Category: Civilization, History, and Anthropology

(from elsewhere)

It is evident that aristotelian science produces a dramatic increase in the abilities of a people no matter what people learn it. It is evident that Christianity is good for a people – better than the alternatives – because it asks that we eliminate hatred from the human heart, and forgive our many failings, and producing economic velocity. It is evident that rule of law is good for a people – better than the alternatives, since rule of law – traditional law – does not depend upon the wisdom of men, only the results of their prior actions: it is scientific – while legislative law is always a questionable hypothesis. It is also clear that democracy is not better for a people than a benevolent monarchy. It is clear that a bureaucracy is more expensive and more corrupt than an upper class and nobility. It is clear that that the large nation state is not better for a people than the monarchical city state with ‘quarters’ for different groups none of whom can obtain political power over the other.

One thing I have learned in my life is that the western overemphasis of verbal transmission of abstract principles is inferior in result to ritualistic learning by doing as a member of the group. A minority of men, verbally gifted, can learn by this means. And while it is an inexpensive means of teaching, precisely because it is merely verbal, we cannot make the method of teaching the of verbally gifted a universal expectation any more than we can make the physical fitness of our best athletes a universal expectation – without failing the majority of our peoples. The west attempted to create an aristocracy of everyone and has failed and killed itself in doing so. The colonial era was a catastrophe because it broke property, territorial, hereditary, tribal and monarchical bonds, in exchange for literacy, numeracy, science, medicine and law.

Enlightenment era western political orders have been a catastrophe. It’s democratic incompetence was a luxury made possible by the rewards of the technological advancements of the era, military power, expanding trade, and colonial conquest. It is not something to be imitated. The west was made great by small nations, with kings, who prohibited the use of government for the exercise of power, relied at the demand of the church and tradition upon the rule of traditional common law, the effect of literacy, beneficial geography, and the aggressive hanging of large numbers of criminals every year – removing them and their genes from the population.

Africa certainly benefits from christianity, literacy, medicine, science, technology, property rights, and rule of common law. But Africans must develop a reproductive, social, pedagogical, and political order of their own. The west’s model of education, production, production of commons, and political legislation, is unique to westerners and causes damage wherever it is tried. The world, Africa included, needs to develop its own success not to imitate western failure. Universalism is a european enlightenment fantasy, and we cannot conflate the success of western technology, with the failure of western social and political orders. The west is dying from its own designs. The rest of the world should not imitate it and perish as well.

Curt Doolittle

The Propertarian Institute

Kiev, Ukraine