Solzhenitsyn on how we have forgotten God and the future of the West

Solzhenitsyn, on Civilization, Self-Restraint and Right Living

I strongly feel that a new generation that by-and-large unaware of Solzhenitsyn, his writings and his legacy need to become acquainted with him.

Some of us of a certain age will be aware of his struggle against the Soviet authorities, his writings (especially the Gulag Archipelago)  and his subseqent and long exile to the USA.

However, the following piece from prime-time television (Vesti) in Russia reminds us that he had words about Western civilisation and where the lack of values would take it.

Basically, it takes us to where we are today.

I find it hard to imagine that ANY television in the West (let alone prime time television) could have an anchor talk about values and the need for moral underpinning.

The tragedy of America is perhaps not so much its collapse but its spiritual impoverishment.

But here we have it. 

Society is measured, according to Russian TV anchor Kisilev, not by its economic achievements but by its culture.  

Solzhenitsyn talks about humanism which took the best and highest in religion and removed God from the equation, putting Man at the apex. 

After two destructive and ("cruel" is the word used by Solzhenitsyn) world wars this became globalism - not a caring globalism which aimed to remove human suffering but one which seeks to impose values by force.

In the age in which we live in we need to remind ourselves of these values and find our way back to them in the short period of time we have left before the curtain comes down on human civilisation.

As an afterword I can imagine that in the present febrile atmosphere of the new American civil war Solzhenitsyn instead of being listened to with rapt attention would be denounced and hounded off the campus by groups of demented leftists and accused of being "extreme right" and whatever other epethets they can dream up..

Here is an interview from the 90's in Russia

and his speech to Harvard University.

You can read a biography of Alexander Solzhenitsyn HERE

Prof.Tim Garrett on civilisation as a heat engine

We Talk the Thermodynamics of Civilization with Professor Tim Garrett

Civilisation as a heat engine

Professor Tim Garrett of the Dept. of Atmospheric Sciences at the University ofUtah, joins us to discuss the thermodynamic implications of our energy consumption and the possible collapse of civilization that is the result of our Greenhouse Gas by-products.  Are we just a flash in the pan, so to speak? 

Listen to the podcast HERE