There was an article in the Spectator the other day, with the title something like ‘It is not too late to save the West’. The article began with the promise of being interesting, and important. The premise in the title, is of course, the urgent matter, of our nation being destroyed by many different things. Essays and books like this began to be written as long ago as the 1930s, but the feeling of something having gone wrong roughly coincides with the rise of Prussia, and maybe Nietzsche was the first great and consistent thinker, who foresaw the decline of the West. The West is not the same thing as our country, and perhaps there is a problem with the idea of ‘the West’, but I will get on to that.
The article began by listing what the author believed would be universally considered to be, the pillars of the West. These were listed, and constitute a rather striking statement of what our culture is, and, truly, what should be fought for, indeed, what is lived by anyone who has to do with our culture and way of life.
The first pillar is Athens, which gave to the West the ideal of democracy, and freedom of choice within a community. The second pillar is Rome, which gave to the West the tradition of law, and the rule of law. To some extent, Athens also had law, but the Romans embedded it over a wide area, so that Roman citizenship meant, being obedient to legal protection and obligation. These are ideals, which were given to the West, rather than existing things; Athens and Rome both no longer exist, of course, but it has been possible to study and emulate these things. Perhaps I could spend time wondering, how something so crucial as these things are to us, can have been brought into our culture, merely by aspiration and memory.
The third pillar is Jerusalem, which gave to the West the relationship with God on a personal level. Christianity, in way which is not written into Judaism, emphasises the individual’s relation to God, rather than the tribe or the legalistic relationship to a mere lawgiver. Life, faith, and salvation, are experienced by the individual, and hence, the most important point of reference for the cultural life of the West, has been the single responsible individual soul.
And the final pillar, is not assigned a place, but I think it could conveniently be called ‘London’, and gives rise to the scientific spirit, investigation, empiricism and pragmatic testing of facts, for the production of working theories and machines. It might also be called, and is called, by the author, the spirit of Enlightenment and rationality. But, as I hope to show, I think this is probably going too far. For, pure rationality is not so useful as one would suppose, and contradicts the other pillar, which it is my purpose to explain in this essay.
The original article, having made this promising beginning, the proceeds to unravel precisely what is wrong with the West, as if it were one of its virtues. The West is globally supreme, and has attempted to transfer itself across all human life. In the struggle to do so, it has begun to be defeated. It had proposed to itself the task of establishing itself as dominant across the world, and, more recently, it has begun to walk backwards, in the face of resistance, the author says. And, he goes on to explain, how it can regain the upper hand.
We should feel some questions about the author’s hidden presuppositions, of course. For, where in the four pillars of a culture, which he set out, with which there is no disagreement, where do we derive the need for global supremacy? Among Athens, Rome, Jerusalem, and London, which one of them demanded that all human beings submit? And, if one were to struggle and attempt to revive the West, would it be, in order to bring about a kind of globalisation? Rather, is not globalisation exactly what has made the West unfit to live, and has perverted the West?
For instance, hasn’t globalisation been the reverse of Christian individualism? I think it is a familiar idea, even if a bit conspiratorial, that global government, or global power, usually destroys local and foreign cultures, and also, the cultures of Europe; we say that it is the opposite of democracy. Again, it is widely suspected, that globalisation, is contrary to local law, and requires laws which did not arise spontaneously from among the people, but were imposed from above. Finally, globalisation could be said, to have something in common with the scientific spirit, in the effort to make every human being a rational agent, and submissive to an impersonal Reason. But I’ve already mentioned, that science and technology, are not the same thing as human rationality, and such a thing is mere pie in the sky, in any case. If one were to say, that England, or the West, have benefitted from rationality, then this would be an example of poor thinking and precisely irrationality. All men are reasonable, in that all men can use language to discuss things, and come to sound conclusions. But that there is some tool that they can use to do this, is merely an unproven suspicion.
So, these global ambitions which the author of the article says is at the heart of the West, are not intrinsic to the West, if we go by the other features of it.
Which brings me to the other questions I mentioned along the way. Firstly, given that it is not global, where are the borders of the West? To be brief, I would say, that the borders of the West, are those nations which compose it. Namely, England, Scotland, France, Germany, and so on. That is, the West does not really exist, except in the nations which compose it. It is true, it could be claimed, that the West exists in spirit, rather than in any place. So, it transcends national borders, and, as above, can become global. But this does not make any sense, if we accept that Athens and Rome are pillars of the West. For, democracy, and law, require specific land areas, and specific people. Those who vote, for example, are citizens of a particular place. And those who obey the law, or break it, are subject to territorially defined restrictions. Not to mention, that Christianity deals with specific individuals, not with a generic ‘spirit’ of men. So, the term ‘the West’ means, specific countries.
The article therefore presupposes that the West should be globally available, but has made the mistake, of not understanding, that the West, as its name implies, a set of countries.
The article’s title has asked, whether the West can surive, and this means, can the individual countries survive. It is true, that there have been efforts in the form of treaties nd organisations, which have tried to unite them, and I don’t deny, that unification of some kind might be preferable in some matters, to isolated existence in the modern form they have taken. But they do remain individual. And this is where I find, that the article has misunderstood the nature of the West, and then failed to list a fifth pillar, which is also necessary.
We should not forget, that the nations of the West, are under pressure of going under. The article expreses the widespread view, that England, France, and so on, are in danger. And so, where it has been possible for the author to rather thoughtlessly suggest means of these places surviving, by going more global as it were, my suggestion of the fifth pillar of the western countries, should assist them in surviving. Because they do need to survive, we are agreed.
I would say that the fifth pillar is nationalism itself. The West is made of nations. But nationalism is a purely empty attachment to the territorial boundaries of a place, and is not suitable as a description of what it is, which allows survival and reproduction of the culture. To jump to the obvious conclusion I have come to accept: the fifth pillar of the West is the attachment and necessity of the nation, which is expressed most often, or even always, in the form of myth. That is, nationalism is that romantic love for the land and people, which has always been expressed in poetry and myth making.
In the word myth, I also include history, in the form in which people understand history. For, there is no precise exact scientific account of the past, our past, and it is always guided by our presupposition of what it ought to be, and is always a kind of myth.
You could say, that perhaps all cultures have myth as a pillar, but not all cultures have democracy or formal law, as a pillar. Or, that not all human cultures have had science, or God and individualism. But I can’t see how this is an objection, since, I think it could easily be shown, that all human beings do have these things, but in only moderately different ways.
In fact, it would be possible to say, I think, that what differentiates the West from other places, is the nature or content of our myths and our history.
I will now explain what I think are the myths of the West. I have no desire here, to investigate the nature of actual history, as opposed to what you could call ‘mythic history’. I think that I do veer into the territory outlined by Roger Scruton in his England, An Elegy, when he says that England is a more of an imagination and a mystery, than a real thing.
But all places are created. All inheritance is selected and creatively accepted.
A myth is not so much to do with the past, as to do with what we allocate as our job to do in the future. What we can see, is the past. We know the past, and can verify that in one way or another, it was once real, and happened. We canot do that about the future. And so, we only see the past, when we make our way into the future. Without the past for guide, we cannot even imagine or see anything, or what is coming our way in the future. That is to say, we cannot properly live with confidence, without a story of the past.
I have found in recnet times, when Covid happened, when the war with Russia happened, that there was what you could call a myth, rose to striking, repeated and unconsciously stupid regularity. I mean, in times of crisis, the Britsih have recourse to one story, mostly fictitional, which was to guide them, namely, the Finest Hour myth. It would be easy to take Churchill apart, and to mull over the mistakes he made, or to separate his actions, from the actions of others; to wonder whether 1939 happened exactly as they believe. It is obvious, that this recorse to that time in the past, is recourse to a myth. What annoys the observer more, is that that the British have been engaged in wars across almost the entire globe, with few exceptions, and yet this particular one is the only one we hear about. Truly, even historians are not known to go on the TV or radio, or even the internet, and propose other historical analogies for Covid or the Ukraine war. What we see here, is a national myth, even, we should realise with some horror as Britihs people, a national foundation myth. As if, that is to say, the country originates from the years roughly between 1939 and 1945. The horror is, what about the Britain before that foundation? How did we lose it?
Myth and history, is how we live from day to day. This is true of all human beings. And it is necessary, to explain how our foundational myth, is one of the pillars. I personally, do not accept that ‘the Finest Hour’ should be that story. In fact, I do suspect, that the Finest Hour myth is precisely the myth which globalists and therefore, anti-West people, chose. England and Britain, as places; the West, that is, must have a better myth than this, if it is to survive. We cannot exist, with a globalist story at our foundation, as the pillar of our culture.
Again, when I say ‘myth’, I mean the imaginative relationship to our past and future, which allow us to live and survive as a culture. It is no mean thing. It is as important as demcorcy, or science, or the Christian relationship to God.
I want to look at myth as I see it, at our history as I see it, in a very brief way here. It is known, that the Greeks were very fluent with their myths and myth making; the Romans, too, but less so. The myth is not a religion, although it frequently concerns gods. The Greek poetry is almost boundlessly creative in the invention of these stories. What they were doing, was poetry. And, it should be known, that where a nation is concerned, that national poet is of great importance. It is said of Shakespeare, that his work is the first globally significant thing that the English ever did. There were others, but this is the first.
We should also be carefl to notice, that in the wake of the last war, poetry, myth making, and the like, were condemned by the mostly socialistic writers and campaigners, who wanted to destroy the West, because of the harm that Westerners had done, during the war. There would be no poetry after Auschwitz. Which is almost the same thing as saying, that there would be no nations or nationalism, after Auschwitz.
Further, I would say, that the nationalist religion followed by the Jews, is built on myth. The Old Testament cannot be understood as anything other, than a structure of myths, or, in other words, history and inheritance, selectively produced, for the education and survival of the Chosen People. I would also say what is widely accepted, that the early British saints, and perhaps even the later ones, and the saints of the Orthodox Church, benefit from being mythically treated. This does not diminish them; rather, it indicates the importance of history, told in a particular way. As in: history is always myth.
British history in our time, is told around a set of myths, which can conveniently be discovered, in the names which were given to the renamed train lines, by the London mayor, a couple of years ago. Windrush, Suffragette, and the like. These are the most recent form of British history. To me, they do not seem to enhance the chances, of Britain surviving as a country. But that is just how I see it. I see it, that a country cannot survive, and that this country is in danger of not surviving, without a positive attitude toward the entire community; not merely to protestors, recent immigrants, just as little as the Finest Hour myth is also inadequate by being so small and desperate, merely reactionary.
The British myths were laid out in large part by Shakespeare, who I have already mentioned. But also, by the Romantic poets. IN the case of Shakespeare, and I think, by common acceptance, the British history, revolves around Kings. It is no coincidence, that the national poet, in the form of pure poetry, namely Milton, set out to write what he thought of as the most poetic subject of England, as story about a king, namely, King Arthur.
For me, England is not so much England, as Wales. I want to mention, as a side note, that Yeats has educated me a little, about how I see my country, and the purpose and form of myth. I have written elsewhere bout his theory. But, he considered his work as a poet, to be to assume a mask from the tapestry of mixed myth and factual history, and to emerge from that limitless mass of the past, to speak in the present, wearing a mask derived from the mythical past. It was not mere poetry, but it is the destiny of every man who wants to become himself, that he should do so. To be a real person, and to have a nation, means that you must become part of the history, the myth of your land. You could say, that this is as foundational, as politics, law, or religion. To be a self, in a specific country, namely, your country.
The place I have lived in since birth is probably not the same place as you are familiar with. I am Welsh by nature and by birth. I will conclude the essay, by mentioning something personal to me alone. I have said, that the myth requires one to take part in it; it gives a vision of the future. That myths are unavoidable, since in order to continue to live into the future, one has to have a past.
A land is, in itself, no more than a desert, an empty barren place; it is mere climate, land, natural things, inhospitable. Wales is like this, as I see it in my heart. A land needs people, in order to be something with meaning. And the merest, perhaps the only absolutely necessary person, is me, myself. Other people are also necessary, and I relate to them, mythically, as other Welsh people; or, as the dead, the ancestors. I have felt like this since I was a small child, and I still do. I do not think of Wales as a place with a devolved senate, and a set of council rates, a place in need of investment, whose chief industry is tourism. I cannot conceive of the kind of person I would need to become, to be satisfied with that as an ideal or real image of Wales.
I populate my Wales, with the people who were here when the Romans arrived. And, who accepted the Roman rule, for three hundred years. And then took on that rule as their own, as the Welsh princes and tribes, for a thousand years. After that, Welsh history blends more and more, to become the joint mythical history of the kings of Wales and England as one. This, in a complicated sense, is how I see my own place in history, as one of those people, who is descended from those Celtic Romans, and people who kept life in the country going, through a thousand years of princes and kings, on these barren hills and valleys. That is the past from which I come, and from which we all come. But it is in the nature of myths and history, that everyone thinks of himself as the hero of the story, and keeps these dreams and intuitions private, for the most part, and he is the centre of the story.
To my mind, anyone who cannot claim to belong to that story, is not Welsh. And in this way, the myth is nationalistic, and it excludes foreigners; that is what it is for. Myth, is usually the story of struggle for identity and survival. And when the author of an article about the West, fails to realise that national myth is what motivates anyone to support and continue that story, he is probably more part of the problem, than the solution. But I will end the explanation of this idea here. I should point out, that I see, that since the history or the mythical history of the land of Wales, and more recently England and Wales, depends on the story of the kings, then it seems to me, that this is how and where, personal worth and meaning, is closely associated with the monarch, whose power is in this sense, not divine, but rather mythical. And that, to be British, is to have some relation of descent or loyalty, to the royal dynasties of the country; and this, even when tempered or made more cold and rational, even by the intervention of insurrections, civil wars, and the secularisation and limitation of the powers of the monarch, as if these things are also part of the story.
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As an appendix or footnote, I should point out, that Spengler, who was concerned with the idea of the Decline of the West a hundred years ago, as the first suffragette movements, the working class protest parties, and the movements of industrial populations and immigrations, were first taking off to destroy the West, that he said that the West is a single unit; and that the myth of the West is Dr Faustus. But what applicability this has to my thesis, is for another time.
I have noticed as a quality of my ideas about my country, that I have an unusual lack of sympathy with other men, when it comes to thinking about what Britain is, what its culture is. Whether it is because I am Welsh, or because I am peculiarly individualistic to a higher degree than other conservative minded people, I do not know. What I mean is, those things which they believe are worth inheriting, such as community, peace, and the English countryside; the sort of Hobbit idea of England as a set of people of a certain eccentric kind, in a largely agrarian economy, with a certain type of restrained Englishman and a living monarch, representing a constitution partly divine and partly secular in an ad hoc sort of way, is not how I perceived my country since my youth. If that is the England I inherit, then I have had to work hard at doing so.
By nature, my England consists of people are like myself. It is still largely a place of survival, where the nation has to survive against other nations by having industry and selfless work; and on the individual level, it requires an ethics of self-denial, silence, and brutality towards one another. I sometimes struggle to see the sense of democracy, where it will lead to things antithetical to the imperative for survival and a kind of local supremacy of the nation against others.
I suppose, that when people advise the classic four or five pillars of the West, they do so, in order to show ideals, which can be transported across the world. And this is what soft power usually means. I have no interest in soft power, but in real power; so even the British constitution is not something I would naturally have any difficulty, in simply brushing aside, even in only moderate emergencies of the state, or individual activity. I mean, in my basic state of consciousness of what Britain is, I think of it not as ruled by law, but by something else; and, throwing aside the law is something which, in my mind, is something that English people do. We aren’t ruled by law, I suppose; rather, we make it up to suit ourselves, both as individuals, and a society of people. I suppose you could say, that I think laws are an inconvenience, as formally drafted things imposed from above. And, that the fewer of them there are, the better. Which, would lead someone like me, to think of government as a thing which ought to be restricted as much as possible.
The luxurious picture of a highly organised England, consisting of huge numbers of people, living side by side in a tolerant way, is something which to my taste, appears to be overly-luxurious, as it is described by most English writers. My vision has been of the solitary individual, who from time to time, sees his interest in working with others, in a military grade organisation, for the sake of communal survival, but otherwise, is on his own, in a place where he makes his own rules up. It is still a mythical place of obligations to the past and future, and to others. But it is a land of silent people, who punctuate their lives not with the passage of new laws and communal festivals and ceremonies. But only with moments of song sung for its own sake, for nobody else; perhaps only to God if anyone else. It is for this reason, that I have an innate kinship with Cromwell, as much as with the great more generous tradition of English kings and history, and the panoply of a complex constitutional arrangement, with those four pillars. To me, the only one which really matters, is the fifth one, and certainly, a true Christianity, rather than the mere formal lip service to our religion, which people make these days.
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