'Civilization' looks at how the West cou...

'Civilization' looks at how the West cou...

Niall Ferguson hosts the PBS special ‘Civilization.’

Civilization tackles, quite expertly, a question thats as troubling as it is broad.

In this two-week, four-hour series, author, professor and historian Niall Ferguson bluntly asks whether the Western worlds domination of human events over five centuries is coming to a close.

Centuries ago, Ferguson notes, Eastern nations like China set the pace in technology, wealth and general progress.

But starting around the time of the New World explorers, the West ascended, while the East turned more inward and had less impact on the course of the world.

Ferguson ascribes this to several specific factors in Western culture, including competition, consumerism, faith and a work ethic.

The current rise of China, he suggests, is rooted in borrowing these killer apps from the West.

And yes, he declares, theres a real chance the West could lose its supremacy.

But if it does, he further argues, it has only itself to blame. Western society wont be conquered by Chinese or Muslims or other outside forces. It will have abandoned the things that fueled its rise: the hope of economic opportunity for all, faith in science, a willingness to engage with the rest of the world.

If the West regresses to suspicious, self-absorbed societies with no aspirational middle class, he warns, it could pass the East again, only this time in the opposite direction.