/lit/ - Literature

Everyone says that the decline is coming, yet it's not happening. Point out the tangible facts that things are declining, otherwise STFU and party on!

>>14146485
Read Taleb. Uncertainty leads to more certainty. For example, the more uncertain it is that you will survive a plane ride, the more certain it is that you will not go on that plane.

we've fallen pretty low already. what is being considered an intellectual now doesn't even come close to the past conception of men of letters, literally anyone who's regularily posting pseudo-Marxist critical theorist analyses of contemporary affairs can be considered an intellectual. read Bloom's "Closing of the American Mind

>>14146510
Fuck brainvaxxers.

there’s basically more demand now for intellectuals than there is for musicians or artists

>>14146510
are you ill in the brain?

>>14146485
>>14146506
People have been standing on corners shouting about how the end is near since the beginning of time. It's a cliché.

>>14146485
So... What is the ideology of western civilization again? The most certain thing is I have 95% of the ideal freedoms one can have, and if I'm bothered by someone else not enjoying their freedoms or freeing themselves from something I don't need to, it doesn't mean the world is falling apart. Other ideas will appear and other people will strive, so what.
I'm pissed at the feminists making fools of themselves with their period-positivity and feminized orthograph but it doesn't mean all women are turning into women-children, far from that. New stuff needs to be tried, some succeed some fail.

>>14146510
I haven't decided what to think of this guy yet

>>14146510

>>14146916
tfw posting freedom cringe

>>14146485
instability can lead to profound change, and we need to fundamentally unroot and reconstruct the shitshow we've been holding for the past few centuries

>>14146485
I think civil war is inevitable within 5 years
Fate of Empires - John Glubb

Diversity is to blame
Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
Bowling Alone - Putnam

>>14146485
The problem with our society is we have too many "philosophers" and "intellectuals"
We have no cohesion
It's just a mass of people all chaotically acting out whatever they want
To be an inventive philosopher is to say "I reject all answers to life before me, reject my culture, including all religious answers so I can invent my own meaning to life"

It's just a bunch of fags circle jerking and debating in universities
"Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up" - GK Chesterton

I think massive war then a resurgence of traditional values (because traditional values are traditional for a reason), and authoritarian government (idk if it will be socialist or capitalist but a dictatorship is likely either way)

>>14146485
>decline
>fall
you're going to have to define what these words mean in your context before any productive conversation can be had

>>14146510
this

and vice versa, the more "certainty" the less people are paying attention, or worrying about how to pay attention, or worrying about how to pay attention to how to pay attention.... then all of the sudden - BOOM

>>14147089
>To be an inventive philosopher is to say "I reject all answers to life before me, reject my culture, including all religious answers so I can invent my own meaning to life"
Was the man who invented the oven rejecting fire?

>>14146510
this

and vice versa, the more "certainty" the less people are paying attention, or worrying about how to pay attention, or worrying about how to pay attention to how to pay attention.... then all of the sudden - BOOM

>>14147089
agree

read mencius moldbug/curtis yarvin (formalist manifesto is a great, short read that will probably define the 21st century) or first couple chapters of Snow Crash.

Basically the world will split up into smaller, more hierarchical tribes/nations/city states.

The leftists can have their little communist city states (SF, Portland), the christian fundamentalists and trans can have their own communities attached to most cities, segregated with militias and Catholic law without being bothered by some shitty visionless mish mosh interventionist empire (USA), the racists can have an ethnostate in Montana, the jews can have a separate Israel in NYC. People can live how they want when they don't live in community with people who hate them .

Maybe each of these city-states/distributed republics can buy timber, stone, water, power produced by robots in the PNW, Appalachia, New Mexico.

maybe the cost of shipping this to each substate plus a cost for housing and feeding the people who are to retarded to be of use to any specific community would be cheaper than our doomed government's pathological cost centers anyway.

And when everyone has a place to call their own, and not this "melting pot" to fight for one in, maybe we will finally know how to negotiate lasting peace

>>14146916
SHISH

>>14147159
>read mencius moldbug
Stopped reading there. Go back.

>>14147168
cry more!

>>14147104
Yes.
His attitude was "fire is not good enough for me"
That's a rejection to at least some extent

To call yourself a "philosopher" is to call yourself some asshole who is just trying to invent a new philosophy, get famous in academia and sell some books.
"Philosophy" is just a bullshit hierarchy for high IQ people to avoid doing some honest pursuit, feel superior to others, and compete against other high IQ people with logical arguments

It's a disgusting occupation when the person is not aimed at seeking truth, but just trying to invent some new or novel thing.
Cosmopolitans should be hanged.

>>14147159
>>14147159
>Basically the world will split up into smaller, more hierarchical tribes/nations/city states
I have thought this as well. Basically balkanization with probably mass deporations and immigrants fleeing back to asia and back down to mexico/south america
I'll read those things you mentioned
>pic related
Do you read stuff about 4 gen warfare? Like post-clausewitz? Vox Day?

I think things will look slightly different than what you say.
There were only 200,000 soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan and look how fucked up those countries are
Imagine just 1% of right wing white men deciding to blow up buildings, setting fires, cutting down power lines and ripping up rail way ties.
200 million whites in US
100 million white males
50 million fighting age white males
25 million right wing fighting age white males
Let's say only 1% willing to fight.
That's 250,000. Basically the same amount of men that were in Iraq and Afghanistan combined fucking shit up
I think we are going to see some shit go down in 4-5 years


What else do you think?

>>14146485
>Fall of civilization/ideology
What does that mean? Nothing, except that the system of power will change shape, in some way, which is inevitable now just as it has been in every age. These words convey nothing except that the speaker has a sense of dread about the future.

>>14147350
It's a shame that you became a zealot, but I guess we can't all be so flexible

I’m not a fucking ideologist, faggot
fuck you and your sophist brothers and sisters that pollute this board with pseudo-knowledge

>>14146485
>Regardless of our respective ideologies, I'll assume that pretty much everyone here can at least agree
This is the point at which you should have, on your own, in your head, thought, "gee, this sounds like bullshit" and gone back to the drawing board.

>>14147350
Wishful thinking. People are way too comfortable and sedated with video games, porn, consumerism, fast food, and lowbrow/midwit media for anything to happen.

>>14146560
Where can this phenomena be observed? Unless by intellectuals you meant woke analysis of cat video memes.

>>14146506
A measurable decline that occurred was the abandonment of full employment in the 1970s. I would consider this an "objective" decline.
In the present day, I would consider many of the developments of the internet (spying, tracking, clickbait, grifters, centralisation, overstimulation, irony overdosing, shittier and shittier software coded with fucking electron, etc.) to be "subjective" decline. That is to say, nobody consciously chooses these things. They are the revealed preferences of market outcomes. Nobody would sit down and plan a world where people buy gamer girl bathwater.

Everyone wishes to imagine that we're going to decline into some serious and miserable times. My viewpoint is that the miserable times were the 80s-2010 though we told ourselves that they were okay, and we have now progressed to the stupid times. I wish someone smarter and more dedicated would build on the understanding of the present as the age of the stupid. People want to imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever, what they'll get is a fursuit paw stamping on Logan Paul.

>>14146510
We're already on the plane though you fucking moron

>>14148866
Ah, but because we fear the plane crashing we'll divert to a nearby airport rather than continuing to our destination.
However, the plane will crash on landing due to inclement weather at the alternative airport we choose. Had we continued we would have been fine - but the nature of the plane and the world that contained it has always been such that we would fear crashing, leading us directly to our deaths.

>>14146485

The ideology that has won in the social sphere is the post Marxist identity politics. This ideology has captured social institutions and will not "decline and fall" but only expand and grow tighter. It's influence on society will only grow. So I disagree with your premise.

>>14147159
>Basically the world will split up into smaller, more hierarchical tribes/nations/city states.
we're heading towards a one world government

>>14149144
These aren't incompatible, though I don't think the situation will actually develop.
The world I've always wanted to see is basically Keynes bancor meets neoreactionary-ish microstates. Crypto probably makes it doubly unviable (ignoring that nobody wanted to create the first part even when it was proposed in the 40s), but a Breton-Woods type system ensuring trade balances would let individual states of arbitrary size run their own domestic affairs on whatever social model they wanted without sacrificing the international trading system or allowing a monster like modern international finance to take control instead.

>>14149135
>schizoposter
None of that is going on

>>14147350
>4 gen

I am not sure. I haven't much. My assumption is it will result in less war thru more complete deterrence, but that could me wrong under a neocameralist system.

The 1% thing is interesting. I think we overestimate how vigorous and convicted our population is about anything. Our internal intelligence apparatus is also very strong, and can pretty quickly dispatch the people who are brave, convicted, and stupid.

So that leaves people who are smart. even 2,000 would be a serious problem.

Some shit will go down but I think the people willing to prove to the owners of this country that they would be better off as actual territorial rulers that are respected and not just puppet masters that we hate would stand a better chance at making change than a bunch of violent resistance. Whatever the military won't do, Erik Prince can always do in cleaning up an insurrection. The elites can just pay PMCs/intel assets 200k a year until the problem is solved


Formalist manifesto is definitely a good quick read, changed my whole outlook. The historical reasoning and evidence for it is encapsulated in his other works, which are much much longer. Still working thru those.