Western Self-Contempt: Oikophobia in the Decline of Civilizations

by Benedict Beckeld

Western Self-Contempt travels through civilizations since antiquity, examining major political events and the literature of ancient Greece, Rome, France, Britain, and the United States, to study evidence of cultural self-hatred and its cyclical recurrence. Benedict Beckeld explores oikophobia, described by its coiner Sir Roger Scruton as "the felt need to denigrate the customs, culture and institutions that are identifiably 'ours,'" in its political and philosophical applications. Beckeld analyzes the theories behind oikophobia along with their historical sources, revealing why oikophobia is best described as a cultural malaise that befalls civilizations during their declining days.

Beckeld gives a framework for why today's society is so fragmented and self-critical. He demonstrates that oikophobia is the antithesis of xenophobia. By this definition, the riots and civil unrest in the summer of 2020 were an expression of oikophobia. Excessive political correctness that attacks tradition and history is an expression of oikophobia. Beckeld argues that if we are to understand these behaviors and attitudes, we must understand oikophobia as a sociohistorical phenomenon.

Western Self-Contempt is a systematic analysis of oikophobia, combining political philosophy and history to examine how Western civilizations and cultures evolve from naïve and self-promoting beginnings to states of self-loathing and decline. Concluding with a philosophical portrait of an increasingly interconnected Western civilization, Beckeld reveals how past events and ideologies, both in the US and in Europe, have led to a modern culture of self-questioning and self-rejection.

Genres: Politics, Philosophy, History, Sociology, Nonfiction, Cultural

264 pages, Hardcover

First published May 15, 2022

Reviews

[Jeff Greason · Rating 5 out of 5]

I got this book specifically because my own study of the rise and fall of civilizations led me to wonder if the tearing-down of the underpinnings of civilizations by academic elites was a uniquely modern phenomenon or whether it was a recurring pattern. The book certainly addresses that question, tracing such fear and distrust of one's own culture ("oikophobia") through several earlier Western cultures. Sadly, no non-Western examples are included, and I would continue to be interested in a broader study of, for example, Chinese or Egyptian examples where we have access to written records.

The author expounds on the philosophical underpinnings of oikophobic attitudes and, I think, does an excellent job of showing how thin those foundations are.

It's a short book and well worth the read if the subject interests you.

I think the greatest weakness is that there is little one might characterize as a 'call to action'. I have come, through my own study, to agree with one of the central theses of this book -- that civilizations do fall and that fall cannot ultimately be prevented. But the fact that the outcome is inevitable does not relieve us of the responsibility to see that such a fall does not happen on our watch. Civilizations have vastly different life spans, ranging from decades to a millennium. The fall may come ... but it need not come today, or even soon, and I would have preferred more discussion (or perhaps references to other works), about what we should be doing to ensure that the answer is "not today".

[Aaron Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Introduction
1. Oikophobia in Ancient Greece
2. Oikophobia as Relativism
3. Oikophobia in Rome
4. The Role of Religion
5. Oikophobia in France
6. Oikophobia in Britain
7. Oikophobia as Positivism
8. Oikophobia in the United States
9. Cyclical and Progressive Theory
10. Oikophobia in the United States
11. The Confluence of the West
Epilogue


Since the common civilizational enemy has been successfully repulsed, it can no longer serve as an effective target for and outlet of the people's wrath. Human psychology generally requires an adversary for the purpose of self-identification, and so a new adversary is crafted: other Greeks, and other Athenians.

With a store of unused power after the elimination of enemies, human nature must spend that power somewhere and somehow, and fighting for the downtrodden at home is the easiest and closest outlet.

“If men cannot struggle on behalf of a just cause because that just cause was victorious in an earlier generation, then they will struggle against the just cause.... They will struggle... out of a certain boredom: for they cannot imagine living in a world without struggle. And if the greater part of the world in which they live is characterized by peaceful and prosperous liberal democracy, then they will struggle against that peace and prosperity, and against democracy.”—Francis Fukuyama, The End of History

…the thinkers in question always seem to believe that they are the privileged ones who are to experience the end of history. Just as dictators, revolutionaries, and college students want to be able to say that they experienced the radical moment in history when everything changed, which makes them mindlessly want to take up arms against just about anything at all, as long as it is a proper revolution or a first-rate cataclysm, so too philosophical totalitarians want to be the embodiment of the end of history and preside over its quiet but magnificent conclusion.



Dependence makes people resentful and miserly, and the more they receive from the state, the less they will respect it. This is why there is often a dynamic of mutual strengthening between oikophobia and government largesse, and oikophobia and the entitlement mentality go hand in hand.



As the society develops, more and more rights are granted to groups as a means of holding on to the consensually voting citizens' support. This increase in equality and rights actually contributes to even more dissent, because various interest groups begin to smell blood and try to obtain even more from their government, a pattern that shall recur time and again. This is why, in any civilization, the more laws appear whose purpose is therapeutic and designed for only a particular group of citizens, the surer will be the decline of that civilization. A law written for a particular group is usually intended to create more equality or inclusion, but in fact it often increases social fragmentation. Plato complains that in Athens, everyone has to be made to have the same rights as everyone else and to feel equal to everyone else: children to parents, students to teachers, foreigners to citizens, and even animals to humans (Republic 562d-563e). With such a pathological sense of equality and liberty, any sense of authority will disappear, along with all loyalty to the civilization at large.

Diverse interests, including previously marginalized and victimized groups, jostle with one another for attention. And as every interest group seeks its own influence and growth, the American version of the late-civilizational obsession with victimhood develops naturally out of those groups increasing strength, as they seek a way of gaining special status and getting ahead. Just as it was in the interest of nineteenth-century British and French industrial workers to emphasize their suffering so as to draw the sympathy of the upper classes, victimized American groups gain by emphasizing their victimization. And so, ironically, the stronger and less victimized a previously victimized group becomes, the more it will insist on its own victimization.



…self-aggrandizement and vanity are in fact part of the overall picture of oikophobia. The ikophobe considers himself individually superior to his countrymen by dint of believing, or thinking himself to believe, in a common humanity, with his own culture having no special claim.

Human beings being what they are, personal vanity must be ted in one way or the other, and as the civilization's enemies have been defeated, superiority must be expressed over neighboring groups at home. Since intellectuals by dint of their education tend to be snobbish, oikophobia offers them the easiest outlet for their need for superiority.



…the beginnings of every civilization are shrouded in religion, that is, that religion is the cornerstone of every civilization. There are no exceptions to this rule. This means that the farther away a civilization moves from religion, the farther it moves trom the traditions of its own origins. …the more religion there is a society, the more sense of community and the less oikophobia we will find there. Since the beginnings of a civilization are religious, the natural end of civilization is the rejection of religion by losing their religion, the members lose their sense of membership that ties them to the community. They decreasingly see themselves as parts of a cohesive whole, and cease to be loyal to one another, becoming more reluctant to sacrifice themselves for the greater good.
They no longer consider the greater good good, with the result that a society and its religion stand and fall together. Greece, Rome, and perhaps Israel among ancient civilizations, and France, Germany, and Russia, among modern ones, offer particularly striking examples of what happens when religion is abandoned en masse…



It is an undeniable fact of history that masculinity dominates the beginning of a culture, and femininity its end.



In cities there is much more contact with other people than in the countryside, and the more one rubs shoulders with others, the more acerbic and jaded one's worldview tends to become.

…a Kansas farm boy will generally be less oikophobic than a Massachusetts college student, and more willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good, is that the college student lives in a more diverse environment, while the farm boy leads a life closer to that of the earlier stages of American civilization, when oikophobia did not exist. In the country, things change slowly, and while the fall of Rome was catastrophic for the urbanites it did not change things all that much for the simple farmers. In the city, however, where the college student lives, the necessity of self-reliance is replaced by a dependence on the Other.

[Hallie Cantor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Disturbing analysis of the origins of liberal self-hate. Oikophobia, contempt for one's own country or culture, is in the author's view the root of civilizational decline. It is the opposite of xenophobia, hatred of foreigners -- seemingly negative but actually productive in terms of a certain group's enhanced feelings of specialness. Patriotism builds up internal strength and structure, contributing to the development of the arts and infrastructure. The opposite is self-loathing, a shame of one's culture or heritage. Citing philosophers and the fates of Greece and Rome (the origins of the West), as well as 18th century France, the author views the current riots, left-wing movements, and polarization the result of a society grown amoral and neglectful of values and boundaries, let alone self-control. He sees the current Western nations -- i.e., Britain and the U.S. -- and heading toward a similar, tragic course, and well on their way to decline, even in spite of outward scientific or technological progress. My own comparison could be made to late Tzarist Russia, which experienced a "Silver Age" before World War One and revolution--scientific, artistic, and intellectual achievements. Nevertheless, sophistication destroys itself, the result of a governing body too arrogant and indifferent to its people. Other comparisons can be made to the current liberal class, the actual focus, or rather target, of this book.

The author makes excellent deductions from major writers and thinkers. However, his avowed atheism (in spite of editorial help from Orthodox Jews) seems to contradict his stance on the need for morality and civic involvement. These are impossible without an awareness of, let alone reverence for, a Higher Power, or at least a higher purpose. Once a person, let alone a society, is merely existing -- i.e., living in the moment -- the future becomes meaningless. He praises rural, traditional, and religious societies yet seems to have none of his own. For that reason, I gave the book four stars, instead of five. I know that conservatism has a spectrum, but I am leery of manmade deductions. Nevertheless, this book is important reading for those witnessing our collapse of societies.

[Jack Hart · Rating 2 out of 5]

★★☆☆☆

I had a couple of starts and stops before I made it through Benedict Beckeld's Western Self-Contempt: Oikophobia in the Decline of Civilizations. It impressed me with its substance and frustrated me with its style. The author is intelligent, well-read, and dedicated to illuminating what he would call Western culture. His large argument strikes me as reasonable, and he's got a lot of learned details about classic works to share. But there were also a couple of big things about the book I didn't like. One is that its arguments were put forth in an aggrieved and snarky tone, and the other is that it didn't seem to me well organized.

What made this a winding read was that Beckeld wanted to make methodological points about the philosophy of history, and may even claim that he's doing that, but for whatever reason he doesn't make that the extended explicit focus of his book. He's very good at arguing against totalizing or teleological views, and had he developed his proposal for a "proper— and more modest— framework" for the philosophy of history, one that focused on "cycles and tendencies," I think it would have given more readers more to engage. But instead, he chooses to apply his more modest framework to the phenomena of oikophobia and let his method speak for itself.

This leads him away from what-do-we-study-when-we-study-history kinds of questions, and into repeated explanations that oikophobia has its source in the leisure associated with cultural development. He really doesn't seem to have anything to say about it beyond that. By contrast his methodological argument that history can teach us "tendencies and patterns" that recur because of the constancy of human nature and mass psychology seem interesting and even important. Perhaps a two-part structure would have worked better. In the first part he could have presented his argument that different thinkers have imagined what the study of history has to teach in different ways, and then surveyed what Thucydides and Plato and Augustine and Thomas Moore and Dilthey and Hegel and Marx and Foucault all had to say on the matter, and then made Thucydides his champion. Then, in part two, "The Case of Oikophobia," his periodizing of oikophobia could have been done as a way of exhibiting the method.

Beckeld seems studied about creating a persona with no collegial intentions. He's an ex-academic who now considers himself an independent writer, and his attitude seems to be, "A pox on their house and fuck those guys." His framing of his aggression is that it's necessary. Academic specialists, he says, "resent encroachment on their turfs" and that's why he has to come in guns blazing.

His book is full of offhand comments on what other thinkers, both ancient and modern, got wrong, often very, very wrong, and often, as he sees it, not just very wrong, but the kind of wrong that comes from bad faith. Rousseau, Voltaire, Thomas Moore, Dilthey, Hegel and Marx all take ritual lashings. Steven Pinker and Richard Dawkins along with Foucault, the Frankfurt School, and of all people, Stephen Butterfield, all get their knuckles rapped.

His book is full of footnotes, and it's clear he's actually read with care the thinkers whose guilt he assesses. So it's not like he's firing from the hip. I try to not worry about how someone works themselves up to make an argument as long as the argument is sound, which, as I have said, I think Beckeld's are. But I, at least, found his prose's vitriol distracting.

He seems to have his own affirmative intentions, but he's so dedicated to the intellectual equivalent of a first-person-shooter game that he hasn't quite figured out what they are. I think he could have written a much better book had he brought forth his interlocutors more as contributors to social thought in the tradition of Western classics. Had he managed to conjure them as worthy adversaries whose contributions he views as unfortunate he could have written the same argumentatively firm book without all the glare of killer arguments. It would have been interesting to see him more engaged with the texts and contexts of his philosophical opponents, and I think it would have made for a more interesting and readable book.

A subtext of Western Self-Contempt seems to be to repudiate his own association with the contemporary academy, and like a bad breakup, it strikes me as an emotionally costly repudiation. Now, even though he's free of it, whatever it was he suffered there continues to tax his resources of tone and to exact a huge cost on his prose.

There's another interesting and endearing quirk of his style. He occasionally abandons his curmudgeonly persona entirely to present himself as just "a plain human being" deeply influenced by the tragic sense of life he's learned from the Greek tragedians. This happens full-throatily at the end of his epilogue, which I found both admirable and cringey. In it he addresses those of his readers who see themselves as strivers. He tells them they are the inheritors of the Greek spirit and the builders of civilization.

What came to me is that he was channeling Nietzsche in Book Nine of Beyond Good and Evil, not in content, but in the pathos of imagining lost secular sheep who might look to him, a fellow anti-transcendentalist, for counsel and guidance as to what is noble. I don't want to mock the effort because it was a bid at sincerity, but it also didn't strike me as a successful way to end the book. Nietzsche offered his readers a vision. Beckeld offers his selected try-hard readers an inspirational cookie.

I read the book from cover to cover because I found myself in the presence of a deeply sourced and disciplined mind trying to work itself out. Yes, the book frustrated me, and to keep going I had to stop now and then to write my own cavilling, ill-tempered, counter-snarky marginalia. But this is a relatively young writer—a good-willed, learned man—devoted to a writerly embodying of a life of the mind. Now, having performed this ritual slaughter of the mandarins, may he be liberated to write more and better books.

[MEHTAB ULLAH · Rating 4 out of 5]

Best book reading

[Kevin Moynihan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Victor Davis Hanson, book jacket — “…Benedict Beckeld both warns and shows us that hating what made you free, secure, and prosperous is not merely decadent but also suicidal.”

Favorably notes The Strange Death of Europe by Douglas Murray, p.195