'Weak' and 'decaying': Donald Trump gives withering verdict on European allies
The US president gave his bruising assessment of Europe's leadership, criticising them for immigration and failing to end the war in Ukraine.
Donald Trump's bruising assessment of Europe as "weak" and "decaying" is a bitter blow to nations already reeling from the release of his national security strategy.
Oh dear, 'a bitter blow' suggests they didn't know what has been obvious for years, Europe is weak and decaying. An aspect of it is that European elites won't admit and get to grips with it, but the first step is acquiring the moral strength to admit it. Won't happen though.
Life was a dark, insoluble mystery, but whatever it was, strength and weakness were its two constituents. Strength would win--weakness lose.
Theodore Dreiser - The Financier (1912)
6 comments:
Thomas Kuhn, who emphasized that scientific progress occurs through paradigm shifts rather than linear advancement. These shifts are triggered by the accumulation of anomalies that challenge the prevailing consensus, leading to periods of crisis and the eventual emergence of a new dominant paradigm.
Perhaps political progress has fallen into this patten? The accumulation of anomalies is challenging the liberal consensus, we are in crisis, and are awaiting a new paradigm. Although some politicians stick grimly to what used to work.
DJ - I've always thought that old paradigms generally fade away more slowly that Kuhn suggested. The old guard usually has to retire or die before the new paradigm replaces the old. Climate change is an example, scientifically it has been on the rocks for years now, but still it plods on. String theory seems to be another example and socialist economics another.
It may be that the accumulation of anomalies requires anomalies which in a sense stick to the old paradigm and are severe enough to bring it down. Maybe AI and robotics will bring about a paradigm shift as there are hints of that happening.
Suppressing political paradigm shifts seems to be the point of repression, it bears down on the accumulating anomalies. Until...
"The old guard usually has to retire or die before the new paradigm replaces the old." thus, "Science advances one obituary at a time".
Ludwik Fleck, Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact, (1935) covered Kuhn's ground before Kuhn. Particularly striking (to me anyway) was the observation that there is a process of decay by which challenging new theories. become orthodoxy, before finally being put out to grass as textbook material, 'lies we tell to children'.
djc - I don't know Ludwik Fleck, thanks for the info, I'll look him up. I never got much out of Kuhn apart from a few quotes and the phrase 'paradigm shift' which is useful. Yes there is a process of decay, perhaps if the decay is resisted too strongly it becomes deeper and wider.
I remember once reading a psychologist who took it into his head to check Planck's claim that mature physicists tried to block the new physics and that it was necessary wait for them all to die. He reckoned it was a bum rap: plenty of the old boys accepted the new physics promptly.
dearieme - maybe climate science needs mature physicists, or at least some mature scientists.
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