Susan Boyle as a sign of the West's decline?

So says Spengler. Here's why:

"In a time of economic strife and stress, she came out of nowhere to make us smile and maybe even shed a congratulatory tear or two for someone who had finally fulfilled a life-long dream. Hey, we all have our dreams, right?" gushed Steve Rosen at the Kansas City Star newspaper on April 17, in a variation of a theme that has appeared in numberless versions in the media.

Meanwhile, in China, 60 million children are learning Western classical music under the gimlet gaze of strict teachers. East Asian singers, particularly Koreans, are working their way up the ranks of provincial opera companies, and every one of them sings better than Boyle. Who do you think is going to run the world 20 years from now? As the Italians say, we're bolliti, "boiled". Now we can spell it with a "y". I hate to always be the one to say this, but the hope is fatuous. No, you can't.

There is an undercurrent of self-worship in the aptly-named American Idol and its British knockoff, which lifted Boyle to stardom. As I wrote some years ago (American Idolatry Asia Times Online, August 29, 2006), at some time during the 20th century, the people of the West elected to identify with what is like them, rather than emulate what is above them.

Churlish resentment of high culture comes from the slacker's desire for reward with neither merit nor effort: the sort of artistic skill that requires years of discipline and sacrifice is a reproach to the indolence of the popular audience of the West. Better voices than Boyle's can be found in a thousand choirs and amateur theatricals, but the crowd has embraced this late-hatching Scottish songbird as a symbol of its own aspirations.

With no prejudice to Boyle, who seems amused rather than beguiled by her success, the fantasy-life of nations has consequences in the real world.

Is that really the meaning of Boyle's triumph? If Spengler's point is that we in the West have developed a lotto-like mentality of thinking that success and accomplishment is something that just happens to you, and the reaction to the Boyle phenomenon is a symptom of that decadence, then he's right. But I interpreted Boyle's success not as a validation of the Megamillions Theory of Human Advancement, but as a lovely human interest story about how fate smiled upon a dowdy woman who lived a life of seemingly noble obscurity. It's like reading a newspaper story about how the high school janitor who'd spent his life living for others has won the lottery. You would be silly to think that the lesson from that is that buying a lottery ticket is the way to financial success. Similarly, insofar that anyone concludes that you can avoid having to work hard and master something difficult to get somewhere in life, they're fooling themselves. But again, is that the lesson most people take from the Susan Boyle story?

Personally, I believe life is mostly unfair, and tragic. Far, far more Susan Boyles live unremarkable, unrewarded lives, their true worth known only to God. The challenge nearly all of us face is how to get through life living meaningfully and nobly in the face of tragedy. It's a pleasure, though, to see something spectacularly good happen to someone who, by the standards of the contemporary world, is a loser. One doesn't have to think Susan Boyle is the second coming of Ella Fitzgerald to experience that. Sometimes, what makes suffering bearable is the possibility that our fortunes might change, despite heavy odds. As Spengler observes, that kind of hope can become enervating, and a source of decadence. But it doesn't have to.

All of which is to say that I buy a lottery ticket from time to time, but I'm not counting on that to secure my family's financial future, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.