Our decline, our lack of confidence

The once prestigious Queens Hotel at the corner of Peel and St-Jacques;
built in the 1890s and demolished in 1995

Is our Western society in decline, are we moving towards collapse? Oswald Spengler certainly thought it was. 

In East and West (1963), C. Northcote Parkinson writes about “… the Western loss of confidence…”, and that this loss of confidence is a symptom of our decline. We aren’t only afraid to celebrate our victories, we’re embarrassed by them, we reject them and apologize for being who we are; now we agree with our critics and say “we must be terrible people.” It’s all topsy-turvy, what was condemned in the past is now the norm and what used to be the norm is considered reactionary and condemned; our culture is even considered dangerous and needs to be replaced. This is a failure of belief in ourselves and a lack of confidence in our history and culture. To quote, yet once again, W.B. Yeats’s famous lines,

            Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

            Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world

Once, we were building a nation, building a railroad uniting east and west, defeating tyranny in two world wars and Korea, now we’re arguing about gender identity and disputing the value of our history; we have no great national projects but we have many people trying to pull down what we have built. We have separatists in Quebec who say that Canada is oppressing them and yet they oppress Quebec's English-speaking population; no one says anything about this, the politicians have no integrity, they want the French vote and to hell with what is right and what is wrong. And Alberta has made itself one of the least liked provinces with its complaining about the federal government; Albertan separatists have no idea what they are getting themselves into. In Canada we have no unifying national project, or values, that distinguish Canada and make it a place of the future. Now we’ve surrendered to feelings of guilt and appeasement to people who have no self-doubts; this lack of confidence seems to be a symptom of a collective depression; it’s just what Yeats was saying in “The Second Coming”. I don't know how we can restore our confidence, the Western world has become a society of arguing voices, agreeing with nothing the other side has to say, and even hating the other side; and there aren't just two sides, there are many. Until we have confidence, and vision, we will continue to decline. But right now we have no politicians who have vision or courage or integrity.