The doomsayers of the 1890s saw our cities drowning in horse poop. The doomsayers of the 1930s saw a final battle between freedom and fascism. The doomsayers of the 1950s and 60s saw the Cold War ending in nuclear apocalypse. The doomsayers of the 1980s saw the world about to boil with global warming. The doomsayers of 2001 saw a final reckoning between 1.5 billion Muslims and 2 billion Christians. The doomsayers of 2020 saw a rerun of the Black Death.

They were all wrong. Terrible wars and huge losses did occur, but in spite of them, human progress has been relentless. Every decade of the modern era has ended with more people living longer on this planet. Threats were real, but underneath it all we humans still kept making headway, improving life on average for the masses.

What was feared was averted, in short, by competition. Every region stupid enough to regress towards stagnancy or destruction was taken over by those who instead chose progress, helped by the technological advantages that came with that progress. The Austrian and Ottoman Empires thereby met their ends. Every ideology arrogant enough to challenge too many neighbours with too much hatred and oppression was eventually taken down a peg by those neighbours, as was seen with Nazi Germany or colonial-era France and England. …

Still, we encounter the fruits of all five in every Western country, and far less of them anywhere else. Outside the West, there are few public spaces to be seen and heard in, little grace towards our true nature and that of our neighbours, little in the way of universal art that speaks to us all and thereby reminds us of our common struggles in this world, little investment in and harvesting of diversity, and no true belief in the separation of powers that motivates power-sharing.

It is because of the benefits available from the five accomplishments above that the rest of the world migrates to the West and stays there, while few Westerners opt to live outside of the West unless those places are themselves more Westernised, like Hong Kong was for a while. These five elements define what it means to be of the West: stunning historical accomplishments to cherish, to nurture, and to expand in our hearts and minds.

The West is great because it has successfully charted a path of inherent tension that acknowledges, yet separates, two core ingredients needed for human thriving that appear to be in conflict. The first is a brutally honest intellect that determines how things actually work and is realistic about the corrupting influence of power. The second is acceptance of human nature and allowing that nature to spill out into open places where soothing lies, beauty, and ideas can be shared with one another. To this point in history, these unlikely bedfellows of cold reason and warm love have shown themselves to be an unbeatable combination for producing human thriving.