What does the future hold for the West? Its perceived decline is not only a well-worn literary genre, but also a matter of lively contemporary interest, not least for the populations of Western countries.
Ben Ryan’s contribution—How the West Was Lost: The Decline of a Myth and the Search for New Stories (Hurst, 2019)—shares its title with an influential 2011 book by the economist Dambisa Moyo. But where that work focused on economic decline, Ryan’s concern is with the modern West’s lack of shared meaning and common purpose—a theme that has provided the subtext for numerous bestselling works in recent years. In the UK, notable examples include Douglas Murray’s The Strange Death of Europe (2017) and The Madness of Crowds (2019) (reviewed here on Arc by Esther O’Reilly), which looked in turn at different surface manifestations of the existential crisis gripping the West. Similarities end there, however: Ryan situates himself in contradistinction to Murray, and his book generally reflects the left-liberal consensus of Britain’s political and media mainstream. Where the author differs from many contemporary British commentators is his more positive attitude toward Christianity, and this, combined with the search for meaning and his approach to framing foundational values, makes How the West Was Lost vaguely reminiscent of Justin Welby’s Reimagining Britain (2018), a book Ryan doesn’t mention.
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