Were the 1990's the peak of Western Civilization?

[The Mikado]

Honestly, I'm not sure how you can justify using a post-World War I date for this.

[The Mikado]

Honestly, I'm not sure how you can justify using a post-World War I date for this.

Well but pre-WWI was a society of an utterly privileged upper classes and an utterly depressed majority. Not to mention the situation of women, the colonialism etc.

No question that great art and philosophic work was done in the 19th century, but so was in old Greece or in the Renaissance era, nevertheless those centuries were a hellhole for 90% of the population.

"Western Civilization", if we want to use the term in an affirmative sense at all, has to be defined as a project of emancipation, participation and social justice.

Just my two cents.

But...why should it be used in an affirmative sense?  1900 makes sense because "Westerners" (the Europeans) or their progeny (the US and the Republics of Latin America) dominated or heavily influenced the entire globe.  Said grip has seriously loosened.  I don't see why democracy, women's rights, pluralism etc. are more fundamental to the Western experience than colonial imperialism and military dominance.

[The Mikado]

Out of the entire cultural output of the 1990s, I can't think of much I'm even vaguely nostalgic for.  Seinfeld qualifies.

[The Mikado]

Enlightenment was the peak of Western Civilization.

Yes, I also love slavery, kids working in mills, women being used as beasts of burden in mines and farm workers starving to death in muddy hovels. Huzzah!

The ideas of the Enlightenment created the notion of human rights.

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This is absolutely hilarious.

[The Mikado]

This is absolutely hilarious.

Why?

First of all, what are these "rights?"  The right to not be a slave?  But Voltaire agreed with slavery, as did Rousseau (though he opposed slavery as a hereditary status), as did any number of other philisophes not named Adam Smith.  How about gender equality?  Take a look at how poor Mary Wollstonecraft was treated, or how Olympe de Gouges was executed by the Jacobins, the most radical segment of society, for claiming that women deserved an equal say in government.  Look how the people most obsessed with Enlightenment ideas, the French Revolutionaries, started a grand campaign to resubjugate and rechain the people of Haiti.  If you think the Enlightenment was a good era for human rights, you've been taken in by the Enlightenment's 200+ year old propaganda campaign, where a couple of decent people (Brissot, Mary Wollstonecraft, etc.) have been taken and used as a figleaf to conceal the actual depravity of the activities of the time.