Butler Shaffer - The Wizards of Ozymandias

The Wizards of Ozymandias

The Wizards of
Ozymandias

Reflections on the Decline and Fall

BUTLER SHAFFER

MISES

INSTITUTE

AUBURN, ALABAMA

Copyright 2012 Butler Shaffer. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

Published by the Ludwig von Mises Institute
518 West Magnolia Avenue
Auburn, Alabama 36832
mises.org

ISBN: 978-1-610160-252-4

To the memory and spirit of Sophie and Hans
Scholl and the White Rose, who reminded us what
it means to be civilized.

51.A Cost/Benefit Analysis of the Human Spirit:
The Luddites Revisited

W hen I first decided to chronicle the collapse of Western Civilization, I assumed I would have a sufficient amount of time to observe and comment upon the transformations taking place. I shared T.S. Eliots sentiment that: This is the way the world ends, Not with a bang but a whimper. Surely a vibrant culture that took centuries to develop would have to experience a prolonged demise. I could not imagine that its downfall would be as precipitous as it has proven to be. Because of the complexities involved, it is difficult to identify a specific date or period when the descent began. Suffice it to say that the process was well underway by the time Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize!

The sense of civility that helps give meaning to a civilization is in full retreat. Our institutionalized social behavior has reverted to its reactive, reptilian origins; our thinking has become dominated by the political imperative that all of life is to be subjected to the exercise of collective power. Indeed, the formal systems through which we have organized and identified ourselves could be described as being in an ever-escalating war with life itself. As the creators of sophisticated technologies, we have made ourselves increasingly machine-like; robotic servants of institutional systems we have been conditioned to revere, whose purposes we neither understand nor control, and of which we are afraid to ask questions. Our corporate-state world plunders, enslaves, controls and destroys us, all in the name of advancing our liberty and material well-being. Most of us are dominated by an unfocused fear of uncertainty, a longing for the security of emptiness.

The reasoned intelligence and spiritual inspiration that would otherwise power life energies, remain suppressed within us. Our current art, music, and literature largely entertain and amuse us (amuse being a way of distracting us from the meditative influences provided by the muses). What we refer to as classical music was often the popular music of earlier centuries. A century or two from now, which rock musician is likely to stand alongside Bach, Beethoven, Wagner, and Mahler as expressions of the inner spirit of mankind? What modern writers will be compared to Shakespeare, Dante, Emily Dickinson, or Walt Whitman?

If there is one period in Western history that I think reflects what we have become, it would be the French Revolution. What could be a more fitting symbol for that period of collective madness, destruction, and inhumanity than the guillotine, ever busy searching for new victims? Whatever visions of mankind in society have been offered by the numerous creators of Western Civilization are being lost as the culture, itself, disappears into historys black hole. My oldest daughter, Bretigne, may have most succinctly encapsulated the changes occurring during her lifetime when she wrote: I dont know who the people around me are anymore.

Long before having children of my own, I embraced the idea that one had a moral obligation not to allow his or her children to live under tyranny. I continue to hold to this principle, even as I acknowledge my failure to accomplish that end. I continue in my efforts, insisting upon such peaceful means as writing, speaking, and teaching, for there are no shortcuts to the transformation of consciousness upon which such a task depends. My current writing is directed to a select audience of five people: my grandchildren. I share Albert Jay Nocks purpose of writing for the benefit of the Remnant, to whom will be left the task of helping to restore civilized society after the end of our destructive one. Still, my own efforts are motivated more by the presence of these five people, in the hope that theyand all the other children and grandchildren of the worldcan walk away from the organized bondage others have planned for them; that they can live in a truly civilized civilization based upon the self-directed, self-serving, creative, free, and peaceful behavior that it is their nature to enjoy as human beings.

Is it possible that the world my generation will leave to the next can be transformed; that society can become decent and supportive of life? Can conditions of peace and liberty replace the wars, coercive regulation, and worship of violence that have combined to destroy our present civilization? The book ends with such questions, and invites the reader to contemplate how such a life-centered culture might arise.

It is inherent in all writing that the author of a work bears the responsibility for its substantive content. It is also the case that a book does not get into print without a great deal of help from others. This work is no exception to this fact. Among those who provided me with such assistance were Spencer and Emalie MacCallum and David Gordon, three friends who were kind enough to review and provide constructive criticism of the manuscript. Judy Thommesen, Chad Parish, and Lew Rockwell at the Mises Institute also provided invaluable assistance in bringing the book to publication. Above all, I must thank my editor-in-chief, Jane Shaffer, for her page-by-page effortsincluding her questions and suggestionswhile the writing was still in progress. I suppose I could also thank the politicians, government officials, and other defenders of statism for their actions that provided me with endless material; but that might be pushing the acknowledgments too far.

T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men, 1925.

Bretigne Shaffer, Mere Anarchy Loosed Upon the World, in Why Peace, Marc Guttman, ed. (Marc Guttman: East Lyme, Conn., 2012), pp. 11826, at 124.

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1817)

Civilizations begin, flourish, decline, and disappearor linger on as stagnant pools left by once life-giving streams.

Will Durant

T hese essays began as part of a continuing contribution to an E-Book titled The Wizards of Ozymandias: Reflections on the Decline and Fall. Written over a period of several years, they are intended as a collection of personal observations accompanying what I consider the dissipation of the systems and characteristics of Western culture. In my first book,