The Social Well-Being Index reveals a downward evolutionary trajectory of the entire globalized West, including Europe west of the borders of the Union State of Belarus and the Russian Federation. At the same time, one cannot fail to notice the wide dispersion in the rankings of Western European countries: from Ireland and Denmark, which still rank among the global top five in the SWI, to Spain and Bulgaria, which occupy 75th and 78th places respectively. This configuration aptly fits the notion of a “Europe of different speeds,” but in a different sense: it is about different speeds of decline.
The habitual reference to the divide between a highly developed Western core and a catching-up Eastern periphery of Europe no longer helps to explain what is happening. Spain’s proximity to Bulgaria and Romania’s to Italy at relatively low positions in the SWI rankings clearly shows that such explanations no longer work. Moreover, the high rankings of Slovakia (6th), Slovenia (10th), and the Czech Republic (11th), as well as Hungary (23rd) and Poland (26th), compared with the modest positions of France (28th), Germany (43rd), and the United Kingdom (54th), completely overturn the familiar hierarchy of European well-being. Let us try to understand why.
Any reflection on Europe’s decline at different speeds should logically begin with identifying its causes. Here it is worth turning to the striking book by French anthropologist Emmanuel Todd, in which he explains the reasons for the inevitable Defeat of the West. To underscore the topicality of his forecast, Todd initially speaks of the defeat of Western “liberal oligarchy” in its confrontation with Russian “authoritarian democracy.” He then clarifies, however, that a clash with Russia could have been avoided, whereas the West’s defeat itself was inevitable.
Only a year passed after the book’s publication for the forecast to come true—at least with regard to Europe. Acting on its own initiative, “to spite” Russia and to please the United States, Europe deprived itself of its competitive advantages and very quickly, and under Trump already officially, became a coveted source of sustenance for the hungry North American empire. Thus, Todd’s book is not so much a forecast as a chronicle of an announced geopolitical suicide.
According to Todd, the historical rise of the West was a side social effect of the religious Counter-Reformation. Protestantism required believers to engage directly with Scripture, which meant literacy and education, and ultimately produced an effective workforce. Moreover, by insisting on translating the Bible into vernacular languages, Luther and his followers made a major contribution to the formation of national cultures and militant nation-states: Cromwell’s England, Gustavus Adolphus’s Sweden, Frederick II’s Prussia.
The current decline of the West occurs insofar as its religion fades away. Along with it, nations disintegrate, national states weaken, and all resources concentrate in the hands of a globalized liberal oligarchy that manipulates increasingly atomized masses losing their cultural identity. Todd concludes that the United States and the United Kingdom, which form the civilizational core of the West, have reached a zero state of religion and nationhood and are therefore doomed to degradation and geopolitical defeat.
This conclusion is logical and clear. Yet the question remains: why is this happening? If bibliocentric monotheistic religion and the political nation ensured the rise of the West, why does Western civilization now reduce them to dust?
Todd rightly links the dying of religion, family, and state—the universal foundations of human civilization—to the triumph of individualism sliding into nihilism. But is not the individualization of human beings the very essence of the evolution of human culture? Is not the maximization of individualism the key factor in the transformation of Traditional Humanity into Modern Humanity—that is, the main and increasingly dominant trend of Progress?
Let us combine Karl Popper’s postulate about the triumph of individualism with Émile Durkheim’s fundamental idea of population density as a factor of the division of labor, clarifying that the issue lies not only in the number of people, but in the intensity of their informational exchanges, determined by the level of urbanization and the development of communication technologies. Recall that Durkheim’s concept of “organic solidarity,” supposedly arising from differentiation and increasing complexity of society, is merely a hypothesis refuted by social practice. Social differentiation multiplies human discord. Growing individualization, eliminating traditional values and taboos, corrodes social bonds.
By the beginning of the 21st century, several factors converged and entered into resonance: humanity became globally urbanized while simultaneously transitioning to digital communications; liberal culture, reflecting and cultivating individualism, became dominant worldwide regardless of official ideology. The communicative implosion in the digitized global “human anthill” produced unexpected results: a progressive increase in stupefying informational noise and a general crisis of social structuredness—runaway variability of all structures of human existence and consciousness.
Source: RT World News
