The West’s Fading Flame
Civilisation Slips Toward Chaos, Its Brightest Hours Flickering at the Edge of Memory.
Editor’s Note (September 22, 2025):
Jimmy Kimmel’s show Jimmy Kimmel Live! will resume on ABC on Tuesday, six days after being suspended indefinitely. The suspension followed comments from FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, who had indicated that broadcasters airing Kimmel could face regulatory scrutiny. Local station groups, including Nexstar and Sinclair, pulled the show from their ABC affiliates. ABC stated that it suspended the show “to avoid further inflaming a tense situation” after acknowledging some of Kimmel’s remarks were “ill‑timed and insensitive.” FCC Chair Carr has since clarified that the government did not directly order the suspension.
I do not relish writing this, but I cannot help coming to one conclusion: civilisation is dead - not literally, but in that it has reached a point of no return, a collapse that feels inevitable. Could Western civilisation, or civilisation in general, be revived? Technically, yes. Nothing stops it. But humanity has all but given up. A few still fight, but they are too few. Even so, these trends are visible across multiple societies and decades, not merely impressionistic. We would be better served preparing for what comes after the fall.
As I argued in Embers of Britain: Rise or Fade Away, this decline is mostly self-inflicted. That piece focused on Britain alone. Here, I want to show a broader picture: how the philosophy of self-sacrifice, altruism elevated to a universal moral code, has rotted the civilised world. And how disturbingly few seem to care.
Voices Under Fire: The Assault on Free Speech.
You do not have to like Charlie Kirk or Jimmy Kimmel to recognise that neither deserved what happened to them. Kirk was murdered, and Kimmel was silenced by the FCC for discussing it. In both cases, the target was not only the individual but the principle of free speech itself.
One camp cheers a secularised version of blasphemy laws: “Say something we don’t like, and we kill you.” The other wields the weapon of government: “Say something we don’t like, and we silence you.” Different methods. Same assault. Left and Right alike now insist that expressing the wrong ideas is a crime against them.
That is just the United States. In Europe and the UK, free speech has been under attack for years. It has not yet reached outright murder, though attempts have been made, but those who tried are now in prison. Kirk’s murder is being prosecuted. But the fact that Trump was not driven from office when he ordered Kimmel’s dismissal, and that most Republicans failed to repudiate him (Ted Cruz excepted), shows how little Americans value free speech. These actions, and their widespread acceptance, illustrate the broader societal tolerance for curtailing speech, beyond individual actors. Both sides embrace censorship, they only differ on method.
The importance of free speech goes far beyond mere “hurtful words.” As Ayn Rand observed, abolishing it alone would justify revolution, for speech is the very medium through which we think (Rand, 1963). This principle is not merely philosophical; modern research confirms it in concrete ways. Lev Vygotsky demonstrated that inner speech, the silent stream of words in our minds, organises perception, integrates concepts, and enables abstract reasoning (Vygotsky, 1987). Jerry Fodor argued that thought itself possesses a language-like structure, while Steven Pinker showed that as children acquire language, their capacity for reasoning and problem-solving grows in step (Fodor, 1975; Pinker, 1994). Experiments in verbal overshadowing reveal that even in adults, stripping away words can impair memory and reasoning (Schooler & Engstler-Schooler, 1990), and Gary Lupyan has shown that labelling objects sharpens perception itself (Lupyan, 2012). George Orwell, in Nineteen Eighty-Four, captured the danger with chilling precision: constrict the words available, and you constrict thought itself (Orwell, 1949).
Take away a person’s ability to use words freely, and you cripple their ability to think. That is why attacks on speech are, at root, attacks on the human mind. Kirk and Kimmel may be men I sometimes wish would just keep quiet, but it must be their choice. Murder or dismissal steals that choice. Today, it is “hurtful words.” Tomorrow, it may be vaccines, climate science, or inconvenient history. All in the name of the “common good.”
The Cost of Appeasement: How Violence is Encouraged.
Since the Second World War, the West has repeatedly turned the other cheek, and in doing so, rewarded violence. This is not new. It echoes the appeasement of Nazi Germany: the belief that yielding to aggression pacifies the aggressor, when in fact it emboldens them.
We did not confront Iran after the 1979 hostage crisis. The Viet Cong survived. BLM and Antifa riots burned cities, often with muted police responses. January 6th rioters were treated inconsistently; some walked away quickly. On the world stage, decades of concessions to North Korea, unchecked Iranian influence, and recognition of the so-called “state” of Palestine all rewarded those who define themselves by coercion and terror.
Whether left or right, home or abroad, civilisation’s enemies have learned a simple truth: violence works. I call this the ‘gunman’s veto.’ In its moral hesitation, the West meets force with compromise instead of principle.
Bill Maher once remarked, “We don’t threaten each other; we sue each other. That’s the sign of civilised people.” That was 2011. Today, too many in the West believe that force, directly with a gun, indirectly through government, is how disputes are resolved. Murderers are canonised. Dissenters silenced. Unpopular words criminalised. And ordinary people, who would never harm another, are ready to vote for those who will. Violence works. Tragically, it seems to be working.
History is clear:
Confucius – Analects: “The strength of a nation derives from the moral rectitude of its rulers. When force rules the people, virtue disappears and disorder reigns.”
Marcus Aurelius – Meditations: “Where a man rules by fear and violence, the community cannot flourish; reason and justice must govern if civilisation is to endure.”
Thomas Aquinas – Summa Theologica: “Laws exist to guide reason; where men rely on force to settle disputes, both justice and human flourishing are corrupted.”
Thomas Hobbes – Leviathan: “In the state of nature, the life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. Civil society exists precisely to prevent men from resolving their disputes by violence; when force becomes acceptable, the social contract fails.”
Friedrich Hayek – The Road to Serfdom: “Once force is seen as a legitimate tool to achieve one’s ends, the road to tyranny and the collapse of a free society is already underway.”
Hannah Arendt – On Violence: “Power and violence are opposites; where violence is accepted as a norm, genuine political authority collapses and civilisation with it.”
Ayn Rand – The Virtue of Selfishness: “Civilisation is the process of setting man free from men. The purpose of government is to protect man’s rights from being violated by others. Wherever force is accepted as a way of settling disputes, civilisation collapses.”
Violence has always been civilisation’s undoing. And once again, it is becoming the way of the world. How long can civilisation stand on such foundations?
The Holy Order of Statism.
Statism: A political and moral system in which the state is regarded as the ultimate arbiter of rights and values, holding the authority to control individuals’ lives, property, and choices. Statism asserts that human well-being is subordinate to the aims of the collective or the state, and that coercion, rather than voluntary trade, reason, or consent, is the legitimate means of organising society. It elevates force above freedom, and power above principle.
Across the spectrum, few escape it. Left or right, religious or secular, most people in practice are statists. Their loyalty, to God, to tribe, or to state, makes the individual subordinate. Civilisation, properly understood, rests on the opposite premise: the sovereignty of the individual, protected from force.
Once the state becomes the ultimate authority, decay follows. Even the smallest expropriation of a person’s time, money, or freedom plants a seed that can erode for centuries before collapsing suddenly. History proves this again and again.
Statism thrives because it is tied to altruism, the moral doctrine that the individual exists to serve others. Religion, Marxism, fascism: the effect is the same. More power to the state, more force over the individual. Once entrenched, it is nearly impossible to uproot. Institutions are captured. Citizens indoctrinated. False choices proliferate. To reject it fully is to become an outcast. And yet civilisation can only survive if individuals do.
Signs of Collapse: How Civilisation Fails Before Our Eyes.
The decay is everywhere, and it is gradual. Civilisation does not fall in a single, dramatic blow. It erodes quietly, in the background, in ways most people barely notice until the cracks have become chasms.
Physical infrastructure is failing. Roads grow rougher with every year, maintenance delayed or poorly executed. Bridges age beyond repair. Construction projects stall, drag on, or are completed with lower standards at higher costs. Public transport groans under overuse, delays, and mismanagement. Computer networks, the lifeblood of banking, healthcare, and government, are increasingly fragile, prone to outages, hacks, and simple malfunction. Scientific progress, once steady and assured, now slows, as bureaucracy, funding issues, and regulatory hurdles multiply.
Social cohesion is fraying. People retreat into ever-smaller tribes. Disagreement is no longer a matter of ideas; it is a battle of identities. Voting is reduced to a crude expression of tribal loyalty: our side versus theirs. Even when people intend to make reasoned choices, their decisions are filtered through identity and outrage, not rational deliberation. Trust in institutions,once the pillars holding society together, erodes under the weight of failure, contradictions, and empty promises.
Cultural decay mirrors the physical and social. Debate, once central to civilisation, is now risky. Opinions contrary to the dominant narrative invite social ostracism, legal threats, or worse. Schools and universities increasingly prioritise indoctrination over reasoning, producing graduates less capable of independent thought. Healthcare, once a mark of civilisation’s progress, grows bureaucratic, inefficient, and rationed, leaving people at the mercy of systems that manage scarcity rather than save lives.
Even technology, a supposed stabiliser, cannot escape the rot. Advanced systems require highly skilled, independent thinkers to maintain and improve them. But when thought is constrained by censorship, fear, or ideology, even the most sophisticated instruments falter. Innovation slows. Precision declines. Society becomes ever more fragile, despite the appearance of progress.
The decline is not limited to visible structures. The very foundations of rational thought are under siege. Language, once a tool for communication and reasoning, is weaponised, narrowed, or policed. Free speech attacks undermine the human mind itself, making critical thinking more difficult. Without the ability to reason openly, society cannot sustain the technological, cultural, and institutional frameworks it has built.
Even in seemingly stable, high-functioning nations, small, subtle cracks appear in governance, public trust, and social cohesion. Easily overlooked, these fissures slowly widen and accumulate, proving that no country is immune. Individually, they might seem insignificant. Collectively, they are lethal.
In short, the pattern is unmistakable. A civilisation cannot endure when its material base crumbles, its institutions rot, and its people lose both the ability and the willingness to think freely. What begins as small, scattered failures eventually converges into structural collapse.
The Last Choice: Can Civilisation Be Reclaimed?
Technically, yes. The question is not can but will. Does the West still have the awareness, the drive, the sense of life needed to pull back from the abyss?
By “sense of life,” I mean what Ayn Rand described: the subconscious emotional orientation towards existence that shapes a culture’s instinctive values. A civilisation with a rational, confident sense of life treasures freedom, achievement, and reason. A culture that loses it tolerates coercion, mysticism, and submission.
Ten years ago, I would have said yes, we still had the resources of spirit. Today, I am not so sure. With free speech under attack, violence rewarded, and statism entrenched, the sense of life that once defined the West is almost gone. A few holdouts remain, but even the most optimistic now doubt. Unless something extraordinary awakens people - a miracle, or a shock too great to ignore - civilisation is a dead man walking.
The authoritarian states of Russia and China will not be the next great civilsation. They are decaying on the same path, just slower. We are heading into a dark age. How deep or how long, I do not know.
Sparks in the Dark: What Individuals Can Do.
The good news is this: the dark age will not last forever. Unlike past collapses, knowledge today is distributed and stored globally. The internet cannot be erased. Somewhere, some culture will rediscover freedom once it can no longer leech off others. When regimes collapse, they will need an explanation - clear, airtight- of why they fell and what must replace them. Even in the most authoritarian, high-tech nations, like China, cracks are forming. Small and subtle, almost hairline, they exist and are slowly growing. Measured against decades of centralised control, these emerging inconsistencies, however slight, are historically significant.
We can choose to provide that explanation. If statism, mysticism, and collectivism breed dark ages, then capitalism, reason, and individualism must be the foundations of renewal. History already shows their fruits. Even small doses have produced today’s unprecedented wealth. Across time and culture, evidence repeatedly links freer markets and individual initiative with measurable improvements in living standards. The case must be made, in terms more persuasive and digestible than the lies of the state. That fight is optional, but the opportunity exists.
Even if you do not take up that fight, there is still something you must do: take your life seriously. Live it on your own terms. Do not live as a parasite, but as an agent of creation, exchange, and achievement. Build, create, achieve, not for others’ sacrifice, but for your own flourishing.
Civilisation’s spark may falter. But do not let your own. You are irreplaceable. Do not go down with the ship. It is not worth it. You never had to take any of it seriously - but now, your spark can guide the way forward.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1987). Thinking and Speech. In R. W. Rieber & A. S. Carton (Eds.), The Collected Works of L. S. Vygotsky, Volume 1. Springer.
Fodor, J. A. (1975). The Language of Thought. Harvard University Press.
Pinker, S. (1994). The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language. William Morrow.
Lupyan, G. (2012). “Linguistically Modulated Perception and Cognition: The Label-Feedback Hypothesis.” Frontiers in Psychology, 3:54. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00054
Schooler, J. W., & Engstler-Schooler, T. Y. (1990). “Verbal Overshadowing of Visual Memories: Some Things Are Better Left Unsaid.” Cognitive Psychology, 22(1), 36–71. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0285(90)90003-M
Rand, A. (1963). “Man’s Rights.” In The Virtue of Selfishness. New American Library.
Orwell, G. (1949). Nineteen Eighty-Four. Secker & Warburg.