/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.14648137]

When asked about western civilization:
>If you ask ten different people what "Western Civilization" is you'll get ten different answers. I think that once the west moved away from having an economy of social relations, and started worshiping abstractions like the nation state, everything went to shit. The jewels of western civilization, liberty, free thought, cosmopolitanism, etc. were all birthed by the kind of liberal freethinkers that were fostered by a strongly individualistic aristocracy and strong religious institutions providing a moral structure people could transgress against.
>Once these liberal aristocrats actually put their theories put into action, through the creation of nation states, universities, volk culture, and so on, these theoretical apparatuses quickly absorbed or destroyed everything outside it and created a base and monolithic culture of thought and feeling that we see today.
>They might get held up as the founders, but there is no way that modern culture today could produce another Rousseau, Casanova, Tocqueville, Goethe, or Bonaparte. Gone are the days of aristocratic adventurers and solitary genius, now we live in the times of highly specialized university careerists and machine technical capitalism.
>Can you imagine Rousseau trying to publish today? He would be yet another weirdo with a blog and radical political views. Publishers and intelligentsia wouldn't touch him, if for no other reason than that he lacks formal qualifications. Likewise he would be shut out of the job market, for lack of qualifications and weird opinions. It's likely that most people would do everything they could to distance themselves from his ideas, which are 'weird', 'creepy', or simply un-American. Rather than finding refuge in a monastic order as an errant youth, he would be pushed through a bureaucratic group home or foster care. Probably his brilliance would leave him just another fentynal user dying on the side of the road.
Does JP have a point here or is he just being a blue-pilled boomer? Was Western Civilization a mistake?

[Anonymous No.14648153]

"I shouldn't have read Jung..." -Jordan "The Leaf Canacuck" Peterson

[Anonymous No.14648155]

>>14648137
>Can you imagine Rousseau trying to publish today? He would be yet another weirdo with a blog and radical political views
Watching that interview I still can't believe he broke down in tears at this part. What a guy.

[Anonymous No.14648159]

>>14648137
that no sound like memerson

[Anonymous No.14648161]

>>14648155
Sartre would be lauded and get more feminist landwhale trim than anybody alive.

[Anonymous No.14648175]

>>14648159
>nation state bad
>cosmopolitanism good
Sounds about right to me

[Anonymous No.14648202]

>>14648175
not really. He doesn't speak like that.

[Anonymous No.14648205]

>>14648137
>he jewels of western civilization, liberty, free thought, cosmopolitanism, etc.
>cosmopolitanism
That's the crux right there.
Cosmopolitanism lead directly to overspecialization, oversocialization, and atomization; a degeneration of the individual to its quanta. Materialist philosophy had to emerge to as a tentatively glue to keep the atomized man glued together; reducing the human condition into an easily manageable production/consumption unit.
Hence you end up with:
>Can you imagine Rousseau trying to publish today? He would be yet another weirdo with a blog and radical political views... his brilliance would leave him just another fentynal user dying on the side of the road.

If you really want to fix Western Civilization, start with dismantling materialism and the incessant pushing for cosmopolitanism / globalism. Then you can being repairing/regenerating the human condition of Western man.
Let man regain his identity.

[Anonymous No.14648216]

>>14648137
>The jewels of western civilization, liberty, free thought, cosmopolitanism, etc. were all birthed by the kind of liberal freethinkers that were fostered by a strongly individualistic aristocracy
>individualistic aristocracy

Okay so I'm not a Marxist or anything but are we gonna let this idea that "liberal free thinkers" somehow grew out of the aristocracy as opposed to the bourgeoisie actually fly? Like I'm supposed to think that the levellers, parliements, and city dwellers were aristocrats? Of his name drops I think only Tocqueville is an actual aristocrat and his interests don't strike me as being particularly aristocratic.

[Anonymous No.14648240]

>>14648216
I thought it was a odd assessment as well. The only logical framework I could see him coming to that conclusion was if he viewed the aristocracy as the financiers/gatekeepers of the Enlightenment peddlers. Or if he considers the word "aristocracy" to mean the avant-garde intellectual class of that time.
Maybe he's referring to the Enlightened Monarchies?

[Anonymous No.14648267]

>>14648240
>Frederick the great gave us the jewells of western civilizations

I really don't know where he's coming from. It's also surprising that this "Christian" guy doesn't count Christianity or the Church as being a jewel of western civilization, nor does that factor in into the rise of cosmopolitanism or individualism, at least not in this assessement here. Christianity would have been a better candidate both as a jewel and as a vector of propagation for individualism and cosmopolitanism than aristocratic culture is.

Like in his description the Church only factor in as something to transgress against or as something that birthed another thing that then created the "jewels".

[Anonymous No.14648296]

>>14648240
plenty of aristos and clergy supported the Enlightenment ideologies at the time.

>>14648137
Don't agree exactly, egalitarianism is the main cancer in Western Civilization.

>now we live in the times of highly specialized university careerists and machine technical capitalism.
In spite of this specialization, why can't we praise the people who make major discoveries in their own right? I mean, we have an American who won the Nobel Prize in Physics TWICE and almost no one even knows about him (based Bardeen),

[Anonymous No.14648308]

>>14648267
It's most likely because he operates under Whig Historiography and views Western Civilization crystallizing in the 18th century. Outside of liberals, I don't think a lot of people can get on-board with this presupposition.
To play devils advocate, I could make a argument that the Industrial Revolution crafted the "jewels" of Western Civilization leading to cosmopolitanism (and individualism et al).

[Anonymous No.14648325]

>>14648216
You literally couldn't even afford paper back then unless you were an aristocrat. Books were not affordable until the very late 18th century for normies, long after all the ideological foundation of liberalism had been laid. Marx is a limited hangout at the very end of the process, but brainlets see him as the beginning of something. It's cringe as fuck.

[Anonymous No.14648352]

>>14648137
Why are we still posting a guy that got obliterated single handedly by Zizek?

[Anonymous No.14648356]

>>14648296
>plenty of aristos and clergy supported the Enlightenment ideologies at the time
Yeah, but I wouldn't necessarily call them the wellspring of Enlightenment ideologies either. When I think Enlightenment, I think of gentry or bourgeois intellectuals looking to reconcile the classes above and bellow their station (not to mention the merchants seeking class mobility). Unless the Aristocracy/Clergy were that hubristic, I doubt they sincerely wanted to abolish their own authority by ceding power from the palaces and churches to the cities.
They weren't THAT benevolent.

[Anonymous No.14648360]

>>14648137
This mewling nutjob needs to be institutionalized.

[Anonymous No.14648362]

>>14648325
Also, weren't a lot of those aristocrats bourgeoisie that bought titles, especially in France?

[Anonymous No.14648383]

>>14648240
Did their tastes not govern the tastes of an era? Even if they weren't the ones writing and publishing, all that free sexuality, gambling, duels, and traveling was certainly inspired by a wish to imitate them.

Just like the shopkeepers and industrialists define the tastes of today. I'll never believe that a group of people who literally financed their own tailors were less individualistic than a society which simply mass produces uniforms to be discarded after several years.

[Anonymous No.14648390]

>>14648356
What you fail to understand is that all the bourgeois had parents or grandparents that were aristocrats. These days the poor are the ones that have all the kids, but back then only rich people could afford lots of kids. So if you were the third or fourth kid you got less inheritance / no titles and had to move down to the middle class. This is why they were resentful and wrote tirades about society being arbitrary ... they were primarily thinking about their birth order. None of them tell you this shit because it seems like a petty reason to overthrow society, so they mask it all in other words. But that is what it was ultimately.

All of the "overthrow the system" people would be like a second son today if the parents decided only the eldest one got the inheritance. Now obviously we know the parents then had good reasons for this ... if you divide your land holdings every generation eventually the family is left with no power. Functional families supported their second and subsequent sons by projecting power from their land holdings / title to support the other brothers in business in the city and what not.

So really the enlightenment revolutionaries were a specific subset of aristocratic children - the families that were sociopathic (didn't maintain relations with the second and subsequent children that went into business) and/or low IQ (children couldn't run a business successfully). This is precisely the very last group in society you want to ever listen to .... people with every opportunity but no results to show for it, so they turn to revolution.

The whole thing is really pathetic once you see it for what it was.

[Anonymous No.14648410]

>>14648216
I think he might be talking more about attitude rather than specifically a class. Especially when he says this:
>Gone are the days of aristocratic adventurers and solitary genius, now we live in the times of highly specialized university careerists and machine technical capitalism.

[Anonymous No.14648426]

>>14648390
>So really the enlightenment revolutionaries were a specific subset of aristocratic children - the families that were sociopathic (didn't maintain relations with the second and subsequent children that went into business) and/or low IQ (children couldn't run a business successfully). This is precisely the very last group in society you want to ever listen to .... people with every opportunity but no results to show for it, so they turn to revolution.

>The whole thing is really pathetic once you see it for what it was.
I guess that's a fair analysis. It's also relevant to today's situation with the relationship between boomers and the subsequent generations e.g. parents are neoliberal bankers and the child joins Antifa.

[Anonymous No.14648430]

>>14648390
>“John Stuart Mill recounted how, “From the winter of 1821, when I first read Bentham, and especially from the commencement of the Westminster Review, I had what might truly be called an object in life; to be a reformer of the world. My conception of my own happiness was entirely identified with this object. […] I was accustomed to felicitate myself on the certainty of a happy life which I enjoyed, through placing my happiness in something durable and distant, in which some progress might be always making, while it could never be exhausted by complete attainment.” And so it was, for five years, “during which the general improvement going on in the world and the idea of myself as engaged with others in struggling to promote it, seemed enough to fill up an interesting and animated existence.” Until one day, Mill continued, “I awakened from this as from a dream.” What had happened? He found himself pondering a question: “Suppose that all your objects in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to, could be completely effected at this very instant: would this be a great joy and happiness to you?”
>“Mill was saddened to realize that the answer was a distinct “No!” He felt his heart sink: “The whole foundation on which my life was constructed fell down.” Everything was ”“suddenly “insipid or indifferent.” Months of deep depression followed, which lasted through the winter of 1826–1827. Outwardly nothing had changed. Mill continued his very active life: “During this period I was not incapable of my usual occupations. […] I had been so drilled in a certain sort of mental exercise, that I could still carry it on when all the spirit had gone out of it. I even composed and spoke several speeches at the debating society, how, or with what degree of success, I know not.”
>“Mill is still regarded today as one of the luminaries of liberalism. But liberals of every kind, whether lay or religious, never had the capacity and bold clear-sightedness to ask the question that Mill, with spotless probity, asked of himself—and it made him fall into a state that only Coleridge could describe: “A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear.”
What did Europe do to itself?

[Anonymous No.14648435]

>>14648426
Yep, nothing new under the sun. All the leftist activists today are bourgeois kids that can't pass a math class or organic chem, same as it was 300 years ago.

[Anonymous No.14648436]

>>14648137
>The jewels of western civilization, liberty, free thought, cosmopolitanism
WTF I hate western civilization now.

[Anonymous No.14648447]

>>14648435
They're ironically lumpenproles.

[Anonymous No.14648450]

>>14648436
we don't have genuine cosmopolitanism, we have a woke leadership class adopting one culture and their dependents who adopt something akin to American black culture.

[Anonymous No.14648464]

An Australian man named P R Stephenson says otherwise to the notion of the nation state.

>"The culture of a country is the essence of nationality, the permanent element in a nation. A nation is nothing but an extension of the individuals comprising it, generation after generation of them. When I am proud of my nationality, I am proud of myself. My personal shortcomings, of which I am only too painfully aware, are eliminated to some extent by my nationality, in which I may justly take pride — such is the reason for nations and nationalities, and also for tribes, mobs, and herds. In numbers there is a strength and permanence not found in individuals.
The nation as an extension of the ego, as a permanent idea which lives when the individual dies, is essential to an individual’s well-being. "

Section 7 [The Foundations of Culture in Australia, by P. R. Stephensen, 1936

[Anonymous No.14648472]

>>14648436
Yeah that statement left a lot of bad shit taste in the mouth.
Pic related would be the culmination of "liberty, free thought, and cosmopolitanism".

[Anonymous No.14648473]

>>14648435
the best thing that could be done to fix civilization today would be:
1. shut down 98% of colleges
2. require students to complete both a STEM and humanities major of some kind

this alone will filter out wealthy brainlets.

[Anonymous No.14648501]

>>14648472
>liberty
>free thought
>cosmopolitanism
Not exactly... As an exercise, imagine someone using Free Thought to come to a worldview exactly opposite of what's depicted in your image (like pre-1960s Christianity basically) and used their Liberty to live out those values. How would this be viewed by the contemporary elite culture? (hint: badly). Now a modern progressive could say "Well, we can't tolerate intolerance, your worldviews are mean to that drag queen!" but again I could just invert the statement and apply it to him. All this talk about muh liberty, free thought etc. masks the fact that we aren't dealing with an excess of neutrality, lack of belief, or whatever, but rather, a new quasi-religious belief that views most things that could be called "pro-civilizational values" as immoral and just Not Very Nice, which is at its roots a form of runaway EGALITARIANISM. People make the mistake of viewing things like Drag Queen Story Hour as archetypical libertine decadence indicative of moral laxity, but in reality it's more like a sexual expression of antiracism. In a way you could view it as a form of Abolitionism really.

[Anonymous No.14648508]

>>14648473
>1. shut down 98% of colleges
Just wrestle away the monopoly that Academia has over accreditation. Do what they did with the GED and create a process of educational verification that's just as vigorous as the universities. All the information exist for free on the internet; there's literally like MIT and Harvard courses available for free to the public. If you can demonstrate knowledge of a field at a sufficent level of a college grad, you should be able to achieve an accreditation as well without having to go thousands of dollars in debt and take a bunch of useless indoctrination courses.

Plus it'll put pressure on Academia to clean up its act and actually improve their education standards to attract matriculants rather than being lazy gatekeepers and pedigree title holders.

[Anonymous No.14648513]

>>14648501
>EGALITARIANISM
Which has it roots in Christianity.

[Anonymous No.14648517]

>>14648450
Based. Genuine cosmopolitanism is embodied by types such as Richard Francis Burton and Alcibiades. What we have now is just a multiracial shop-keeping class holding onto property investments in a handful of world cities

[Anonymous No.14648534]

>>14648513
True, however, the situation we have today is more like the following:
>book says "X bad"
>"actually X is good and Nice, God, you bigot. Don't you care about the marginalized, hypocrite?"
Like Jesus could come back tomorrow and would get told to check His privilege.

[Anonymous No.14648538]

>>14648534
You see this with Africans actually, the African Protestants see English come down and act horrified at anti-gay sermons, and then wonder why they did that when they brought them the Bible not so long ago.

>"It's in de Book."

[Anonymous No.14648541]

>>14648513
Maybe Western Christianity, particularly of the protestant variety. Then again, they were the last to abolish slavery.
Eastern Christianity has and still is based around ethno-churches that are for the most part culturally exclusive.

Until you get to the Enlightenment, most of Christian history was FAR from egalitarianism being stratified by a rigid hierarchical class system and later after the Age of Discover by slavery/indentured servitude (I don't think a lot of Catholics saw indigenous Christians converse in the New World as "equals").
But you're probably arguing under the guise of polemics against Christianity, seeing it as the root of all Western problems, so it's not like this matters anyway.

[Anonymous No.14648555]

>>14648541
>Eastern Christianity has and still is based around ethno-churches that are for the most part culturally exclusive.
Which are literally a heresy under orthodoxy.

[Anonymous No.14648562]

>>14648541
I'm >>14648501
>>14648534
>>14648538

The thing is, while it's true that Christianity had a stratified class system in the past, once you hold the precept "All men are equal before God", you're going to have a bit more of an uphill battle against runaway egalitarianism. I'm a Catholic, I'm just saying it's a problem that will manifest from time to time. Even before Protestantism we had heretical movements that sounded awfully similar to socialism (Taborites, Cathars, Joachimites etc.)

[Anonymous No.14648575]

>>14648541
Ironically, as far as Protestantism and slavery go, Christian "SJWs" probably played a central role in its abolition. See the Clapham Sect for one example in Britain, there are many more in the US, of course. I think in the Anglosphere it is Evangelical Christianity in particular that plays the key role.

[Anonymous No.14648601]

>>14648562
"All men are equal before God" but God doesn't judge all men equality; He judges them individually. The Lesson of the widow's mite (Mark 12:41-44) demonstrate this.
So God acknowledges that inequality exists, but doesn't explicity demand mankind to rectify inequality; He already will take individual accounts in life and determines what is equitable Himself.
No two men can every be perfectly equal nor should they be judged perfectly equal.

[Anonymous No.14648613]

>>14648575
The Abolitionist movement was multivariate. Did Christian moral arguments play a part, sure. But I wouldn't say it was the primary mover in abolishing slavery.

[Anonymous No.14648634]

>>14648613
I meant to say "plays the key role in the prevalence of sentimental egalitarianism". They did accomplish some good things, but they did it in the most cringeworthy way possible, generally speaking.

>>14648601
I'm in agreement, I'm just saying this sort of heresy is going to recur.

[Anonymous No.14648667]

>>14648360
>oh no! not the federalismo! democracy may not be perfect but its the best system we've got!

[Anonymous No.14649158]

>>14648430
>“I awakened from this as from a dream.” What had happened? He found himself pondering a question: “Suppose that all your objects in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to, could be completely effected at this very instant: would this be a great joy and happiness to you?”
>Mill was saddened to realize that the answer was a distinct “No!"
We really are living in the wrong timeline

[Anonymous No.14649261]

Sometimes when philosophers use the term "aristocrat" they are speaking of the nobility of their thinking or spirit, not of their literal economic state. It can be a metaphorical description.

[Anonymous No.14649355]

>>14648667
I hate that when I see pictures like this I read through them intently praying that I don't meet any of the mentioned qualifications.

[Anonymous No.14649573]

>>14648137
This is way too concise and to the point for a Peterson quote. Where'd you get this?

[Anonymous No.14650071]

>>14648155
What's the interview?

[Anonymous No.14650229]

>>14648352
Peterson self-refuted the day he forgot to clean his room up.

[Anonymous No.14650375]

>>14649355

[Anonymous No.14651420]

>>14649355
>I hate that when I see pictures like this I read through them intently praying that I don't meet any of the mentioned qualifications.

[Anonymous No.14652631]

>>14648137
This isn't from him. Nice bait.

[Anonymous No.14652686]

>>14648137

>Cosmopolitanism
Not a word he would use
>Un-American
Rousseau, a Frenchman, un-American? No shit. You think the term un-American is used in Canadian academic circles?
>No way modern culture could produce a (significant historical figure)
This would mean the pareto distribution is false, which Peterson holds as an axiomatic truth.
>Highly specialized careerist and machine technical capitalism (as if this were something 'bad')
Same as above
>fentanyl (as opposed to 'drugs' or 'addiction' or 'alcoholism')
Too specific and dramatic

Definitely not his. Did you make this up or is there actually some deepfake out there?

[Anonymous No.14652792]

>>14652686
I like to pass of my embittered drunken tangents as being written by actual thinkers. It forces people to engage with my opinions. Often I will make shit up in conversations and pass it off as the thought of JS Mill or Nietzsche or Chopin, the name alone forces most people to agree with what I'm saying-- even when I don't believe it myself

[Anonymous No.14652902]

>>14652792

Based

[Anonymous No.14653416]

>>14652686
It's the line
>everything went to shit
that stands out.
Extremely unpetersonian.

[Anonymous No.14653432]

So what is the quote from?

[The Man !QkRJTXcpFI No.14653632]

>>14648137
>liberal aristocrats

[Anonymous No.14653671]

Dear Op,
Your picture has disturbed me..
Knowing nothing of the man at all, from the picture I can tell upon meeting him I would punch his face. I would do this in self defense, not wanting to be assaulted by his "Personal Journey" or whatever pseud shit comes from the mouth of someone so posed.

I would continue to punch until the word describing this kind of person bubbled up from the depth of my long lost education.
... earnest, poser, self-absorbed, ... the word is not there... And the more I punched, the farther away the word would get...
This is the hell you created by posting this image.

I'm going back to /b until I feel safe again... I'm going to cleanse myself in gore, rekt, and loli until I feel whole.

I hope you are happy.

love anon.