/lit/ - Literature

>>18845181
>his arguments don't really hold up.
Why do you think so?

>>18845267
40% of the book is Modern art is bad because it's bad. I don't disagree but saying it's bad because it's bad doesn't really hold up in argument

>>18845181
Okay, here you go.

there is only one

>>18845283
That's an awful summary of his arguments.

Ah Monsieur, you want a book about the decline of a whole civilisation, a document that absolutely rails the cunt of the whole question, but it has to be written five minutes ago, it has to be “up to date”, because you don’t know how to fill in the gaps and think for yourself. And there, that right there, my boy, reveals the whole character and scale of the decadence question even in the search for its diagnosis and cure by the noviciate anti-leftist, the would-be dissident from the Regime of Onions

>>18845292
What do you think his argument is? I read the book and that's what I got out of it. Literally the first line is "The art we call Modernism is best described as a psychological disease". Again I don't disagree but that doesn't really hold up

>>18845290
It's a bit dated imo.

>>18845181
Suck it up and read Leo Strauss.

>>18845289
I hate this fucking millennial self help style book covers that all these modern books have. Do they have no choice in the matter? Do the publishers make them do this?

>>18845307
Recommendations of his works based on the topic I posted? I read some of his stuff but it was just academic politics talk

>>18845181
>why western civilization has declined
It hasn't
>what we can do to bring it back
Who's we?
Please actually study history, even if the west should "return to its former glory" whatever the hell that means then do you really think your life would fundamentally change?
No, it wouldn't, unless you're like a military contractor or insanely rich your life will be irrelevant and worthless.
Go outside and talk to people.

>>18845294
Unfathomably based.
>>18845303
If you read carefully, you will see that every single thing that you have noticed was described and analyzed in penetrating detail by men of the past, some of whom lived or were born in the nineteenth century.

>>18845317
In the 19th century alone we had Dostoevsky, Balzac, Tolstoy, Flaubert, Turgenev, Maupassant, Chekov, Zola, Dickens, Dumas, Goethe, Hugo, Lermontov, Melville, Keats, Proust, Stendhal. In music there was Beethoven, Wagner, Haydn, Mahler, Bizet, Brahms, Chopin, Schubert, Lizst, Mendelssohn, Berlioz, Bellini, Prokofiev, Puccini, Bruckner, Rossini. Are you really going to tell me there hasn't been a decline? Get the fuck out of here retard

Read Barzun. He provides a personal account as someone who lived a ridiculously long life through the immense decadence of the twentieth century. You can find intellectual arguments in Strauss, Spengler, Nietzsche and others but the question of decadence is given a “natural cultural history” in Barzun that is elsewhere only an Ideologica Fabula.

>>18845320
Yeah but we have more modern problems that they didn't have in the past. The internet, postmodernism, extreme individualism and hypercapitalism.

>>18845324
His book is literally touching my leg right now on my bed

>>18845312
>Recommendations of his works based on the topic I posted?
All of them. Start with "Three Waves of Modernity" and then go read some of the following:
Natural Right and History
On Tyranny
The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism
Persecution and the Art of Writing
Thoughts on Machiavelli
Toward Natural Right and History
What is Political Philosophy?
Ten Essays on Political Philosophy
On the question of "decline," it is much older than you think.
>I read some of his stuff but it was just academic politics talk
Read more carefully and use your brain.
>>18845329
>The internet
How is this a problem?
>postmodernism
"Postmodernism" is just another kind of historicism. The things you call "postmodernism" have been around for more than a century.
>extreme individualism
That's been around for more than a century.
>hypercapitalism
Who told you that "hypercapitalism" is a problem? Start thinking about where you're getting your ideas from.

>>18845337
>The internet
>How is this a problem?
Are you joking?

>>18845322
We've had a similar plethora of artists, musicians and intellectuals in the last 100 years.
In fact, music, art, liteature and science has in large parts been liberated and grown enormously in the last 100 years. The fact that we got better instruments and tools means that we have pushed lots of boundaries in terms of developing new talent.
So tell me again, where is the decline?

>>18845343
It's not a problem. I'm serious. Whatever made you think that a tool could be a problem?

Culture isn't declining. Better healthcare just means that surplus moids, the incels, about 80-90% of the male population should be killed or gelded at birth. Only moids cry sl about this so much (but also won't address real problems like global warming because it requires work and sacrifice, not things being given to them). Moids are weak willed and the genetic dead ends just need to go.

>>18845345
Aphex Twin is not equal to Beethoven you retard

>>18845348
I'm not responding to obvious bait

>>18845357
If you dismiss everything you disagree with as "bait," you will never learn anything.

>>18845294
Definitivamente basado, señor de los alcalabrios!

>>18845351
Yeah culture isn't declining at all. You can just walk around and see beauty at the strip malls and listen to Lil Uzi Vert on the radio. Culture is thriving! Yaas queen

Another counterintuitive suggestion: read Marx (and Adorno). His analysis of techno-capitalist modernity and its laws of motions are only reinvented by most critics of modern commercial society—“culture industry”. Strauss too consumed his Marx. An account of decadence without a conception of how the ruling class itself has fallen into decadence since the end of the old Arisrocratic class order, that is as transparent in Marx as in Maistre.

>>18845359
I've been here too long. I already knew you were going to post that exact line. I'm two steps ahead of you

>>18845354
Beethoven was a once in a time genius. Beethoven, Bach and Mozart are literally the peak.
Might as well say that western culture was declining after Newton because it took like 400 years for a man of similar calibre of genius to arrive.
And I would say that musicians like Stravinsky, Hendrix, Charlie Parker, Elvis and the Beatles expanded the scope of music tremendously.

>>18845368
Your brain has atrophied.

>>18845383
Stravinsky was born in the 19th century. Charlie Parker never composed anything. The Beatles didn't know music theory and could barely play their instruments. Elvis is great but he is performer.

>>18845383
Including Elvis is too much of a giveaway.

>>18845394
I'll humor your bait. You already know what the exact response to your question about the internet is. Write out the argument you know I'm going to write and refute it

>>18845322
We live in the golden era of art. Never before was it this easy to make and spread art. Good art just takes time to bubble up between the rest of the cultural noise.

>>18845406
I'm extremely knowledgable about modern art. The existence of great artists is extremely rare. Name some artists who comparable to Beethoven. Any list you make is going to look retarded because great artists don't really exist.

>>18845402
Like I said, dude. Your brain has atrophied. Go read some Leo Strauss like I said and maybe you'll figure out what I mean.

>>18845422
youre extremely far up your own ass yes

>>18845429
That's what I thought pussy

>>18845397
>Stravinsky was born in the 19th century.
In 1882. He composed nothing relevant in the 19th century. The previous anon also listed Beethoven who was born in 18th century.
>Charlie Parker never composed anything.
Great music doesn't have to be composed. The medium the music in transmitted through is not a measure of anything.
>The Beatles didn't know music theory
Completely irrelevant to the value of what they did
>and could barely play their instruments.
lol
>Elvis is great
LOL

>>18845354
He's better, Beethoven was a nigger.

>>18845439
I'm 99% sure this is bait but I'll humor you.

The point is that Stravinsky is a man of the 19th century. Not comparable to anyone of our day.
>Great music doesn't have to be composed. The medium the music in transmitted through is not a measure of anything.
We don't discuss performers when talking about making art. It's why we don't talk about opera singers who sung Beethoven. We talk about Beethoven even though the singers are performers who deserve respect. It's not relevant to the conversation. Parker was nothing but an okay sax player in the emerging shit tier genre of Bebop. There were much better sax players than Parker.
>Completely irrelevant to the value of what they did
It is relevant. The Beatles were popular not great. They made nothing more than nice sounding pop music. They weren't even the best rock artists in the country at the time let alone comparable to the greatest composers of all time. Consume more art before you try to make an opinion. Make look at like a beginners guide to rock music or something and just go down the list and start listening.
>and could barely play their instruments.
What made them so talented then? They couldn't compose. They didn't know music theory. They could barely play their instruments. The session musicians they brought in were always a thousand times more talented than them. What was so great about them?
>LOL
Are you going to say Elvis wasn't a great singer but John Lennon was lol. The Beatles would get on their knees for Elvis.

>>18845181
>give me a book that tells me why x is y
>every single fucking day
Opinions should follow information and not the other way around you absolute fucking retards

>>18845406
>Never before was it this easy to make and spread art
This isn't completely irrelevant, but it's close. Art is not created, initiated, or motivated by material conditions. A craftsman is not made by his tools, and we live in a world full of glorious tools and mediocre-at-best artisans.

>>18845181
>simple
This is a gigantic topic. A book can either deal with the details or step back from them. If it takes the first route it's going to be tough going. If it takes the second it's never going to convince anyone who isn't already convinced.

>recent
If you want to master this (or any) topic you're going to have to read old books. You can't study eugenics without reading Galton, any more than you can study philosophy without reading Aristotle. There is no zoomer road to learning.

A few random suggestions:

>Essays In Eugenics (Galton)
Main takeaway: A state can (and should) practice eugenics. If it doesn't it will have dysgenics. There's no fence to sit on.

>Which Way Western Man? (Simpson)
Main takeaway: Gotta get control of money. Gotta get rid of the Jews.

>The Death Of The West (Buchanan)
Main takeaway: Gotta stop mass immigration.

>A History of Central Banking and the Enslavement of Mankind (Goodson)
Main takeaway: Pretty much the same as Simpson, but this is more recent (2014 I think), which might make you happy.

There are many lesser works mostly just documenting the problem without really offering any solutions. A few from England:

>Life at the Bottom (Dalrymple)
Mostly describing in sordid detail the catastrophic effects of so-called "sexual liberation". If you like this try "Our Culture, What's Left Of It".

>Fools, Frauds and Firebrands (Scruton)
Points out the wicked intellectual dishonesty of some leading "New Left" figures.

>The Abolition of Britain (Peter Hitchens)
Takes two funerals (Churchill, Princess Diana) and shows how much the UK has declined in the intervening period. (PH refuses point-blank to face the racial or Jewish questions, but he's perceptive and honest in a limited area.)

>>18845479
Good point, anon. Can you recommend a book that discusses this?

>>18845484
Thanks for giving recommendations. I already know all of those books I'm pretty deep into the topic. By simple I just meant good writing. Weirdly there are a lot of right wingers who write like french postmodernists and I don't have the time to decipher that shit. For recent books I didn't deny the importance of the historical books it's just sometimes you want someone who discusses modern topics.

>>18845469
Show me a man who can determine the merit of art and I'll show you a fool.

>>18845422
>I'm extremely knowledgable about modern art. The existence of great artists is extremely rare. Name some artists who comparable to Beethoven.
Without a shadow of a doubt Paul Cézanne and Pablo Picasso. At least 5-10 more depending on what critera we are taking into consideration.

>>18845526
We are talking about the 21st century. Either way those are shit tier picks

>>18845496
You will never get anywhere.

>>18845546
Why :(

>>18845283
I have a strong feeling you didn't take a single note while reading, so the only thing you can take from a book is "x bad".

>>18845560
That's true. Maybe you can convince me otherwise.

>>18845531
>I'm extremely knowledgable about modern art.
>We are talking about the 21st century
I genuinely hope this is bait because otherwise you must be completely retarded. No one with even the slightest knowledge of the art world would confuse modern art with contemporary art. Learn the correct terminology and kindly stfu until you have done so.

>>18845574
Are you autistic? This isn't an essay for class retard. Everyone got my point. You're the only one who had trouble with it

>>18845592
I gotta side with the other poster here. It's like confusing jazz and rock music. The words have well defined meanings and can't be used interchangably.

>>18845606
I was using the word modern as the word modern. I was never talking about a specific type of art.

>>18845290
Did Crowley write a lot about Western civilization?

>>18845627
You literally wrote
>I'm extremely knowledgable about modern art
That’s like saying
> I'm extremely knowledgable about rock music
>Oh I just meant music you make by banging two rocks together you know? What do you mean that I just referred to a specific music genre? Listen man, I sure know what a rock is so you can’t tell me that I am wrong.

>>18845660
The guy was talking about the 21st century. It was obvious what I was referring to

>>18845669
Not if you're knowledgable about modern art it isn't. When you put 'modern' in front of 'art', it has a specific meaning. That's why the word contemporary comes into these conversations. Don't shift blame because you got called out as a midwit.

>>18845686
This is irrelevant because the context was already there that I wasn't talking about "Modern art". Are you that retarded that you can't understand context?

Leftists always make a big stink about how "modern art" doesn't mean this and doesn't mean that. All the confusion would be solved if we just called it degenerate art.

>>18845752
I'm on board

>>18845324
Barzun was a crypto-neocon.

There's so many reasons.

-Christianity, the foundation of Western civilization, died.
-Capitalism.
-Marxist ideologies (feminism, social justice, racism, materialism, etc)
-Physical degeneration: falling testosterone, estrogen producing products, obesity, bad food.

I'm sure there are a lot more than what I've listed. These seem to be the most important.

>>18845357
OP is a fucking pseud everyone shit on him

>>18845879
You don't think the internet has had any negative on modern life???

>>18845807
Now gib a book based on this

>>18845181
>simple book that talks about why western civilization has declined
"The Culture of Critique". And I'm completely, 100% serious.
The last 76 years of western history simply don't make any sense, unless in light of this book. You can find the free PDF on the internet.

>and what we can do to bring it back.
"Mein Kampf".

>>18845807
>The countries with the lowest testosterone levels are the safest and least violent
>The countries with the highest are some of the most violent on Earth
What did God mean by this?

>>18845317
>It hasn't
>a culture of self-flagellation where we're taught to be ashamed of being white and western.
>our history is being warped, censored, cut and pasted back together in order to cancel all our accomplishments and gigantify our faults, which are also extracted from their proper context and judged by modern moral standards (which happens only in our case).
>governments and academia that shame us and guilt us into polluting our countries with millions upon millions of retarded brown third worlders that are often explicitly hostile to us.
>a jewish master class that strangles us and is quickly destroying the middle class, creating a situation where there will be only a class of hyper-rich and another of pseudo-slaves, powerless and dependent on the same system that exploits them.
>already, 2 college educated people working full time can now only afford half of what a single guy with a high school diploma could afford only 50 years ago.
>mass media, financial institutions, universities dominated by the same toxic anti-western ideology that openly wishes for white genocide and gleefully counts the days until whites will disappear because of record low birth rates.
>"it hasn't declined dude lmao."

>>18845181
The decadence of the West is not something very recent...
I would recommend:

- Why Liberalism Failed by Patrick Deneen (showing the root cause of our decadence)
- Slouching Toward Gomorrah by Robert Bork (to learn about the destruction caused in the late 60s by idiotic rich American Boomers and cowardly university admins)

Recently, I started reading "The Revolt of the Elites" by Christopher Lasch.
It was written in 1990's but it looks like it was written in 2020. It is like he was a time traveler from 20w0 writing in 1990.

>>18845899
i think ur a fucking fagget

>>18845807
>1
Sure, whatever
>2
Yup.
>3
>>18845752
>>18845807
>feminism,
Is bourgeois, not marxist
>social justice,
Same as above
>racism,
¿¿¿¿???? This is a meaningless trostkyite term. Do you mean an ethno-centrist? A Race realist? Or perhaps an anti-imigrationist?
>materialism
I suppose, yeah.
>Physical degeneration: falling testosterone, estrogen producing products, obesity, bad food.
Completely agreed

>>18845966
The only valid point that you make is about the fact that working households struggle to make a living.
Everything else is just you spending too much time on /pol/, twitter, youtube and other kinds of SoMe cancer which has rotted your brain.

>>18846444
Everything communist is right and everything not communist is wrong

>>18846627
Based

It is as Gibbon posited for the decline of the Roman Empire. He essentially viewed the Roman Empire as an overripe fruit that fell into a natural state of decay because it maxxed out all its potential and forgot or scorned its roots.

1. Decadence. Roman men grew effeminate and materialistic, or in a word, soi. They lost their industriousness and grew too comfortable. The barbarians, filled with ambition and urgency, took advantage of this.

2. The decline of civic virtue. In the twilight days of the empire, people lived for themselves. They no longer did anything to benefit the commonweal and instead pursued their own selfish interests. When news of calamity in some distant part of the empire reached their corner, they said to themselves, "not my problem."

3. Excessive taxation. To keep the plebeians happy, the government continuously raised in order to fund bread and circuses. They poured everything into entertainment to keep citizens distracted, but this had a counterproductive effect of making them more unhappy about increased taxes.

4. Imperial overextension. The Romans over-invested in their military and neglected domestic development.

5. Loss of religious faith and those beliefs and values which bind a community as a cohesive society with shared priorities.

Also, as Montesquieu also pointed out, diversity lead to conflict and disagreement and a lack of unity.

>“After this, Rome was no longer a city whose people had but a single spirit, a single love of liberty, a single hatred of tyranny… The distracted city no longer formed a complete whole. And since citizens were such only by a kind of fiction, since they no longer had the same magistrates, the same walls, the same gods, the same temples, and the same graves, they no longer saw Rome with the same eyes, no longer had the same love of country, and Roman sentiments were no more.”

The Roman Empire had some advantages because the geographical features of the Mediterranean made for efficient transportation and logistics (much cheaper than land transportation). The Empire was also more decentralized than people sometimes assume. Autonomous city-states were responsible for funding many local projects in the Mediterranean world, which reduced the financial expenditure of the ruling class. Their political tradition also emphasized the privileges of a small number of Roman elites. What the Romans actually did to obtain loyalty from the local elites was to grant political and economic privileges in their local area. So these local elites and "citizens" could get more land, slaves, wealth without necessarily moving their ass physically to Rome to work. I think that echoes the United States in some ways.

But, what would happen if the empire ran out of money and land to give? The local elites began to lack the motivation to maintain their loyalty or to restore the empire from anarchy. Instead, once the empire stopped growing and couldn't acquire more resource injection, the elites resorted to maintaining their own privileges first and hoarding what they had, such that they became feudal lords themselves (or aligning with the Germanic warriors), or they turned to the church which substituted for the empire to govern their local area.

There you go with feudalism and the Catholic Church. In fact, adopting Christianity itself was already a result of the failure of the government because the Romans failed to crack down on Christianity. So, basically, the failure to adequately incorporate the local elites and keep them loyal, a lack of centralized bureaucracy to provide effective governance and to check the local elites resulted in the permanent downfall of the Roman Empire.

Lastly, Rome's "meritocracy" was based on military service, which in the later era led to endless rebellions from the legion, because rebellion to win the claim of the empire was indeed "meritocratic" by their standards, just like taking the test was for Chinese bureaucrats during the Han Empire. But for the Chinese empires, their bureaucracy was embedded deeply into the local society, creating a stronger relationship between the empire and the local society, so the social foundation of the national tax system was more stable, which made it easier to restore the empire once it fell into anarchy. The local elites in China after a dynasty collapsed would seek to reobtain power, but wouldn't hesitate to try to restore the state.

In the Roman case, the elites scattered, and there was almost no way to make a comeback. Perhaps that's why Christianity was needed to "unite the empire." That did not really happen, though, because when you replace a Roman identity with a Christian identity, the interpretations to Christianity would always vary by definition so there is even no base for that to happen.

>>18846627
While the West goes the way of Rome, the Chinese are restoring their historic Confucian bureaucratic empire with Marxism:

https://youtu.be/tYfCfSLNeG8

>>18847849
Don't tell me you're the guy on leftypol who replies to all of my threads lol

>>18845940
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/homicide-rate
It means that you fell for the meme, it's a map of murder rates with the title changed.

>>18846859
>Also, as Montesquieu also pointed out, diversity lead to conflict and disagreement and a lack of unity.

>>“After this, Rome was no longer a city whose people had but a single spirit, a single love of liberty, a single hatred of tyranny… The distracted city no longer formed a complete whole. And since citizens were such only by a kind of fiction, since they no longer had the same magistrates, the same walls, the same gods, the same temples, and the same graves, they no longer saw Rome with the same eyes, no longer had the same love of country, and Roman sentiments were no more.”

Yeaaaaah...I think it's fuckin' time we cancel his pasty bigot ass.

>>18845181
The single massive problem with these books is lack of objectivity. I fundamentally believe nobody who has an interest in "saving" civilization can offer a decent analysis of what is actually going on because they are always tied up in value judgements and what they see as the "problem". I dub this phenomenon culturalism, an attachment to culture itself rather than the ideas contained in it. This is a condition of essentially everybody these days and it lies at the root of politically oriented thinking.

What I mean is, the great artists and philosophers of the past didn't create out of a conviction that culture is good in and of itself, it was because they genuinely had something to say. But since the 19th century we do not value ideas anymore, we value culture itself, a vapid materialism that began with nationalism, and this is really why the West is "declining" (a word which itself contains a value judgement)

Those who complain about "decline" instantly out themselves as what I call culturalists i.e. materialists. And today everybody is like this, on the left and the right, which are two sides of the same coin. Modern culture is a thin layer of skin draped over ancient bones, without content.

The book that describes all this in a truly objective sense remains to be written.

>>18847870
>people who hold opinions I dislike are a priori bad when I make the requirements for being bad stilted enough to suit my ideological leanings

W-whoah...

>>18847858
Probably. I got so many of these videos. It's funny though how Trump fans would depict as Caesar. But I dunno. I think that would be JFK because he gets "betrayed" as killed shortly after this relatively isolationist republic turns into an empire after World War II.

I don't hear some of the Claremont-type conservatives talking about a new Caesar anymore.

>>18847870
Your analysis is entirely wrong. We don't value culture at all or you would see a bunch of artists simply creating art for the sake of culture. That isn't happening today. Along with Nationalism brought plenty of great art in the 19th century. The problem is the lack of any values today. It doesn't matter what you value. God, Nation, Nature, anything but you have to value something. The artists have to something in common to work towards.

>>18847898
Wait so you are the guy who posts China videos on my leftypol threads? I'm guy who always posts about traditional architecture and trad shit. We have been in many many conversations if it is you

>>18845181
It is always supposedly declining yet we are having more comfortable lives and more opportunities to be whoever we want to be.

It all seems just a big cope from people trying to blame society for their failures.

>>18847870
People might benefit if they try to put some distance between themselves and what they see happening, or try to look at it from the moon or if you were a space alien who was watching what's going down.

As far as culture, I think there's a tendency to celebrate "form" over "substance." I see this on both the left and right. For the neo-traditionalist right, it's this prizing of pure aesthetics or pretty pictures of an idealized past. I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with pretty pictures, but it's a cheap imitation. Then on the left, the empty politics of "representation" that feels like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

>>18847910
Ha ha ha. I think your posts over there interesting although a lot of anons get triggered by them or whatever. I'm not afraid of talking to people interested in conservative or traditionalist stuff. The China stuff is primarily interesting to me because what they're doing doesn't seem like it'd fit at all in a "left-right" spectrum that Americans would understand it or being a matter of swapping various "positions" on things, like adopting Bernienomics with right-wing culture war issues. It doesn't seem like that, but more like a completely different value axis or something. More directly, a show on state T.V. showing off a "high-art" or ""traditionalist"" painting but it's depicting a dirty-red peasant uprising with women throwing grenades:

https://youtu.be/XIn5g7BskjQ?t=543

For me, it's interesting to just contrast that with the "official" culture in the Western countries.

>>18847986
I have to be a bit hyperbolic sometimes to get replies. I'm on a 7 day ban now for one of those threads lol. You're a cool dude though. Honest for a leftist and we agree more than disagree.

>>18845363
>listen to Lil Uzi Vert on the radio.
that's not a bad thing

>>18845181
The great irony of books like these is that they always throw a fit over visual art despite the fact that visual art is the one medium that doesn't really have a commercialized, mass-produced, public-appeal analog. You want art that tries to do nothing but gaze at its own values and technique? There you have it. If you're gonna complain about "muh traditional beauty" you are probably only absorbing past works that have become commercialized interior decorating pieces after the fact like Van Gogh.

bump

>>18846444
why won't you listen?

>>18847898
tfw we'll live to see crucifictions become a thing again during our life time.