Re: But as I said, the demographic battle is lost -- this is the battle which is waged in the bed-room and not on the battlefield. The graph of World Population Growth, 1750-2150 shows the situation clearly.
Actually, Europe never won the "cradle war"... I just checked it out this morning in ReOrient: Pr Andre G. Frank says that Europe accounted for 12% of world population in 1400 and only 18% in 1600... China's share was 60% in 1600.
Hence the feeling of decline/decadence cannot stem from Europe's, or the white man's, sluggish demographics since, on a world scale, Europeans have always been a "minority".
However, as far as technologies and sciences are concerned, Europe --joined by North America in the XXth century-- enjoyed a substantial lead from the XIXth century on. Yet, the technological gap was narrowed in the late XXth century, first by Japan, next by South Korea and China... I even expect it to be reversed in some fields such as life sciences (hindered in Europe by agro-luddism).
Also important is the moral leadership and Europe's claim to universalize her values: the European bid to lecture the world was badly, if not irredeemably, damaged in the wake of WWII... and the US's nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn't help. The atrocities committed by the white man during that brief span of time --1933 to 1945-- exposed the shortcomings of the so-called Western civilization and somehow debunked its humanistic pretense...
Gus |
