Western Civilization: Love it or Leave It

Perhaps we should show you the door…

Far too frequently, as a culture, we now ask why someone committed a heinous or otherwise problematic act. As though understanding them somehow frees us from the responsibility to stop heinous acts. I’m not sure where this started originally but it has morphed into a sympathy for those who would do us harm, and guilt for perceived slights against them.

One of the great areas of this is the collective guilt over slavery in the United States, as though that is a burden that only our people carry. As though other nations, through out history, did not do those same things. As if people alive today inherited that guilt. You only inherit genes and traits that can be tracked by science — that is nature. Guilt over the actions of your (maybe!) ancestors actions is a cultural phenomenon — that is nurture.

Adults do not make excuses for the actions of others, whether they be their ancestors or criminals. We recognize that we do not speak for others, and we cannot atone for their sins. That is not how atonement works. If someone who is dead has not yet atoned for their sins that is something for them in the after-life. Those of us here in the moment bear no responsibility for that.

Slavery was not an invention of Western Civilization — it predates it. I would wager the practice predates history. But even if it was, it is not a sin we all bear, a sin for us to atone for. To be blunt, that’s stupid.

Similarly, past civil rights abuses or racism? Someone else being racist today? Not on me, not for me to atone for or suffer over. I am not going to wonder if some crime committed decades ago is an excuse for a crime today.

In the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attack yesterday there were some in the media wondering if this was a crime born out of a disagreement, or a slight, some magically awful racism of the victims. In the aftermath of that putrid git who murdered his former co-workers live and on the air there were claims he was angry over racial and/or sexual preference related bigotry. In both cases the implication was that we needed to be introspective and see how we are to blame for the actions of others, as though we have the power or responsibility to manage other adults in a free society.

But when that slimy twerp shot up an African-American church, no one asked us to identify with him or his crazy ideas, and wonder what could have possibly motivated him. Instead, we were once again taken to task over perceived white supremacy and racism, with people making remarks about how we must now deal with that sin. A sin of others. Because that disturbed individual is a collective guilt for the rest of us.

Interesting how that works.

Often, we are given grief for the sins of Western Civilization as a whole. On Columbus day we’re treated to hearing about how awful the man was. Yes, Christopher Columbus did some pretty rotten things. So did Vasco de Gama — he had a man’s lips and ears removed and dog ears sewn onto his head, for example. But I do not feel guilt over this. It’s gross, it sounds horrible, but I didn’t do it and I do not have to answer for the disturbed actions of a man that did horrible things hundreds of years ago. Imagine: People from a different era had different standards of behavior.

We are also given grief because we benefit from a society built on the suffering of others. I didn’t make it so. This is akin to a mother giving her child a hard time because the labor and delivery of said child was difficult and painful. The child benefits by being alive, for sure, but the child didn’t intentionally inflict suffering on the mother. Unless the child was Damien from The Omen.

Yet, other cultures are not asked to bear the weight of their ancestors’ crimes. Not that I expect them to be, but the double standard remains and must be pointed out: the fools trying to fundamentally transform our culture based on past sins must be exposed by their hypocrisy. China has done many horrible things in the last century, to many of their own citizens. What Mao did was atrocious by any measure. A good number of Eastern nations have similar despots in their recent history — and Japan has the Comfort Women of World War Two in theirs. But the Japanese men of today are not responsible for that (save any few still alive), any more than the current leader of China is responsible for Mao’s policies. To briefly mention Russia, as a sort of homework assignment: the United States is certainly not the only country with a history of abusing indigenous peoples. Not by far.

Western Civilization has risen and fallen many times in history. Greece is the real root of our civilization, with advances in science and philosophy that can’t ever be overlooked. Even today we marvel at the Greek accomplishments, we read the works of their philosophers, historians, mathematicians, and writers. We teach their literature. All of this is because of the significant contribution it represents to our society as a whole. They made mistakes — they weren’t perfect. That’s part of why they fell from grace. The curse of being a society of imperfect humans.

The Romans came next. They built on what the Greek had done after pilfering a great deal of their culture. In many ways they idolized the Greeks, but they also had their own spin and contributions. Even today we marvel at some of their art and writing, their science. The Romans took over most of the known world at the time — and then, like the Greeks, they fell. Mostly due to their own flaws, their weaknesses and their unsavory appetites.

This fall plunged the world into the “Dark Ages.” A lot of atheists and internet know-it-alls like to blame this on Christianity, as though medieval Christians hated progress and intelligence. This overlooks the contributions of the Catholic Church to our scientific understanding. Many early European scientists and philosophers were priests or monks. These were the men with the time and resources to do such studies — your average European didn’t have that liberty. The Church also funded a great deal of art and literature.

There was indeed a loss of many scientific accomplishments and a lot of knowledge, but that is at the feet of the Roman Empire’s catastrophic collapse, not the Church. Much like we see today in the middle east where strong Dictators have been removed with no stable government to replace them, the vacuum left by the Romans caused a great deal of strife.

There were also disparate, different groups of people fighting for land, power, resources — they often used religion as an excuse, but it was just that: an excuse.

But Western Civilization bounced back. There was an Age of Discoveries and men began to traverse the entire globe and even make inroads toward the poles. The industry that arose from that was a unique invention in the history of the world. Before those Spanish and Portuguese landed in the Americas, there was only sporadic travel to this hemisphere by people on over-sized canoes and occasional land bridges. The Spanish hold on the seas fell away, though — and England’s rose. England, too, was only an all-powerful empire for a time. Now we don’t have a single world power, but supposedly allied Western nations.

Since then we’ve grown by leaps and bounds. We have grown in our understanding of all the sciences, of medicine, and even of how to treat one another. People have more rights and freedom because of Western Civ, not in spite of it. We live longer, we can cure many more ills. Hell, my own knee issue would have resulted in the loss of my leg more than likely. Instead, it just resulted in some annoyance and a bout of self-pity that I let take over more than I should have.

Child birth is much safer. Infants live much more often. The elderly live better, longer lives. We put men on the moon, we put up a space-station. There has been a whole hell of a lot of progress in just a few hundred years, in just a few decades even. When this nation was founded people wrote with quill pens.

Of course, the fuddy-duddy types will come out and lament that technology is damaging our social interaction, but people have been making that claim since the invention of the telephone. Others will lament the availability of all flavors of pornography — and yes, that is a poison, especially for men. But so is sugar, if it becomes an addiction. There will always be ills. We will always be flawed. That’s not the point; that’s focusing on the tree rather than the forest.

Western Civilization is the greatest thing to happen to the people of Earth that was created by the people of Earth. There is no doubt about this, there is no room for debate. The advancements that this civilization has brought to the world have made countless lives immeasurably better, safer, and longer. Other civilizations have contributed, they’ve made discoveries, invented technology, written literature, and made art. But their contribution is relatively minor over-all — at least, in the West.

Oh, you think because people don’t want men who think they’re women to use the women’s restroom that we’re being oppressive? Try that story in the Middle East. They’ll probably kill you outright. Who is intolerant, again? You see, the tantrum thrown by the leftist over the bounds of our society is similar to the child who demands a toy, but when you give it to them they reject it — because you lost your temper and just gave in. They “don’t even want it now.”

There is much left to do — and we’ve taken a few steps back.

People like to mock “male tears”, but they would never think of doing the same for other groups that are complaining about their treatment, however legitimate those complaints may be. Because the double standard runs deep. As men, we are to be ashamed of the sins of our fathers and even men we don’t know. You see this in twerps like Ezra Klein, saying that men should feel a spike of fear if they’re beginning a “sexual encounter”. There is a collective guilt assigned to us for sexual assaults that a small number of us commit. But there is no collective pride for the actions of men allowed because even what good men have done is stained by the horrible privilege of being male.

Well, you can no longer have it both ways. We’ve gotten to the point where more and more people are waking up to this stupidity. Time to reverse the narrative:

I do not carry the blame for what others have done wrong, but I am damn proud of what Western Civilization has accomplished and the possibilities of its future.

I will not wonder, when some lunatic murders people, what sin could have been visited upon him, what slights he faced. I do not care why he wants to kill innocent people. I only care that he is stopped, and punished accordingly. I don’t believe in a rape culture in the West, and I refuse to allow that excuse to be built for rapists. Just like with domestic violence — we all know it’s wrong! The people who do it aren’t right.

That is not civilization. That is a barbaric lack of empathy.

If you don’t like Western Civilization, and you want some other sort of Totalitarian regime or a police state, go live in one. They already exist. There are places were you can go and get all the big government you want. Go there. But stop trying to change it, stop trying to guilt the rest of us into changing it. Stop trying to make us feel bad collectively for the actions of others.

Western Civilization. Love it, or leave it. We have stuff to do and we don’t have time for your bullshit anymore.