"What explains these failures? It is surprisingly simple. After two centuries of success, the region’s leaders assume their role is to sustain the expansion of western power. Not one of them has wrapped their heads around the new undeniable reality: the real challenge of the west is to manage decline."
(http://www.mahbubani.net/…/Look%20to%20China%20for%20wisdom…, 21 March 2014)
Perhaps one should be hesitant to carry this sentiment too far past the
context it originated in. But it seems to ring a faint, evocative bell,
at this time. Perhaps something has broken, perhaps our onlooker's
faith in the rationality of things eventually turning out right, given
recent events, has gone slightly askance. Or can it simply be that this
is, after all, the end-game of western political art; that this is, for
the happy fatalist, the inevitable outcome of such as democracy
untrammeled, the good/evil polarisation of a two-party republic, the
final renaissance of populism, capitalism, individualism, demagoguery,
and all that?
If this is true, then perhaps it is not that such and such a man steps into the space, it is that the space was always there for such a man as him. Yet that is perhaps the common, unitary truth behind any form of politics, any form of government over a polis - that in the end the guardian who guards the guardian is at best some kind of man, or men. Socrates argued that it was essential for the guardian class of each polis to be specially educated and nurtured for rule, and rule be reserved to such as these. Wishful thinking, but probably the only good prescription.
The troubling thing, in my view, is that I'm not entirely sure this particular man has realised that he has to, whether he likes it or not, manage something that seems to be a little on the decline.
If this is true, then perhaps it is not that such and such a man steps into the space, it is that the space was always there for such a man as him. Yet that is perhaps the common, unitary truth behind any form of politics, any form of government over a polis - that in the end the guardian who guards the guardian is at best some kind of man, or men. Socrates argued that it was essential for the guardian class of each polis to be specially educated and nurtured for rule, and rule be reserved to such as these. Wishful thinking, but probably the only good prescription.
The troubling thing, in my view, is that I'm not entirely sure this particular man has realised that he has to, whether he likes it or not, manage something that seems to be a little on the decline.
