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How to end war and famine |
For me, 1900 is the most haunting year in human history. In 1900, the west believed in the future. We believed in reason, in progress, in liberal democracy, in science. We believed that humanity was going somewhere. And then the 20th century did its best to destroy all these dreams. For me 1900 wistfully stands for what might have been, what we might have achieved if we had stuck by reason, science, and the values of the Enlightenment.
If we had stayed true to the Victorians, instead of betraying them, there would have been no World War One or Two. No Marxist revolutions. There would have been no Holocaust. There would have been no Soviet Union. No communist famines. No Islamofascist movement. By 2000, every country in the world would have been a democracy, and war and famine would have ended forever. A golden age, unlike any other in history, would have begun. Humanity would be looking forward and outward, and by now we would have at least one permanent base on another planet or moon.
We had a chance to do this. We had a chance to end history, to reach the promised land of worldwide democracy. And we blew it. We wasted a hundred years following Marx and other siren voices of the counter-Enlightenment. We betrayed the Victorians. We betrayed the Enlightenment. We wasted a hundred years.
The "King of the World" scene
in the movie
Titanic (1997).
How much better the world would be if the 1912 world had been allowed to continue slowly developing,
if the 1914 war had never happened.
"16th April. — There has been an astonishing disaster at sea, the
Titanic, the largest vessel ever built, wrecked in mid Atlantic by
collision with an iceberg. It was her first voyage, and she was carrying
over 1,000 passengers to New York, many of them millionaires. Most
of the women and children seem to have been put in boats and picked
up by a passing steamer, but the rest have perished, over 1,000 souls
...
One thing is consoling
in these great disasters, the proof given that Nature is not quite yet the
slave of Man, but is able to rise even now in her wrath and destroy
him. Also if any large number of human beings could be better
spared than another it would be just these American millionaires with
their wealth and insolence."
- The disgusting diary of
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt,
on
16 Apr 1912
(see screenshot),
after the Titanic sank,
manages to sum up everything I hate about a certain type of western intellectual.
Like sneering leftists after 9/11,
he seems delighted the ship sank.
Thousands have died in horror, and he just feels like making stupid jokes.
He has contempt for vulgar Americans who earned their wealth through trade
(in contrast to old money like his wife the
15th Baroness Wentworth).
And finally, he is delighted that cruel uncaring nature is putting man in his place.
He's dead 90 years, but I still want to punch him.
Was WWI pointless?
And it is not just the 15 million lives lost immediately in WW1.
WW1 was the start of the 20th century collective madness
that led to the Russian revolution (1917),
the Bolshevik and Soviet democide,
the Young Turk and Ataturk democides (1914-23),
the rise of Nazism,
WW2, the Holocaust,
the Cold War, and the entire worldwide communist democide.
WW1 derailed western civilization from the long 18th-19th century
pursuit of science, enlightenment, democracy, capitalism
and ever-expanding freedom.
After 1914, an entire human lifetime
was lost before the tide began in 1989
to flow in the direction of human progress again.
And finally, 1914 was something from which Europe never recovered. It was the great stupid act of European suicide. Until 1914, Europe had had centuries of being the centre of the world - the birthplace of science and the heart of all human knowledge. And Europe threw it all away. It never recovered from the two world wars of the 20th century. Leadership of the world passed to America. As the men were marching out in 1914, they should have been told: This is the end of European power you are marching for. Don't try to beat the enemy. Just do some kind of deal with him and carry on with life as normal.
inspired by
A Trip to the Moon,
captures that 1900 feeling, when anything was possible.
20 July 1969.
The moon landing as imagined in
A Trip to the Moon in 1902.
What the moon landing actually looked like in 1969.
From here.
The earth seen from the moon, as imagined in
A Trip to the Moon in 1902.
What the earth seen from moon orbit
actually looked like in 1969.
From here.
See also 1968 photo (from moon orbit).
Since 1995.
