politics. The Comte de Gernande in Justine, for instance, after Thérèse asks him how he justifies abusing and torturing women, states: This argument, it should be noted, also reflected Popper’s judgment that the universe is nondeterministic: that is, he believed that prior conditions and the laws of nature do not completely causally determine the future, including human ideas and actions. Other civilisations, such as China, were built on different sets of cultural norms, yet thanks to globalisation, defining where Western culture starts and ends is far from easy. This happens every time a new technology is invented that renders the environment more hospitable. He was a dogged opponent of totalitarianism, nationalism, fascism, romanticism, collectivism, and other kinds of (in Popper’s view) reactionary and irrational ideas. Change the conditions and the trends may alter or disappear. For instance, some philosophers argue that human consciousness is an emergent phenomenon whose properties cannot be explained solely by the properties of the physical components (nerve cells, neurotransmitters, and so forth) that comprise the human brain. Holism may be defined as the view that adequate understanding of certain kinds of entities requires understanding them as a whole. The arguments in the two essays overlap a great deal. These criticisms exposed errors in Popper’s scholarship. Similarly, ethical public policy may benefit by aiming at “the elimination of suffering rather than the promotion of happiness” (Ibid.). One particularly important cause of unintended consequences that utopian engineers are generally blind to is what Popper called the “human factor” in all institutional design. In contrast, as discussed above, social reform that is wide ranging, highly complex and involves multiple institutions will produce social experiments in which it is too difficult to untangle causes and effects. However, when writing Poverty and The Open Society, Popper regarded the Soviet experiments, at least the early ones, as examples of piecemeal social planning rather than the utopian kind. This idea, which was a key component of the “new science” of politics in the 18th century, was expressed most famously by James Madison in Federalist Paper #51. Documentary filmmaking offered an avenue for directors like Penelope Spheeris (The Decline of Western Civilization), Joyce Chopra (The Lemon Sisters), and Claudia Weill (It’s My Turn) to … This reluctance to name names is somewhat surprising, given that Popper himself later stated that the political disasters of the 1930s and 40s were the impetus for his foray into political philosophy. By this criterion, even very advanced societies have collapsed irreversibly and the West could too. Evidence of Popper’s conservatism can be found in his opposition to radical change. The Poverty of Historicism is concerned principally with the methodology of the social sciences, and, in particular, how a flawed idea, which Popper dubbed “historicism,” had led historians and social scientists astray methodologically and which also served as a handmaiden to tyranny. This showed that either extreme inequality or resource depletion could push a society to collapse, but collapse is irreversible only when the two coincide. (That knowledge might be, for example, a scientific theory, a social theory, or an ethical or religious idea.) Currie, Gregory, and Alan Musgrave (eds.). “Justice for [Plato],” he wrote, “is nothing but health, unity and stability of the collective body” (OSE I, 106). , published 20 January 2018, Forgotten mountain shrine to a Soviet superstar of astrophysics. He noticed that while, in nature, some prey always survive to keep the cycle going, some societies that collapsed, such as the Maya, the Minoans and the Hittites, never recovered. Argues that the logic of Popper’s own ideas should have made him more leery of state intervention and more receptive to classical liberalism. Popper’s discussion of utopian engineering and its link to historicism is highly abstract. It required creation of a rigid and hierarchical class society governed by philosopher kings, whose knowledge of the Forms would stave off decay as well as ensure the rulers’ incorruptibility. Socialist culture with Chinese characteristics is derived from China's fine traditional culture, which was born of the Chinese civilization and nurtured over more than 5,000 years; it … Popper devoted relatively little thought toward the design of the democratic institutions that permit people to remove their leaders or otherwise prevent them from doing too much harm. He made several arguments in favor of this view. It would also reverse the tide of individualism and egalitarianism that had emerged in democratic Athens, establishing a hierarchical system in which the freedom and rights of the individual would be sacrificed to the collective needs of society. It starts with a fairly equal society, then, as the population grows, the supply of labour begins to outstrip demand and so becomes cheap. This, Popper argued, was the deep aim of the utopian society developed in the Republic—a newly fabricated closed society as the solution to natural tendency toward moral and political decline. They claimed that in about 2008 the US would enter a period of crisis that would peak in the 2020s – a claim said to have made a powerful impression on US president Donald Trump’s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon. How then is public policy to be forged and implemented? For this reason Marx rejected attempts to design a socialist system; in fact he derided such projects as “utopian.” Nonetheless, the connection between historicism and utopian planning remains strong, Popper insisted. That they were democratic and generated great prosperity was merely an added benefit. Finally, Popper offered the pragmatic argument that negative utilitarianism approach “adds to clarify the field of ethics” by requiring that “we formulate our demands negatively”  (Open Society Vol. According to Plato, understanding of any kind of thing—for example, a bed, a triangle, a human being, or a city—requires understanding what Plato called its Form. But he did emphasize the importance of instituting checks and balances into the political system. Herein Popper detected an implicit historicism in Aristotle’s epistemology. Going further, Plato sought to provide a way to arrest this natural tendency toward decay. Wealthy elites form, while the living standards of the workers fall. Contains essays addressing Popper’s controversial interpretation of Plato. Part II of this volume contains essays and speeches on history and politics, mostly from the 1980s and 90s. Popper’s open society is technocratic rather than aristocratic. It was no coincidence, he said, that the Nazis and other modern-day totalitarians were also inspired by the Spartans. For Popper, the value of democracy did not reside in the fact that the people are sovereign. Popper argued that utopian engineering, though superficially attractive, is fatally flawed: it invariably leads to multitudinous unintended and usually unwelcome consequences. a society can grow by an order of magnitude, almost nobody thinks the outlook for the West is good, Apocalypse not now but the fate of civilisation is in our hands, Why the UK changed covid-19 AstraZeneca vaccine advice for under-30s, New kind of blue found in cabbage could replace synthetic food dye, Covid-19 news: EU drugs regulator reviewing Johnson & Johnson vaccine, Human-like intelligence in animals is far more common than we thought, Strange muon behaviour hints at mysterious new particles and forces, Artificial nervous system senses light and learns to catch like humans, Tanja Bosak interview: Using Perseverance rover to hunt life on Mars, Don’t Miss: The Beauty of Chemistry lifts the lid on nature’s wonders, Fukushima 10 years on: Life inside the exclusion zone. Motesharrei’s group defines historical societies according to strict geographical limits, so that if some people survived and migrated to find new natural resources they would constitute a new society. The director of Drive, Bronson, and the Pusher trilogy looks back on the films that helped shape him, from the movie that taught him films are art to the one that taught him he could make movies without formal training. But he also argued that it was politically dangerous and that this danger stemmed from historicism’s natural and close allegiance with what Popper called “utopian social engineering.” Such social planning “aims at remodeling the ‘whole of society’ in accordance with a definite plan or blueprint,” as opposed to social planning that aims at gradual and limited adjustments. And more importantly, does science have any ideas about what is really going on, what might happen next and how people could turn things around? 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