I have frequently posted stories on my blog linking to the pseudonymous “Spengler” at Asia Times.   The real identity of this erudite, yet controversial writer was for years something of an Internet parlor game.  I suppose choosing to write under the name of an author whose pessimistic and deterministic view of human history was encapsulated in the well known title, the Decline of the West, raises questions of identity and intended purposes.

This article finally tears away the veil of mystery surrounding Spengler as he sketches his own intellectual odyssey and the reason he chose to write under that name.

Also, in this article, Spengler, or David P. Goldman, examines the competitive nature of many Chinese and contrasts that with what he clearly believes to be a slothfully indulgent West. 

I do not subscribe to all of Spengler’s ideas, but his general thesis that civilizations die by no longer valuing their future posterity, while new, hungry civilizations rise, is a sobering thought experiment for those convinced of the possibility of manmade utopias at the end of the rainbow.

Civilizations, in fact most civilizations, die.  Only those that are still relatively young seem to still be alive and even as they live, they struggle.  Competition is ceaseless and once the will for competition ceases to exert its gravitational pull, lethargy is spawned. 

To be a conservative is to recognize the limitations of man and be willing to even take pride in some of the very things that make him parochial.  This doesn’t mean we should remain standing in one place forever with feet of clay, but it should sober us to the prospects of what is the best that can happen in this world. 

Progress appears; often only in retrospect, to be linear, but really occurs in fits and starts.  Two steps forward and one back.  There are no “final solutions” that will ever be final.  That is the central tenet of conservatism.

Civilizations die when their youthful vigor peters out.  This happens because man becomes so convinced of his “solutions” to the exigencies of the moment that he fails to remain connected even to shards of tradition and memories that stir deeply in the unconscious.  In a sense, the desire to seek unbounded “progress” destroys the foundations necessary for society to exist in a healthily functional way.  A void emerges like a Black Hole that eventually will suck all goodness and hope into its infinite vortex. 

 Perhaps, then, civilizations are the most ironic of human constructs- both the highest culture and the beginning of the end of that culture.

Globalization is not universalism, “westernization”, or “Americanization.”  It is merely a tool that can be used by any number of cultures.  Some will reap its fruits more than others.

Fundamentally, the question is- will globalization bring man together or will it find new ways to tear him apart?  An unyielding adherent to progress will believe it to bring man together, a conservative anticipates the absurdity of this “final solution” to history’s grand problems and recognize the transience of the moment.  A conservative will also smell decay long before the rot has decimated the structures underpinning their civilization, because it as an odor only tradition and history rightfully appreciates.

A conservative must defend what has been great, because to defend what “may be great” is a leap of faith more difficult than believing in God and far more likely to sow seeds of bitterness when the inevitable disappointment saps that once youthful vigor.  At that point, a rootless, existential ambiguity consumes those once well meaning hopes.

Tradition is posterity and the cumulative total of history’s lessons.  Losing tradition will kill civilization.