Is this worth reading in 2025 or is it outdated now?

We don't "read" in this board, buddy

>>24525984 (OP)
Look at mcdonalds and understand that is the endpoint of history. You know it in your heart, we wont progress past the big mac.

>>24525984 (OP)
is this the 21st century das kapital

>>24525999
It was written last century but yea

>500 pages
Its just a after noon of skimming, where you bother to properly read the introduction to get an idea on what the skimming do.

And that means you are in bad faith asking if the book has merits, instead of asking if you will gain any insight of knowledge out of reading it.
Such as.... what is the significance of it being published in 1992, despite it just being a larger cardboard house built on top of a a popular essay?

What other post-cold war treatises would you recommend /lit/? Spectres of Marx? Empire?

>>24526078
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Nations_Fail
you have the coolest book now

>>24526029
So should I just read the essay?

>>24526084
I can't for the life of me read books written by economists. Tried reading Sen, Tirole, Piketty all to no avail. Guess Keynes' saying of decades long encroaching ideas resonates too much with me and I just have to find THE one economics book or even essay and just be done with it.

>>24525984 (OP)
Trump liked it.

>https://elontalks.com/share/4cfc091b-1cfd-425f-9d42-ff39051f6040

>>24526078
go for spectres of Marx and then procede to Capitalist realism

Get with the times gramps. /lit/ is an audiobook only board unless you're a
pensioner

>>24526144
Is a essay that is correctly titled "Will Social Democracy outlast the competing institutions?" worth reading?
Even more so when its written from a US POV? Which mean the author struggles with the idea of bordering a competing state, and thereby also struggle with HOW the various Fascist juntas decided end their rule with democratic party election?

I am only like 70 pages into the book.
The core reason to read the book, is that the argument as a social scientist do have to make arguments and build logic.

>>24526163
I like Sen because options and selections is a really funny meme, anyway I only posted that book because I saw someone with a comically oversized version of it at a bowling alley. don't ask.

i used to make fun of fukuyama with the rest of you but then the way the iran israel thing just ended made me think twice.
i have come to the conclusion if china cant overcome america then we really are at the end of history

>>24526240
Oh yeah Capitalist Realism. I have read it it but it won't hurt to take a refreshing detour, especially since I've read through some of his influences. Will probably feel like visiting an old friend.
>>24526265
kek, knew it was an offhand suggestion. How big is comically big though?

>>24526284
Iran is just a shithole nation with soviet tech, what did you expect lol. Decades of embargo does that

>>24526375
America and Israel have been stealing Iran's money and assets via sanctions for a long time now. Iran would have been fine without sanctions, at least significantly better than KSA, UAE, and Israel (not much of an accomplishment honestly).

>>24526284
The thing with China is, that even if it wins against america it doesnt mean it will win against liberalism. Admitidly I dont know that much on China, but my understanding is it's population is becoming more middle class and educated, and for now it can avoid giving them more freedoms and say in the government because they have had constant rapid improvements in economy and in comfort, but at some point that will slow down and will face the choice all industrialised and educated countries government do. Give some more freedoms and democracy to the masses to placate them for now or risk civil war now?

>>24526858
>>24526284
>china cant overcome america
I think its interesting
At a glance t hat isn't a problem

At a second glance in a population of a billion, you are going to have a entire upper class who has ownership of the growing parts of the economy, and some of them is going to become filthy rich.
Will China survive Xi picking a successor? Will the filthy rich just flee China and become irrelevant, or will they double down on proxy warfare against the CCP for their rights ala something like the Hansa?

I am not even trough the book, but it almost feels like the point is that in a Democracy you call a new election, go trough some turmoil, and a few rounds of chair games the old elites could be entirely frozen out. The big question will be if USA can successfully pull of the chair game and renew, and the same is true for most EU states.
In a dictatorship you eventually have to deal with completing your goals as a past event, which might be the reason for the military coup. Or that running on a cult of personality means you run out of steam if Hitler/Pinochet/Kim dies.

>>24525988
FPBP

>>24525984 (OP)
What are you supposed to do if you accept the idea we are in the end of history? It implies any involvement or caring about politics is basically a larp, no? Do I just shove all my money in the stock market since line go up forever?

>>24527634
>It implies any involvement or caring about politics is basically a larp, no?

no Fukuyama adresses this, apathy for the political process creates boredom and stagnation paving for the re-emergence of illiberal forces

Fukuyama's best stuff is his two volume opus on state development. It's pretty encyclopedic, although philosophically narrow (pulling mainly from mainstream Anglo-American polsci in terms of more recent stuff).

His latest response on liberalism makes it clear that he realizes that Rawls and Nozick, etc. have anthropologies that are too thin to support a civilization long term. The atomized utility maximizer of homo oecononimicus cannot motivate citizens to arduous goods and civic virtue. He even makes a specific appeal to notions of virtue in the book, but then quickly backs away from it.

In the end, he is an improvement in realizing the need to recognize thymos, but is still almost totally discounting any notion of logos and the rational appetites. For the ancients and medievals, these were key. Man's rational part, will and intellect, correspond to a desire for goodness and truth, the desire to have and be "what is truly best," and to know "what is really true." This is what allows for any transition from continence to virtue. People realize that something is better, and even if they don't yet desire it, they strive to practice it and learn to desire the it. That's the whole idea, the virtuous person enjoys doing what is good. Our desires are habits and can be trained, and indeed liberal culture habituates us to certain desires, just not ideal ones.

>>24527742
But Fukuyama is still stuck in this very dismal view of man as an appetite machine, only his has feelings too, and the role of government is to manage the appetite machines as best as possible so they can get on ok with each other and rut and eat and consume and, because he recognizes thymos, feel better than others and get recognition. But life as the pursuit of virtue, excellence in search of what is truly best, a truly common good that isn't just the sum of individual utility functions? This still seems beyond him. And he doesn't really address these criticisms of liberalism, except a handwave at Deneen telling him to go live by himself, and some mentions of MacIntyre, Millbank, etc. to use only for attacking post-moderns. He still largely treats liberalism's presuppositions as transparent and ahistorical, despite the fact that he is aware of Millbank, Charles Taylor, etc. and the ways they really grow out of Protestant volanturist theology (man being the image of God, also becomes sheer will and wholly instrumental reason).

That's his big weakness. His only answer to greater questions of human telos (and liberalism ultimately still indoctrinates in its own view of human telos) is to say any thicker alternative will just lead to the Thirty Years War redux. It's a pretty hollow version of humanity, at least in the political dimension. Something like politics as man communicating goodness to his fellow man, lifting him up in virtue, is dismissed a priori and what you get instead is selfish actors agreeing out of a desire for safety to accept minimal constraints so as to allow for greater consumption.

The funny thing is, there is an argument to be made for key parts of liberalism from a broader notion of human telos, in that it gives people the space and education to explore the human good and access to greater resources and people in the pre-modern era could have imagined. But to make this appeal, one also has to open up the possibility of education once again being seen primarily as education in virtue (as it was in the East as well as the West), instead of shutting down debate and reducing it to job training. Ultimately, civic virtue cannot flourish and be kept from turning toxic without an acknowledgement of logos. So even if neoliberalism hadn't killed civic virtue, they type we'd get would probably slew towards Nazism given the Logos skepticism in the current culture, which would reduce it to collective will to power.

Ultimately, Fukuyama can't even refute the post-modern ontologies of violence well because his human being is too thin.

>>24527744
His defenses feel very half-hearted in general now. His book Liberalism and its Discontents show it. He’s not as confident as he acts

>>24527742
>>24527744
Fantastic effort posts. I've read all of these Fukuyama works, and this is a great synthesis.

>>24527744
>>24527742
This might be correct but it's also irrelevant. Secularism and liberalism have made the wisdom (if wisdom it be) of Plato, Aristotle, Epictetus, Cicero, the Roman historians, Boethius, Augustine, Aquinas, the Islamic commentators on Aristotle, Confucius, Laotze, the Hindu thinkers, the Neoplatonists, etc. all equally inaccessible in the political dimension. At best they can be useful for private individuals in a purely private sense. They are a priori banned from politics because their notions of a human telos, virtue, a metaphysics of goodness, realism, and God disqualify them before debate has even started. Given how the "secular" is defined, and that any philosophy related to public life must be secular, all this stuff is to be thrown out and any appeal to them is illiberal and authoritarian unless it remains privatized.

That's partially why they aren't taught anymore for the most part. Or, for the few who cannot be ignored, there are huge efforts to reread them as secular agnostic post-moderns, or as being "ironic."

>>24526284
Its hard to say. Really, attempting to predict and control the future is ridiculous. You just really never know what can spark a change or something. Its like the novel Napoleon of Notting Hill. Author predicted that the world would go through a series of wars, bureaucratic liberalism would win, and it would be the end of history, because no one would believe in anything enough to want to change the world. The whole system gets destroyed when someone doesnt want their house destroy so the local council can make a new road.

>>24526284
>Mu china tho!
China isn’t going to karate chop the new world order, these white people who are simping for China cannot read the geopolitical room much like how the MAGA people think Trump is going to cross the rubicon. These are all just desperate delusions for swift victories.

Beijing’s has an unwillingness to build a trilateral coalition with Russia and North Korea, because such an arrangement would call for actual strategic leadership by China, and Beijing is decidedly uninterested in such a prospect. That is partly because any axis led by them would require a mission around which its allies could unite—and no one in Beijing seems to know what that mission should be. Plus, China isn’t the soviet union — they depend on the global market and are really sensitive and sensible to sanctions or boycotts so they couldn’t take the role that the soviets did even if they wanted to.

China isn’t going to save you from working at Mcwagies and hooking you up with a Chinese trad wife, they have other issues and market deals they need to secure and remedy now that Trump is back in office. China benefits from the U.S. taking economic hits, but only up to a point. If the American market collapses too hard, it takes global trade—and China’s exports—with it. That’s why they aren’t out here looking to ‘salt the earth’ with the U.S. They need America to be weak, not dead.

>>24529375
Plus china has an aging demographic, the policy of "have a shit load of children to survive a nuclear war" policy kind of put China in a spot that's really hard to get out. The "one child policy" was needed, but now you have an economic trade expectation that will hit a grinding point once the older chinese warehouse workers die out and the younger population isn't too keen on warehouse work, and definately are culturally influence by westerners in both positive and negative ways. But there's a big gap between Chinese boomers and the current generation, the speration between culture and population both share this gap and its because of the one child policy and China embracing being cheap trash tier labor for the west.

There's theories that Mexico / South America legitimately have a chance to replace China (for the US) since the US can manipulate them easier, they're culturally more similar to us (despite the pol memes, there's a bigger chance North Mexico will intergrade into the US then vice versa, considering the mexican government which is a joke n the first place is centeralized east mexico as well as the "desperate" need for economic stability in those countries, shit the west US already has a lot of deals with mexico that the public isn't even aware of, even during the Trump administration, even policies by republicans in Texas. Hard to say where China's relevance with the US will be in that time, and maybe learning spanish would be preferred. China and the US both need to culturally mature, but for completely different reasons.

>>24529073
Thomas Hobbes was really the antichrist

>>24529186
In order for liberalism not to be the dominant hegemonic force there would need to be
1. An alternative illiberal ideology that is directly competitive with liberalism if not superior than it
2. Liberal states who explicitly renounce the doctrines of liberalism. Acting in an illiberal way while still claiming the mantle of liberalism doesn’t really “defeat” the system. It needs to be overtly rejected

We are nowhere near these 2 things yet

>>24529375
China has only been giving the Russians enough rope to hang themselves with and half sabotaging them. They don't want a strong successful Russia. Likewise 1/5th of the Far East are no ethnic Han and they have bought up all the resources and manage them. The next biggest demographics are Mongolian and indigenous. They are going to colonize them, not build them up.

When Putin dies, that is when they will make a play to help elevate a successor who will be reliant on them. They have already pulled the Central Asian Republics into their orbit and forced them to accept annexations, and they still make claims on Russian land. You're just missing their long term goal.

>>24528571
He's lost faith. It's sad because there are strong hints in his book that he knows where he needs to go but I can see why he would be afraid about his reputation with his peers if he did do. Ultimately, a MacIntyre-style transition to Thomism is calling him. If there was a secular Thomism he'd probably already have gone over. Maybe we do need something like a secular Thomism; some ancient phil guys who actually take their material seriously and not just as of historical interest argue pretty well in that direction. Robert Wallace is a good example re Plato.

I think the US is due for a rebirth of Plato, Cicero, Boethius, etc. But elites are allergic to Christian overtones, even though a lot of stuff doesn't depend on revelation.

>>24525984 (OP)
>Is this worth reading in 2025 or is it outdated now?
I recently read the book, and in my opinion, it has three main problems.

First, the author doesn't clearly define his ideologies and systems. He broadly equates liberalism with individual rights and property, but he fails to assess how these can be implemented in almost any system. Similarly, his arguments for liberalism can often be extrapolated to other forms of regimes, which undermines his overall purpose. This issue isn’t critical if you're simply looking for broad arguments as to why liberalism might be the telos of humanity, but it weakens his case when critiquing specific contemporary ideologies.

Second, his defense of capitalism—since he equates liberalism with capitalism plus democracy—amounts to a claim that humans can't properly grasp and organize the economy, leaving capitalism as the de facto mode of production. In other words, the economy is supposedly too "complex" for humans to understand. While there's some truth to that, it's not a convincing argument for why capitalism must prevail in the long term, especially in light of recent technological advancements. Market socialism, a Gosplan-style computer-managed economy, or even a heavily regulated system could all theoretically address his concerns without requiring capitalism.

Lastly, and this is axiomatic to his analysis, democracy doesn't solve the problem of thymos (the spirited part of the soul that seeks recognition). Yes, democracy might allow people’s desires to be acknowledged, but that doesn’t mean it truly addresses them. I've heard he has since revisited these claims in response to the rise of populism, which suggests he recognized this shortcoming. But thymos alone can’t be the sole foundation of democracy. It only exists meaningfully in the context of justice in governance—no one would recognize someone becoming enraged over an unjust ideal. This implies that a just government, as long as it is perceived as just, would retain legitimacy and be able to govern effectively.

Overall, it's a good read that's well-written, but not a major philosophical breakthrough as it advertises itself. You can read it for anecdotal purposes, but imo it's not worth it if you want more.

>>24530184
Let me guess, this would enable the return of a trad christian nation that will usher in the kingdom of christ ?

>>24529475
Religious fundamentalism addresses the issue of spirituality which appears to be endemic to Man. Market socialism/regulated capitalism both also surpass traditional liberalism (and subsequent capitalism) in quality of life (EU countries) and specific economical objectives (Chinese specific industries like EVs, trains etc). These 2 are very well competitive, and seemingly address certain fundamental flaws within liberalism.
Now, you could argue for a synthesis of ideas but it's clear that liberalism isn't enough for *everything*

>>24530310
>Let me guess, this would enable the return of a trad christian nation that will usher in the kingdom of christ ?

That post specifically references elements of Thomism not related to Christian revelation and mentions mostly non-Christian thinkers, so I am not sure what the point of lurching into this strawman is, except for maybe proving >>24529073's point for him.

>>24530310
It is interesting that the U.S. State Department under the Trump administration immediately rebuked the "end of history" liberal consensus and is now pivoting more to be a nationalist state in a multipolar world. (Although I will say that this is at odds with most of the rest of the world which is actually liberalizing more).

>>24527744
>>24527742
Do you have any suggested reading for a political approach that does consider thymos in a modern setting? I’ve read some medieval philosophy and can agree with it, but obviously the context and ideals are set for an entirely different time. Burnout Society seemed to come to some better conclusions in my eyes, but it felt like a diagnosis without a suggested treatment, and I’m looking for a better suggestion in terms of treatment. I’m actually entering a masters program to do mental health work with an ideal towards either catching the strays that fail out of the system and helping them land on their feet again, or helping to establish and advocate for systems which will lead to less strays to begin with and for a greater order of dignity and purpose to be restored to the wider community. But I feel I lack a certain center, I’m a typical “spiritual but not religious” agnostic, practicing contemplative prayer from the traditions of the mystic Catholics and forms of zen Buddhist teachings, with a dabbling of Sufi readings here or there. But the eclectic split of all of that feels a little debased, flowery, and often it leads to conversations with wide and shallow eyed coexist new age liberals that circle jerk the few “enlightened” people while dismissing the spirit of the many which seems obnoxiously elitist and tribal. I’d love to have more reading and ideas to explore.

if liberalism is so bad then why is it so blatantly successful does anyone have an answer for this that isn't just leftist whining of muh capitalism and west colonizing the world

>>24530778
>if liberalism is so bad then why is it so blatantly successful
>human beings have begun to stop reproducing even in places like africa and india (the system is entirely dependent on this to function)
>there's plastic in the air, water, our blood, brains and organs
Liberalism is only winning quality is it's ability to persist.

>>24530787
That is more capitalism’s fault not liberal democracy. Non-liberal countries have the same issues

>>24531000
You stupid nigger, every country is liberal now, all thanks to globalization. Vietnamese and Chinese zoomers all acts like typical white American liberals. Japan too, to a degree, is more gen X and millenial. Just go outside and you will see: there's no escape.

>>24525997
>If you want a vision of the future, imagine a burger stuffing a human face, forever.

>>24530460
Because it's always the same crap : people advocating for a virtue based lifestyle and upholding greek thought as a way to transition into revering a christian nation that would accomplish the prophecies set out in the bible

>>24530778
>if liberalism is so bad then why is it so blatantly successful
Successful in what ? Making economies grow ? Atomizing individuals for giant multinationals ? Polluting the environment beyond repair ?

>that isn't just leftist whining of muh capitalism and west colonizing the world
capitalism is part of liberalism, unless you want to go the marxist route

>>24530310
To quote him a bit better

>An American politician could harbor ambitions to be a Caesar or a Napoleon, but the system would allow him or her to be no more than a Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan—
This is the core problem of Thymos. This is fine so long there is a acceptance of slave morality once you peak
This isn't fine when you get Hitler or Mussolini who is going to go so hard they are going to secure a majority, and then start having fun with private death squads.

>>24531259
>Justifies a strawman with another strawman.
>"Nooooo! You cannot offer any alternatives to liberalism because they MUST always be Stalinism or theocracy. I don't need to respond to what people actually argue, because I can presuppose their true Stalinist or theocratic intentions!"
It's sad that liberalisms professional intellectual defenders have been reduced to doing this same sort of thing.

>>24530653
From a perspective that is not particularly religious, Robert M. Wallace's Philosophical Mysticism in Plato, Hegel, and the Present is quite good, although some of the more technical parts are probably skippable.

C.S. Lewis' The Abolition of Man is short, free online, and a very good essay all though it leaves a few things to desire.

Deneen's criticism in Why Liberalism Failed is more secular, although it doesn't open up much of a clear alternative path.

In terms of charting a philosophical path forward I think D.C. Schindler's Freedom from Reality and the Catholicity of Reason are quite good, David Bentley Hart's The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth deals with post-modernism quite well, and then Millbank's Social Theory and Theology really gets at the way liberalism is positively constructed from a particular theology it has forgotten. But Charles Taylor's door stopped A Secular Age is the most accessible here and might be a better starting point.

Understanding alternatives requires a proper diagnosis of liberalism. The exclusion of thymos is, to my mind, less problematic than the exclusion of logos.

D.C. Schindler's Politics of the Real looks at alternatives, but it's too Catholic and polemical for most.

Ultimately, you cannot expect one writer to put forth a realistic alternative to a globally hegemonic system that also backwards projects itself on to human history. It's a long project to disentangle liberal dogmatic presuppositions from anthropology, neuroscience, psychology, economics, and political science. David Bentley Hart's book on philosophy of mind is a good example of the sort of work needed. But a movement akin in scope and effect at least to that of post-modernism would be needed for a real effect.

Still, the skeleton is there.

If I ever finish my book tracing the history of the idea of thymos and epithumia ordered to logos from Homer to Virgil to Dante, and then how Dante's vision became unacceptable to the moderns due to skepticism about the capacity and authority of logos (in Hamlet, Paradise Lost, Dostoevsky, and 20th century dystopias), maybe that will be a good one to. The main idea there is that deflationary approaches to reason, knowledge, and psychology led to the twin modern pathologies of volanturism and a straight jacket intellectualism that fed off each other and made the orientation towards Logos impossible. This is different from Virgil's skepticism in the Aeneid, which was about man's ability to overcome the passions and fate, since it is skepticism of reason itself and its capacity to know and be oriented towards Goodness and Truth, such that you get either a view of reason as limited to and unable to transcend finite human "systems" or "language games," or a volanturism where the will itself becomes its own object rather than Goodness (a pathology that bottoms out in arbitrariness).

Pic related is also pretty good on this sort of thing, although less direct.

>>24530653
I'll just note that I was in a similar place several years ago, and I found Wallace very helpful as a starting point.

>>24531964
We can just consider Hamlet's "nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so," or Milton's Satan's claim that the "unconquerable will" and mind can "make a heaven of hell or a hell of heaven," versus Plato's appeal in the Symposium, that:

>And the true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love, is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these as steps only, and from one going on to two, and from two to all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is

How do we get from one to the other? There is ancient skepticism, but it is skeptical in a different way.

Liberalism is built on the assumption that we are left with the former, and that the latter must be a position of privatized taste because its truth cannot be known (because it cannot be discursively justified, or because any discursive system of justification cannot wholly justify itself).

Diagnosing this shift is, to my mind, the key to any political theory or philosophical movement that transcends modernity, or its latest, "liquid" form in neoliberal, globalized "late-capitalism."

I love Byung-Chul Han, and Fisher is pretty good. But I don't think they have the resources to convincingly answer this, while I think Plato, Boethius, Aquinas, do, although they require significant updating, not least because many elements of modernity are vast improvements. It's like Jacques Maratain says, in history, the good grows alongside the bad, they are sewn together, and we must know them by their fruits when it comes time to harvest.

>>24525984 (OP)
>>24526078
Baudrillard's writings on the same subject are much more profound and grounded

>>24531964
The most clear alternative that I see today is honestly with the United Arab Emirates and its ideology. Industrial and consumerist, but anti-liberal and anti-leftist socially, a model of citizenship that favors their ethnic group even as they're a minority, aggressively anti-Islamist to the point where their leaders are hardly even Muslim anymore. Look at how popular Dubai is with normies today. You get all the prosperity and consumerism of the West, but without democracy or progressive liberal stuff. Turns out that is actually appealing to the average person (this is not a good thing but it is what it is)

>>24531087
looool

>>24532079
>Look at how popular Dubai is with normies today.
Dubai is popular? I always thought people mentioned it as a joke about how fucking hollow and superficial the ultrarich are.

>>24531939
>"He's lost faith"
>"Ultimately, a MacIntyre-style transition to Thomism"
>"Maybe we do need something like a secular Thomism"
>"I think the US is due for a rebirth of Plato, Cicero, Boethius, etc"

You can't ground moral virtue in politics without divine retribution, because you can't ground civic righteousness in the context of power without a *higher* power. And you can't have a secular higher power without religion. This isn't a strawman, it's quite literally core to theists shitting up threads by subtly introducing religious elements and then promptly using them as an introduction to why their god is necessary to civilization. Besides, the following posts after yours proved my point.

>>24532079
>Dubai is popular with normies
I don’t think so. There’s certainly a subset of “sigma grindset” autists that like it, but the average person would think it’s hollow or superficial. It’s like your brain fried uncle who likes Vegas, sure there’s one in the family who goes out for strippers and gambling and thinks that’s peak living, but most people are embarrassed by that uncle and don’t let him around their kids. Dubai is basically Vegas only pretending to be moral, they’re both tasteless and they both don’t offer anything to anyone who wants a family, a community, or to live towards a “good life worth remembering.” Of all my high school normie friends, only one brags about having been to Dubai, and the other normies talk behind his back about how big of a douche he is. There might be a break away of those types, but I can’t see it being sustained for long, it’s just too ugly and fake. It doesn’t take its own morals seriously, it’s all performative. Trump is the “savior of the west” and yet is a philanderer, scummy salesman, and embarrassingly tasteless, the real traditionalist are only going to stay in line with that for so long, especially if they’re anti materialist.

>>24532436
>Teleology and any notion of final causality re the human good and the common good must reduce to Reformation Era divine command theology—sheer 'thou shalt."

No. And actually, it's precisely this sort of theology that liberalism itself (along with materialist mechanism as a metaphysics) grows out of.

Aristotle's Ethics, for instance, does not require a God who meets our arbitrary punishments and rewards. Nor does Boethius, Maximus, or Aquinas for that matter.

>>24532079
Is this a joke?

I'd say elements of Japanese society point to a better way of doing things in some ways. The big example to my mind are successful Christian intentional communities. Secular ones could exist as well, they just don't or they tend to be based on hippiesque philosophies of freedom as sheer freedom from constraint and "authenticity" and so collapse quickly.