THE AFRICAN REVENGE: THE AGE OF REGRESSION AND THE DECLINE OF THE WEST Book review of Michio Kitahara's "The African Revenge: The Age of Regression and the Decline of the West" (Columbus, OH: Pine Island Press, 1997)

by G.Dotzel, 1999-11-27
    (Hier ist das Review in deutscher Sprache)
    (Cette recension en Francais)

In his book, "The African Revenge", the author Michio Kitahara shows that he has studied
(1) biology to explain the desire of and the results of manipulatory drive in Homo sapiens sapiens,
(2) the history of evolution to illustrate the development and forces of the three, functionally different layers of the human brain,
(3) the cultural developments from the Greeks to the Middle Ages,
(4) the work of important philosophers and psychoanalysts,
(5) the history and psychological consequences of the oppression of the African Americans, who have been forced to regress to infantilism, creating a new subculture in the Southern states of North America,
(6) the profound development of music and art, which allowed him to define creativity, art, and beauty and to separate this from junk music and art,
(7) the development of the accelerating decay of civilization from the Enlightenment until today, and last but not least,
(8) the identification process of the individual with the superior and the inferior. This knowledge makes the author to conclude that the fate of Western civilization is besieged. "The African revenge" helped me to understand what happened to the so-called baby-boomers, from a cultural aspect, at a time when rock music played an important, but inherently destructive role. The author shows how the seeds of contemporary junk art and junk music grew out of the oppression of the African Americans.

The author points out that classical and jazz music allow variation or improvisation. In contrast, rhythm and blues, later commercialized as rock'n'roll, as well as its successors, i.e., rave, house, hip-hop, trash, metal, and acid music appeal to the two lower levels of the brain, namely the limbic system and reptile brain. They block out the dominance of the neocortex, by generating beats at the frequency of the pulse, and by giving everyone illusionary happiness everywhere. Happiness has its limits -- it cannot continue forever. My feeling is that happiness most probably is counterproductive to creativity. But in an exponentially growing society, creativity is needed to find solutions to growing environmental problems. The goal is to increase the quality of life by generating and restoring the conditions for freedom from noise, pollution, bureaucracy, and the dreaded welfarism. This is required if we want to develop or at least maintain our culture. Unfortunately, as the author shows, the regression to infantilism forced upon the de facto powerless individual leads to the development of egocentric personalities, who most probably are satisfied to fulfill their manipulatory drive by watching television.

Television provides for identification with the superior, and makes one feel to be in the center of the world, by being served by a world-wide network of highly educated reporters. One also listens to feel-good, don't-worry music everywhere, driving the automobile in crowded areas. These changes were all initially triggered by the jazz subculture of the African Americans that combines music with sex and drugs. But jazz is not evil. It is the combination of music, sex, and drugs, which became popular in the fifties. This subculture, rooted in the oppression of the African Americans, is destroying Western civilization. The process can be considered as a revenge for centuries of oppression.

The observations, insights, and conclusions that the author discusses in his book left me paralysed for many days. "The African Revenge" will provide for more thinking in the future as it raises our sensibility to observe cultural decline.

Being one of the late baby-boomers, I admit I was a big fan of rock bands like the Doors, Pink Floyd, Deep Purple and later Frank Zappa. But I also knew something was wrong with that kind of music and that many things went wrong in society. But I accepted the situation and tried to live with the contradiction imposed by the socialist community. Unfortunately, as Ayn Rand pointed out in "For the New Intellectual", trying to live with contradictions is denying one's own existence. Also until I read "The African Revenge", I did not understand why there was so much growing hype created by commercialism in the computer science industry. The latest craze is the Internet which gets commercialized beyond recognition by the early movers who take their power to create monopolies, and to manipulate the masses.

This concentration of power and de-democratization of the Internet is strategically planned only by a few major Internet-estate owners, the goal being maximal profit, without any ethical and moral considerations -- as if commercial success would legitimize everything. The current trend is to disallow any competition in a world wide net, where decentralization was the main goal -- if there was ever a goal in a distributed brain.

But history shows that even state monopolies, such as lotteries, where 50% is already lost when you buy the ticket, are a big success -- in draining citizens in their desire to take any chance to become more powerful, when every other creative activity is punished with high and even progressive taxes and pseudo taxes, the so-called social contributions -- in a state "where everybody tries to live off everybody else", to close with a quote from Frederic Bastiat's pamphlet, "The Law", 1850.

About the Author

The revised review was published in German in REFLEXION, nr. 42, December, 1999, pp. 58-60.

Hier ist das obige Review in deutscher Sprache.

Le revue ci-dessus en francais.