Why Has The West Been So Successful?

Pundit Ben Shapiro narrated a Prager U video on 4/8/2019 about why has the West been so successful. Here are my notes on the video. Ben: Western Civilization. Some want to save it. Some want to see it go. What is it? Is it the great cathedrals of Europe or the Nazi concentration camps? Is it the freedoms secured in the US Constitution or chattel slavery? Life-saving medicines or poison gas? My response: The West in general and America, in particular, are humankind's last best hope. It is not perfect here, but it is pretty darn good. Ben: The Left likes to concentrate on the bad: genocide, slavery, environmental destruction. But those have been present in every civilization from time immemorial. The positives are unique to the West--religious tolerance, abolition of slavery, universal human rights, the development of the scientific method. These are accomplishments of a scope and scale that only the West can claim. My response: The Left lie. Injustice and wrongdoing are historical realities everywhere, but the wondrous moral, cultural and legal advancements have been historic advancement, and that has happened, only in the West. Ben: As Western thought evolved, it secured the rights of women and minorities, lifted billions out of poverty, and invented most of the modern world. My response: Why would we want to undo Western progress? One must be evil or stupid to undo what works and works so well. Ben: Why has Western civilization been so successful? There are many reasons but the best place to start with the teachings and philosophies of Jerusalem and Athens. Jerusalem represents Judeo-Christian religious revelation: the beliefs that a good God created an ordered universe and that this demands moral behavior from his paramount creation, man. The other city, Athens, represents reason and logic, from the great Greek thinkers. These two ways of thinking--revelation and reason--live on constant tension. My response: Eric Hoffer has long written that tensions between opposing attributes are what goad people to strive, arrive, think, create, argue and goad themselves and others forward. This is the axiomatic law that moderation is the source of truth, love, goodness and creativity. The tension pushed Westerners to grow, think, seek liberty, technology, science, profits and creative ideas. Ben: Judeo-Christian religion posits that there are certain fundamental truths handed down to us by a transcendent being. We didn't invent these truths; we received them from God. The rules He lays down for us are vital for building a functioning, moral civilization and for leading a happy life. My response: The fundamental truths handed down to us by transcendent God are objective truths that help us live in a functioning, moral civilization and to lead happy lives. We are so blessed for this heritage. There is no need to abandon it. Ben: Greek thinking posits that we only know truth by what we observe, test and measure. It is not faith, but fact, that drives our understanding and exploration of the universe. My response: Greek thinking awakened in us a hunger for worldly, practical knowledge, yielded from studying nature under the scientific method. Faith and worldly facts together help us enjoy and comprehend the universe. Ben: The Judeo-Christian tradition teaches that God created an ordered universe, and we are to make this world better. This offers us purpose and suggests that history moves forward. Most pagan religions taught the opposite: that the universe is illogical and random, and that history is cyclical. History just endlessly repeats itself--in which case, why bother to innovate or create anything new? My response: Progress is possible under the Judeo-Christian ethos, but with the pagans there is no change, no reform, no progress. Ben: Judeo-Christian tradition teaches that every human being is created in the image of God; that is, each individual's life is infinitely valuable. This seems self-evident to us now, but only because this is our tradition. The strong more natural belief is that the strong should subjugate the weak--which is precisely what people did in nearly every society in all of history. Only by recognizing the divine in others did we ever move beyond this amoral thinking towards the concern for human rights, democracy and free enterprise that characterizes the West. My response: Jordan Peterson teaches that the sovereignty of the individual is the core axiom of Western thinking, and that each individual is created in God's image is the core concept driving this wonderful belief. Each life is precious, unique and immeasurably important. The law of the jungle polity pattern, endless tribal strife, of most countries in history has been replaced in the liberal West with laws about human rights, democracy and free market. What civilized advancements these are! Ben: Our modern civilization also required Greek reason to build our modern civilization. Greek reason teaches us objective observation. Through reason humans have the capacity to search beyond revelation for answers. My response: God works in various ways to share answers to guide us, via De's reasoning, our reasoning, and through God's revealed word from sacred texts and the prophets. Ben: Greek reason brought us the notion of natural law, the idea that we could discover the natural purpose--the telos--of everything in natural by looking to its character. Human beings were created with the unique capacity to reason; therefore, our telos is to reason. By investing reason with so much power, Greek thought became integral to the Western mission. My response: God is the Rationalist, that created the ordered universe governed his De's Logos, De's rational principle. As we reason in our armchairs and apply the scientific method to the experiencing of natural phenomena, powerful reasoning made and still powers Western advancement. Ben: The Founding Fathers of America took the best of European Enlightenment with its roots in Greek thought and added to it the best of Judeo-Christian practice with its roots in the Bible and melded them into a whole new political philosophy. My response: The Founding Fathers, steeped in Judeo-Christian spiritual and moral orientation and classical reasoning with Enlightenment Era liberalism did forge a unique, wondrous culture and political system that much be preserved as the foundation of our constitutional republicanism and society of participating supercitizens and anarchist individuators going forward. Ben: Without Judeo-Christian values, we fall into scientific materialism--the belief that physical matter is the only reality, and therefore also fall into nihilism, the belief that there is meaning in life, that we are merely stellar dust in a cold universe. My response: Without Judeo-Christian values, atheism, godless materialism, communism, totalitarianism, world war and nihilism are the human lot, and that witch's brew of troubles have many satanic origins. Without Greek reason, we fall into fanaticism--the belief that fundamentalist adherence to unprovable principles represents the only path toward meaning. My response: Greek reasoning allows us to be objective, moderate, logical and in love with liberty, free speech, free thought allowed for every individual citizen to think, do, act, speak and believe as his conscience guides him to express himself. There is no ism to be forced by terror and intimidation upon all resisters and unbelievers. Ben: The Soviet Union, Communist China and other socialist tyrannies rejected faith and murdered 100 million people in the 20th century. My response: Whether fanatics in a mass movement are religious or secular, ultimately does not matter much, because they are so similar and vicious once in power. They are dumb, mistaken, cruel and killers, and their master is Lucifer, not God. Ben: Modern Muslim world is rejecting reason whereas for 100s of years they embraced Greek reason, and were a leading center of scientific advancement. My response: Great point. Ben: We need the marriage between Jerusalem and Athens, revelation and reason. But Progressives reject both. Progressives want to go backwards, to a time when humans were governed neither by reason or faith, but by feeling, a time of moral chaos and disorder, a time of feeling over faith. My response: Ben does a great job pointing out how the blend of faith and reason handed us our great Western culture and civilization. This is our grand tradition, the key to a blessed and happy future not just for Americans but for all humankind.