/lit/ - Literature

>>16192387
It predicted you'd be a faggot

>>16192387
Obamania, occupy Wall Street and populists, the loss of colonial power and the Russian surge in the near future (would already be here if the entire west didn't enter the economic warfare against Russia).

>>16192387
>in about 100 years people the death of christianity will have most people searching for all sorts of strange subcultures and replacement spiritualities

>the last eight years normies are using the internet to find all sorts of pseudo religion conglomerates of their own making from Elkhart tolle to Veganism to metaspiritual Reptilian space dungeons and dragons.

>>16192387
Oh god reading this right now will it get better after page 200? It’s so tempting to quit but I wanna be part of the meme.

>>16192488
Feminist "witches" are the worst. I hate them the most. At least Eckhart Tolle had an actual

>>16192502
they just have to be dicked into submission anon, pump and dump always works with those whores

>>16192387
it predicted the world you're living in, just go out and see for yourself

>>16192481
No. Russia had its surge in the Soviet Union. Todays Russia has been relying on exporting gas and oil. China is the country that surged. Russia is forgotten.

America becoming the world's hyper-power, getting bogged down in the Middle East, the year the Third Reich would collapse, 9/11 (not the date, the event).

>>16192588
> 9/11 (not the date, the event).
where did he predict that?

>>16192608
Beats me, I've seen people post screencaps of a passage by him here discussing it. tl;dr America becomes a hyper-power, starts throwing its weight around, Muzzies cause a terrorist attack on the East Coast, leading to the US going balls deep into the Middle East out of a combination of wanting to further entrench itself and revenge.

>>16192570
Reddit moment

It predicted the west to decline

>>16192387
-Geopolitical transition from multipolarity of great powers to the unipolarity of a single superpower, he thought it would be Germany but it turned out to be America

-Democracy and its constitutional forms become increasingly meaningless and hollow; political parties and platforms begin to revolve more around political personalities, this is pretty much what happened with the Democrats and Republicans which have become simply the Clinton party and the Trump party

-The divide between rich and poor grows exponentially driving the much more numerous poor to ally themselves with a single rich politician who will fight against the elite for them, this is Trump's slogan of "drain the swamp", even though he didn't deliver on it

-Decline of originality and increasing repetition in art, Mark Fisher has written about how we have been culturally stuck for the last 30 years

-Decline of original thought in general; philosophy becomes about endlessly reinterpreting the greats of the past in a new light, while the public intellectual is no longer a politician or philosopher but an 'orator', one who is simply good at little else than beating his opponents in public debates (Cicero, Jordan Peterson)

Can't think of anything else right now

>Scientists estimate that Oswald Spengler had an IQ of 207

>>16193260
no way O_O

>>16192387
The last passage predicts the gibsmedat welfare state (and celebrates it because Spengler was a huge fag)

>>16193269
baldness increases IQ by 40 due to increased cranial ventilation.

>>16193489
holy shit so his IQ was 247?

>>16193260
it takes either a genius or a total freak to start with a discourse on mathmetical systems and spin it into a critique of all history

>>16192799
the decline in originality and increasing repetition is only a problem in establish fine- and mass-art forms. the kind of bizarre shit you find on the internet indicates that there's no decline in creativity, just a migration into new and unestablished media

>>16193593
I guess you are not bald...

>>16193902
What Ozzy Spergler is getting at is that society is unable to take that creativity and make use of it. "The System" doesn't have a means to take those whackadoo creative types and transition them into standing structures OR create new structures for them.

There's no material reason a society can't just stop decline at will. The problem is that the entrenched systems and incentive structures prevent that. Spengler does actually list a few times this has occurred (it usually happens when some Great Man, or a clique of Elite Men, totally upheaves society).

>>16193938
I forgot to mention: this isn't to say that Spengler is suggesting that history is predicated on Great Men, but rather that part of decline is the over-reliance on mechanisms, bureaucracy, formulae, etc. In order to remove the Human from society, to perfect it in some way (as an example, creating elaborate voting schemes to prevent voting fraud), you must remove the Human from society. But an elaborate mechanism to run some activity without a human ever actually being able to interfere does not care about beauty. It can't. The same things that prevent humans from fucking up these mechanisms also prevent them from interacting with them in any meaningful way.

This is a critique that monarchists sometimes levy, which is sort of abstracted away from Spengler: you can convince the monarch to build his stately palace somewhere other than your farm, you cannot convince a bureaucracy to do the same. You physically cannot, because you cannot actually talk to a bureaucracy.

Thus, a Great Man (or Great Men) are REQUIRED to stop decline because only by enacting human will upon a system that is designed to eliminate the human (and thereby upheaving it) can you actually change anything. Why? Because bureaucracies are meant to resist change.

>>16193902
>establish fine- and mass-art forms.
If they are industrialized and institutionalized, publisher or propaganda driven, then it's natural. However, an established art form can grow amd evolve like any other organism.

>>16193976
Well said.

>>16192588
>>16192624
No he didn't predict any of those things except for the collapse of the third Reich you dumb fucking retard

>>16192629
>russia isn't past its prime

>>16192481
The Russian surge will come after Putin's cleptocracy is replaced by a nationalistic, patriotic government.

Is it possible to make a new religion that is not infected with the rot of the West, similar to how Christianity took root in the decline of Rome?

>>16192387
Basically nothing.
Spengler is worthless and his writing is shit.

>>16192488
That was already happening in the 1800s.
My favorite is how he 'predicted' mass transit and an increase of industrial warfare. Spenglershits are retarded.

>>16195786
I have been thinking about this. We are in the same civilizational phase as early Imperial Rome. Greco-Roman world-civilization provided the hotbed for the start of Christianity which Spengler counts as the start of the magian world-civilization. We nowadays have our own apocalyptic movements just like 1st century Judea had, the thing is ours are mostly secular.

I kinda fear that the fascist movements of the 20th century were abortive attempts at a religious renewal of Western civilization.

>>16195786
Christianity was infected with the rot. It was part of it.

>>16192570
>Todays Russia has been relying on exporting gas and oil.
If you think that the USSR was not completely dependent on gas and oil exports, you have very shallow understanding of the history of the USSR

>>16195890
accomodative state christianity is infested with the rot, read Kierkegaard

>>16195890
This!
I think the next religiosity will be part of the rot of neo-liberalism, SJW, BLM and other kinds of crap and it won't be some ultra trad religion that many anon hope for ...

>>16192387
Happened at world war 2

>>16195465
No it will come after Siberia warms up and arctic sea routes open. Which is soon

>>16192570
>a country is only good cuz communism
hahahaha

>>16195786
Yes, but it will be materialistic one based on blood and soil

>>16196260
sounds good

http://avery.morrow.name/blog/2014/10/oswald-spenglers-decline-of-the-west-the-100th-anniversary-update/

Old fags will recognize this name.

>>16195465
>Russia
>Nationalist
kek.png

>>16196260
Based, brother

literally everything he said about democracy. this should be among the most glaringly obvious things he predicted

>Spengler asserts that democracy is simply the political weapon of money, and the media are the means through which money operates a democratic political system.

>>16195465
Putin is an improvement to Jeltsin, and his successor will be an improvement to Putin, if he isn't a pro-democracy pile of shit.

>>16196260
>It will agree with me and do my fantasies
Nah, everybody who agrees with you is a broken husk, and that shall be the case forever. Only jews are still functional despite their materialism, but they've been selectively bred to be soulless.

>>16192387
john david ebert is your guy

>>16192570
You mean implementing this guy's plans that the monarchy was already in the process of fulfilling? Hmm...

>>16197092
I like him a lot but hes been having a lot of really embarrassing drunken episodes recently. Hes an unstable lunatic.
Good analytical work though.

>>16196903
Should have just posted the quote

>>16193489
So that's why he's Agent 47...

>>16195786
>>16195880
In Spengler's system a culture that is in decline will eventually get its Caesar. Augustus was the Caesar of Rome, Qin Shi Huangdi was the Caesar of Ancient China, etc. The Caesar centralizes power in himself, "fixes" the problems of his society by taking the absolute worst possible solutions to fixing the problems of his society and enacting them reasonably ("Rome is a giant bandit-state whose economy is predicated entirely on kidnapping and stealing? Let's just invade the whole world then!"). The Caesar "heals" the divide of his culture by eradicating any actual meaning that results in it (Augustus made the pleb/patrician dichotomy moot). The Caesar "rejuvenates" the religion of his society by enforcing LARP at gunpoint ("People aren't taking part in the sacral rites of reproduction? I'll just tax the SHIT out of anyone who is single").

So, the Great Awokening (which is literally just the fifth Great Awakening, a serious of religious revivals in American history) is really just the religious heralding of America's Caesar.

The question, then, is what happens after that. As far as I'm aware, Spengler doesn't posit that every civilization has a Constantine (in his view Constantine is actually a rejuvenator of Magian culture). The fact that Christianity is spent is obvious, the question is what can replace it. As far as I'm aware, Rome is the only empire that has ever just totally ditched its own native religious tradition in favor of a foreign one, so that's our only real data point. If we take the view that the Founding Fathers LARPed as Romans so hard that American history is inextricably bound to repeat Roman history, it follows that a weird Oriental state, rooted in an ethno-religious theo-monarchy, that tried to invade the whole world and lost, views itself as a special chosen race of pure beings, that is unconcerned with prosyletization, was deeply influenced (in many ways, created by) the enemy of This Empire, and is now a client state of This Empire given a bizarrely long leash despite doing basically everything wrong, will be the source of this religion. It will be close to another oriental state cut in half by This Empire and This Empire's enemy.

So, some kind of weird Japanese Buddhist-Shinto importation.

>>16195890
It's been 1,500-1,700 years since Christianization, at this point Christianity isn't "rot", it's the floorboards. The fact that they're made of weak wood is irrelevant.

>>16197265
There could be much, much worse outcomes from that

>>16197236
cringe. what a dumbass.

>>16195786
Christianity’s universalist doctrine was a ticking time bomb

>>16193976
thanks for this post

market economies
mass transit
revolutions
third world colonization
industrial technology
major wars

>>16197377
>thanking a guy for a lame effortpost about a midwit pop author

the absolute state

>>16197265
>he question is what can replace it. As far as I'm aware, Rome is the only empire that has ever just totally ditched its own native religious tradition in favor of a foreign one
Mongolian Empire converted to Islam shortly after conquering Muslim lands.

>>16197265
I guess you could read it like that but Spengler also makes it very clear that it is entirely possible that we will have several Caesars or only potential Caesars which will be unsuccessful in strengthening our civilization for the next phase which then again might give form to a more decentralized imperial model.

I think Caesarian figures are already upon us. We can see it with the populist shift in Western politics that the conflict of Optimates versus Populares is resurfacing whose synthesis will ultimately lead to a victory of Spengler's concept of blood over Spengler's concept of money.

>>16197397
wish you didn't make this post

>>16197340
You can disagree with him on a lot of things but if you disagree on that you are literal NPC bugmen

>>16197265
Yikes, I hope you are wrong. I don't want an Imperial era run by woke culture.

>>16197377
You're welcome.

>>16197407
I was going to get autistic about the term "Mongolian Empire", as the whole thing sort of fractured pretty quick, but even the Yuan Dynasty ended up just wholesale adopting Chinese religion. I think the situations are a little different, but I stand corrected.

>>16197412
I don't see why Faustian Civilization couldn't be one of Spengler's "Aborted Civilizations" or whatever, in that it just never gets a Caesar, but I also don't see things as being that dire just yet.

>>16197412
>>16197412
I agree with this.
Here is my pet theory, feel free to criticize:
American deterioration leads to our Marius and Sulla period, we can see the true beginning of Caesarism with the popular rhetoric about election fraud last election, at first Trump suggesting it, and Obama saying it's impossible to do so. Then, The Clintonites said Russia influenced the election, Trump had already played with the election fraud idea and now that democrats have made it a part of their narrative as well it is irreversibly in the public consciousness. Trump is now talking about mail-in-fraud, democrats about Postal service interference. There was that political group that roleplayed the election and Podesta (playing Biden) lost and did not accept the results. Increasing posting by both sides of election post-pwning. You get the picture, I don't think this election will be civil war 2, but I do think it makes the eventual conflict inevitable, we will get our Marius and Sulla, increasingly hot civil war until sometime soon our Caesars come along. Spengler says the Caesars are supremely loyal to their own, their in-group. So, imo America is headed for balkanization, with different regions being led by different Caesars, with the potential for one to eventually defeat all others, officially end the civil war and we enter full on imperial stage. IMO, we will be living under the American Augustus by the 2050's. Thanks for reading my blog post.

>>16197265
What are fissures in american/world society that need mending?

>>16197511
Your scenario is not entirely unrealistic since there is real world precedence. In your narrative America is headed towards its own Venezuela moment where two rival governments claim legitimacy while coexisting.

>>16197511
>>16197560
I will add that personally though I think Hitler/FDR/Churchill were our Sulla moment in that it's outcome was a republican government model corrected by centralization of power.

>>16197581
Actually that makes a lot of sense. I've been wondering a lot about that era in Faustian culture because all the major players reek of Caesarism. I wasn't sure how to categorize it all, but that fits in quite nicely.

>>16195786
If we were to make a new, positive religion, then what should it look like? What would its fundaments be?
Are there any books on what to do for this, for someone who might want to do this?

>>16197614
This is the wrong way to think about it. You're trying to build a religion like a build-a-bear or like in the civilization games. I.e. Ooh if we have a pope we get +5% centralization -5% degeneration -5% inventiveness. A religion cannot be created from a materialist or any non-spiritual conception. When you do that you get the exact modernist stuff we are complaining about. Unfortunately, that means we wait around until someone has a vision from God and then we have something to work with. It must be authentic

>>16197641
It will come, when rightoids and leftoids are bashing each others brains in in the streets, death is heavy in the air, and destruction is thick.

A man will come with a message.

>>16197674
Fully agree

>>16197674
And what will his message be?

>>16197702
wait and see my negro, we aren't going to predict divine inspiration years in advance on lit of all places

>>16192387
The Decline of the West ain't happening any more; what is actually going to happen is the Decline of the entire World, when AI actually begins taking over the entire globe by droves.


You only had to listen, anon.

>>16197397
and still did more than you

>>16195853
>proxy wars happening with drones and other modern weapons
>spengler was wrong

>>16197340
>NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO NOT MY HECKIN DEMOCRACIRO DONT YOU KNOW WE ARE FREE THINKERS WE HAVE INVENTED HAPPINESS

>>16197516
The obvious one being Red/Blue = Rural/Urban. One group (Blue) holds power and privilege despite being largely useless and doing nothing of worth (as Red sees it). But then, Red are also the cause of literally all problems in society (this is false) and prevent it from advancing and progressing (this is true).

America's Caesar, then, would get rid of the Red/Blue distinction and "reunify the country" by making status meaningless. How that turns out, I don't know. I don't really know how you could possibly eliminate the distinction between a corn farmer in South Dakota and a law student in NYC, but Caesar will make it a meaningless one.

>>16197581
A number of anons have suggested that the timeline Spengler gives (Faustian civilization ending somewhere near the 2600s) is flawed as communication technology (which Spengler couldn't foresee) has greatly sped things up. FDR as Caesar would make sense, after all people thought they were still in the Roman Republic for decades. We're starting to see people, both Red and Blue, openly referring to the American Empire as an empire in pro-system (pro-empire?) media. One could argue the limited power of the President means he's not an emperor, but then the actual Roman Emperors had limited power as well, and actual father-son dynasties basically never happened. The average reign time of a Roman Emperor was something like 5 years, which would match our 4-8 year cycles currently.

>>16197641
This is sort of the problem with new religions. Nobody wants to be the guy to go around and do the preaching and get crucified by the authorities, or live in asceticism for years, or whatever.

>>16198298
>A number of anons have suggested that the timeline Spengler gives (Faustian civilization ending somewhere near the 2600s) is flawed as communication technology (which Spengler couldn't foresee) has greatly sped things up
That line of thinking requires you to consider technology a thing in itself and that it can be a cause of effects on us. But technology is a mental construct arising out of necessity, i.e. we create technology in response to situations that demand it. Technology is in and of us, like a thought in our minds, and can have no effect on us, for technology itself is causally determined by our will. You cannot imagine the internet existing in 1700, or even 1900; it arose in a certain time precisely because an increasingly interconnected world required an omnipresent communication platform. I believe this is largely Spengler's view, of the dynamic Faustian will to power over nature. He would have adamantly disagreed that technology can speed up or slow down history.

>>16198298
>>16198491
Its silly to try estimate the end of Faustian civilization. Basically it just petrifies, and said stagnated civilization can continue to exist for long time. This has already happened to Magean civilization, which continues to exist as a small somewhat isolated groups.

>>16197340
t. literal, actual NPC

>>16197340
>he doesn't know the purposes for which he is used and the role he is supposed to play
>he believes in the illusion of consent from the governed

>>16192387
Man and Technics has been as well

I want to be a grumpy old man and read spengler, what history books/philosophy should i read beforehand

>>16192387
>My kingdom is not of this world. This is the final word which admits of no gloss and on which each must check the course on which birth and nature have set him. There is no bridge between directional Time and timeless Eternity, between the course of history and a divine world-order, in the structure of which the world "providence" or "dispensation" denotes the form of causality. This is the final meaning of the moment in which Jesus and Pilate confronted each other. In the one world, the historical, the Roman caused the Galilean to be crucified - that was his destiny. In the other world, Rome was cast for perdition and the cross became the pledge of redemption - that was the "will of god".

>>16195880
but fascism requires the mass killing of innocent people so fuck that, what else is there that doesn't actively subjugate or crush by force a person?

>>16199494
>requires the mass killing of innocent people
doesn't necessarily, Italy and Spain weren't like Germany

>>16197162
Yeah, poor fella.

>>16198876
Start with the Greeks, read some wikipedia pages about world history and learn calculus. Then you will be ready for spergler-posting

>>16197614
Probably something like Buddhism. A philosophy for life that emphasizes universal respect and peace of mind, rather than any slavish devotion to a single entity and its arbitrary dogmas.

I know very little about Buddhism obviously, but you can guess what I’m getting at here.

>>16198655
Correct, we go through Caesarism, our winter. Eventually, we reach complete stagnation, and then its just holding on to whatever we have until a final collapse.

>>16199701
I mean the trend of imperalism is directly toward slavish devotion to a single entity and assuming its dogmas even if they seem/are arbitrary. It's worth noting that Rome didn't progress from a monist one God faith to a plurality of expression and multiple ways of seeking truth in paganism, but the exact opposite. Spengler notes this trend in China where before the imperial stage there was the "100 schools of thought", all of which were purged and replaced with state backed Confucinism (idk the spelling).

>>16199907
How the fuck can you misspell Confucianism

>>16199907
you are misinterpreting roman syncretism as a classical thing. it was arabian (all neo-philosophies and mithras cult, etc). emperor worship is distinct from this, and has to do with specifically classical spirituality (as ianus is the door, caesar is the people). roman imperial life philosophy was stoicism, followed by second religiousness of the augustan era.

>>16197614
>>16199701
the time for life philosophies is past, by like a 100 years. the future belongs to the second religiousness of a gothic revival.

>>16197265
>The question, then, is what happens after that. As far as I'm aware, Spengler doesn't posit that every civilization has a Constantine (in his view Constantine is actually a rejuvenator of Magian culture). The fact that Christianity is spent is obvious, the question is what can replace it. As far as I'm aware, Rome is the only empire that has ever just totally ditched its own native religious tradition in favor of a foreign one, so that's our only real data point. If we take the view that the Founding Fathers LARPed as Romans so hard that American history is inextricably bound to repeat Roman history, it follows that a weird Oriental state, rooted in an ethno-religious theo-monarchy, that tried to invade the whole world and lost, views itself as a special chosen race of pure beings, that is unconcerned with prosyletization, was deeply influenced (in many ways, created by) the enemy of This Empire, and is now a client state of This Empire given a bizarrely long leash despite doing basically everything wrong, will be the source of this religion. It will be close to another oriental state cut in half by This Empire and This Empire's enemy.
>So, some kind of weird Japanese Buddhist-Shinto importation.
That's an interesting take.

>>16199924
Confusush says:
I rere don gire a fuck

>>16199991
herro

>>16199960
It's really not. It's the drivel you would come to expect from neophytes who actually think Japan is a "client state" of America.

>>16199991

prease

1488

>>16199948
You're right. Nonetheless, I see no reason to infer Buddhism will become Faustian version of Christianity on the merits of universal respect, peace of mind, and not being slavishly devoted to single entities and their arbitrary dogmas.

>>16199994
>>16200002
wing wong chink chong americans

>>16200008
i wasnt the anon you were replying to. the indian imperial era lead to the rise of the siva and vshnu cults, buddhism starting moving away from its homeland, etc. i think people are confusing the ethical life philosophy problems posed in our 19th with the second religiousness of caesarian times.

>>16200056
Oh yeah, I didn't mean to imply you were. Second religiousness is noted by Spengler to occur around similar if not same time as rise of occultism. I do think "new age" and shit like that is evidence of the weakening religious attitude. Again, I think if we have a Constantine of our own, he will promote something more authoritative. The "energy" or ideas Constantine had were similar to Aurelian with his whole Sol Invictus idea, all gods as aspects of one deity. I don't think that's a coincidence, I think emperors will promote one god one realm one king in attempts at centralization.

>>16200151
*not weakening religious attitude but degenerating religious attitude

>>16195465
isn't putin already uber nationalistic and patriotic? and also isn't he a dictator?

>>16200254
Putin's a bagman for his clique of oligarchic buddies

>>16199542
He always ends up deleting it, but the damage is done. Most recently he has been publicly bashing the co author of his Hypermodern series lol. Oh and the usual posting of his suicided ex gfs porn videos and nudes on his twitter while bashing her as well.
Shits tough.

>>16199998
Japan cannot do a thing in foreign policy that the USA disapproves of.

>>16200333
checked, also to address the other poster what can Japan do against any Chinese demands without US backing, if the US disappeared tomorrow they would have to make a lot of changes quick or just get geopolitically bodied by China

>>16200151
You seem to have misinterpreted Spengler. Constantine was a symptom of the new Culture of the East overwriting the ancient moribund Classical Civilization. The Pantheon in Rome is a similar occurrence with its single hole in the roof symbolically shining a light through the darkness. Late Roman sculptures as well, have the pupils bored into the eyes instead of being painted on like they had been for 1000 years. It represents the Eastern feeling of the world as a cave. Classical Culture felt the world to be a plurality of bodies, so the monotheism of the East was as alien to them as polytheism is to us. By welcoming Eastern style monotheism into their society the Romans were admitting that Classical Civilization had nothing more to offer. When Theodosius made Christianity the state religion of Rome, Classical Civilization was finished. Constantine wasn't Roman, he was Eastern.

The final world sentiment of Rome was Stoicism. The same in Faustian Civilization, AKA America, is Puritanism, or as Spengler called it, ethical socialism. America will return to Puritanism in the future, though it may not be called Puritanism, because ethical socialism is embedded deeply in their psychology more than any European nation. The Second Religiousness of the 22nd century will be under a Stoic Puritan model of simplicity, piety, and self restraint, similar to the Second Religiousness under Vespasian in the 1st century.

Every Universal State follows the same thread. Vespasian, Wu-ti, and Amenhotep III occupy the same space in the Civilization cycle, as will the Puritan American President Caesar of the late 22nd century. Rome was just unfortunate that a new Culture had begun on its doorstep, greasing the wheels of cultural disintegration and making it easier for the barbarians to overwhelm the empire. The same may happen in the future of the West but as of now we can't tell. Spengler was one of many to see Russia as a young Culture separate from the West. If Western Civilization does get overwritten like the Classical was by the East, it will be from Russia. Then we will have our Constantine.

>>16197702
>>16197712
I am that man. The message is GNOSTICISM.

>>16200317
Hes bipolar. Nevertheless, he is a great teacher. I do wonder how such a briliant man could do such a thing.

>>16200384
What does spengler say about the future of religion

>>16199998
>t. historical illiterate

>>16200008
Not him, I'm just spitballing based on similarities. We have no idea what would come after Faustian Civilization. I see no reason why Faustian Civilization necessarily had to come from Apollonian Civilization. If we follow that Faustian Civilization is just Apollonian Civilization but expanded outward, where else is there for Faustian Civilization to expand outward to?

But then, I'm a Faustian man, so perhaps I'm just not capable of perceiving this sort of thing "from the aether" as it were.

>>16200384
I could see Hispanics being the new-culture-brewing-on-our-doorstep. But then, I also see no reason why America has to be closer to Rome than any other civilization (all civilizations go through the same cycles, after all). We could make an argument about the Ancient Germanics being an "aborted culture" similar to the Mesoamericans, but then we could do the same with any people that got smooshed on (why aren't the Khazars an aborted culture? Where is the line drawn?).

>>16200556
Yeah he got me into a lot of stuff that has changed how I view things. But I consistently feel embarrassed for him. It is what it is.

>>16200562
Only that it will witness a revival of early medieval Christianity. I think we're seeing the beginning of this with the tradcath meme. It always begins as a larp before people start taking it really seriously.

>>16200620
>I could see Hispanics being the new-culture-brewing-on-our-doorstep. But then, I also see no reason why America has to be closer to Rome than any other civilization (all civilizations go through the same cycles, after all). We could make an argument about the Ancient Germanics being an "aborted culture" similar to the Mesoamericans, but then we could do the same with any people that got smooshed on (why aren't the Khazars an aborted culture? Where is the line drawn?).
Have you read Spengler? What constitutes a new Culture is a new all-inclusive idea of how the world works. For us it's the infinite expansion of space, for Greece and Rome it was the plurality of bodies, for China it's the endless interplay of cooperative substances. There are no new High Cultures today.

>I also see no reason why America has to be closer to Rome than any other civilization
Amaury de Riencourt's book "The Coming Caesars" makes the strongest case for America playing the role of Rome in the modern West; America is the "barbarian" nation like Rome that creates a vast permanent globalist empire (Rome was globalist for its day) after the energy of the older nations is spent. Europe=Greece, America=Rome.

>>16200673
50% of our generation do not want to have relationships, people drink less, smoke less, have sex less. It's rather interesting. but i would say that it due to the narcissism of the internet, they seek friends in video games...sex in porn and so on. Could this really be regarded as an entrance into traditionalism or merely the inability to avoid the adverse effects of being hyperonline?

How can Spankler be so based?

>>16200730
This is the problem of nihilism and why I think the only possible outcome is a return to religion. Partly out of reaction, as in the case of Jordan Peterson, and partly out of the need of the lost to find direction, as in the case of Jordan Peterson's huge following. A nihilistic self destructive society simply can't exist, it defeats itself. I read somewhere that religious conservatives will outlive nihilistic liberals simply because liberals don't reproduce. I think that's a very likely outcome and will contribute to a rise in religious feeling across the West in the coming century.

>>16200788
What if it's not 'religion' as we think in a traditional sense but rather a disparate 'scientific' takeover of religion, specialization of religion, in which 'psychology' replaces. Peterson as representing 'father' or order

>>16200620
>I'm a Faustian man, so perhaps I'm just not capable of perceiving this
Yeah, I feel this is how predictions far into the future about what a foreign religion or conquering civilization will look like ends up. Hard to discuss since we are by nature conditioned in Faustian ways of thinking. Who knows, maybe it will seem obvious to the predominant culture in 3020 (if we make it there).

>>16200777
>trips wasted on this

>>16200788
>>16200809
I think Peterson would be representative of this new a-god religion (assuming this happens, which I don't really think and neither would Spengler), but the real father of it would be Jung. Peterson is a Jungian through and through. I remember reading secondary about Jung's view on Aeons, specifically that we are at the end of the christian one and a new one is beginning, and it will be the Jungian aeon that sees Jung as the predictor and father of coming pseudo-religions. So Jung is Christ2.0 and Peterson would be a disciple.

>>16197340
a literal NPC found its way to this thread

>>16195465
>t. zhirinovsky

>>16199494
violence and religious reawakening can go together quite well, look at Muhammad's wars

>>16200777
he just is

>>16198876
I’m 3/4 through his book now, there’s probably hundreds of references to all types of people, countries & cultures in DOTW that you really just need a light grasp on Classical history. Reading DOTW will change your view on history you read after it, you dont need to prepare or you will prepare endlessly.

>>16192481
Russia is entirely fucked the second we stop using oil and gas largely because of 50-60 years of mismanagement.

>>16203482
Lol Germany literally closed their nuclear plants and now they rely even more on Russian gas

>>16199516
>Italy
I'm italian and we did pretty bad shit in Africa during fascism but that was just imperialism, something that all world powers are still doing in different ways.

>>16203531
One country. The direction powr is going in globally is clearly a mix of nuclear and renewable.

>>16203531
haha mutt cant cope with russia winning in the end.
Look how they built up foreign reserves before the covid crisis. Highest in the world i believe.

>>16203559
Nonsense, Every single western european country except france is moving away from Nuclear energy.
It appears this time the age-old canadian maxim was true.
>If you kill your enemies the win.

Russia has a much brighter future compared to the US.

>>16203559
I've never seen anyone support nuclear outside of 4chan. We are at least decades away from nuclear fusion and green activists are pretty opposed to nuclear. If I'm not mistaken, they were the reason Germany started to phase out nuclear. The West will commit economic suicide by simultaneously embracing renewable and rejecting nuclear. See pic very related. I think Finland even built a site for storing nuclear waste but they never got to use it.
And I'm talking from a country whose politicians wasted EU money on renewable, meanwhile the energy bill just keeps on going up.

>>16203559
Russia is a leader in nuclear too.

>>16203591
Objectively incorrect and long term PwC forecasts prove it. Russia is entirely fucked because its turned into a despotic cult of personality and hasn't even attempted to overcome the middle income gap. At least China are trying even if all of their main international cities will be underwater by 2100.

>>16203591
Where did I say Russia won't win in the end? If anything, it implies Russia will have more and more leverage power over Europe. And currently America is pretty much self-reliant on oil and gas due to oil shale.

>>16203603
>Russia is fucked because it isn't a liberal democracy
Autocracy just works, checkmate liberal.

>>16197702

>>16203611
yes i tagged the wrong poast in my response. You are objectively correct. Mutts can't stand EU-russian cooperation. See nordstrom 2 for example.

>>16200333
>>16200360
>>16200620
in 50 years china may well be a puppet state of japan. you have no idea what is going on right now.

>>16203636
It doesn't because the vacuum left behind by Putin will be catastrophic and it hasn't bridged the middle income gap. Putin has squandered a chance to make Russia the world's great superpower by making it the world's enemy for his own ego.

>>16192387
The west isn't in decline economically or socially. Foreign powers have just grown used to diplomacy and olive branches being repeatedly offered even when they spit at them. It won't last forever.

>>16192387
Is that Hank from Breaking bad

>>16203656
I've heard humors that Abe is trying to re-establish the Empire. That what you mean?

>>16197265
Anon, I'm afraid you failed to consider one important element. The next Caesar won't just be anyone or anything. It will be an AI.

>>16204020
i'm saying the empire never died

>>16200673
Spengler doesn't say that it's a revival of Medieval Christianity, he says that it will be similar in attitude to it: grim, all-encompassing, enforced by violence, deeply interwoven with the state.

And secondly, I see no reason that there can't be new Cultures. Plenty of authors have broken up the world into more Cultures than Spengler did (Toynbee increased it to 23). Faustian Civilization doesn't come around until the 10th century. Hispanics have plenty of time to come up with some new all encompassing worldview (I'm not Hispanic, maybe they already have it).

>>16204048
No, it won't.

>>16204112
You know it will >:I
Don't contradict me, boi

>>16192387
It predicted the 9/11

>>16192387
Decline of the West doesn't hold up, just read Ibn Khaldun instead

>>16203656
none of the people you're quoting dispute that as a possibility, nothing about Japan that says they can't turn things around. Nonetheless, everything that's said in the posts you're replying to are true.

>>16203681
you ever wonder what goes on in the head of someone who goes into a thread to argue against a books thesis, not having read the book. What's the psychology of this kind of person.

>>16205054
>You didn't read this /pol/ book of the week
No, I didnt. Respond to the point incel.

>>16205054
attention whoring

>>16205085
>we have iphone 23s and neftlix and porn, how can we be in decline?
That is precisely evidence that we are in Decline. Spengler's language is technical. Decline refers to a period when a Culture stops producing quality and focuses solely on quantity. The numbers stop meaning anything, and are just arbitrary increases in measurements. Humans are abstracted away, and replaced with systems and mechanisms. Rome's Decline started centuries before it became an Empire.

The US will never put a man on the moon again, or go to space in any way that matters, but it will fill the night sky with millions of satellites so you can stream porn arbitrarily faster than you could before.

>>16192799
>-Decline of original thought in general; philosophy becomes about endlessly reinterpreting the greats of the past in a new light, while the public intellectual is no longer a politician or philosopher but an 'orator', one who is simply good at little else than beating his opponents in public debates (Cicero, Jordan Peterson)
Thats a few decades into our future, people are still under the illusion that we are being progressive, modernists, innovators, but if 4chan is counterculture of the future, in the next few decades if /lit/ is anything to go by, we will be seeing more and more academics basically following the great books programma.

>>16204353
t. has never read both

>>16192531
>pump and dump always works
What does it do?

>>16193886
>a genius or a total freak
There's no discernible difference.

>>16205598
This happened in Rome, and is sort of what he gets at with "the religion of the future will look like Medieval Christianity". Even before conversion, there was a period where the (Pagan) Romans sort of just stopped in their tracks intellectually and just kept looking at the past, commenting on it, and discussing it. The Christians had a small furor as they established an Orthodoxy, and then spent several centuries doing nothing but referencing works done by Apollonian Man at his height (Scholasticism's love of Aristotle is this; in Byzantium, it was an endless debate about Aristotle vs Plato that no one could ever really win until the Turks came in and declared Aristotle the winner).

This is a problem in Science as well, wherein we've basically ran out of Big Ideas to keep chasing. Men with PhD's now just fill in ever tinier gaps in an established theory. A Theory of Everything looms in the distance, but no one can find it.

>>16206023
Interesting enough, just look at this chart, you get an idea of a slow progression of many overlapping philosophers until 150 bc. and then it just smears itself out, or only survives because its a Latin interpretation of a Greek philosopher

Rought from the death of Alexander to 150 bc is about 170 years, from the death of Napoleon in 1821, would make it around 1990's when philosophy in the West mostly ends, which is just after postmodernism started to become common, which would kinda put it at the same period of the academic skeptics.

>>16196903
>>16197236

Wow he was the first person to say this? HOLY BASED!

>>16197440
>>16198068
>>16198695

Democracy is cringe but BOY, that quote is mega cringe

What did Spengler think of Nietzsche?

>>16206245
He claims Goethe and Nietzsche as his mentors.

>>16197265
>So, some kind of weird Japanese Buddhist-Shinto importation.
what can i personally do to make this happen

>>16206128
I believe this ties in with China, with their 100 Schools of Thought period, where there are, while not necessarily 100, many religio-philosopho-political schools of thought all trying to actively compete not only for the minds of intellectuals but also for actively grabbing power for the school's leadership to use. The Mohists actively held territory as political actors. While some of these seem to just be meme-schools focused on glorifying and engaging in a specific activity (the Agriculturalists, the Logicians, and the Warfare-dudes all seem to just be guys that really liked farming, logic, and war, and being paid to talk about them), many of them were quite different from each other and had vastly different ideas about where China should go.

And then Qin Shi Huangdi takes over, and murders all of them, even the ones that support him, and only the Confucians, Taoists, and Legalists survive (and the latter only barely).

>>16206300
>While some of these seem to just be meme-schools focused on glorifying and engaging in a specific activity (the Agriculturalists, the Logicians, and the Warfare-dudes all seem to just be guys that really liked farming, logic, and war, and being paid to talk about them),

Imagine how people in the future will look at the dozens of economic, physical and architectural schools that dominated the 20th century.

>uhm yes amongst many of the ideological schools, you had the Bauhaus, the Georgist and the Quantum Mechanics all these three where later unified under the Second Neoliberal school, which as you know is alongside the Occult and the Socialist schools the only one to survive the scourge of Jeremiah Tabb.

>>16204020
>I've heard humors that Abe is trying to re-establish the Empire
How? Japan seems even more nihilistic and economically unstable than the west, unless there's some big things I have no knowledge of.

>>16206411
Streamlining happened long before that, it happened with mandatory education. In medieval world every school was different, and most of them were competing with each other. There wasn't one set of standards that all adhered to.

>>16206463
Look up the Nippon Kaigi

>>16198298

>urban/rural split

A phenomenon that existed for a few centuries before he was even born.

>muh roman parralels

Every single kingdom, podunk principality and empire in the West has hearkened back to Rome for parallels since the fall of the empire.

>president is like an emperor

This is getting laughably tenuous.

>s. Nobody wants to be the guy to go around and do the preaching and get crucified by the authorities, or live in asceticism for years, or whatever

people in the West don't really give a shit what you believe these days enough to crucify you.

>>16206697
Reddit spacing, no one engage with this creature

>>16197236

>Has become
>As if it wasn't always

this guy is a retard

>>16206411
Reddit spacing, no one engage this creature

>>16192387
Read The Conspiracy Against the Human Race

>>16197440
>>16198068
>>16201457
Not the point faggots.
Obviously democracy is shit, but his own understanding of it is cringe and 70-IQ tier.

>>16197702
FUCK NIGGERS

>>16200384
>The final world sentiment of Rome was Stoicism. The same in Faustian Civilization, AKA America, is Puritanism, or as Spengler called it, ethical socialism. America will return to Puritanism in the future, though it may not be called Puritanism, because ethical socialism is embedded deeply in their psychology more than any European nation.
I think we have already arrived there.
>Mitchell’s thesis is both simple and elegant: he contends that the worldview underlying a great deal of today’s progressive activism is a curious admixture of Friedrich Nietzsche’s reduction of all ethics to power and the zealous moralism of America’s Puritan heritage. Despite their seemingly irreconcilable presuppositions, the two paradigms nonetheless make up a distinctly American brew.
> Power and Purity is more of a book about Nietzsche than about the Puritans. Following Alasdair MacIntyre, Mitchell argues that the heart of Nietzsche’s work is the “genealogical” critique of morality—the claim that all traditional moral discourse inevitably masks power plays by one group or another. This critique has implications for virtually every sphere of human life. In The Anti-Christ, Nietzsche famously argued that religion began when the first “priests”—weaker members of society—invented a web of transcendent punishments and rewards in order to exert psychological control over society’s physically dominant members. And more broadly, since all language entails the imposition by human beings of some classificatory scheme or another upon the phenomena of experience, on Nietzsche’s account the use of language itself is nothing more than a further power play.
>But, as Mitchell correctly points out, few of Nietzsche’s latter-day disciples go this far. Instead, “Nietzsche’s Puritan Warriors” prefer to hover at the level of surface criticism, decrying modern civilization as pervasively oppressive while simultaneously immunizing their own premises from critique. Mitchell’s explanation for this apparent inconsistency is that the contemporary campus left simply lacks the courage to embrace the full force of Nietzsche’s work;
https://kirkcenter.org/reviews/nietzsches-puritan-warriors/

>>16205468
>That is precisely evidence that we are in Decline. Spengler's language is technical. Decline refers to a period when a Culture stops producing quality and focuses solely on quantity. The numbers stop meaning anything, and are just arbitrary increases in measurements. Humans are abstracted away, and replaced with systems and mechanisms. Rome's Decline started centuries before it became an Empire.
This.

>>16206800
Definitely going to read this.

>>16197641
They can and they were. Religions were formed by elders sitting around and deciding they'd tell people they'd be tortured forever if they didn't stop raping each other's wives and getting sick from shellfish because it would make society function better.

>It must be authentic
Give one reason to believe this.

>>16197702
UBI and coomsumerism for all.

>>16207014
Give one reason to believe what you've claimed. Almost every major premidern religion that we know the origin of came from some high verbal iq guy who would be categorized as mentally ill nowadays hallucinating some nonsense and then convincing followers that he's right. There's no support for your fedora tier belief that all of religious history is some cabalistic conspiracy

>>16207014
>Religions were formed by elders sitting around and deciding they'd tell people they'd be tortured forever if they didn't stop raping each other's wives and getting sick from shellfish because it would make society function better.
Goddamn you are genuinely ignorant. Literally go read a book other than Dawkins on the origin of religions. You're literally no different from people who believe the lizards control the whitehouse.

>>16207078
>i'm incapable of arguing this point therefore hats
God stopped hating shellfish. God does not care about things that do not influence societal functioning or maintaining belief in god.

Your turn.

>>16207099
Please summarize the origin of religions.

>>16192387
>Nooo you can't just enjoy your lives!

>>16196092
that chart is retarded

>>16207115
>i enjoy my life

>>16206697
its not about the fact that these already existed but that these exist in morphological parallels for every single civilization - all can be studied within its comparative morphology and its homologies and analogies found thereof

>>16207112
>i'm incapable of arguing this point therefore hats
There's nothing wrong what the other guy said. You made the claim, its your job to prove it.

>>16207616
He made the claim that religions have to be based in something sincere which he is completely incapable of supporting. In fact there are even modern religions that achieved minor popularity despite obviously being created by con men without any sense of subtlety so he just seems empirically wrong.

If you want more evidence I'm right you can look at how often the leader of nations or the priest caste control their society and compare it to the likelyhood that every drugged out hippie happened to dream of gods who wanted that social structure. Obviously religions are least coopted by people with social power. Why exactly would you assume the people with power didn't design them in the first place?

Aside from that there are no 'jobs' here. If you want believe shit you're incapable of formulating any kind of argument for that's your choice. It's not your job to stop being a pseud that believes whatever makes you feel good and indignantly tells people to read books when upset. But since this is ostensibly a place for discussion posting "nuh uh" is a sign you just care about influencing opinion and don't give a shit about the truth of ideas.

>>16208254
*how often the leader of a nation was declared a religiously significant figure and how often the priest caste controlled society

>>16208254
>If you want more evidence I'm right you can look at how often the leader of nations or the priest caste control their society and compare it to the likelyhood that every drugged out hippie happened to dream of gods who wanted that social structure. Obviously religions are least coopted by people with social power. Why exactly would you assume the people with power didn't design them in the first place?

Are there any good books on the origins and explanations of the success of certain religions?

>>16208387
I dunno. If someone actually cited one instead of using its hypothetical existence as an authority to appeal to we could look at its claims.

>>16208399
Im not part of this argument, im just interested in that particular topic and wish to know more about it

>>16208387
>Are there any good books on the origins and explanations of the success of certain religions?
I got this:

>The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority
https://archive.is/QMWAa

>The War on Sensemaking, Daniel Schmachtenberger
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LqaotiGWjQ

>>16206697
>t. hasn't read Spengler
Then your opinion doesn't matter.

>>16207078
No, they don't. At all.

>>16208387
Unironically, The Selfish Gene, by Dawkins deals with this. It's where he creates Memes.

>>16192481
>Russian surge in the near future
lol

>>16200254
Putin is quite strictly a conservative dictator if anything. Nationalism and patriotism are part of it, but so is religion and a potentially even the revival of the monarchy although it seems unlikely.

>>16205085
lol I'm not trying to argue with you over the strength of arguments in a book you didn't read moron. I just pointed out how odd it is to go into a thread on a topic you don't know anything about, call everyone dumb and refuse to read the thing you're supposed to e disproving.

>>16207014
your claim is that "religions were formed by elders sitting around and deciding they'd tell people they'd be tortured forever"
so prove that, I need only look as far as Buddha, Christ and Zoroaster to see religions inspired not by groups of elders plotting (of which I doubt you have any evidence at all for). I bet Christ and all the early saints were laughing it up as they were crucified and tortured: "haha, I am only looking out for myself and to control the masses, I am motivated purely by ego and self that's why I choose to get tortured rather than give up my faith" yeah really worked out well for them. Clearly plotting to stop you from masturbating and enjoying life.

>>16207112
>Please summarize the origin of religions
That's YOUR job you're the one claiming its all a big ruse by a couple fat priests, you have to bring up literally anything backing that up

>>16208828
>i'm a pedant responding to my strawman instead of what was actually said
The point wasn't the social status or malevolence of the people making up religious rules. The point was that they did it with the intention of each rule manipulating society in some way. I assume most of that was leaders that didn't want people coveting each other's wives because it would lead to conflict but there could be sources that weren't *literally* elders (who were sitting)

It's possible that religions were completely organically formed from the dreams of single schizos and it was some kind of evolutionary pressure that made them manipulate society in beneficial ways. But then you'd expect more vestigial rules that didn't contribute to social harmony.

>>16208840
Here you go >>16208254

>YOUR job
>Aside from that there are no 'jobs' here. If you want believe shit you're incapable of formulating any kind of argument for that's your choice. It's not your job to stop being a pseud that believes whatever makes you feel good and indignantly tells people to read books when upset. But since this is ostensibly a place for discussion posting "nuh uh" is a sign you just care about influencing opinion and don't give a shit about the truth of ideas.

>>16209115
>It's possible that religions were completely organically formed from the dreams of single schizos
I'm fine with this statement, decent middle ground between our earlier posts.
Relating back to Spengler, my original claim about authenticity was not that its impossible to form religions as if you're playing a game (or starting a cult like scientology), but that that sort of thing is not the way to combat the decay of christian culture. Congrats, now you have secularized religions, larpers or literal meme cults which I wouldn't like to see. I'm team original schizo with vision all day.
>But then you'd expect more vestigial rules that didn't contribute to social harmony.
Sure, I think you're approaching this purely from an evolutionary perspective, which is fine but I'll draw attention to the fact that schizos with visions creating religions that don't have enough vestigial rules that don't contribute to societal harmony could also be because their visions are legitimate and that spirituality is "real".
>indignantly tells people to read books when upset
Why are you mad that someone told you to read the book we're discussing, in the thread dedicated to that book, on a literature board. If people telling you to read gets you flustered this might not be the board for you, and frankly it's rich to criticize people telling you to be familiar with the ideas you are dismissing only to turn around and claim they don't give a shit about truth.
You clearly want to believe you give a shit about the truth of ideas, that makes you feel good, well you can start by actually reading and understanding the ideas of people before you dismiss them. Then you can posture about how you care for truth so much more than all us foolish biased plebs itt.

>>16209641
>told you to read the book we're discussing
They didn't. They just told me i was ignorant and needed to 'read books'. If there was a specific book they were suggesting it's one thing. But otherwise it's just a feminist-tier appeal to authority.

>>16209665
If what you're saying was their genuine intention I agree, but in a Spengler thread for discussing Spengler someone tells you to read I think the implication is to familiarize yourself with the topic of discussion not just "muh educate yourself" by reading theory or novels by literallywho twitter checkmarks.

>>16206800
>>16206945
I wouldn't bother, I read this out of curiosity today after reading that post, and it isn't really very interesting. It's mostly typical American conservative garbage complaining about campus identity politics and some quotes from Nietzsche by someone who may or may not have read him. Sure, campus identity politics has some roots in (a subset of) Protestantism, but we pretty much all know that by now. It's also true that many leftists are indirectly influenced by Nietzsche in one way or another, especially through postwar French philosophy. The conclusion of the book is that post-Protestant moralism and Nietzsche-influenced contemporary leftism (like critical race theory, in the US context) are fundamentally incompatible. Again, obviously true, but not really interesting - Power can make a democratic majority of people believe ANYTHING because humans as a rule are utterly submissive to authority.

You'd do much better to read The Age of Entitlement to learn about how the aforementioned campus identity politics are caused not by the autonomous logical development of ideas from 200 years ago, but by the Civil Rights Act and associated jurisprudence.

>>16208254
>there are no jobs here
>you can't form a argument
You want others to argue while you don't want to carry the burden of proof when its on you? If that's the case nobody should waste time talking with you. Other than that, I don't really disagree, religions are used to control populations. Of course they're much more, and if you can't see that, too bad.

>>16204005
sex gifs

>>16192387
>concrete examples
Jesus Christ, Marie! They are called mineral probes.

Bump

>>16211814
Hank is actually more handsome than Oswald. Oswald looks like a cry baby.oh and look! he was!

>>16211814

>>16214363
Weird how it doesnt look like either of them

>>16206697
So what you are telling me is that Spengler's analysis is actually correct? Wow, thanks.