Yet we are witnessing the accelerated collapse of the major props of what used to be regarded as the Western civilisation.
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Dostoevsky delivers a very prescient thought in his “Diary of a writer”. He states that the collapse of the West (“Europe,” in the parlance of Russian intellectuals of his day) will occur suddenly and precipitously. Dostoevsky’s bold prognosis, written over a hundred fifty years ago, must have struck his readers as fanciful for at least two reasons.
Firstly, in the context of the period when that prediction was made, mid-nineteenth century, on the surface there was very little to support the notion that the West was approaching collapse, whether gradual or accelerated. Quite the contrary, it was advancing and gathering strength in science, industry, and every other significant field of human endeavour. Viewed collectively, as the concert of the Great Powers of that day, the West was exerting unchallenged global dominance. Over the preceding centuries it had been on the ascendant continuously and no power was in sight capable of limiting or reversing its supremacy. It paid outward homage to and drew moral sustenance from Christian principles as it understood and practiced them. Its social and political institutions appeared solid, and its combined military power was sufficient to subdue and keep in a state of impotent dependence many formerly mighty “heathen” civilisations and empires. At the time that Dostoevsky and other likeminded Russian Slavophile thinkers were questioning the durability of the Western enterprise, the thought of its demise was scarcely conceivable.
Secondly, and also for the above reasons, Dostoevky’s more specific prediction that the crumbling of the seemingly unassailable West-centric global system was not just certain but would be relatively quick and sudden, at the time it was published must have sounded even less likely.
Yet we are witnessing the accelerated collapse of the major props of what used to be regarded as the Western civilisation, and it is occurring in a manner that resembles remarkably the framework of events that Dostoevsky described.
The moral collapse, symbolised by radical distancing and even straightforward repudiation of the metaphysical foundations that the West used to claim as its heritage, is self-evident. It was confirmed by two publicly orchestrated and deliberately blasphemous events, the 2024 Paris Olympic ceremonies and festivities marking the opening of the Gotthard base tunnel in Switzerland in 2016. It may be noted that the only major actor to officially protest the Paris blasphemy was Shiite Muslim Iran.
Breakdowns in other areas are equally striking, as civilizational props crumble one after another. On the social plane, native populations are being replaced by the massive influx of “migrants” from other parts of the world who do not share their culture, values, or even language. Concomitantly, a demographic catastrophe is taking place because the birth-rate of the newcomers greatly exceeds that of the natives, portending the latter’s extinction or at best reduction to the status of a disenfranchised minority status in their former homelands. In culture, scarcely anything of note is being produced any more. As collective purpose evaporates, life loses meaning and inherent value. Previously unthinkable “solutions” to the challenges and stresses of living, such as the huge state-sponsored suicide programmes in Canada, are becoming common and even attractive.
In the realm of politics, the chasm between the ruling elite and the inert masses whose destiny the alienated rulers are directing has never been greater. The list of ominous signs could be extended. Sharper minds are keenly aware of the situation and its dire implications. Just recently, Paul Craig Roberts posed the critical question: How did we get here so fast? Other serious analysts, such as Dmitry Orlov, have proposed explanatory models for the collapse process based on the experience of previous imperial and civilizational failures.
All of the cited trends bode ill for the civilisation they affect. There is one failure however that at first glance may not appear very significant but it stands out because it points to the West’s cognitive decline. That decline, which paralyses thinking, compounds cumulatively the effects of breakdowns in the other domains.
The episode we will highlight epitomises the normalised insanity of a moribund society. The mise en scène is a US Senate subcommittee hearing convoked to elicit evidence on the safety and regulation of abortion pills. The hearing would probably have passed routinely if obstetrician Dr. Nisha Verma had not been invited to testify on certain pregnancy-related issues. In presenting her evidence, she took great pains to sound politically correct and to avoid suggesting that pregnancy is a condition that exclusively affects women. When Sen. Joshua Hawley [R. – Missouri] took his turn to question Dr. Verma he asked her directly to clarify for the record, as a medical doctor and a scientist, her position on that issue: Can men get pregnant?
Throughout the ensuing exchange with Sen. Hawley, this obstetrician-gynaecologist who claims a medical doctorate, and who presumably is familiar with human anatomy and versed in reproductive matters, remained extraordinarily evasive. She refused stubbornly to respond with a simple “yes” or “no” to a question that did not require any academic credentials to answer. The video clip of her testimony should be viewed critically, not just for its undeniable ludicrousness, but more to the point as disconcerting evidence of ideological denial of self-evident, empirical facts that has gone dangerously mainstream.
Dr. Verma was obviously uncomfortable and even frightened as she sought evasive stratagems to deflect Sen. Hawley’s common sense question. The fact that she is of Indian origin, although judging by her accent she is American-born and bred, suggests that to her the notion of male pregnancy probably is as culturally unpalatable as it would be to every normal person in the Indian subcontinent. Her nervousness hints that deep down she knows perfectly the correct answer to the senator’s question but is professionally and socially intimidated to state it publicly.
If that is the case, it does not reflect favourably on her professional integrity. But it is absolutely damning for the culture that in a public setting, when important issues are being weighed, makes it personally hazardous to speak the truth.
And there is little doubt, at least with regard to the narrow issue of male pregnancy, that the facts are not just well known but are even readily admitted so long as they do not impact the regnant ideological chimeras. Evidence for that is the charming clip on YouTube about “fifteen differences between male and female cats.” Cat lovers will appreciate it. Where cats are concerned, there is no equivocation, conflation of male and female roles, or misattribution of biological functions. The notion of male cats getting pregnant is not entertained, even theoretically. One wonders how Dr. Verma would react if the question put to her were reformulated: Can male cats get pregnant? Or male storks, or male centipedes?
From an obligatory “yes” answer with reference to human males to the same required answer with reference to male cats or dogs, the distance is short. With the normalisation of enforced lunacy, which is the cognitive aspect of collapse, that distance is decreasing rapidly.
