by Kerry Bolton
This Puritan outlook became a foundation of the capitalist ethos with, “That powerful tendency toward uniformity of life, which today so immensely aids the capitalistic interest in the standardization of production”.11 Here we see the formative stages of globalism. The Puritan ethos also provided religious rationalisation for the inequities of capitalism that were to mark the social revolution overturning the traditional Christian beneficence that the emerging oligarchies found so restrictive. Inequities exist because it is part of Divine pre-destination, the concept giving the Puritan merchant;
“the comforting assurance that the unequal distribution of the goods of this world was a special dispensation of Divine Providence, which in these differences, as in particular grace, pursued secret ends unknown to men. Calvin himself had made the much-quoted statement that only when the people, i.e. the mass of labourers and craftsmen, were poor did they remain obedient to God. …”
“Now naturally the whole ascetic literature of almost all denominations is saturated with the idea that faithful labour, even at low wages, on the part of those whom life offers no other opportunities, is highly pleasing to God. In this respect Protestant Asceticism added in itself nothing new. But it not only deepened this idea most powerfully, it also created the force which was alone decisive for its effectiveness: the psychological sanction of it through the conception of this labour as a calling, as the best, often in the last analysis the only means of attaining certainty of grace. And on the other hand it legalized the exploitation of this specific willingness to work, in that it also interpreted the employer’s business activity as a calling”.12
While the traditional societies had the notion of “divine calling” in regard to work, as we have seen this was as part of a social organism, where each “calling” at its duties and obligations, including the merchants, who had their own guilds, as did artisans. These imposed duties and obligations on craft and trade. The traditional social order was far removed from the Free Trade ideology that developed especially in England as a secularised Puritanism.
In the American colonies the Pilgrims and the Puritans saw the Promised Land. Those who became the Pilgrim Fathers of the American colonies regarded themselves as “English Israelites, like the Chosen People leaving Egypt”. A British merchant, Thomas Weston, formed from a congregation of English Puritan exiles in Leiden, Holland, the “Saints” to establish their Promised Land in the New World.13 The Puritans had detached themselves from England and from the Western culture-organism. The USA became a “messianic” nation with a world-mission, profit having been sanctified and forming what has become the “American Dream”, to which all nations are expected to convert in the name of Liberal-Democracy. The Masonic ideal of a “new secular order” was a formative influence on American messianism. Hence even the “second religiousness” that Spengler stated was a feature for the revitalisation of a Late civilisation14 has, to use a Gumliev term, “zig-zagged”: instead of a resurgent Western spirituality we have the “prosperity gospel” that declares personal “finances” to be the primary blessing of God, and the masses by their millions are inspired by this message from the holy men of the Late West.
Decay of the Megapolis
As we have seen Late civilisation is marked by depopulation, after a period of overpopulation has resulted in the decay of the cities. These occurrences fulfil a pattern of culture-pathology.
Konrad Lorenz, saw in the overpopulation of the cities one of the “deadly sins” of “civilised man” resulting in the unique ability of the human organism to “suffocate itself”. The noblest traits defining what it is to be human are the first to perish, Lorenz stated. The more people are obliged to live closer together the more antagonism increased among them.
“When there is daily and hourly contact with fellow humans who are not our friends, we continually try to be polite and friendly, our state of mind becomes unbearable. The general unfriendliness, evident in all large cities, is clearly proportional to the density of human masses in certain places. For example, in large railway stations and at the bus terminal in New York City, it reaches a frightening intensity”.15
“Crowded together in our huge modern cites”, wrote Lorenz, “in the phantasmorgia of human faces, superimposed on each other and blurred, we no longer see the face of our neighbor”. “Neighborly love”, or what we might here extrapolate as a sense of kinship, “becomes so diluted by a surfeit of neigbors that, in the end, not a trace of it is left”. Lorenz makes the very pertinent comment that “we are not so constituted that we can love all mankind, however right and ethical the exhortation to do so may be”.16 The more we are exhorted to “brotherly love” for all “humanity” the less our humanity becomes. “Emotional entropy” ensues, as we try to find substitute kinship bonds among the nebulous city masses. The greater the crowding the more the individual becomes emotionally detached; the more “urgent the need not to get involved”. “…[T]hus today in the largest cities, robbery, murder and rape take place in broad daylight, and in crowded streets, without the intervention of any passer-by”.17 Lorenz regarded as “a dangerous madness” efforts to create by “conditioning” “a new kind of human being”,18 that “madness” being the ultimate objective of the presently dominate ideologies in the West and China.
Lorenz regarded “the fast-spreading alienation from nature” of the man of Late civilisation as a symptom of “the increasing aesthetic and ethical vulgarity that characterizes civilized man”. Detachment from nature, from the awe of nature, which in traditional societies, as we have seen, is an awe and connexion with the cosmos, results in this “aesthetic vulgarity”. Culture as an expression of the neurotic city-dweller rather than as symbolic of the healthy organic rhythms of a young culture, becomes a grotesquery of what we call “modern art”, and more broadly aesthetics in general, whether as architecture, music or fashion. Lorenz wrote of this epoch:
“How can one expect a sense of reverential awe for anything in the young when all they see around them is man-made and the cheapest and ugliest of its kind. For the city-dweller even the view of the sky is obscured by sky scrapers and chemical clouding of the atmosphere. No wonder the progress of civilization goes hand in hand with the deplorable disfigurement of town and country’.19
Lorenz used an organic analogy to explain the process:
“If we compare the older centre of any European town with its modern periphery, or compare this periphery, this cultural horror, eating its way into the surrounding countryside, with the still unspoiled villages, and then compare a histological picture of any normal body tissue with that of a malignant tumor, we find astonishing analogies”.20
Lorenz explains that the cell of the malignant tumour differs from the normal body cell in that it lacks the genetic information required to fulfil is function as a useful member of the “body’s cell community”. The malignant cell multiplies “ruthlessly”, “so that the tumor tissue infiltrates the still healthy neighoring tissue and destroys it”. He compares the “structurally poor tumor tissues” with the modern suburb of “monotonous houses” “designed by architects without much art, without much thought, and in the haste of competition”.21 As Spengler said, “money wills in Late civilisation”, and here in Lorenz’s analogy of modern, utilitarian architecture, resulting is “aesthetic vulgarity”, money dictates style, because of “commercial consideration”, mass production, and “mass dwellings”, “unworthy of the name ‘houses’”, but “at best batteries for ‘utility people’”, as units that are “anonymous and interchangeable”.22 Yet in the cramped conditions of multi-story apartments, alienation increases as an effort to maintain individuality.23 The equilibrium between individual identity and social kinship does not exist. Importantly, Lorenz concludes from this:
“Aesthetic and ethical feeling appear to be closely related, and people who are obliged to live under the conditions described above obviously suffer from an atrophy of both. It seems that both the beauty of nature and the beauty of cu
ltural surroundings created by man are necessary to keep people mentally healthy. The complete blindness to everything beautiful, so common in these times, is a mental illness that must be taken seriously for the simple reason that it goes hand in hand with insensitivity to the ethically wrong”.24
This lack of aesthetic sensibility allows the man of Late civilisation to have such disregard for ecology. Again “money will”, as Spengler said. Here ethics are atrophied. “Cold calculation dictates” Lorenz perceptively observed. The “overwhelming majority” only value whatever brings “commercial gain”. “Utilitarianism, with its destructive influence, may be defined as mistaking the means for the end. Money is a means…” As Lorenz states, few today would understand that “money by itself does not represent any value”.25 Here Lorenz, the zoologist, has discovered a great truth that few economists can conceive, but striking at the root of the money-system of Late civilisation, where money becomes a commodity, when in youthful cultures usury is outlawed and regarded as a hell-spawned sin.26
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The decay of the cities is accompanied by a loss of technical ability and craftsmanship. The USA as the citadel of the Late West is experiencing the collapse of its cities. Like Rome’s tenements, buildings are falling apart. Like the Indus and Mesoamercia large sections of the USA are becoming uninhabitable, and inner cities are being left vacant.
Adam Forman wrote an article aptly titled “New York City is Crumbling”. Citing a report from the Center for an Urban Future, for which he is a research associate, he wrote that,
“a significant portion of New York City’s bridges, water mains, sewer pipes, school buildings, and other essential infrastructure is more than 50 years old and in need of repair. Throughout the city, 1,000 miles of water mains, 170 school buildings and 165 bridges were constructed over a century ago. The city’s public hospital buildings are 57 years old, on average, and 531 public housing towers were built prior to 1950”.27
In 2013, there were 403 water main breaks. In 2014 a major water main break in Manhattan flooded the street and nearby subways. In 2013, subways in south Midtown were flooded. In 2012, 11% of the bridges across New York City were structurally deficient. Forty-seven of these were reported as “fracture critical,” meaning they are prone to collapse. “Approximately 4,000 miles of sewer pipe across the city are made of vitreous clay, a material susceptible to cracking and blockage. One and a half thousands of 2,600 public housing buildings do not comply with local standards for exterior and façade conditions.28 Of the public schools, over 370 of the city’s 1,200 public school buildings predating the Great Depression, have “temperamental heating and cooling systems, leaky roofs, and broken elevators”.29 Forman cites Elliot Sander, President and CEO of the New York architectural and engineering firm, The HAKS Group, and former Commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation:
“If our infrastructure is not advanced to an acceptable level and then maintained, these systems will degrade. We know from the 1980s that these systems will fall apart. It came very close to killing the city and region. You probably need to double the investment to both bring all the elements up to a state of good repair and to deal with the added demand from the growth we have had, and then put it on a regular replacement cycle. We also need to get more for our money. It will be difficult to do all of this financially and politically. But if we continue on the current course, it is likely New York will be substantially diminished as a global leader, with enormous environmental, social, political, and financial implications that far outweigh the cost.”30
The concern is for New York City as the financial capital of the world, yet while its Wall Street banks are lenders to the world, it is unable to fund its own infrastructure. The recourse is for the expenditure of billions in debt, backed by taxation. There is no credit lending facility to invest without recourse to debt and taxes. The global financial system devours itself, and its world centre, New York City will crumble, amidst “enormous environmental, social, political, and financial implications”. The cycle is set for crumbling buildings and broken utilities, such as one sees in the “Third World”, fellaheen states, where the jungle or the desert encroach progressively.
A report on Washington referred to “a loose chunk of concrete” that “plummeted onto a woman’s car as she drove under the Capital Beltway. It broke loose from a decades-old bridge in Morningside, Maryland”. “The Arlington Memorial Bridge is emblematic of the nation’s infrastructure challenges”. In 2014 the National Park Service stated that the bridge would need to be “shut down by 2021 for safety reasons”. “Its facade appears elegant on the outside, but the bridge’s innards are withering away”.31
That is the character of a Late civilisation in its terminal state: The tenements of Rome were constantly falling down onto the streets while the Roman Empire seemed to flourish. A tourist might one day walk through the streets of New York or Washington and write of its decay like travellers walking through the streets of Morocco, once the centre of a great civilisation: “Above these old broken walls upon which the devouring noontide sun now falls, appear once more the weed covered roofs of the palaces of ancient sultans … and beyond the more distant medley of terraces, mosques, minarets, and cracked and crumbling walls.32
The U.S. Military regards what are called “megacities” (populations of 10,000,000 or more) as an approaching problem of world instability, with the finite capacity of resources, and the cosmopolitan, multi-ethnic character of megacities that will cause conflict. A report by the U.S Army Strategic Studies Group, states that there are currently over 20 megacities in the world; by 2025 there will be around 40. With their growth there are increasing problems of sustainability. The U.S. Army comments that megacities are a unique environment that they “do not fully understand”.33
The report gives a picture of proliferating criminal networks and underground economies, natural disasters and the inability of decaying infrastructures to withstand the stressors. A feature is predicted to be the breakdown of civic order through ethnic and religious conflict among groups that are forced increasingly together to share diminishing resources and utilities.
“As resources become constrained, illicit networks could potentially fill the gap left by over-extended and undercapitalized governments. The risk of natural disasters compounded by geography, climate change, unregulated growth and substandard infrastructure will magnify the challenges of humanitarian relief. As inequality between rich and poor increases, historically antagonistic religions and ethnicities will be brought into close proximity in cities. Stagnation will coexist with unprecedented development, as slums and shanty towns rapidly expand alongside modern high-rises. This is the urban future”.34
“Regardless of the fragility or resilience of the city, their stable functioning is dependent on systems of finite capacity. When these systems, formal or informal, real or virtual experience demand which surpasses their capacity, the load on the city’s systems erode its support mechanisms, increasing their fragility. These systems are then more vulnerable to triggers which can push the city past its tipping point and render it incapable of meeting the needs of its population. Some dynamics of friction are observable in all megacities to varying degrees. Population growth and migration, separation and gentrification, environmental vulnerability and resource competition, and hostile actors are all present in some fashion within every megacity”.35
The military report comments on the increasingly heterogeneous populations inherent in a megacity as potentially “explosive”. However, the imposition of a multicultural, cosmopolitan society proceeds apace, with active encouragement from the U.S. State Department, and a myriad of U.S.-based think tanks and NGOs, for cities across the world, as part of the globalisation process. Again, it is a self-destruct system; an inherent characteristic of Late civilisation to rely on the continuation of suicidal tendencies in the name of “progress” and “economic growth”. Rome needed workers and soldiers from its provinces until ther
e were few Romans left. The Late West needs migrant workers.
“One of the hallmarks of megacities is rapid hetero and homogeneous population growth that outstrips city governance capability. Many emerging megacities are ill-prepared to accommodate the kind of explosive growth they are experiencing”.36
“Radical income disparity, and racial, ethnic and sub cultural separation are major drivers of instability in megacities. As these divisions become more pronounced they create delicate tensions, which if allowed to fester, may build over time, mobilize segments of the population, and erupt as triggers of instability”.37
Demographic Suicide
In conjunction with the overpopulating of “megacities” there is a depopulation trend of the native builders and sustainers of the original culture. It has become innervated and exhausted, and on its way to becoming fellaheen. In the meantime, the fellaheen from other regions flock to the decaying megacities, accelerating the process of cultural decay. This is the process described in the above quoted U.S. Army report, which it “does not fully understand”. It is a process that was described nearly a century ago by Spengler:
“the last man of the world city no longer wants to live – he may cling to life as an individual, but as a type, as an aggregate, no… That which strikes the true peasant with a deep and inexplicable fear, the notion that the family and the name may be extinguished, has now lost its menacing. … and the destiny of being the last of the line is no longer felt as a doom…”38