TRIGGERnometry - The Eye-Opening Truth About Western Civilisation - Marc Sidwell

00:00:00.960 I grew up with that Cold War idea of the West as a thing that was sort of moral and great

00:00:05.840 and worth standing up for against the sort of slave empire of communism.

00:00:09.840 And then I suddenly realised that for like 20, 30 years, no one had been taught that.

00:00:14.160 And the current generation don't know that story. In fact, they only know the other story,

00:00:18.000 which is the one that says, you know, the West is uniquely evil and awful.

00:00:22.960 We're under threat from without because there are very real people, Chinese and the Russians, 1.00

00:00:27.920 who are coming together now very explicitly and saying, we want a different world order.

00:00:33.200 What you get in Magna Carta is the idea of the rule of law.

00:00:37.760 We talked about individualism. The thing about the rule of law is it says every individual,

00:00:42.960 even the king, is under the same law. And we can go to court and we can thrash it out,

00:00:47.840 but we'll follow the rules and we'll see who comes out on top.

00:00:50.800 The other threat is inside. And that is the fact that we have started to not teach,

00:00:56.720 first of all, to not teach about Magna Carta or the West or what it is.

00:01:00.480 And in fact, to teach the opposite, to teach that it is awful.

00:01:04.320 The foundations of the Western system are just being knocked down casually by people

00:01:10.480 who don't understand because they haven't been taught what they mean and how everything that they

00:01:15.600 value, everything that makes their lives what they are, rest on these things.

00:01:21.280 And, you know, there's a reckoning that can come with that.

00:01:33.760 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster.

00:01:37.520 I'm Constantine Kissin.

00:01:38.560 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:01:43.760 Our terrific guest today is a senior fellow at the New Culture Forum and the presenter and director of a brilliant series.

00:01:49.520 And I'm not just saying because I was in it. It is actually very, very good here on YouTube called The West.

00:01:54.320 Mark said, well, welcome to Trigonometry.

00:01:56.000 Thanks so much for having me.

00:01:57.040 Oh, it's so great to have you. I already told you the story, but our audience should know a lot of

00:02:02.000 people. So you recorded some interviews with a lot of people and I was one of them.

00:02:06.560 And I never had a chance to watch it because I've got a lot of stuff that I'm working on, whatever.

00:02:11.040 But so many people kept saying to me, oh, that series you were in is so good called The West.

00:02:16.640 So I eventually watched it. And it is actually brilliant. Before we talk about it, though,

00:02:20.960 do tell us who are you, how are you, where you are? What has been the journey through life that

00:02:24.400 brings you here talking to us? So I work with a number of think tanks. I'm a senior fellow at

00:02:29.440 the New Culture Forum, which which made the series. I'm also the head of research at the Henry Jackson

00:02:34.000 Society, which stands up for the free society at home and abroad. But actually, I had a long gap in

00:02:39.600 between. I used to work for think tanks about 15 years ago. And then I thought, well, the world's doing

00:02:44.480 OK. I think these problems are going to be fine. And I went off to have a career in business journalism.

00:02:48.720 And I thought that'd be fine. And then I looked up and I thought, oh, the the world has actually

00:02:54.080 gone mad since the end of the Cold War. Things haven't gone well. Russia hasn't democratized.

00:02:58.160 China certainly hasn't come into the family of nations. And things at home are getting increasingly

00:03:03.200 unfree and intolerant. And so it brought me back because I thought we needed to start talking

00:03:08.320 about these questions again, or I needed to to reengage with with the debate. And in particular,

00:03:13.280 the idea of of the West, which is really the idea of this series, because, you know, I'm an 80s kid,

00:03:18.720 I grew up with that Cold War idea of the West as a thing that was sort of moral and great and worth

00:03:24.080 standing up for against the sort of slave empire of communism. And I suddenly realized that like 20,

00:03:30.160 30 years, no one had been taught that. And the current generation don't know that story. In fact,

00:03:34.720 they only know the other story, which is the one that says, you know, the West is is uniquely evil 0.94

00:03:39.760 and awful. So I thought I wanted to use new technology for a new generation and tell that

00:03:45.760 story again that that no one had heard for a long time. And you do beautifully. And one of the things

00:03:51.040 I really enjoyed about it, and actually our producer Anton was saying it to you as you were sitting down,

00:03:55.360 how informative it is. I'd like to think I'm one of the West's big fans. I have a whole book about it.

00:04:01.280 But I actually learned so much. One of the things that you talk about that I found fascinating is

00:04:07.200 that the idea of democracy or the idea that authority should be answerable to the people

00:04:12.160 below actually comes from barbarians. That was really interesting. Tell us about that.

00:04:16.320 Well, yeah, the the older traditional idea of the West often is told in a narrative that goes back

00:04:21.680 to ancient Greece and Rome as if there was a sort of unbroken tradition. And it's very true that the West 1.00

00:04:26.960 draws on some ideas from ancient Greece and from Rome. It was a big influence. But there are problems

00:04:32.560 historically with that narrative. There's really there's a big break that happens. And the West,

00:04:36.240 I think, really begins with the fall of Rome. It's what happens after the empire goes. And then

00:04:40.560 you get the barbarians, the Germanic tribes that come in. And they're really, they're very poor, 1.00

00:04:44.880 they're primitive, but they have this enormous focus on the individual and other sort of individual

00:04:50.800 pride. And as a result, a sort of culture of not quite democracy, but of freedom, that there are

00:04:56.640 free men who sort of vote together as who should be their leader. And that culture, I think, was

00:05:01.920 enormously important in informing the West and giving its shape. I mean, not just on its own. I think

00:05:07.600 also, it's the interaction of that with with Christianity, which is really the form in which

00:05:12.160 the traditions of Rome came into that into that part of Europe, because Christianity and the church

00:05:17.120 survived the fall of Rome. But I think that's a much more honest place to start the conversation

00:05:21.760 about the West. And also, it gets away from this sort of grand idea of the West as something that's

00:05:27.200 sort of Roman and imperial, and gets back to the real truth. The the adventure of the West is this

00:05:33.520 poor, primitive, divided corner of Europe that is nothing like as rich, nothing like as civilized in

00:05:40.240 traditional terms, as other parts of the world, like like China and the Islamic world. But that

00:05:45.840 nonetheless has this thing in it, this spark, out of which are going to come things that have never

00:05:50.800 been seen before in human history. Things like experimental science, like industrial capitalism,

00:05:56.400 like parliamentary democracy. There was something there, something there that's about the individual.

00:06:02.080 And that is partly, I think, an inheritance out of those Germanic tribes.

00:06:05.280 It's so interesting, because I've never really thought about it like that. But actually,

00:06:08.400 the story of the West, in the way that you describe it, is a story of, depending how you want to look

00:06:12.800 at it, either coming from very humble beginnings, or a tremendous recovery from a gigantic setback,

00:06:19.200 which is the collapse of Rome. And then, you know, I remember seeing various exhibitions here in the

00:06:25.680 UK about what happened after the Romans left Britain. And the tribes that came after, who hadn't

00:06:31.360 directly been in contact with the Roman civilization, they, the gap between them and the Romans 0.56

00:06:37.440 technologically, were so vast, that they thought that the buildings that the Romans had erected

00:06:42.640 here, which were nothing as impressive as the ones they built actually in Rome, were the work of

00:06:47.760 gods, because they couldn't imagine engineering at that level. And to come from that to being the

00:06:53.040 most successful civilization in the history of the world is quite remarkable, isn't it?

00:06:56.160 It's quite remarkable. And I think the West, you know, it's the triumph of the small. It's the triumph of

00:07:02.240 giving power to individuals. But it didn't really happen because of, like, a grand theory. It happened

00:07:07.920 because when Rome fell, and then Europe was divided, no one could exert power from above to tell people

00:07:15.040 what to do. Plus, you had this culture from below that was quite individualistic anyway. So then people

00:07:20.480 were free to play around with ideas. There wasn't enough people who could quash it. Traditional

00:07:27.200 civilizations, which in many ways the West isn't, are much more about stability, about power from the

00:07:32.880 top, about great empires. And the problem with that is you can get to quite a high level of

00:07:38.000 sophistication. But its primary virtue is stability and stasis and the people at the top keeping power.

00:07:46.960 And they say no to the dangerous, crazy ideas that might take them forward. And so that's why you don't

00:07:52.640 get industrialization happening elsewhere, where you don't get all the crazy inventions. You know,

00:07:58.480 Columbus going to the New World. Well, so the Chinese had great treasure voyages, huge, 0.98

00:08:03.760 much more sophisticated fleets that went out into the world. But they weren't that interested because

00:08:08.480 they thought they were more important. And it was all controlled from the imperial court. So when the

00:08:12.640 imperial court said, well, we don't want to do that anymore, ban the ships, burn the ships, whatever, 0.98

00:08:17.440 no one goes. In Europe, you have an independent crazy guy, Columbus, who's like, I think that we

00:08:24.400 can get, you know, to Asia by going over the ocean. And he was wrong that you could do that, because

00:08:30.560 he thought the world was much smaller than it actually was. And, you know, smart people could

00:08:34.240 have told him that. But he had a crazy idea. And he went around to different monarchs in Europe.

00:08:38.880 And he said, give me some money, I'll go and do this. Some said no, but there was always someone else

00:08:44.320 you could go to. And in fact, I discovered, which I didn't know, that if the Spanish hadn't said yes, 0.91

00:08:50.160 Henry VII, I think it was, in England, had said yes. He'd said yes to Columbus's brother.

00:08:55.600 But by the time he got back, they'd already gone with Spanish money. So it's an interesting

00:08:59.600 counterfactual, you know, that the English might have been the financiers of that voyage. But the

00:09:04.880 point was, it couldn't be stopped. There's something unstoppable in the West, because it's so divided

00:09:10.640 and broken and competitive. And there's always another power center that you can go to.

00:09:14.480 That means wild ideas sort of bubble up.

00:09:17.840 It's a really good point, because you wouldn't get that in China, like you said before.

00:09:22.560 There's so many aspects of your documentary that I found fascinating, in particular,

00:09:26.640 when you talk about empire and the slave trade, because it seems to me we have an absolutely 0.99

00:09:32.480 blinkered approach to talking about these subjects, which understandably can be seen as quite contentious.

00:09:38.640 Absolutely. And I think this is very important, because it's become a huge debate of the moment

00:09:44.400 as to, you know, how should we feel about the British Empire? And that by no means is a particularly

00:09:50.400 pro-imperial series. I tend to think that empire is the sort of traditional solution of civilization.

00:09:57.440 You build a giant empire. The interesting thing about the European ones, for all their faults, 1.00

00:10:02.240 and obviously terrible things suddenly happened, but there were lots of them. So even there,

00:10:07.440 there was competition going on. But there was also, you know, all of these different,

00:10:12.960 very unusual European values, Western values, bubbling under the surface about the individual,

00:10:18.800 about, you know, what you could and couldn't do to other peoples, and how you might want to

00:10:24.240 bring them on board. I talk about the example of Columbus again, who, you know, a very complicated

00:10:29.520 figure, not always a great guy, brought back some slaves, native slaves, to Spain. And the monarch said,

00:10:37.040 well, can we actually have these slaves? Is that right? And they spent several years thinking about

00:10:42.320 it. And they said, well, no, because these are potential Christians. These are people we could 0.98

00:10:47.120 convert. And that means that they have to be treated with respect. They actually can't be enslaved.

00:10:52.720 And that was, you know, quite a bold way of thinking about the native populations,

00:10:56.960 you know, because the sheer power dynamic, well, you could, obviously, you could enslave them.

00:11:00.640 But actually, maybe there were reasons you couldn't. The tragedy, partly what happened in

00:11:06.080 the new world was, was to do with, you know, the epidemics that were no one could predict or

00:11:11.200 control, which just wiped out millions and millions of people with diseases that they weren't used to

00:11:16.720 being exposed to. Absolutely. In particular, in South America, when the Spanish came over,

00:11:21.120 there's a joke in Venezuela that the conquistadors gave the native population the flu, and then the flu

00:11:28.400 gave the native population gonorrhea. Yeah. So it was a lovely little exchange. 1.00

00:11:33.280 But I was going to say, do you get... Wait, the flu? No, you mean the natives gave... 0.99

00:11:38.320 No, no, no, no. The Spanish gave the native population the flu. The flu, the flu, the native 1.00

00:11:44.160 population gave the Spanish... That's what I was correcting. You said the flu gave them gonorrhea.

00:11:47.760 Oh, right. Okay. That is a really interesting mix of things. Now, that is a version of history I

00:11:52.720 have never heard. But do you sometimes get frustrated at how we discuss these topics? Because

00:11:59.200 in a way, well, in many ways, it's completely, it's ridiculous. It's being discussed from a 0.75

00:12:05.840 point of view that knows the answer. I think that's the problem. And knows the answer, basically,

00:12:09.840 is that the West is awful, and the empires were terrible. And that, you know, slavery was of the

00:12:16.160 West. The transatlantic slave trade, which obviously was a horrific thing, was the worst thing ever in

00:12:21.600 history. And there was nothing else like it. And that, you know, Western sin is the thing we must 0.99

00:12:26.720 focus on. And that has no nuance. It has no historical context. And it really just,

00:12:33.120 it exists to kind of gnaw at Western confidence from within, which really matters. It matters today,

00:12:40.160 because that's the spirit you need to resist real alternatives in the world, real alternatives from

00:12:46.400 China, from Russia, which are places which, you know, they are now the first to stand up and make

00:12:52.400 grand speeches about how the West is evil and, you know, talk about anti-colonialism and talk about all

00:12:58.480 the terrible things the West did. While they are literally putting people in camps, while they are

00:13:03.840 literally aggressively invading other countries, but they use this anti-Western language to sort of make

00:13:10.960 up as if we are the villains while they're doing truly dreadful things. And we need that confidence

00:13:17.600 to stand up against that. And we can't have that if we, if we have this idea, this false idea of

00:13:22.960 history in which we are always the villains without even checking the facts. You know, there's a great

00:13:28.400 book by Nigel Bigar, and I interviewed him for the series as well. And, you know, I talked to Nigel about

00:13:34.480 it. And that book, he says in the book, and he said to me, you know, the reason he writes it is not just

00:13:40.560 to tell the truth about empire and colonialism, to offer a more nuanced moral account, but because

00:13:47.520 that matters, because otherwise we don't have the confidence today to preserve liberal democratic

00:13:53.520 civilization against the forces which are, which are ranged against it. And it's a great point,

00:13:59.120 because if you spoke to someone about the transatlantic slave trade, they would be able to tell you

00:14:02.880 certain things about it. And they would be able to explain why it happened. But if you ask someone

00:14:09.040 about the trans-saharan slave trade, they wouldn't have a clue. I mean, most people wouldn't.

00:14:13.040 Unless they read my book.

00:14:15.280 Or heard your wonderful interview about it, which is in the series, I think, which is very good.

00:14:19.760 We have this conversation about whether slavery should be taught in schools and so on. And my answer 0.94

00:14:24.560 to that is yes. The problem is, we don't teach about slavery in schools. What we teach about is the

00:14:30.400 transatlantic slave trade. And this way of looking at the world is quite silly to me. It's sort of like 0.97

00:14:37.680 evaluating whether a sprinter is fast or slow without comparing them to anybody else. You can't

00:14:43.760 do it. You have to understand what was happening everywhere else at the same time. And I talk about

00:14:49.840 my own family history of being slaves in Russia. I talk about what was happening in my country,

00:14:55.600 what was happening in Africa when the evil Western colonialists arrived. And by the way, 0.71

00:14:59.760 the transatlantic slave trade was absolutely evil by the standards of the modern day.

00:15:03.920 But it wasn't as bad as the trans-saharan slave trade, which was conducted mainly by

00:15:09.520 Muslim and Arab traders. It didn't last as long, didn't take as many lives, didn't have such a high 0.98

00:15:15.360 death rate. And slavery was continually practiced around the world much later. And only ended,

00:15:22.320 by the way, thanks to the Western colonial powers, putting a lot of effort and a lot of money into it.

00:15:28.160 Does that excuse the transatlantic slave trade? Of course not. But it gives you the context to

00:15:33.040 understand that the Western powers are and remain some of the most progressive, tolerant societies

00:15:39.840 that have ever been created. And our crimes, which are many, there is no doubt they are many,

00:15:45.280 should be seen in the context of that, in the context of the fact that other great civilizations

00:15:50.640 and empires around the world were doing the exact same things and worse at the same time. And we

00:15:56.240 ended it. We stopped it. Not only did we end it within our own empires and our own borders,

00:16:02.640 but we also then spent over a century spending vast amounts of money and power and treasure out in

00:16:09.920 the world trying to enforce this on other people and trying to stop slavery wherever we could.

00:16:15.120 Britain was among the first states in the history of the world to abolish the slave trade and then to

00:16:23.920 abolish slavery. And it then led the world in suppressing both of those, as I said, from Brazil across

00:16:29.840 Africa to Malaysia. That was extraordinary. No other state had done that before. No other states had done

00:16:36.320 that before, certainly not in Africa, certainly not in Asia, nor in among the indigenous peoples of North

00:16:42.080 America. That was extraordinary. And we carried on doing that until the end of the empire in the 1960s.

00:16:49.440 And in the 1820s and 30s, the slave trade department in the British Foreign Office was the largest unit.

00:16:55.760 And in the 1830s or the 40s, thereabouts, 13 percent of the total manpower of the Royal Navy was devoted

00:17:06.160 to stopping slave ships leaving West Africa for the Americas. Just stopping that, quite apart from

00:17:18.000 stopping slavery elsewhere.

00:17:23.040 A hundred dollars an hour, weekdays at nine, one and five. Sign up now at boom97free.com. Approved by Alpine

00:17:29.200 Credits. Own your own home and eat alone. Alpine Credits can help. Visit alpinecredits.ca.

00:17:35.840 And that is an extraordinary legacy, an extraordinary moment in human history where slavery goes from being

00:17:43.280 part of the background, something that's awful maybe, but something that's kind of understood that it happens

00:17:48.000 sometimes to being something that's morally unacceptable. And morally unacceptable because of a deep

00:17:54.000 understanding of what the principles of Western civilization are. And that to live up to those

00:17:59.360 more fully, we're going to have just, just wipe this thing out.

00:18:02.800 Which brings us neatly onto Christianity, because that's really what you're talking about. But before

00:18:06.800 we go there, I went to the Slavery Museum in Liverpool. And in many ways, it's very good. But nowhere in

00:18:14.240 it, and I went through the whole thing, because it's an interesting subject, historically speaking,

00:18:19.120 to look at. Does it say, who was it that sold the slaves? Nor does it really talk about how the slave

00:18:25.360 trade was ended around the world, by the way? Whose idea was that it should not happen?

00:18:31.760 Can't trust Scousers.

00:18:32.720 Well, that's certainly true. We have a Scouser running the show. But Christianity, Mark, 0.99

00:18:39.280 what is the role that Christianity plays in the development of our civilization? Because 0.55

00:18:47.040 there are some people that might argue, and David Starkey, the former guest on our show,

00:18:50.880 who might argue, actually, it's the religion that brings down the Roman Empire. It's the sort of

00:18:55.680 wokeness of antiquity that sort of takes a powerful and confident civilization and makes it meek and

00:19:03.120 feeble and so on. And yet here we are. So what is the story of Christianity in the context of our

00:19:08.720 civilization? Well, Christianity is a morally revolutionary way of thinking about the world.

00:19:14.320 It is itself against dominance and power from the top, and in many ways against empire, arguably.

00:19:22.400 And it was a revolution inside the Roman system. But of course, the Roman system being imperial was

00:19:27.760 in many ways very cruel, very terrible to women in particular. It was often the women who understood, 0.97

00:19:32.960 first of all, you know, the attraction of Christianity. And it spoke powerfully after the

00:19:40.800 Roman period to these Germanic tribes. This was a whole new kind of heroism. And they were very

00:19:46.720 attracted to it in part, I think, because it was a heroism that was democratic. It wasn't just a few

00:19:52.640 people at the top who could be heroes, you know, sort of the true aristocrats, but anyone. And that

00:19:59.680 everyone mattered. And that that became a very, very powerful force in Western history. And, you know,

00:20:08.000 more recently, I suppose, there has been a tendency to see the sort of key liberal democratic ideas as

00:20:13.840 coming later, coming very much from the Enlightenment, say. But scholarship, I think, has moved on

00:20:20.080 since that time. And you see books, more popular books, like Tom Holland's book, Dominion,

00:20:25.440 more scholarly books, like Larry Sedentop's book, Inventing the Individual, which go back much further

00:20:30.880 in time and say, you really have to look to the medieval period, to the period where Christianity is

00:20:36.480 this dominant intellectual system inside Europe, inside the West. And that that is what shapes a lot of

00:20:42.960 these ideas about human rights, individual rights, and indeed democracy as well. And that that comes

00:20:50.320 through into the present day. We're so Christian, in a way, that we don't, culturally, that we don't

00:20:57.200 really recognize it anymore. It's like a fish being in water and not knowing what water is. And that

00:21:01.680 doesn't mean that everyone needs to be Christian, or you need some kind of, you know, imposed

00:21:08.560 Christianity. But culturally, the ideas that we take for granted are, in many ways, Christian. As you

00:21:14.880 say, the fight against the slave trade was profoundly driven by Christian sentiment. And I think that

00:21:23.280 that Christian ability to go somewhere revolutionary and to say, well, we know this is the established 0.99

00:21:29.360 system. This is like, you know, the economy is built on it in certain ways, and it's making

00:21:33.760 people rich. And this is just how things have been done. But to say, well, actually, no, no. And an

00:21:38.880 ordinary person like William Wilberforce, or someone who drinks their tea with sugar in it, can turn

00:21:45.200 around and say, I can't be part of this, and I won't have any sugar from enslaved plantations, or

00:21:51.280 I'll stand up against this. And then that vast popular movement that anti-slavery was,

00:21:56.320 was, was imbued with that, that spirit. And that, that, that's very Christian.

00:22:03.520 Mark, and fill in a historical gap for me. How do we go from the, the collapse of the Roman Empire,

00:22:08.000 which by this point is already Christian, basically? Yeah. Yeah. To the barbarians, 1.00

00:22:13.520 sort of that period, and then the emergence of medieval kingdoms, which are all pretty much

00:22:18.880 universally Christian in Europe. How does that happen? How do the barbarians become Christianized over 1.00

00:22:24.400 the time? Well, as I say, the, the church is really the, the one bit of, of the Roman system

00:22:31.040 that survives, because it's not really, you know, part of, of the empire, but it's there within it.

00:22:36.000 And, and it has a sort of network across Europe of bishops. It has, uh, monasteries. See, you have this,

00:22:43.600 this system forming that can survive the, the collapse. And as the empire goes away,

00:22:49.280 the church is there providing a network of, of local power and of knowledge and literacy even,

00:22:57.360 often. And so that provides something of an intellectual culture that can then crystallize

00:23:03.840 around the, these various Germanic tribes. And they recognize something in it. They recognize

00:23:08.480 the fascination of the ideas. They quite like this sort of individualistic aspect. They find in it and

00:23:13.920 they turn it into something perhaps rather more warlike. That appeals to them as well. There's a,

00:23:18.320 you know, different ways you can receive Christianity. They rather liked it as something

00:23:21.600 they could wave as a battle flag as, as they went in, uh, which been true in the Roman times too.

00:23:26.640 That's why, um, you know, um, Constantine, uh, took it up as, as, as a, the symbol of the cross to go

00:23:32.640 into battle under. Uh, but, but, so the, the Germans took that, or the, the barbarians, we should say, 0.79

00:23:38.160 took that idea. And then it became though a new kind of culture that formed, particularly in the

00:23:44.080 northern monasteries in Britain. Uh, and then from there, a long way from the old imperial centers

00:23:51.760 in Rome, you get this new culture forming, particularly in the monasteries. And then you

00:23:56.400 get a new movement back onto the continent. So you get this, this new imperial system trying to start

00:24:02.480 up under, under, under the Carolingians. And they, they call a monk from Britain to go there and, and

00:24:09.600 to take this new sort of mixture of the old classical culture and the sort of new thinking that's starting

00:24:16.000 to emerge and, and to teach them. And that becomes a new way of teaching Europe. And then that imperium,

00:24:20.960 that attempt to recreate the Roman empire goes away, but these ideas start to spread and, and

00:24:27.360 Europe starts to reform, not as one empire, but as a series of competing nations. But they, they share

00:24:35.040 this, uh, a common language of Latin and then also the local languages as well. And so you get a mixture

00:24:43.680 of the ability to have a sort of shared intellectual culture, but also local national cultures as well.

00:24:49.520 And that's again, so important in the West, this ability to have different, different nations,

00:24:55.120 different cultures, different centers, it's competing power centers. And there's always a 0.70

00:25:01.120 restlessness and that restlessness could be very bloody, lots and lots of wars. But at the same time,

00:25:08.640 that, uh, allows new technologies to develop the warfare technologies that develop in the West,

00:25:14.800 particularly the use of gunpowder, uh, gunpowder comes from China. It doesn't really

00:25:19.280 develop in the same way there as it does in Europe. And it's because Europe is fighting

00:25:24.720 amongst itself, that there has to be a kind of arms race there with the new technology, but also

00:25:29.920 because they're developing systems within these nations to raise money for the wars. And that

00:25:38.800 actually is parliaments. Parliaments are a very good way to legitimately raise more money from the

00:25:44.720 nation in order to go and fight the wars and therefore to develop better gunpowder technology

00:25:49.760 or longbows or crossbows to fight with. So people sometimes want to separate out the best bits of

00:25:56.960 the West from the other bits and say, oh, well, you know, democracy and it's peaceable, but oh yeah,

00:26:00.960 we used to fight wars. It's, it's the competitive warlike things that were going on inside the West,

00:26:06.880 which are tied to its Christianity, that are tied to its parliaments. The West is a, is a complex and

00:26:13.120 dangerous thing. We shouldn't imagine it's, it's perfect or it's wonderful, but it was just

00:26:17.440 this extraordinary fusion. And out of it, you get these things that just didn't happen elsewhere.

00:26:22.960 And you talk about things that don't happen elsewhere, but you touch on the Magna Carta. And I found that

00:26:28.960 fascinating because I can't really remember in my education being taught about the Magna Carta or why it

00:26:35.120 was so important to our nation. So let's explore that. Yeah. But you know, this sort of stuff used

00:26:40.960 to be taught all the time, everywhere. There used to be jokes about it. That's why there's the joke in,

00:26:45.840 you know, the old, the old Hancock. Does Magna Carta mean nothing to you? Did she die in vain?

00:26:56.240 Because, you know, everyone would know what, what it was and why that wasn't, wasn't correct. We've stopped,

00:27:01.840 we've stopped teaching this history. What you get in Magna Carta, and this is really something that

00:27:08.480 I think is central, we perhaps haven't talked enough about yet, is the idea of the rule of law.

00:27:13.280 We talked about individualism. The thing about the rule of law is it says every individual,

00:27:18.480 even the king, is under the same law. And we can go to court and we can thrash it out,

00:27:23.360 but we'll follow the rules and we'll see who comes out on top. It's not that because you're rich and

00:27:27.520 powerful and the king that you can just do what you like. Everyone gets a fair shot in court. I

00:27:32.720 mean, you know, maybe someone's got a better lawyer, but in theory. And Magna Carta is the point,

00:27:38.320 one of the key points where we say that, where we say that.

00:27:41.120 It's fairly early days in the development of that idea, to be fair, right? It's the barons taking

00:27:45.920 some of the power away from the king. It's not like the ordinary, you know, the idea that the

00:27:49.520 ordinary person is entitled to the same justice as a king in that day would have been ridiculous.

00:27:54.800 Yeah, but you know, it's there in principle. It's the barons who are fighting for it.

00:27:59.920 And even though it's just barons against a king, sort of princelings against a prince,

00:28:04.880 but that there is still, it's not one emperor over the court, over the great empire. And it's those

00:28:12.160 divisions that eventually play down and mean that everyone is ultimately in the same place. And

00:28:17.600 before that too, you know, the old law codes of people like the Visigoths talking about the 0.78

00:28:23.040 barbarians again, you know, which is a name that we use to mean sort of completely outrageous and 0.99

00:28:27.840 barbaric, people who tear things down. They had very, very strong law codes that were about giving

00:28:33.680 people rights, giving women rights. They could choose who to marry after they got to a certain

00:28:40.000 age, like 20 or something like that, you know. So not exactly modern rights, but you know, more than

00:28:45.120 you might expect. But that idea of law, I think is central. And you know, something that occurred to

00:28:52.560 me in working on this is we don't even notice how deep it is culturally for us. Like you look around

00:28:58.480 at every big news story, like the Supreme Court this week, very important decisions going down

00:29:03.760 in America. So it's a law story. Or you go and, you know, look at novels or movies. It's John Grisham

00:29:11.280 or things like this. Or, you know, in Shakespeare, it's Merchant of Venice. Law. Again, so common we

00:29:21.440 don't even notice it, is this really powerful thing. And then you go somewhere else. You go to China.

00:29:27.600 There's no rule of law. There are things that might look like it. There are things that might look like

00:29:31.280 courts. But China is a place where there are, what, two to five million people in prison? Not a single

00:29:37.360 one of them has had a fair trial. You know, it's like 99% of prosecutions ending convictions. 99% of

00:29:45.920 appeals are refused. This is not a system that has anything approaching rule of law. I was talking

00:29:52.080 this week with some Western businessmen who spent time inside Chinese prisons. And, you know,

00:29:57.920 it's terrifying to hear those stories. And it's those moments when you suddenly realize

00:30:03.520 how much we take for granted. I think this is a big problem with the West, right? It's like

00:30:07.600 we grow up in it. We're used to. We think, oh, this is just how things are. You take one step

00:30:13.440 outside that and you suddenly realize how different things can be. It doesn't have to be this way.

00:30:19.440 And that's a great point. We do take things for granted. And you talk about in the documentary,

00:30:24.320 you use the word threat several times. And you say the West is under threat. Well,

00:30:28.960 I mean, what do you mean by that, Mark? I mean, look around. We're not under threat, are we? I mean,

00:30:32.080 France maybe, but not here. We're under threat from without and we're under threat from within.

00:30:38.320 We're under threat from without because there are very real people, Chinese and the Russians, who are 1.00

00:30:43.680 who are coming together now very explicitly and saying, we want a different world order. We think

00:30:49.040 our way, even though it involves putting people in camps for their religion or because it involves us

00:30:55.120 shamelessly invading and butchering people in another country, we think our way is better than your way. 0.98

00:31:00.640 And if we can, we're going to take over and we're going to impose a different system,

00:31:05.120 a system in which individuals don't matter, in which things are run from the top,

00:31:09.120 in which there is no rule of law. Now, OK, we can feel pretty safe from that here, maybe. But,

00:31:14.800 you know, they're getting they're getting stronger. They're very powerful. We are really going to care

00:31:19.200 about them if Chinese invade Taiwan and suddenly we can't get the the microchips that that run

00:31:26.560 everything in our country, you know, from from cars to watches to mobile phones. This stuff really

00:31:33.360 will affect us just as your energy bills last winter, your energy bills this winter

00:31:38.960 are affected by what Putin's up to in Ukraine, even if you don't care or have the sort of personal

00:31:44.320 connection that Constantine does to what's going on there. So that is a real threat. But the other

00:31:50.880 threat is is inside. And that is the fact that especially at the top level in the universities and

00:31:57.520 the schools, we have started to not teach, first of all, to not teach about Magna Carta or the West

00:32:03.440 or what it is. And in fact, to teach the opposite, to teach that it is awful, that we've done terrible

00:32:09.600 things, we need to apologize for them, and that we're not very special. If we are special, we're

00:32:14.240 special in being awful. And if you do that, it's like I was saying about what Nigel Biggar has been

00:32:20.320 working on you. If you do that, you don't have the confidence to stand up against people like Russia and 0.66

00:32:26.960 China. And things inside start to go away. And even without that external threat, you start to 0.82

00:32:33.440 throw things away, because you don't think you need them. You start to tear down meritocracy. You

00:32:38.800 start to say, well, equality, it's all very well, this individualistic approach. But you know, we need

00:32:45.280 to do more for people of color, or we need to do more for certain groups. And actually, we won't judge

00:32:50.720 people by the content of the character anymore. We'll start judging them by the color of their skin.

00:32:54.720 Again, scientific objectivity, oh, that's very nice. But maybe we should look at other systems

00:33:01.600 of knowing and not worry so much about, you know, just following objective reality.

00:33:06.400 We are in a period where, you know, the basic building blocks, the foundations of the Western

00:33:12.880 system are just being knocked down casually by people who don't understand, because they haven't

00:33:18.320 been taught what they mean, and how everything that they value, everything that, you know,

00:33:24.240 makes their lives what they are, rest on these things. And, you know, there's a reckoning that

00:33:29.280 can come with that.

00:33:30.000 And do you think that this is how civilizations collapse and implode? Is this what happened to

00:33:38.000 the Roman Empire? Is this what happened to other empires? Or is it something different?

00:33:42.640 I think the West is so different that it's hard to draw comparisons. The thing about

00:33:48.560 most traditional civilizations is that they're very stable, right? You have this authoritative

00:33:53.680 system from above. It doesn't change that much. It can become quite grand and go on for a long time,

00:33:58.560 but it can break quite fast. And then they don't really have a way to come back. The West,

00:34:04.080 of course, has already fallen in a way. It's like, it sort of starts in a sort of post-apocalyptic

00:34:11.040 setting of Western Europe after the empire's gone. And that makes it very resilient. It's

00:34:16.080 a sort of distributed, bottom-up system. And it also means it continually renews itself. So I think

00:34:22.960 the West does have the potential to survive and go on much longer than a normal civilization. But

00:34:30.240 it needs to hold on to itself. And if it doesn't do that, you know, it can just get lost. And because

00:34:36.400 it's so unusual in human history, it could get replaced by, you know, it could go back to the

00:34:41.520 norm. We could get back to a system of top-down control. It could go back to all the things that

00:34:46.480 are kind of the default of human history. And we need to hold on to it just because it's so unusual.

00:34:52.160 And that, you know, it has so much more to give. We aren't there yet, right? You know, the West keeps

00:34:57.440 changing and moving upward. As someone, Walter Russell Mead, the historian, says, you know,

00:35:03.120 we are, we're building a space rocket. We're not, we're not building a rest home. We're here to,

00:35:08.080 you know, go to the stars and keep doing crazy new things. The West needs to hold on to its roots.

00:35:14.400 But, you know, it keeps growing up into the sky as well, trying to live up to these extraordinary

00:35:19.840 ideals that it has. And Mark, one of the great gifts the Western civilization did give to the world

00:35:25.440 is the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution. How does that happen? How does that come about?

00:35:32.480 What is the process that the West takes to get to that point where suddenly people decide, oh,

00:35:39.520 let's, you know, invent the scientific method and think about, you know, various things that come with

00:35:45.680 the Enlightenment? It's an incredibly hard thing to do. This is why it doesn't happen elsewhere. And in

00:35:51.520 the West, it takes a very long time as well. The West has two things going for it though,

00:35:55.920 apart from, you know, its general, its general sort of individualistic sort of setting where

00:36:00.320 mad ideas can, can be allowed to sort of bubble through. Firstly, it's quite an inventive culture.

00:36:05.600 That was always true. It's true from the Germanic days. You get things going on with a lot of 0.82

00:36:10.960 automation early, well before the industrial revolution. You've got water mills, windmills.

00:36:16.800 These are taken to a new level of sophistication in the West. So there's an inventiveness going on.

00:36:23.440 You've also got Christianity, which we've talked about before. Now, Christianity is sometimes seen,

00:36:27.920 particularly from a sort of Enlightenment perspective, as being somewhat opposed to scientific

00:36:32.560 thought. And certainly there were moments when the center of the church wanted to stand against

00:36:37.520 certain ideas. But Christianity in the West, at its root, had the idea of a reasoned order, that God

00:36:47.520 himself was logical and created an ordered creation that followed certain rules. And one of the key

00:36:56.640 inventions I talk about in the series, which is very early on in the Middle Ages, is the invention of the

00:37:03.120 the mechanical clock. And this doesn't happen elsewhere. You get water clocks, you get sand

00:37:09.120 clocks, sand timers, things that are about the flow of time. But to create a machine that

00:37:16.000 ticks and tocks and sees time as distinct units, it's really very different, very challenging thing

00:37:21.600 to build. And it turns up in the Middle Ages, and it's actually used not just to be in every town

00:37:27.760 square and to, you know, help people coordinate their days and work in different ways. But also to

00:37:33.360 demonstrate models of the cosmos. And these models are wrong. They're sort of Christian models in which 0.99

00:37:38.320 the sun is at the, the earth is at the center and the sun and everything else goes around it. But it's very

00:37:45.520 much a sort of clockwork universe built by God with us at the center of it. And that, you know, survives for

00:37:53.040 centuries. But it's tied, you see, this rational Christian order to this idea of an orderly world

00:37:59.120 where you can build things within it and you can follow the rules and you can make new things like,

00:38:03.280 like the clock. So that, that's there, that's all under the surface. It's very hard to get from that

00:38:09.200 to experimental science. It starts to happen in the universities, which is a place again where

00:38:14.240 different ideas can come along. What you really need to do is you need to put the theoretical thinking

00:38:20.960 together with the, the people who are good with their hands. And that, that just takes a very long

00:38:25.760 time for people to get around to it and to start to do it. And it starts to happen when they start to

00:38:30.800 notice the gaps in the clockwork universe that they've got. They start to say, oh, anyway, there's

00:38:35.760 a star in the sky that shouldn't be there if we have this, this neat mechanical model. So there's a

00:38:40.400 supernova. And then someone invents the telescope, which comes out of another very interesting invention,

00:38:47.920 which is eyeglasses. But the telescope suddenly allows you to look at things in the sky and you

00:38:53.120 see the moon and it doesn't look like the theory says it is. And so it's people, you know, we think

00:38:59.760 about, I know, Galileo, we think about these people as just having ideas or doing theory, but they're,

00:39:06.000 they're working with their hands to build new instruments to see things. And it's that ability

00:39:10.720 to combine the two, to have an idea of theory, an abstract theory about the world, and then to,

00:39:16.720 to build things, to help you test it. And that's what, what starts to develop. And in fact,

00:39:21.840 that, that feeds into the industrial revolution as well, because what James Watt does with the,

00:39:28.000 with the steam engine, which is at the center of that, is, is to improve it and to make it more

00:39:33.280 efficient. But he does it by, by knowing theoretical people, by talking to them about their new ideas,

00:39:38.720 and then, you know, hammering and going and smelting and working with iron to see if he can make a new

00:39:45.680 thing that works and trying and trying again. So that sort of trial and error with the hands,

00:39:51.120 put together with this sort of theoretical abstract thinking about the world. And that then,

00:39:56.240 those two together, suddenly you have this ability to, to, to not just have one invention,

00:40:02.000 but to sort of have a way of inventing and inventing and getting to know this ordered world in a, in a

00:40:07.440 whole new way. And it just opens doors that, you know, we're still, we're still walking through.

00:40:12.480 Absolutely. And it's the ability to tolerate heretical thought as well. Although that wasn't

00:40:16.640 always the case. And of course, there were great thinkers who unfortunately paid with their lives

00:40:20.880 for their, for their thinking, their thoughts and their work. But we were able to tolerate that in

00:40:25.600 the West, weren't we? We were able to tolerate that within universities because they were kind of

00:40:30.560 independent institutions. That goes back to the idea of law. You know, they could, special law that

00:40:35.120 allowed them to be these independent corporations, but also because they were sort of independent

00:40:39.440 princes. So again, it's a bit like Columbus, you go and find another patron, go and find another

00:40:44.720 power center that'll protect you for their own personal reasons from the papacy. So yeah, you know,

00:40:49.920 maybe the Pope doesn't want you to say that we're not at the center of the universe. But, you know,

00:40:55.840 there's probably a prince up the road who will look after you and have you at his core, particularly

00:41:00.320 if you're going to help him come up with cool new inventions that maybe help him defeat his neighbors or

00:41:05.440 something. And do you think that is the main difference between the West and the Islamic world?

00:41:09.040 Because as any, because as a lot of people will be able to tell you, at one point, the Islamic world 0.96

00:41:14.000 was streets ahead of us when it came to science and maths, etc. Absolutely. Yeah. And, you know,

00:41:19.200 I talk about in the documentary how there's a lot of sort of westernized names that we have for

00:41:23.760 the people who really influenced us in important ways and provided things into the West that we'd

00:41:29.920 we'd lost. Alhazen is very important for lenses. So his tracts are picked up by Roger Bacon in England,

00:41:37.840 and that leads in some ways to spectacles. But the theory's all wrong. That's the interesting

00:41:43.280 part about that is they just, they have these theoretical ideas, but they're not developing

00:41:47.920 them practically. So they're not testing them. In some ways, it gets a bit frozen there. There's

00:41:54.080 a point, yeah, where they could have gone down that road. But this is what, like I say,

00:41:59.360 it's kind of the default of human history. You have these flowerings or these moments where

00:42:03.600 knowledge could break through. But ultimately, you're within a civilized system in the sense

00:42:09.600 of something that's sort of controlled by great princes from the top down. It's very centralized.

00:42:13.840 It doesn't have somewhere you can go and hide from that and think the crazy thoughts. And it gets,

00:42:19.200 it gets shut down. And there's a lot of documentary makers who say that when they make a documentary,

00:42:23.760 I'm a huge fan of documentaries, I love them, that it's a real journey. It's almost a journey of

00:42:29.280 a discovery when you make a documentary. So what did you actually learn as you were doing this?

00:42:35.040 Yeah, it was, it was a huge journey. And you know, the funny thing with Constantine's interviews,

00:42:39.440 we did that sort of, you know, in the summer or something. And that was like six months or so

00:42:43.680 before we were returning to it and trying to work out which bits to use. You do have a sort of time to

00:42:49.040 really sort of think things through. I think one thing I've mentioned already, the idea of law and how

00:42:55.760 important that was to the West. That's something that really struck me as I was making it.

00:43:02.560 But I think too, it made me more optimistic about the West. Because a lot of people can be like,

00:43:08.960 oh, we're all doomed. Or if they think about the West, they think, oh, well, you know, even if I like

00:43:13.520 it, it's in decline. But when you study its story, and you realize how often it's been, you know, in a

00:43:20.320 terrible state, or in the bottom of a hole, and it's come back. And you see this sort of structure

00:43:26.240 that it has, where it can sort of reinvent itself from below, because it's so distributed.

00:43:33.440 You know, this idea of the West as in twilight, as in decline, it's like the place of sunset.

00:43:39.040 But it's, I really don't think so. It's always, it's always the sun coming over the horizon. There's

00:43:43.840 always another dawn in the West. And so that, that made me much more optimistic. But in a way,

00:43:49.920 I think that's so important, because it's people thinking, oh, well, the West is over, isn't it?

00:43:55.280 Even if you think it's fine, and it had an interesting run, its day is done really now,

00:44:00.160 isn't it? Once you start thinking that, you're looking around for someone to surrender to,

00:44:05.120 because you're wondering, well, who's going to be next? Maybe it's China. Maybe it's Russia. Maybe it's

00:44:09.600 the Soviet Union, you know. You need to have some confidence that there's still exciting things

00:44:15.920 for us to do. Otherwise, you know, why would you bother to keep our institutions, our traditions

00:44:21.040 alive? Well, we are locked now culturally in, I mean, I'm so glad you came onto that, because this is,

00:44:27.200 we've talked about the past, but the future is arguably more important, although depending on

00:44:32.720 the past, of course. We're locked in this cultural standoff now between a bunch of different groups.

00:44:40.800 But one of the things that's going on is, you have this group of people who've essentially

00:44:46.800 either given up on the West, or people who think the West is uniquely evil for the reasons that you

00:44:51.360 elaborated on. And on the other hand, you have people who are so fed up of what those people are

00:44:56.480 doing to the West, that they've also given up on the West. And now they are, you know, some of them,

00:45:02.240 you see this online, certainly, sort of celebrating Vladimir Putin as this great savior of Christendom,

00:45:08.240 you know. And that's because I think they are so fed up with a lot of the cultural changes they see

00:45:14.320 in the West. And I suppose one of the things I see out of this conversation that I wanted to ask you is,

00:45:19.840 if it is an essential quality of our civilization that we keep disrupting ourselves,

00:45:25.920 what does that mean for our future? Because a lot of people would argue, I mean, our show is based on

00:45:32.320 essentially going like, what the hell is going on? And there's a lot of disruption, very fast-paced

00:45:37.200 change. A lot of, lots of normal people are suddenly finding themselves in a position where, like,

00:45:42.320 the beliefs they had two years ago are now really, like, outrageous and can't be said in public.

00:45:47.600 Like, and the pace of change seems to be getting faster and faster. So where does that leave us

00:45:52.800 going forward? We have to find a way to, you know, to adjust to that change and hold on to something.

00:45:59.920 And that is the riddle of the West. I talk about it a bit in the last episode of the series. You know,

00:46:04.320 we have a tradition of disrupting, of doing new things. And we need that because you just put us under

00:46:11.600 glass and sort of say, well, we've got to sort of hold on to this tradition as like a, you know,

00:46:15.900 as a static thing. It won't, it won't work. And then it's really difficult. But I think

00:46:21.100 what we used to have when we would talk about the West and say, well, no, these are the things that

00:46:25.260 matter, you know, about treating individuals equally, about, about democracy, the institutional

00:46:32.460 framework that we built up, free speech, all these things, those are the things we've built to sort of

00:46:38.540 hold and channel the Western energy into healthy directions and into a way that everyone can live

00:46:45.100 their lives in ways that are, you know, fruitful and we can continue to grow the economy and do more

00:46:50.700 exciting things, discover new things. And so those are the things we have to preserve. And people,

00:46:57.500 people now just carelessly tearing things down because they don't understand, you know, how much

00:47:03.180 they matter. But if we don't have that, well, you know, there are two dangers. One danger is the danger

00:47:09.260 of, you know, slipping back into a sort of Russia, China type, you know, system, which is,

00:47:15.100 which is terrifying in its own way. The other thing is that that, that Western spirit, which is,

00:47:20.220 I think, quite dangerous if it's not contained within these institutions, that's, it goes back in a way

00:47:27.120 to the worst of the barbarians, right? Because those Germanic tribes were brutal and uncivilized in many 1.00

00:47:33.460 ways. And Christianity and all the other things of the West have spent centuries turning that energy

00:47:39.140 into something more fruitful. But, you know, the social justice warriors or the people on the,

00:47:44.900 you know, the right who think, you know, bronze age mindset is the way to go. Both of those

00:47:49.540 are harking back to a pre-Western idea, which is thrilling, but very, very dangerous. And they're,

00:47:56.740 absolutely, because they don't have the tradition of, of the West, what that turned that heroic impulse

00:48:03.840 into. At the center of the West, you know, there is this heroic impulse. Your life matters. You are

00:48:09.520 on an adventure and you are the hero at the center of it. But you need to center that within the

00:48:16.860 institutions that allow that to not just be destructive and tear everyone down and make

00:48:21.860 everything worse for everyone else. And the way to do that is all the institutions that we've spent

00:48:27.480 centuries working out. And what impact has the fact that we've become, and I'm saying this as an

00:48:33.180 agnostic, an agnostic, what has the impact of the decline in Christianity had on our civilization?

00:48:42.120 Well, of course, it's a decline in church attendance more than it is, in some ways, a decline in Christian

00:48:48.400 values, I think. And I think one of the problems at the moment is people don't quite know how to

00:48:53.760 teach that. But I think you can't really be culturally literate in the West if you don't

00:48:59.380 know something about Christianity, which doesn't mean teaching people to follow it as a faith. But

00:49:04.300 they surely need to know something about it because you can't really understand, not just our art,

00:49:09.020 you can't really understand, you know, the Sistine Chapel or, you know, Michelangelo's David or

00:49:13.600 lots of things like that. But also a lot of intellectual thought as well, which, you know,

00:49:18.740 is based around very Christian principles. So there needs to be, I think, some grounding in that.

00:49:24.280 And that is very important to people. I mean, you know, I'm a Christian myself. I think, you know,

00:49:29.380 if people go to church, they'll find that there's something very important and powerful there. But

00:49:33.760 it's not to say that everyone in the West needs to be Christian. But what's emerged from that

00:49:41.160 Christian background? Because Christianity in the West has placed so much emphasis on choice, 0.84

00:49:46.840 on people choosing who they marry, on people choosing the faith for themselves, that it's

00:49:51.560 created a space in which you can choose what religion you follow for yourself. And that's a very Western

00:50:00.060 sort of culturally Christian ideal. So as long as we have that, we have the basis of a society in which

00:50:08.340 people can choose to be Christian, then that's a good thing. Perhaps one of the worries in today's 1.00

00:50:13.400 culture is that Christians themselves are maybe moving into a sort of negative world where they're

00:50:19.260 treated as somehow culturally hostile and alien and people who need to be sort of pushed out of the

00:50:24.920 public square. So that concerns me more than the idea that just not so many people are going to church.

00:50:31.680 And I really like the fact that you are optimistic because it's so refreshing. Because, you know,

00:50:38.140 on this show as well, we talk to, you know, all different types of people with different viewpoints.

00:50:43.380 And it can be very, very easy to slip into a negative mindset. It's very tempting. And there's

00:50:50.760 a lot of people who make a lot of money on it, particularly on this platform. So let's look at

00:50:55.180 grounds for optimism. Why are you optimistic? I'm optimistic because in the end, the energy of

00:51:02.900 individual people to come up with crazy ideas, they're going to sort things out, is the most

00:51:08.040 powerful force in the world. You know, look at the Wright brothers coming up with the plane.

00:51:13.120 Just before they did Powered Flight, there'd been a big project to do it, you know, sort of government

00:51:17.980 support loads. Didn't work. And there's a big, big editorial in the New York Times. I mean,

00:51:23.640 maybe it's going to take a thousand years for us to come up with Powered Flight. That's the way of

00:51:28.540 things if you just rely on that. A couple of bicycle mechanics playing around. Again, what I was

00:51:34.440 talking about before, tinkering and using theory both together. And suddenly they do this thing

00:51:39.440 which transforms human experience and suddenly allows us to do a thing that we've dreamed of

00:51:44.700 throughout human history and never been able to do. And that's, you know, an unparalleled

00:51:50.660 thing to unlock. But it's too dangerous for places like Russia. It's too dangerous for places 0.94

00:51:55.660 like China because it brings down those systems. And they know that they can't stand it. That's 0.98

00:52:02.280 why you've got things like Tiananmen Square where they have to crush the revolt and, you know,

00:52:06.580 sort of mash the protesters who are pro-democracy into, you know, into blood and pulp with tanks.

00:52:13.100 But once you stop having that, then you can't discover these things. They've got as far as they

00:52:18.820 have recently because they've taken up the ideas that we've invented. And we used to think that that

00:52:27.020 this was too optimistic. We used to think, oh, well, China is going to become like us because it's going 1.00

00:52:32.380 to become rich and industrial and that'll be fine. It doesn't work like that. You can become rich and

00:52:38.180 stay within, you know, a very totalitarian system, as it turns out. It's not as good, maybe, you know,

00:52:44.020 maybe not as productive, but you can do things. Some things maybe you can do faster. So, you know,

00:52:49.480 that's a scary thing. Then you suddenly realize you've got to hang on to the idea of the West,

00:52:56.000 to the idea of what we have, because actually maybe it's quite special. Maybe it's not so easy

00:53:00.720 to turn someone else to that. So, grounds for optimism, but, you know, you need to be wary as

00:53:09.760 well. You can't just have a sort of blind optimism that everything will naturally go in a Western

00:53:14.100 direction. I think the most important point is here in all of these conversations, the importance

00:53:21.080 of understanding our history correctly. And this is one of the reasons I've been writing and talking

00:53:25.800 about a lot, because if we don't have a healthy view of ourselves, I just don't, I think it's very

00:53:30.860 difficult to then have a confidence in the future and have the right attitude about the future to deal

00:53:36.940 with the challenges to come. And because of that, I think your documentary is really, really important

00:53:41.260 and beautifully made. You've got some fantastic guests interviewed there, people who we've had on

00:53:47.020 the show, as well as others. Andrew Claven is in it. Nigel Biggar, you mentioned, you know,

00:53:53.120 James Bartholomew, a bunch of very, very good guests. So, thank you for making it. It was a

00:53:57.860 real pleasure to be involved. I hope people go and check it out. It's on the New Culture Forum

00:54:02.320 YouTube channel available in six, there's a six-part series called The West. Make sure you go and check

00:54:07.200 it out. We're going to ask you some questions from our supporters in a second on Locals. Before we do,

00:54:12.700 we've always got the same final question, as you know, which is, what's the one thing we're not

00:54:16.340 talking about as a society that we really should be? I think we should be talking about what to do

00:54:22.180 about our universities. Perhaps we are talking about this, but we need to be talking about it

00:54:25.860 more. Specifically, what happened with the West, you can actually almost date it. 1987, protests at

00:54:32.580 Stanford, hey ho, hey ho, Western Civ has got to go. The Western Civilization course in the top elite

00:54:38.860 universities of America were some of the most important courses they had, and they got torn out

00:54:42.700 because they were politically incorrect, they considered them to be racist. 20, 30 years later,

00:54:48.020 we see what happens. I think lots of people are, you know, the mass of people are quite ready to be

00:54:55.080 proud of Western civilization and to be pleased to learn more about it. When you take it out of the

00:55:00.040 top institutions that produces the people who run all the institutions of society, it's a disaster.

00:55:07.080 And it's very hard to know how to get the right ideas back into those places. And I think that is

00:55:13.780 the great intellectual challenge of our time. And, you know, there are great things people do around

00:55:17.560 the edges and say, well, maybe we'll start a new university or something. It's powerful. It's

00:55:21.520 powerful. But there are things you can only do from the center. We talked about the Supreme Court

00:55:26.280 earlier. Supreme Court and its ability to make decisions which, you know, I would argue stand up

00:55:31.300 for rule of law and in very important Western principles, happened because of the Federalist Society,

00:55:35.840 which worked inside top American law schools to bring top lawyers to think in a certain way

00:55:41.620 and ultimately to be in a position of power in the Supreme Court in America. More broadly,

00:55:48.580 what else can we do that's like that, that takes these ideas back, not just to the people who are

00:55:54.020 more receptive to them, not just in our schools to everybody, but to the people who are going to have

00:55:59.100 power in our society? Because the problem we've got is people right at the top who prefer fashionable 0.99

00:56:05.900 ideas about how awful we are. And until we can reach them, it's very hard to change things around.

00:56:10.800 Well, I would argue that actually, we've just done it. And you've done it with your series and

00:56:15.940 the conversations we're having and people writing books about these things actually

00:56:19.660 is what will make that difference. Because actually, I really agree with you that I think

00:56:25.240 the overwhelming majority of people in our countries, not just this country, but in many others,

00:56:32.760 are ready to hear a balanced and sensible, healthy message about our past, our present and our future.

00:56:40.400 So thank you very much for coming on and join us on Locals, where we will talk more with Mark

00:56:45.780 and ask him your questions. Is there a particular trigger that might inspire a kind of renaissance

00:56:52.640 confidence of confidence here in the West?

TRIGGERnometry - July 26, 2023

The Eye-Opening Truth About Western Civilisation - Marc Sidwell

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