A One-Sentence Recipe for Civilizational Revival

Today's anti-civilization is a mix of economic authoritarianism ("do whatever you are told") and social infantilism ("be whatever you want"). Civilization requires the very opposite: a mix of economic libertarianism ("do what you want") and social maturity ("be what you ought").

Hence the following one-sentence recipe for civilizational revival: get rid of scientism and "postmodernism" in favor of Aristotelian Thomism, get rid of legal positivism in favor of natural and common law, and get rid of social democratic statism in favor of classical liberalism/libertarianism.

Preference Change in Social Organization

Could the governments of the world reinstate slavery? Yes, they could. They possess sufficient coercive power at their disposal. But would they dare to do it? No, they would not. The prevalent social attitude toward slavery makes such an action uneconomic from the point of view of the calculus of power.

Could warlords and mafias destroy a stateless order and replace it with a statist one? Yes, they could. They might possess sufficient coercive power at their disposal. But would they dare to do it? Only if the prevalent social attitude toward statism made such an action profitable from the point of view of the calculus of power. And there is nothing inevitable as to what this attitude will be.

The pen is mightier than the sword. Ideas are stronger than violence, even that of the most organized kind. The stationary bandit is not a necessity and the defense entrepreneur is not an impossibility. To suggest otherwise is to claim that intellectual and moral progress in the area of social organization cannot happen, which, to say the least, is a historically and anthropologically dubious suggestion.

Ideas Good and Bad: A Subjective Listing

If I were to name what I consider to be the ten most destructive and pernicious doctrines ever conceived that still retain various degrees of popularity, those would make the list (roughly in order of malignancy): Marxism, Keynesianism, welfare statism, coercive democratism, nationalism, militarism, postmodernism, positivism, scientism, anti-religionism. I am quite convinced that ridding the world of their influence (which could happen only as a result of their voluntary, conscious rejection) would make it an unprecedentedly humane and civilized place.

Fortunately, there are also what I consider as salutary and beneficial counterparts of the abovementioned malignant forces, among which I would single out the following ten: classical liberalism/libertarianism, rationalism, individualism, causal realism, marginalism, non-interventionism, Christianity, scholasticism, secessionism, abolitionism.

I would contend that the progress or regress of human civilization depends on which of these sets of ideas prevails. For the time being, I remain cautiously optimistic about the matter.