/lit/ - Literature

>>19706557
bump

>>19706557
>What does that mean? It seems like the West and China are sharing in a similar civilizational pathway.
????
Chinese civilization as it existed for thousands of years died in the Cultural Revolution and was replaced with something new. This new Chinese civilization, founded in Marxist thought, is an offshoot of Western civilization. The West hasn’t experienced anything like that.

>>19706557
>But I also have heard about how the esoteric traditions of the West managed to strike a careful balance between appreciating the material and the spiritual world
Have they? What proof do you have that this is the case? How do you know that you're not living in a period of decline right now?

you are a dilettante and maybe understand a tenth of the philosophically loaded valuations you are regurgitating

>>19706912
It’s not my claim but rather what many Traditionalists have claimed. See the pic-related. It seems right according to my intuition, but I have questions about how it related to involution, and I’m curious if anybody else has a major critique that would upend the material-spiritual-balanced comparison. What happens when a society becomes too “spiritual” at the cost of the material, and what would that process look like?

>>19706967
I agree. That’s why I made this thread—because I’m confused. I’m hoping somebody can give me some insight or at least point me in the right direction.

>>19706984
Civilization is not a pokemon battle. This reductionist stuff is laughably naive. And you're rotting your brain with it to boot

>>19706991
Tradlarpers are Marxists reading Hegel in reverse. There's your koan for the day.

>>19706557
This model is goofy as fuck. Spirituality isn’t the first stage of development, it’s the last — spiritual beliefs are drawn from culture, which is shaped by those with the means to produce culture. Development begins with workers, then advances to management and other types of pillaging. Then each class constructs it’s own spiritual order. Read Nietzsche — God is a mirror.

>>19706984
> rather what many Traditionalists have claimed. See the pic-related.
That’s wrong, what the Traditionalist school of Guenon et al talks about is totally different, in fact the Traditionalists usually regarded the Eastern cultures both Indian and Chinese as having the right balance of spirituality versus worldly concerns while chiding western culture for degenerating in modernity into one where a attitude of pragmatic materialism pervades everything

>>19706967
>he has opposite views on two completely different hierarchies
>GUENON BTFO!!!
This meme is so stupid.

>>19707015
It depends on whether you acknowledge the existence of higher dimensions. If you believe in a higher, eternal metaphysical reality and man's descent from it to the material world, it makes sense that spirituality would come first. Otherwise, your view would make sense.

>>19707090
>guy who larps as a priest wants priests in charge
>cries foul when people who aren't priests are in charge
pathetic.jpg

>>19707144
Him being of the sacerdotal caste is irrelevant though. His hierarchy is essentially based on spirituality, the other one isn't. Keep rolling with your 85 IQ nigger take though.

>>19707181
What even is a "hierarchy essentially based on spirituality," whoever can spit up the best pilpul? Tibet was conquered by Chinese communists. The Pope governs a mansion instead of Central Italy. There's your refutation of spiritual hierarchy. Other people learned how to cast spells. And they are every bit as petty and vicious.

>>19707218
Ya idk man, you could have just actually read Guenon, you dumbass.

>>19707243
I have. He's upset that priests are no longer in charge sitting around and contemplating the various scriptures. Probably because they did so much sitting and accumulating, they made themselves inviting targets for the other "castes." There are lots of writers who have whined about change but none have been so priestly in their solutions: to evacuate from the society entirely and retire to another one. Egypt became his hermitage.

>>19707110
>if you believe in higher dimensions
I’m a Platonist, but that doesn’t imply anything “spiritual” — it just means there are truths we can’t directly experience. As far as hierarchy is concerned, I’d argue something like “material success comes from successfully applying Platonic truths (ex maths).” So that would still situate material leaders as ideal social leaders.

>>19706557
>According to Evola
Stopped reading there

>>19706984
>China focused too much on the material,
While this claim can be argued for about the current ruling party of China, there is no evidence for the Europeans having a more spiritual lifestyle than their predecessors.

Make no mistake the China-that-was died in the 20th century. Maoist materialism and multiple ideological purges made sure of that.

Even so, the mainland Chinese of today, as atheistic and secular as they claim to be, still regularly practice ancestor worship, observe sacred geometry, and perform ritual appeasement of local deities, practices many in the west would consider superstitious. Even after the tumultuous upheavals of the Cultural Revolution.

If anything, it is Europe that has lost sight of the spiritual and the divine.

>>19707352
China built a number of collossal Buddhist statues over the last few decades while Americans have immortalized George Floyd in several bronzes. I think that answers the spirituality question. Cope and seethe westoids

>>19707015
>>19707282
>tranime poster
>his philosophy is an unholy atheistic mix of Nietsche, Plato and Marx
>>>/twitter/

>>19707393
You have to go back, and take your pilpul with you

>>19707001
This. china and india are just as diverse (not in the racial sense) as the united states.

>>19707298
thanks for the bump fren

bump

>>19706557
To be fair all of those country dichotomies are irrelevant now that we are a globalized world that has to pay extra close attention minute by minute to the affairs of others and follow the same technological, economic, and cultural/diplomatic whims.

If you wanna play the "we don't have to be internationalist" card then I'll play my "literally just fucking Inertia/accumulation" card which makes that irrelevant.

>>19707352
>Make no mistake the China-that-was died in the 20th century.
No it didn't.

>>19706859

China is probably more religious than Japan, which never went through communism.

And there is no fundamental difference between th Chinese in China and the Chinese in "free" countries. They all continue to do ancestor worship as they've always done along with a mix of Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism as they've always done.

There ain't no Cultural Revolution that can undo five thousand years of history in the space of a few years.

All the monasteries are still there and have more money than ever. They are rebuilding and renovating everything. They are building new buddha statues that are the largest in the world. So the notion of an atheist China is fiction.

The only thing holding them back is that according to their constitution the party and president have to be atheist so he can't openly participate in temple ceremonies.

But even that can change, because they realize a traditional Chinese cultural revival is their best bet for holding Western influeces at bay.

>>19708521
That makes them pretty scary, huh?

bump

>>19707393
>shitposter
>zero argument
>>>/pol/

>>19710903
hamina hamina hamina
AWOOOOOOOOOOGA

>>19708721
they just are, anon
being alive is just that, scary
but inside all anons there holds a place of harmony

>>19711960
that was really gay my dude

>>19706557

Can the charts guy fuck off? I hate reading your shit takes about everything. The very definition of style over substance

>>19712275
There’s a charts guy? What other charts has he produced?

>>19707298
Brown hands typed this

>>19710903
Dumb phone poster.

Bump

>>19706557
No, you are completely misunderstanding the framework Evola uses. Evola described the West as a civilisation of Action, which already places the West on one of the extreme ends of traditional civilisation. What kept the West at a high level was the consecration of action as sacred action.
Involution always leads to a collapse from the higher to the lower, from spirit to matter. Does every civilisation have its own unique starting point and end point? Yes, but you can't "decline into spirit". If you are interested in Evola's view on ancient India, read the context chapters on Doctrine of Awakening - he describes the dissolution of the original Brahmanic solar spirituality into more speculative-philosophical style stuff of abstract character and no direct link to spirit. The focus on spirituality was retained, but its content was severely diluted, which prepared the civilisation for future collapse. If pure spirit is retained and pursued harder, the only result can be metaphysical growth, not collapse of any sort.
>>19706984
This pic is autism, by "unparalleled creative forces" I assume you are referring to the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, both of which were a collapse in level and a loss of interest in the sacred in favour of the material - in other words a debasement and loss of focus.

Technology is the antithesis of tradition. Women only entered the workforce when science made it viable for them to leave the house (e.g tampons, birth control etc)

What does Evola have to say to that?

>>19713884
He's not a fan of technology. He also shares some of Junger's views here, of technology having become a sort of self-driving force that has made humanity its own tool, and that the only way to fix that is for humanity to muster even greater agency.

>>19713919
>technology having become a sort of self-driving force that has made humanity its own tool
Enter nick land

>>19713937
Okay anon that was funny.

>>19706557
Absolutely no mention of the role of energy or debt in that chart of yours. Morals and "personality" don't mean shit once you understand energy and physics to be the crux of all civilisations growth, stagnation, and decay. Jevons Paradox and Liebig's Law of the Minimum determine more about the health and wealth of a society than any pseudo-sociological (aka theological) theory you got ready at the shitpost.

>>19714005
Hello resident /lit/ bugman.

>>19713884
Positing technology itself as some sort of dualistic opposite to what is "good" is extremely weak and simplistic. Technology from the traditional perspective is much like morality, it is a tool which ,when overemphasized, can become a negative power (essentially when men become passive rather than active with respect to its use), which then has negative results, as man is enslaved to material forces, whether technological, moral, or a combination of both as we see today. This enslavement necessarily means that one is not free to focus on the higher aspects of life. As the enslavement becomes more and more total (as we become more and more passive), we progressively lose the potential for higher modes of life and being.

Gay chart

>>19706859
Moron.

boomp