Iza Ding

“Goodbye, Gibbon” (theideasletter.org/essay/goodbye-…) is an essay I had the quiet pleasure of writing for The Ideas Letter from the @OpenSociety. In which I offer my non-answer to the question “Is America in decline from a Chinese perspective?” I conclude: “We should be careful not to let a question turn into a prophecy. Rises and falls need not be an inter-civilizational zero-sum struggle, however seductive Thucydides’ lair may seem. Rather than getting swept up in the collective effervescence of status anxiety, only to look for an elixir in the intellectual Viagra of declinism, perhaps we should forget Gibbon.”

“Goodbye, Gibbon” (theideasletter.org/essay/goodbye-…) is an essay I had the quiet pleasure of writing for The Ideas Letter from the @OpenSociety. In which I offer my non-answer to the question “Is America in decline from a Chinese perspective?” I conclude: “We should be careful not to let a question turn into a prophecy. Rises and falls need not be an inter-civilizational zero-sum struggle, however seductive Thucydides’ lair may seem. Rather than getting swept up in the collective effervescence of status anxiety, only to look for an elixir in the intellectual Viagra of declinism, perhaps we should forget Gibbon.”