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Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
1953 - Iran Coup. The CIA and MI6 organise their first "regime change", a coup to overthrow Mohammad Mosaddegh after he nationalised the Iranian oil industry.

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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:

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Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
1953 - Iran Coup. The CIA and MI6 organise their first "regime change", a coup to overthrow Mohammad Mosaddegh after he nationalised the Iranian oil industry.

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^
THIS.

All else aside is just normal for the cycle, but that right there is where it all started to go wrong, as soon as we started putting up puppet dickheads like the Shah - tell me we're not STILL suckin on blowback from that, right now, right here, today ?

And doomed to repeat the cycle, having learned nothing, as we install two MORE pricks of the same stripe who will either be cast down and replaced with someone who hates us, a'la Khomeni, or turn on us when we fuck em over one too many times, a'la Saddam.

Wanna make the world a better place and advance the cause of human freedom ?

Don't bomb the middle east, bomb langley.

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
I agree rampant imperialism is both the turning point when a nation becomes an empire, and also the start of the downslide of that civilization.

So, I might say the Industrial Revolution and the Treaty of Versailles. The Industrial Revolution because of the pollution and because that's when almost everyone became slaves, and the Treaty of Versailles as the political element, it led directly to all the conflicts and invasions around WW2, which in turn has led to all the conflicts of today.

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Originally posted by AnthonyT:
"2000s – Good education skews to the rich. Health care skews to the rich. Inequity skews to the poor."

Hello,

Clearly, this is a timeline with a skewed point of view. The described condition deserves to be limited to no particular date.

--Anthony

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Originally posted by Niki2:
Anthony's got it, so does CTS.

As for the pattern, it may be a semi-global one now, but the pattern of empires has pretty much been the same throughout history. What CTS said, c'est vrai.

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there was some massive slavery in the agrarian serfdom world

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Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
So worth no comment then.

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The rise of porn,the neutering of democracy and the spread of junk culture. Can we just agree society peaked in the 60s?

It's mid-afternoon on a Monday. The waiter has just brought over a cheese platter and is tempting us with a list of liqueurs.

"You only live once," smiles Pria Viswalingam.

In a posh eatery in Sydney's CBD, the former SBS TV host is discussing his new film about the ills of modern life. Called Decadence: The Decline of the Western World, it explores the rise of porn, the demise of egalitarianism and the spread of junk culture. It examines the neutering of democracy and the unstoppable growth of mercantilism. It touches on the collapse of faith and the fracturing of families.

Then it weaves all those threads and more into one argument: that western civilisation peaked in the 1960s, and is now sliding into the abyss.

"This here is decadence," says Viswalingam, looking around at all the businessmen lingering over long, indulgent lunches.

After spending five years and visiting 10 countries to make his film, he pinpoints 1969 as the peak of western civilisation.

"The west as we know it today begins with the Magna Carta in 1215," says Viswalingam, who wrote, produced and appears in the documentary. "Then came the Renaissance, the Reformation, the founding of America and the Enlightenment, before the west peaked with the social revolutions of the 1960s.

"In 1969, the Russians and the Americans took us beyond our earthly bounds, the My Lai Massacre shattered the image of us as the good guys and then there was all the sheer exuberance and peace, love and rock and roll of Woodstock before the Rolling Stones 'end of the '60s' concert at Altamont. Decadence depicts the west's decline ever since."

Viswalingam is a former SBS TV presenter whose credits include Fork in the Road and Class. Having devoted a career to analysing culture and society, he says the symptoms of decay and decadence are unmistakeable.
Filmmaker Pria Viswalingam

Those symptoms include soaring suicide rates and the west's addiction to anti-depressants. They include rampant individualism, emptying churches and disintegrating families. And they include the west's obsessive devotion to money as the only true measure of worth. In the west today, humanities are maligned while MBAs are coveted.

"Treadmill consumption, growing income disparity, b-grade leadership, they're obvious signs of a culture adrift," he says.

Thing is, he's not alone. Another voice among the swelling chorus of cultural doomsayers belongs to author Alexander McCall Smith, who came to the Opera House in October to present a talk entitled Society is Broken

"People have been talking about the 'broken society' for some time now," Smith wrote in a complementary article. "[The British] riots demonstrated just how broken. The broken society is a consequence partly of social change and cultural change.

"The social change is familiar: the destruction of the family as the fundamental social unit would be fine if we had replaced it with something. We have not. [And] it’s a culture in which we seem to have abandoned many of the values on which we based our civilisation.

"We don’t know what we believe in and are busy bringing up children who share our confusion ... We have created a strange culture perpetuated by television and other media that rejoices in and celebrates dysfunction, violence and anti-social behaviour."

So pervasive is the sense of cultural bankruptcy that a new school of thought has emerged. Dubbed "declinology", it has seen the publication of books including Dambisa Moyo's How the West Was Lost, Walter Laqueur's Last Days of Europe and Bruce S. Thornton's Decline and Fall: Europe's Slow Motion Suicide.

"[In] France declinology has become a national art," wrote Madeleine Bunting in The Guardian in January. "While in Germany, declinology has assumed hysterical proportions."

Of course, the idea that civilisation is doomed is nothing new. Since the beginning of time, the end has been nigh. Declinology is merely the latest manifestation of humanity's insecurity about its imminent demise. Moreover, some declinologists have ulterior motives. They are peddling doom to push other ideologies.

"The really striking characteristic of declinology is how it is used to advance other agendas," wrote Bunting. "It is a way of injecting urgency, grabbing attention for another cause. And it can get very nasty ... Declinology in Germany and France has become toxically entangled with Islamophobia."

Viswalingam has no hidden agenda; he's simply fascinated by all the social changes underway. And not a little frightened.

He first broached the subject in Decadence: The Meaninglessness of Modern Life, a six-part TV series which aired on SBS in 2006. Since then, he says, the topic has become even more relevant and confronting. Tellingly, his film dovetails with the Occupy Wall Street protests.

"I heard an American professor saying that the Occupy protesters had achieved in a few weeks what non-protesting people have been trying to achieve for years," Viswalingam says. "They have expressed the view that young people are fed up with corporate greed creating serious divisions in society between rich and poor and that this has to be addressed. They have set the agenda and it is not going to go away."

Decadence aims to be the social equivalent of Al Gore's climate change documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. It aims to inspire change. One of the interviewees is philosopher Noam Chomsky.

"Eighty per cent of the population think that the country [the US] is run by a few big interests looking after themselves," says Chomsky in Decadence. "And we can't do anything about it."

Unsurprisingly, Viswalingam struggled to raise finance for a film that attacks the status quo. He finally found an unlikely ally in Oliver Yates, a Sydney merchant banker who contributed the bulk of the film's funds. Yates says the Occupy movement, the Eurozone protests and the British riots all reveal the grassroots disillusionment within western societies. His hope is that Decadence articulates some of the frustrations underpinning that disillusionment.

"I believe that the new generation is struggling with society as they see it today," Yates says. "They have a feeling that something is just not adding up but don't know what exactly it is and why. Decadence is about why disenchantment and social dislocation are bubbling over in the industrialised world."

Even more concerning is the thought that the problems addressed in the film aren't confined to the industrialised world. They extend far beyond the west, because the rest of the world is actively labouring to emulate the west.

"The rest of the world is aspiring to the west,’’ says Viswalingam. ‘‘We have a billion middle-class consumers coming online in China and India. Noone is going to stop them.

"Decadence is really an ode to the west. I mean, I love the hard-won western values of liberalism, law and freedoms that we now take for granted _ to live as I choose, to be able to sue a government and win, the weekend. But it’s also a call to arms because China is still ruled by big bad Animal Farm-types and India has got another 200 years before its 99 per cent comes anywhere near the notion of social equitability."

So, if the west is doomed, how long do we have?

"Every civilisation will fall," says Episcopalian bishop John Spong. "The question is when."

Jacinta Dunn, the film's co-writer, says the answer may be soon.

"Just before the fall of the Roman Empire, they were all feasting on lark's tongue and nightingale hearts," Dunn says. "They were obsessed with food. I don’t think George Calombaris will be dishing up lark’s tongue any time soon, but we are undoubtedly obsessed with food. Anyone for sea urchin on angel hair or flavoured foam? A sign of imminent decline? Maybe. I certainly think it’s decadent."

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/movies/society-is-past-its-use-
by-date-20111202-1oajg.html#ixzz1g4zGovfJ

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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:

I want our young to be better people, better humans, than we are - to have compassion, empathy, to communicate and cooperate - to do the things we do not because of the stupidest goddamn reasons.
And I TRUST them to work it out, better than I do us, anyways.

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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
Why fall back, why participate in the cycle ?
I am of the mind we should stand tall and stride forward, adapt, evolve...

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Originally posted by SignyM:
When the end comes, it comes suddenly. There will be no bumbling along for another thousand years. The only bumbling will be in the minds of people who refuse to admit reality.

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Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
Who said it was just about America anyway?

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I'm not sure that's true. Powerful Empires have been known to crumble over the span of generations, and then survive in smaller pieces for a time, with little dark ages and renaissances along the way.

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Originally posted by canttakesky:

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Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
Who said it was just about America anyway?

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Nobody. You didn't say it. Neither did I.

I am sorry I didn't mean to sound touchy. But maybe I don't get the point of this thread. I think most everyone agrees that the sky is falling. What else is there to say?

It's not like we can stop it. Well, maybe Frem can, but not the rest of us. ;)

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Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth. -- Lucy Parsons (1853-1942, labor activist and anarcho-communist)

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Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
I thought it might generate some conversation re did people really think that western civilisation was falling? if yes, did the timeline accurately reflect the kind of decisions and events that precepitated that fall? were things missing that were relevant.? Did people think the whole idea of a western civilisation kind of hogwash, that it has been a series of empires.

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I did find it a bit rude that a couple of posters made the 'civilisations fall, so what' kind of comments.

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Originally posted by HKCavalier:
But how the heck you gonna get people to get it?

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It's odd. Folk love to talk about how much every damn thing sucks, and how everything's goin' to hell, etc. Even folk who you'd think would be clapping their hands, "Good riddance!" And then somebody suggests that all this sucking may be for the best and maybe underneath all the suckatude there's some lovely truth to hold on to and things to look forward to because of it and no one pays any attention.

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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
CTS?

None of us, is as strong as ALL of us - I and those like me stop it... no.
ENOUGH of us, humanity in general, though, oh hell yes.
Our combined might and will can in fact accomplish... ANYTHING.

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
But in regards to empathy, current generations don't really connect with people around them, or try to help people, or get involved in their community.

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