Gnon, shorthand for Nature’s God, is the concept describing the overall will of nature. This is intended as a metaphorical will, for neither atheists nor monotheists (and I consider pantheists just a kind of atheist) care to suggest that the universe has some underlying will of its own. However, the operation of nature has a clear selection for certain forms of propagation over others, and this preference for those forms which excel at propagating themselves under their relative conditions might be considered those favored by Gnon. Gnon is not God, nor is Gnon intended to replace God, but the correspondence between our intellect and the world described by our words demands a synthesis in just the same way the operation of nature tends to an equilibrium. In the long run, Gnon is neither friend nor foe, only a dispassionate judge of forms.

If the law of Gnon might be put timidly, it is as a kind of universal Darwinism; the universe is a framework for the selection of those forms able to maintain their order through entropy. Just as gas expands to fill its container in a practically uniform distribution, so does the existence of any being in the world occur as an equilibrium between order and chaos. To be material is to undergo change, and without the participation of the form in the perpetuity of its own being, this change shall eventually lead to its cessation.

Civilization is its own kind of being. It has come into being through the dialectic of evolution, and is the accumulation of matter into a form which has a tendency to propagate itself. Were it not, it shouldn’t be. On the one hand, this process is accidental, in that the presumption of humanity to pursue its own destiny is less the product of intentional will than that our forms of organization have happened to be amenable to the law of Gnon. Those societies which attended most closely to perpetuity Gnon has rewarded. On the other hand, the success of societies is essentially related to the ideas which guide their formation. Those who find themselves in some modicum of success tend to presume this is the product of their inviolable, nigh self-subsistent will, an arrogance which Gnon swiftly punishes. To deny the privilege of one’s inheritance is to deny Gnon, and to deny Gnon is to invite its wrath.

Where does that put the West? Can a society which has turned its back on the causes of its success last? Of course progressivists would suggest Progress is the cause of the West’s success, without inferring that our increases in Progress have only been afforded by exponential increases in material productivity. An agrarian society such as 11^th century England has no use for tolerance or multiculturalism; for the majority, Gnon commanded one to work 12 hours a day in order to avoid starving. Progress is a privilege for those of such abundance that the understanding of poverty is completely precluded. The most inconsequential forms of stratification become the most serious transgressions against the summun bonum of society that everyone must cease whatever they are doing to give it attention. The medieval English peasant knew enough to be thankful for his life and the lives of his loved ones. Where is the gratitude of the progressive? One finds ceaseless complaints at women being treated differently than men, but never gratitude for when those differences are beneficial. This is not a kind of dignity, but an arrogance. The path to material success for the average woman today is so laughably easy that it takes over a decade’s worth of trying very hard at failure before it becomes a likelihood. Countless other examples of this presumption hardly need be duplicated ad infinitum.

The only correct answer to whether the West shall fall into terminal decline is “We shall see.” There is a role yet to be played by the choice of her peoples. Perhaps the cycle of history involves the alternating rise of different civilizations; as the West grew, the East stagnated, but now as the West stagnates, the East grows. Perhaps the West was but a passing stage in the maturation of civilization. Or, perhaps the modern West was right all along and the decline is Progress. Who is to say that a civilization perpetuating itself is a good thing?