21st Century Civilization curriculum

I’ve just released a curriculum on foundational questions in modern politics, which I drew up in collaboration with Samo Burja. I’ve copied the introductory text and the section headings below; you can find the full curriculum at www.21civ.com.

Sign up here by 27 October to join the first cohort of discussion groups (which will meet weekly to discuss each of the 11 sections of the curriculum).

This curriculum is about Western civilization, and how it enables citizens of the Western world to live together in a just, orderly way. But it’s also about the 21st century, which has been characterized by the continual decline of many aspects of that civilization.

Despite our superior technology, there are many things that Western countries could do in the past that we can’t today—e.g. rapidly build large-scale infrastructure, maintain low-crime cities, and run competent bureaucracies. More importantly, it feels like there are no adults in the room: modern elites often seem unvirtuous and even unserious by historical standards. This curriculum focuses on explaining what changed, and how to orient to the world we now find ourselves in.

Discussions of large-scale political issues can be unsettling or jarring. So the curriculum intertwines discussion of what’s happening on a factual level, with readings on how to develop a healthy emotional and ethical stance towards politics (culminating in the final week’s focus on cultivating virtue). It also strongly prioritizes honesty and clarity of writing (even on topics often considered taboo), which is one reason why most readings are informal blog posts or essays rather than academic papers.

Given the sheer scope of the topics covered by the curriculum, it does not aim at comprehensiveness; nor does it try to give detailed strategies for solving civilizational decay. Indeed, given the accelerating development of AI (as discussed in week 10) the coming decades are likely to be extremely unpredictable. Readers should instead think of the curriculum as a starting point for informed, realistic discussions about how we as a civilization can steer ourselves through the coming turmoil.

Contents

• Week 1: Western Culture

• Week 2: Civilizational Decay

• Week 3: The Managerial State

• Week 4: The Open Society and its Discontents

• Week 5: The Psychology of Modern Elites

• Week 6: The Unprotected Class

• Week 7: World on Fire

• Week 8: Industry and Money

• Week 9: Sociopolitics

• Week 10: Technology and Civilization

• Week 11: Reviving Virtue

Read the full curriculum here.