Pick Your Poison
Many options to choose from:
Make note that the author screwed up 19—There are two. 19(1) and 19(2).
There are certainly others to choose from outside of these 25, but I still enjoyed these options.
I don’t appreciate how “humanism” is listed with the enlightenment (the truthful and pure ‘renaissance humanism’ started during the renaissance). 10-12 are also all strongly interconnected, probably only broken out to show the American revolution in the middle. There is also no mention of the civil war, which probably a sizeable amount of Southern Dissidents would point to as a strong starting point of the decline.
I think our more libertarian-minded dissidents would choose 15.
The Ted Kaczynski types would clearly pick 14.
I’d guess that the judeo-critics would pick 16 or 19.
The crazy pagans on the Right that actively hate Christianity would pick 2.
Leftists would pick 2, 7, or 9 and then a rebound toward “progress” starting at 17. Leftists love pretty much everything after 17. It’s clearly their world and we’re unwelcome guests.
Neocons would probably start at 22. They have no issue with capitalism, central banking, suffrage, or the cold war, so I can’t see how they’d be any sooner. They also gained a lot from 9/11 and got all the wars they wanted, so not sure how that’d count. I guess some would say 18 for neocons if we’re being generous. Still, most neocons would fight to the death to uphold 17, 19(1), 19(2), 20, and the powers brought about from 21. So, if they said it started back at 18, they’d be defending positions that inevitably came after and derived from the previous. Hypocritical, but would be nothing new with them.
Some right-wingers would want to just pick out some here and there, but otherwise keep our current trajectory. I imagine some would be fine taking out 15, 19(2), and 23/24, but leave the rest. But sadly, because there is a cyclical precursor for historical movements, one inevitably requires the other. If you didn’t have it then, it would just come later, because the conditions allow it. Globalization required central banking, the great recession required capitalism, and Tumblr required women’s suffrage. They would all happen eventually, if the other conditions existed and thereby incentivized them.
The dissident starter’s pack or baby nationalist usually comes clocked in at 14/15. But once they dive in deeper, they would hopefully start to see the issues were present and building long before then.
I’d hope that most dissidents with a knowledge of our history would pinpoint the start at 10. Maybe some would disagree, but that’s my position of where I’d say it went wrong. It was essential to have this event for 12-18 to come to pass. All of which were needed for later options and definitely for the worst of all: 19(2).
This doesn’t necessarily mean that everything after it was bad or everything before is good, but that the seeds of destruction were faithfully and fruitfully planted then. Everything that came after started with what happened during that period of our history. If it hadn’t been so powerful, this graphic would look very different. The renaissance was a civilization revival, especially if packaged with colonialism, until the enlightenment hit.
An interesting question to ponder, if nothing else.
Read Next:
The Old School Dissident H. L. Mencken
The Sensitive Cultural Markers: The Cultural Arena Centralizer
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