Spengler refers to Iran ’s declining birthrate and, as he has done in numerous articles, speculates this is the window of opportunity for Iran to push forward their claim for regional hegemony, before they no longer have the manpower to do so.  It is a compelling case. 

Additionally, Spengler’s view that many groups of people are not reproducing at the rate necessary for replacing their population is as a result of a lack of religious faith is quite interesting.  In many ways, I believe one of the most important philosophical and spiritual challenges of this or any age is that very issue, a lack of faith in anything.  I think that the extreme effort to secularize the world (at least the Western World) has resulted in unanticipated consequences that are not the beneficial ones so often desired by those who seek to “rationalize” mankind.  Rather, they lead to a crisis in identity and to fashionable nihilism that in turn moves us further away from real vitality.  I think it may well be in this day and age when Nietzsche’s critique of modernity and the “Last Man” becomes most profound, even if his animosity to tradition leaves us few places to go.

Will Iran seek to avoid becoming a nation of “Last Men” as so much of the western world appears to have already acquiesced in becoming?