I've discovered that very often when I am impressed by an Epoch Times article, the author turns out to be Jeffrey Tucker. Here's another one: "The Undying Necessity of Moral Courage." Please be sure to read as well my comment at the end of this post.
Tucker is a realist, and the article starts out depressing, with a reiteration of insights from Joseph Schumpeter's book, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (1942). But it ends with a bit of hope.
I keep going back to this treatise for guidance in our strange times, mainly to better understand the interaction of economics, politics, history, and culture. His outlook is probably best described as transideological; a partisan of capitalist systems, he was not optimistic about human nature itself.
You can see the entire work as an elaboration on the following principle sometimes attributed to the Stoics: “Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And weak men create hard times.”
Yes, capitalism works. Manna falls as if from heaven, and people are no longer taught its source through any lived experience. Better lives, richer lives, more opportunities rain down on the population as if by magic.... What does this do to human character? It trains people to believe that the ancient virtues are no longer operational. We don’t need fortitude, resilience, courage, and determination. A credit-soaked world no longer needs thrift, prudence, or sobriety. Instead, rising wealth of the sort we’ve experienced since the late 19th century trains people just to go along for the ride. Careerism replaces courage. Credentials replace talent. Erudition replaces wisdom. Indulgence displaces prudence.
States come to believe that they can promise their populations anything and that normal accounting has been superseded. They create giant cradle-to-grave welfare states. They intervene in every conflict, domestic and foreign, as if there are no limits to resources. The culture celebrates recklessness, sloth, and opportunism instead of discipline and fortitude.
Schumpeter was even more correct than he knew. In 2020, the wealth seemed so automatic, so inevitable, so indestructible, that most nations in the world actually set out to shut down their whole economies in a new science experiment in disease mitigation, all while they waited for labs to roll out some magic cure that turned out to not work. ... And how did most people respond? They went along.
People’s lives absolutely fell apart. Arts, culture, mainline religion, and so much more fell apart. Major media lined up to push official messaging. So did Big Tech. The upheaval utterly changed the functioning of life itself. It was a fiasco for the ages, and guess what? Weak men did indeed create hard times, and those have hit everyone very hard today.
All of this is backdrop to the real crisis of right now, and you know the substance of it: It is a political crisis now illustrated by an attempt on Donald Trump’s life. He was spared by the grace of God: a sudden turn of his head toward the screen caused the bullet to slice off the top of his ear but miss his head. ... But the story does not stop there. Having been shot at and bleeding from his head, he rose to his feet and rallied the gathered crowd while promising to fight on and urging others to do the same. As security forces got him away from the violence, he fist-pumped the air one more time and then left.
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(I took the photo from the article; the attribution is AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
In our times, we’ve rarely if ever seen anything like that. Those who said he was a mere actor, influencer, opportunistic politician, or businessman on the make saw a different man when faced with mortality itself. He exercised resilience, fortitude, and moral courage, all those ancient virtues that are so ill-practiced in our times but which ultimately drive history. Most people I know, even those who completely oppose his politics, are still in awe of that scene. It rocked the world and made history.
We ... are so accustomed to a culture of inauthenticity ... that it is startling to witness an authentic display of genuine fearlessness in the face of death. If I may say so: We needed this. Desperately. We all needed to remember and know that it matters.
All politics aside, our times have deprecated and driven out the old virtues and toughness along with it. I’m convinced that an authentic display of exactly that is precisely what the world craves right now. We need it more than ever in our lives. Otherwise, we will continue to go the way that Schumpeter predicted, straight to the doom he foresaw for Western culture.
From what I have observed over the last 70+ years, I can affirm that these points are accurate and important. However, I want to add this: Good times do, indeed, breed weak people; for one thing, they allow us to survive and procreate. But they also provide the stability and means through which art, culture, and creativity can flourish.
I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine. — John Adams
It is also true that there is no inevitability about the idea that individuals are determined by their times. Bad times bring forth heroes, flawed and broken as they may be, in greater number—but they also provide unusual opportunities for villains. And there's no reason why the good, the strong, and the virtuous can't flourish during times of ease and plenty, albeit that it takes firm intention, deliberate practice, and self-discipline. I look at our family, friends, and neighbors, and see much to give me hope.
