Lions vs. Scavengers: Saving the West | 5-Minute Videos

The West is in a war for its survival, but it’s not the war most people think. It’s an existential conflict, as Ben Shapiro describes it, between lions and scavengers. The scavengers have the advantage. They have figured out how to use the lions’ virtues against them. So how do the lions fight back, and win?

When we think of the American Revolution, we think of the North: Lexington and Concord, Washington crossing the Delaware, the winter at Valley Forge. But it was in the South—in the swamps and backwoods of Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia—where the war was decided. Mark Malloy, author of To the Last Extremity: The Battles For Charleston, explains.

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Transcript:
Lions vs. Scavengers: Saving the West
Presented by Ben Shapiro

We are not just in a clash of civilizations — we are in a clash within civilization: a clash between lions – those who wish to build; and scavengers — those who wish to destroy. The scavengers, for too long, have been winning.

They have been winning because the lions got complacent.

In their complacency, the lions forgot how to defend their civilization — or even that their civilization required defending.

And the scavengers grew ravenous.

The scavengers hit upon a brilliant strategy: what if they could turn one of the great strengths of the lion against himself — that is, the lion’s willingness to admit error.

In 1946, in the aftermath of World War II, anthropologist Ruth Benedict wrote a famous book titled The Chrysanthemum and the Sword — an attempt to understand the differences between America and her approach to war and that of the Japanese Army. She hit upon a fundamental distinction: the distinction between what she termed “guilt cultures” and “shame cultures.”

Guilt cultures, said Benedict, were frequently present in societies that inculcated “absolute standards of morality” and relied on people “developing a conscience.” Guilt is a private phenomenon: we beat ourselves up when we sin. And this means we also confess our sins and repent of them.

This is essentially a statement of the Judeo-Christian ethic.

Shame cultures, by contrast, are interested, not in absolute standards of morality, but in how people are perceived by others.

As Benedict wrote, shame cultures “rely on external sanctions for good behavior.” Those sanctions include enforced conformity, social rejection, and public humiliation.

If that sounds like Cancel Culture to you, you would not be wrong.

So-called honor killing is an extreme example: the only way to repair the social shame brought on by a daughter who dates someone of whom the family disapproves is to kill her.

In short, lions are concerned with guilt, scavengers with shame.

To put it another way, lion culture is preoccupied with how God judges people; scavenger culture with how other people judge them.

What happens when these cultures clash?

Let’s examine.

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