(2005-01-27) Lind Four Gw Roots Modernism

William Lind on the roots of FourGW. The key to it, I think, is precisely "the triumphs of rationalism." Rationalism, or more broadly Modernity, believes in nothing. Belief is the opposite of Rationalism. Fourth Generation war is triumphing over the products of rationalism because people who believe in something will always defeat people who believe in nothing at all... As Martin Van Creveld points out in his key book on Fourth Generation war, The Rise and Decline of the State, up until World War I the West believed in something too. Its god was the Nation-State. But that god died in the mud of Flanders. After World War I, decent Western elites could no longer believe in anything: "the best lack all conviction." Fascism and Communism offered new faiths, but in the course of the Twentieth Century they too proved false gods (all ideologies are counterfeit religions). Now, all that the West's elites and the "globalist" elites elsewhere who mimic them can offer is "CivilSociety." Unlike real belief, civil society is not worth fighting for, killing for or dying for. It is far too weak a tea to serve in the global biker bar which is the Fourth Generation's world of cultures in conflict. Yikes. I would counter-argue that it has more to do with the increasingly Complex System that is human Civilization (with a reduction in Resilience), combined with the increased ability of the individual to use technology to perturb such systems.