/lit/ - Literature

>>11853680
"Civilized" is vastly overrated. Europe is great because in it civility and savagery are perfectly balanced. Europe is just civilized enough and just savage enough. It works out really well for dominating the world.

>>10744207
I'm really intrigued by one of Deneen's central conceits in "Why Liberalism Failed": the idea that liberalism is a tradition-destroyer and a values-shredder, its all-consuming focus on individual self-expression causing it to destroy anything that inhibits the free action of atomized individuals.

It sounds an awful lot like Nick Land's idea of Capital as a self-perpetuating entity that uses individual participants in the market as agents. However, there's a crucial difference: Land sees capital as something that grows and strengthens as it's perpetuated, while Deneen seems to think that liberalism's self-perpetuation inevitably leads to its self-destruction, as the conditions which allowed it to exist and be strong are gradually stripped away by its own growth.