/lit/ - Literature

>>18196911
>what vision would replace this vague idea of technoliberal "progress"?
Unironically posted here everyday. Read Guenon and Evola.

>>18196911
Shortcoming of the enlightenment init.

Read The Frankfurt School.

>>18196911
>How do we get rid of the concept of "societal progress"?
You kill the ones who rule the world.

>>18196911
The most important questions do not have an answer, only a history.

>>18196956
I saw someone say is on reddit earlier today... exactly the same phrase.

Curious.

>>18196911
I wrote the book in 2019, but you knew this already didn't you?

>>18196965
*this

>>18196911
Destroy the West, specifically America. There's no other option really, which sadly means we're trapped in this paradigm of progress and hegemony

Zapffe's Last Messiah mentions, briefly, the diagnosis:

>Most “spiritually developed” people demand
that these changes have a sort of continuity, direction,
or progression. For them, no situation can be ultimately satisfying, they must always go a step further,
gathering new information, pursuing a career, and so
on. These people suffer from an ineradicable yearning
to overstep limits, to demand more and more from life,
a restless ambition that is never satisfied. When one’s
previous goal is reached, it becomes only a step to some
higher goal—the goal itself, in fact, is immaterial; it
is the yearning itself that is important. The absolute
height of one’s goal is less important than how much
higher it is from where one momentarily finds oneself;
it is the marginal degree of yearning that counts.

I'm not sure what the "solution" to this is, but it's not an easy concept to overcome.

>>18196911
Progress is simply evolution, and so is not optional. The question is how best to correct the course of societal progress and avoid/delay maladaptive collapse (if that's even possible).

>>18196918
No.

>>18196911
>How do we get rid of the concept of "societal progress"?
There was a man who tried to do this back in the 20th century. Perhaps yohu have heard of him

>>18197700

>>18197784
This image activates the fight-or-flight instinct

>>18197700

>>18197784
>>18197794
Not even close

>>18196911
We have progressed though dummy. We used to be unable to speak but we advanced to the point where people like Schopenhauer can explicate his complex philosophy and enjoy classical music which only became possible through standardized tuning across all the instrumental families which required incredibly detailed craftsmanship. Via this Internet forum we discuss “returning to tradition” and come to understand what “tradition” is by navigating the hyperlinks of the internet, the internet being a sum of different technologies developed in time.

Our understanding of the past, of Schopenhauer, is throughly mediated by the reality we inhabit that has been progressed to.

Keeping in mind the relativity of our thought as determined by our unique historical circumstances, it is evident why our own prophecies of the future are dystopic. As Spengler accurately outlined the West is declining. Our necrotic empire is doubling down on its worst aspects in an attempt to petrify its reign. We are unable to produce positive models for the future, as Fisher pointed out, because our imagination is sapped.

Spengler explains how the poetics of a vital, uncivilized society forms a cultural identity and inaugurates the spring phase of development. The first two phases in the cycle are the culture half, the second two the civilization half where the cultural identity is applied, actualized in the physical world through empire.

Things do progress across these cycles though. We have access to far more history and great art than the Greeks did for instance. We are more literate. Technology advances as do rights, slaves used to be killed with no repercussions, now the lowest classes have more legal representation. Spengler was addressing these more consistent developments in his work The Dawn of World History but it was unfinished and remains untranslated.

So for the West our technodystopia appears a pretty fixed future, but things are different in Eurasia imo, especially China. They’ve steadily been rising out of poverty by accommodating the West’s advancements made while China was fractured. They are consistently polled as the most optimistic about their future, and they have good reason to be since they’ve been riding an upward curve. They have a more holistic view of man’s relationship to technology. For instance, they recently banned gene editing practices (this pissed off nick land on Twitter lol.) Chinese sci fi is excited about the future, and of higher quality than western sci fi I would add.

Technological progress will continue, even if, for now, it stagnates in places (sorry Ted, I don’t think anti-tech revolution is possible.) So our goal should instead be developing a philosophy of technology where tech empowers us, we are after all the ones creating it.

Concepts inhabit people's minds. You can refute an argument, not a concept. What you want is to refute the argument that societal progress is a good thing for society, or, better expressed, that societal good/advancememt is a good thing for society. Ergo, you want to refute a tautology. This can't be done, but you can at least point it out.

>>18196918
Yes.

>>18197038
>Progress is simply evolution, and so is not optional.
Stupidest post I read all day.

>>18198092
>Chinese sci fi is excited about the future
Idk about that.

>>18196911
>More importantly, what vision would replace this vague idea of technoliberal "progress"?
Don't worry, soon enough the idea that will replace it will be plain old survival.
War and famine are coming. Soon all of this existential bullshit will be over.
I'm actually serious.

>>18198092
Refuted by Ecclesiastes 1:4.

>>18198092
read heidegger

Stop using the word evolution and stop seeing development as linear
I'm of the mind that our publicly known history is either a shame, pruned, or a combo

But either way, all there is is change.
Some change offers us a broader experience, some doesn't.
This word evolution puts people under this spell that each day they get up and work, we are advancing.
Tech is. WE aren't.

>>18198092
>Spengler
You mean that liberal Germanoid /lit/ worships?

are there any books or authors who have written about the cult of progress, other than john gray?

>>18198718
I liked it
>>18198727
How so?
>>18198732
Where would he and I disagree?
>>18198734
More people are able to live comfortable lives now, more can read and write, is this not an advancement? I also don’t like using the word evolution, its Darwinian connotation I don’t find is able to explain things like art.
>>18198738
Yeah he’s great but what I find valuable in him probably differs from most of /lit/.

>>18198800
>more can read and write, is this not an advancement?
more people reading and writing doesn't matter at all.

>>18198800
I really liked it too, but optimistic it is not. Maybe that series is an outlier and I need to read more Chinese scifi.

>>18198092
The Adversary of America. The Baron of Beijing. The Crusader of Communism. The Dictator of Diseases. The Emperor of Economics. The Forthbringer of Five-Year Plans. The Governor of Globalization. The Hate of Hong Kong. The Inspector of Imperialism. The Judger of Japan. The Kryptonite of Korea. The Leader of Liberation. The Maintainer of Maoism. The Nationalist of Nanjing. The Officiator of Oppressors. The Provider of Prosperity. The Queller of Queers. The Re-educator of Radicals. The Sage of Socialism. The Terror of Tibet. The Undertaker of Uyghurs. The Viceroy of Vassals. The Woe of the West. The Youth of Years. The Xenophobe of Xinjiang. The Zenith of Zhongguo.

THE INDOMITUS REX
THE ALPHA OF ALPHAS
THE KING OF KINGS
THE LORD OF LORDS
THE JUSTICIAR OF JUSTICE

SON OF HEAVEN Xi the CELESTIAL
FRIEND OF AFRICA Xi the GENEROUS
CENSOR OF DEGENERACY Xi the PURE
PANHUMANIST Xi the UNIFIER
DOWN TO EARTH Xi the HUMBLE
CHAIRMAN Xi the WISE
SAILING ON THE SEAS Xi the HELMSMAN
RULER OF THE MIDDLE KINGDOM Xi the ALMIGHTY
XI JINCHAD
CHAD JINPING
CHAD JINCHAD
CHAD CHADCHAD

ENTER CHAD JINPING

>>18198800
>comfortable lives
>advancement
all things come at a cost

>>18198920
>>18198800
again this is why i said "change"
you have to project values and opinions and weigh in on hierarchy to determine if its "better"
its all projection one way or another

i am of the mind that which offers us the broadest experience is the best metric. this is not linear.
as per your chosen metrics, at this time, i think language itself is holding us back

>>18196911
crashing the ecology with no survivors

>>18198778
Paul Kingsnorth

>>18198823
What do you think matters?
Inb4 nothing
>>18198831
>I really liked it too, but optimistic it is not.
Lol yea you’re right.
>I need to read more Chinese scifi.
Me too, lots is still untranslated though, not just with sci fi but with classic Chinese lit too. And many of the translations that do exist aren’t great.
>>18198933
>i am of the mind that which offers us the broadest experience is the best metric. this is not linear.
as per your chosen metrics, at this time, i think language itself is holding us back
Forgive me if I’m strawmanning you but I’m doing so to make a more general point.

I suspect you’re a “vitalist” pining for the return of the “good ol days” of war and glory. This response to modernity that opposes language with irrationality is a product of modernity. People like Nietzsche believe there to be a rationally ungraspable force animating all things called the will. Many reactionaries today subscribe to the same worldview. That there is an ineffable “nature” to existence and that reason corrupts this.

It has been the project of western philosophy to rationalize this “mysterious force.” The best example of this is Hegel’s (the arch enemy of “vitalists”) philosophy. He outlined how philosophy beginning with the presocratics was a dialectical argument culminating in final understanding (his system.) Notice how Heidegger labels philosophy from Plato to Nietzsche the “metaphysical age.” And Heidegger, being a Nietzschean, loved Heraclitus. Thus we can see that philosophy has been brought full circle back to its advent, which was Hegel’s goal, tracing human understanding into a self contained awareness he calls absolute knowing. What began in flux with Heraclitus we have returned to in Nietzsche and Evola, both trad larpers lashing out at Hegelian reason without really understanding Hegel.

This is where history has placed us. Vitalists deny that their ideas have been historically determined because they seek to escape history and immerse themselves in what you call “broadest experience.” I don’t consider this possible though. We are within historically determined circumstances, our very thought process is a product of language and history. The “pure experience” ancient man lived is no longer accessible to us.

>>18198837
我跪...

>>18196911
You don't.

>>18196911
Better yet, get rid of the idea that the natural state is an amenable stasis where everything is catered to you so you can stop making pathetic, shitty threads like this because despite being handed every opportunity to build something for yourself you were too feckless to do anything but whinge silently that you can no longer have something to which you feel entitled.

>>18200379
t. Johanna Schopenhauer

>>18199716
Literacy does not matter if you cannot reflect or think critically about what you read. Reading nowadays is just used to create braindead consoomers through the schooling system (even college).

Also, technique is not neutral, it is ambivalent. For every positive effect brought by it, there is a negative one and more of the latter because of externalization of costs on the environment and society by technical development. Technical discourse wants to make us believe we live more comfortable lives but that's just an illusion. It has replaced spontaneous physical tension with efficiently planned mental tension, aging us faster. It has prolonged our lives but made them precarious and weak making us very dependant on it. The old world was harsh and dangerous yet full of surprises and rewards, now we replaced it with a very dependant and degenerate lifestyle we call "comfortable" which is controlled at whim by technocrats whose only objective is advancing their instruments of power. On top of all, life lost all its sacredness except for the latest technical development. Nation, race, culture, etc are just rotting corpses and any denial of this is just a massive cope.

What's the point of rising the quality of life through sanitation, food, etc if you can concoct any technical development to change the internal emotional state of human beings as to make them happy and fulfilled amongst the worst of privations? Technical progress is absurd, nonsensical. It will happen because it will happen, nothing more, nothing else.

>>18200379
>forget about the past goy just slave away for us oy vey

>>18196911
How about some form of great reset?

>>18197027
The solution is either become a monk, or just think that doing more and more stuff is cool

>>1819696
>I went on reddit

>>18200461
Read Mcluhan

>>18200461
Agreed, the West’s current stance towards technology is very dehumanizing but there have been different, more holistic approaches like the Renaissance’s. I would say China also has a better approach (though they are not perfect) that seeks to lift humanity through technology rather than to use it as a tool for control like in the West.

I’m happy to have technology because it has enabled me to explore art and history with great efficiency. Not to mention I can talk to interesting people thousands of miles away from me! This is a tool that can have likewise positive effects on the societal level if it is implemented correctly.

Ultimately I only consider technology to be beneficial when it exists in harmony with art and spirituality. That is not how it functions in the West today. Because of this I exercise restraint when using it.

REJECT MODERNITY

RETVRN TO TRADITION

>>18200758
Trad larping is a thoroughly modern sentiment

>>18196911
"societal progress" is actually just a neo-american term for the entrenchment of current power structures

getting rid of 'societal progress' IS societal progress you dumb nigger

>>18198092
>slaves used to be killed with no repercussions, now the lowest classes have more legal representation.
they still are, just in countries that aren't in your immediate vision, but still belong to your civilization because of globalised production

>>18200882
Completely agreed. We do not live in utopia but some advancements have been made.

>>18200764
Read Evola, Evola was perhaps the only actively anti-larp philosopher on the right that took it to it's logical conclusions.

No larping in actual Tradition. No Doubtful losers or posers can survive the natural vetting of actualization.

>>18200916
Can't

>>18198719
You feel it in the air, too, don't you? Can't say that I'm happy about any possible outcome, either war and disaster or this hellscape continuing, but I can't shake the feeling of living in a neoweimar waiting to blow.

>>18196911
Most people cling to it like a life raft in the vastness of their underlying existential despair. It gives their reality a sense of coherence and purpose. You can't get rid of it per se, you have to displace it with a more compelling vision of existence.

Would you say it is possible to reconcile a Western universalist idea of 'freedom' with a technological faux-utilitarian capitalism that optimises for exploitation?

>>18200764
Nope, even the Romans LARPed as Trojan survivors.

>/lit/ is for the discussion of literature, specifically books (fiction & non-fiction), short stories, poetry, creative writing, etc. If you want to discuss history, religion, or the humanities, go to /his/. If you want to discuss politics, go to /pol/. Philosophical discussion can go on either /lit/ or /his/, but those discussions of philosophy that take place on /lit/ should be based around specific philosophical works to which posters can refer.

>>18198800
>More people are able to live comfortable lives now, more can read and write, is this not an advancement?
This implies the existence of objective values like comfort and literacy, albeit there is no such thing as objective values.
The problem is that the claim "being literate is better than being illterate" is subjective normative statement.

>>18201248
unfortunately its impossible to discuss politics on /pol/

>>18201338
Go to /his/ for humanities, then. Stop shitting up the literature board with off-topic garbage.

No, I'm not glorifying war, but battle is inevitable and it's happening all the time. How we war changes.
Self imposition is happening all over the place. Even the expression of opinion reflects this.

I am not opposed to language, I never said abolish language. I am saying language hinders other experience.
To me, true knowledge rests in the body. Anytime you read something, even the behavior of a subject, you are reading it through the medium of language from someone elses filter and experience.
You aren't sensing nor experiencing for yourself. You're internalizing the experience of others.

To me, stagnation is the only true sin, and it comes in many forms. Addiction, comfort, even "active stagnation" whereby you repeat the same patterns day in day out.

This may have allowed us to develop pursuits outside us. To raise infrastructure and these sorts of things. To create more tools.
But to equate human development to be on the receptive end of mass verbal data falls short of, imo, more depthful development, which requires acting and fresh novelty.

Language biases us, all the way down to the tone. You can view it as its own medium of understanding, but it becomes its own filter that hinders your personal one.
To have existential understanding is to remove language.
Once you again construct language, the phonetics, rhythms, and cultural conditioning is baked in. Language will "activate" you in a certain fashion that will also alter your body and your filter that causes you to receive and process information differently.

At this point, our language convolution is becoming abundant and locking us in a cage we can't see out of.
I'm not denouncing language as a concept. I am not conceptually against anything. I am not an absolutionist. I see things in terms of levels based on how I'm feeling about it, in awareness of other options.
I believe we need to spend more time outside words, or constructing/learning new languages.
How we use language is another topic as well. We aren't poetic and playful, for example. Our language is often very mechanical or mathematical.

>>18200461
>Literacy does not matter if you cannot reflect or think critically about what you read. Reading nowadays is just used to create braindead consoomers through the schooling system (even college).
This is also an ever growing problem
Rote learning and the education system in general is more like programming and conditioning to get you to act downstream from whats already been established.
It doesn't emphasize creativity because you didn't need to figure anything out or come to your own understanding and thus your own "language"
You were spoonfed by "authority"
And in doing so, you begin a conditioning whereby you are used to being spoonfed by authority.

>>18200461
>The old world was harsh and dangerous yet full of surprises and rewards,
I do think there is a way to mimic this in the modern day, but as a more choice-oriented, playful style novelty seeking.

>lifestyle we call "comfortable" which is controlled at whim by technocrats whose only objective is advancing their instruments of power

Culture has definitely been infantilizing us and institutions have been becoming more pervasive. When we are less competent and independent, we seek others to take care of us. Powerful institutions are happy to agitate this process, and in our comfort addictions and incompetence, we allow them agency to do as they wish.

Watch and you will see that the old way of "shock and fear" as a means to insert conditioning will be traded off for more "soft and lulling" pernicious methods that -feel- nice but may still be insidious.

> life lost all its sacredness
This is also part of my point. We have much less existential relationship with reality. It's all downstream from synthetic forms, language being one of them, especially its modern usage.

>Nation, race, culture, etc are just rotting corpses and any denial of this is just a massive cope.
They're also easy ways to control identity

>quality of life through sanitation, food, etc
I'd argue that even a lot of sanitation has become a harmful process. When you clean your tub with chemicals then have a bath, it's soaking into your skin. Same thing with disinfectant on your hands. A child is instinctively dirty for immuno purposes.
I don't think our food is very quality. Nor is the diet that is preached.
In fact if you remove carbs from your body and you go through periods of fasting, you will notice your awareness begin to rise.
Our diets are part of the satiating, pacification process.

>fulfillment
This, imo, is what we sorely lack
We have happy faces all around us in synthetic media. We have an abundance of toys.
We still lack fulfillment of the human experience. We are penned up. First it was as cattle, and now it will be as kids.

>Technical progress is absurd, nonsensical
I disagree. It can have its place, it's just poorly utilized.
I do think we could stand to practice scarcity more, as this is very developmental for us personally.

>>18200764
>>18200758
yeah purity spiraling is a cope dude
the box has been opened
learn to wield

>>18201397
this was meant for>>18199716