why did spengler want this?

[Anonymous No.17061607]

"And I can only hope that men of the new generation may be moved by this book to devote themselves to technics instead of lyrics, the sea instead of the paint-brush, and politics instead of epistemology. Better
they could not do."

[Anonymous No.17061632]

due to the ontological primacy of technology to that of art
read Heidegger

[Anonymous No.17061862]

>>17061632
makes no sense.

[Anonymous No.17061887]

What did Sprengler base his arguments on of cultural differences on views of time?

[Anonymous No.17061905]

>>17061887
On his ass

[Anonymous No.17061910]

Sex gifs

[Anonymous No.17061912]

>>17061905
An excellent source, I applaud him

[Anonymous No.17061920]

>>17061887
>he thinks the Egyptians built the pyramids

[Anonymous No.17061971]

>>17061607
Makes sense, just look at a lot of "modern art", its pointless and will inspire nobody, to bad that artists are usually not engineers.

[Anonymous No.17061973]

>>17061887
A juvenile oversimplification of classical Greek and Roman conceptions of history. It wasn't 'timeless and immobile. Just look at the Aeneid and the whole Augustan age, where history is clearly interpreted as a movement toward the imperial domination of Rome.

[Anonymous No.17061984]

>>17061973
>Just look at the Aeneid and the whole Augustan age, where history is clearly interpreted as a movement toward the imperial domination of Rome.
Which is just the return to the mythical golden age......

[Anonymous No.17062072]

>>17061607
>>17061632
Heidegger has literally the polar opposite recommendation. Heidegger's critique of technology is that it "demystifies" the world and dominates all other world views, all possible ways of "being in yhe world' and usurps all other means. Nobody prays for their daily bread, we genetically engineer our grains to be draught resistant. This is only the first part of the critique however, as in the second part he shows how man becomes only a component of technique, a slave to method. The way to prevent this is to focus on the world of spirit, to become a poet-mystic and make other people see. Simondon has a really nice continuation of this argument, trying to absorb technology in less materialistic world views.

For Spengler technique is will to power, a way of subjecting the world to your will. Anything realizing tangible results is inevitably realized by technical means for Spengler. This is showcased in the cringey first half of Man and Technics, with technological man as alpha predator. Technical innovation in this view is development of personal and societal power, driven by the needs of political and natural struggle. Wilfully hamstringing technology is then the embodiment of decadence, of people refusing to struggle and will. Junger very strongly follows this line of thought in all his works, but especially in The Worker.

For an in depth general historical overview read Yuk Hui "Technology in China".

[Anonymous No.17062075]

>>17061984
So you age its not timeless and immobile then?

[Anonymous No.17062125]

>>17062075
I dont think you understand, no Roman or Greek was thinking they where creating something new and original, if Rome became the empire, that is just a repeat of an event that happened in the mythological past, the universe keeps repeating itself, that doesnt mean a sense of history.

[Anonymous No.17062151]

>>17061607
kek

>>17061632
>due to the ontological primacy of technology to that of art
kek

[Anonymous No.17062295]

>>17062125
>no Roman or Greek was thinking they where creating something new and original
Thats a nice fantasy you have, it would be a real shame if you had to back that up with evidence.

The Greeks recognized their invention and development of tragedy and drama. They even discussed and theorized on its origins. It was understood as a new thing. This is just one example but their are many. The field of History itself as an investigation into the causes of things is something new that the Greeks credited themselves with creating.

[Anonymous No.17062343]

>>17062295
Spengler literally discusses this in the beginning of his book, of how Thucydides reveals the Greeks had no historical sense etc.

[Anonymous No.17062389]

>>17062295
>Thats a nice fantasy you have, it would be a real shame if you had to back that up with evidence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_Man

Here done, no people who have this kind of worldview, can have a concept of the future, like other indo-european people the Greeks believed in historical cycles of repeated creation.

>>17062295
>The Greeks recognized their invention and development of tragedy and drama. They even discussed and theorized on its origins. It was understood as a new thing. This is just one example but their are many. The field of History itself as an investigation into the causes of things is something new that the Greeks credited themselves with creating.

You confuse the concept of recent history, with either the long history of the West and a concept of a progressive future, which the Greeks did not have, as shown in the Spenglerian chart.

Unlike the West or the Egyptians and to a lesser degree, the Greeks and Romans did not have extreme and detailed timescales, they had a mythological past and a recent history, with the present and past being a repeat of previous events from mythology.

[Anonymous No.17062449]

>>17061607

Pretty much the most traditionalist stance there is outside of literal return to monke
A return to the world before ancient Greek philosophy took hold a world where people are chiefly concerned only with the most practical and concrete things but still had some semblance of order

[Anonymous No.17062514]

>>17062449
Tobad we dont life on the Thracian steppe's or the Woods of Germania, but in modern cities, so return to tradition is pointless.

[Anonymous No.17062534]

>>17061607
sex gifs

[Anonymous No.17062599]

>>17061973
You must have missed the "mythically fashioned background for the particular present" part

[Anonymous No.17062786]

>>17062534
based asac poster

[Anonymous No.17062923]

>>17062072
Junger sees it as a law of the age, a figure of man rather than will to power. He's not following Spengler.
>Yuk Hui "Technology in China"
JUST

[Anonymous No.17063019]

SOULLESS

[Anonymous No.17063128]

>>17062923
>>17062923
He is not following Spengler but their treatments converge. Junger his focused treatise on technology indeed preceded that of Spenglers by decades. This post was meant as an exposition on the philosophy of technique as zoomers seem to think alll revolutionary (conservative) philosophers ultimately agree on the role of technology. Heidegger and Spengler disagree within their view on technology, while Spengler and Junger share common ground. Will to power was only a simile exemplifying the differences in flavour, to my knowledge Spengler was not a strong follower of Nietzsche.

[Anonymous No.17063339]

>>17061632
you sound really smart when you make your sentences unreadable

[Anonymous No.17063361]

>>17061910
Based

[Anonymous No.17063383]

>>17061607
You have to know how to feed yourself before you contemplate existence. Extrapolate this to civilization.

[Anonymous No.17063391]

>>17063383
to add: if a civilization mastered its practical needs there would never be a rise and fall

[Anonymous No.17063502]

>>17063339
He basically just said this >>17063383 you brainlet

[Anonymous No.17063517]

Has nobody actually read Spengler in this thread? The meaning of the quote in the OP is that the Culture is entering its winter stage, during which art is no longer possible, and the men of action should turn to the forms that can still be developed in the Civilization stage: technics, politics, etc.

[Anonymous No.17063608]

>>17062389
How accurate do you think the chart is for the Indian and Chinese concepts of time?

[Anonymous No.17063620]

>>17062923
>>17062072
I always thought Junger was opposed to technology. Care to develop his views please?

[Anonymous No.17063727]

>>17063608
Not that guy, but I made that chart. I based the Chinese and Indian worldviews on Amaury de Riencourt's books "The Soul of China" and "The Soul of India", where he takes Spengler's birdseye view of their civilizations in TDotW as a springboard and develops them fully.

For a further external view, here is a good essay unrelated to Spengler's thought that discusses the differences between Western and Chinese concepts of time
https://academicjournals.org/journal/PPR/article-full-text-pdf/7C0C79A55304

[Anonymous No.17064062]

>>17061632
you need the brush before you can paint
you need the paint before you can put it on the wall
he right yo

[Anonymous No.17064193]

I have a dumb question. Did Spengler ever talk about how these cultures were actually defined? They are such loose categories. For example, when does Western man really start? With Christianity? With the enlightenment? Is the whole of East Asia Chinese culture? Japanese, Koreans, and Mongolians included?

[Anonymous No.17064253]

>>17063383
Isn’t it quite obvious that in the case of the West, all we do is feed ourselves? Western history is more or less an upward striving (or a downward sinking) into deeper and deeper levels of the scientific for mostly material gain. Why focus our efforts there if that’s what’s delivered us to our present (existential) crisis?

[Anonymous No.17064278]

>>17063517
No, I haven’t read him but I find what anons say about him interesting so I ask questions.

My question here is that while I understand all that, what good reason does he give for devoting oneself to technics? If his thinking is basically that is still what is to be developed but we’re already entering our winter stage and we feel a sort of existential crisis because of this same technic, why should we devote ourselves to technics then? Why should we do anything at all? I don’t get it.

[Anonymous No.17064293]

>>17061973
You have no idea what you're talking about, so you're unaware that Spengler actually directly addresses this in his two volume book series "Decline of the West".

>>17064193
Yes, he does. He gives specific timetables. The .pdfs up on libgen have them, there's like eight pages of them. "Faustian Man" for example starts in 900AD in France-Germany. Christianity has no impact on Faustian Man, however, at least in the sense that Spengler is working in. Spengler's Culture-Civilizations (Faustian Man, Apollonian Man, Sumerian Man, etc) are independent of religion. The Greeks have been Faustian, Magian, and Apollonian Men, and have practiced Greek Polytheism, Islam, and Christianity. You can be a coal black Bantu congo-nigger in the heart of Africa practicing Judaism and be a Chinese man, Spengler's Culture-Civilizations are thought-forms that take on a life of their own by defining how men see and understand space-time, they don't care about petty concerns like "religion", but they damn sure do influence them.

Japan and Korea are both Chinese Men, the Mongolians are Felaheen. Felaheen are men without Culture-Civilizations. They are moved by history, and cannot influence it. That doesn't mean that they can't be important, or have power. The Mongol Empire ruled a substantial portion of the planet at one point. But what great intellectual works did the Mongols leave? Felaheen are adrift on the sea of time. Their great thinkers will only ever be clever men in other king's courts.

[Anonymous No.17064295]

>>17064278
Spengler was a historical determinist, he thought our civilization was going to become cultureless and focused on technics and empire regardless of how anyone felt about it, and he thought the respectable or admirable thing to do was to play the part you were given. He has some passages that are quite stoic in nature. He also clearly just thought that the material sciences were interesting and that there was a kind of nobility in industry.

[Anonymous No.17064331]

Could the way that modern communication and the internet have lead to so much interconnectedness and remixing of ideas be the beginning of a new culture/world view or is it just a new kind of decadence?

[Anonymous No.17064379]

>>17064331
The internet and social media is our equivalent to the prevalence of oratory in late Republican Rome. Society is becoming more and more about the sliver tongued "Caesars" who can move the masses to do what they want.

[Anonymous No.17064383]

>>17064331
Take a wild guess

[Anonymous No.17064420]

>>17061910
Quick rundown on this meme

[Anonymous No.17064442]

>>17064293
Did he believe people were able to inhabit or espouse different thought forms? You mentioned the coal black Bantu being a Chinese man but how would such a thing even work? Are you not inherently the product of the culture-thought form that you’re born into in Spengler’s view.

Also, I’m curious. What were his own religious views? He sounds something of a religious relativist to arrive at such a theory.

[Anonymous No.17064458]

>>17064295
Why though should I come to believe that doing so would in fact could be the part I was given? It seems I just as likely could just as likely could be playing the natural role of decadent according to Spengler. If he believed that a winter phase was simply inevitable, I don’t see why he felt it necessary to further accelerate into technics in light of that. I’m not detecting the nobility here.

[Anonymous No.17064463]

>>17064331
It’s both at the same time. Those who know use the addictive and decadent influence of the internet and media to mold and manipulate the masses.

[Anonymous No.17064472]

>>17061910
>Sex gifs
what did he mean by this?

[Anonymous No.17064486]

>>17064458
>It seems I just as likely could just as likely could be playing the
lmao

Anyway though there is always a certain amount of paradox to determinism, but he was basically just saying that there was no point dedicating your life to art anymore, nothing great was going to come out of it, and that men of talent should go into those other fields. You don't have to agree with him re nobility, I'm just explaining how he saw it.

[Anonymous No.17064503]

>>17064458
>Why though should I come to believe that doing so would in fact could be the part I was given
I missed this, this is even worse than the other part, did you have a stroke writing this post

[Anonymous No.17064508]

>>17061607
Art and philosophy concluded before they were born, so those who make new things are wasting their time while those who take more pragmatic action are actually doing the best they can in their situation.

[Anonymous No.17064533]

>>17064486
Yeah. I get what you’re saying. I think I’m not phrasing my question well. What I really want to know is this:

Let’s say we’re in agreement that there is no point in dedicating your life to art because nothing great is going to come of it. Why then should we dedicate ourselves to technics even nothing great is going to come of that? They both seem pointless in a Spenglerian worldview to me.

If you don’t know, that’s cool. I’m just shooting out questions in case any anons can.

>>17064503
My computer is broken and I’m phoneposting...

[Anonymous No.17064561]

>>17064533
He did think great things were still possible in technics and statecraft, that is the point.

[Anonymous No.17064579]

>>17063128
He literally dedicates The decline of the west to Goethe and Nietzsche

[Anonymous No.17064582]

>>17064442
Spengler's Culture-Civilizations are organic entities of their own. Again, they're just methods of understanding space-time. A lot comes from that, but there's nothing innately Christian about seeing space as a 3D grid with fields overlaid upon it. I wouldn't necessarily call this requiring a religious relativism. There's no reason Christianity can't be true and people see the world differently. I might be overstating the distance these things have from actual people, but I do believe Spengler would totally accept people changing, or being born into, their Culture-Civilization. After all, huge swathes of the world are Fellaheen. American Negroes and Israelis are both Faustian men.

Also, Spengler was born into a Lutheran province. He had distant Jewish ancestry (his maternal great grandmother converted to Catholicism to marry a Catholic), which also reveals Catholic ancestry. I can't find anything on his actual practicing religion if he had one, but he was a HUGE Prussiaboo.

[Anonymous No.17064605]

>>17064561
I don’t see how. If he was absolutely convinced that we had entered our winter phase, what could possibly be achieved? What has already been achieved? Why is it an achievement? Another pyramid? For what?

[Anonymous No.17064619]

>>17064605
Well the Caesar figure for one, and military commanders, and Idk building giant dams and military aircraft and buildings or whatever, impressive engineering projects.

[Anonymous No.17064628]

>>17062072
Tell me more about Technology in China - is it worth reading if I've already read Decline of the West + Man & Technics?

[Anonymous No.17064633]

>>17064619
I think I just need to read more of his work desu. I just still get to what end he wanted us to do this? The way I see it, we have no pyramid to speak of. Our pyramids are erections of glass and steel which will likely fall just as quickly as they were built and I frankly don’t see what sort of logic Spengler was able to imply which justified striving for the building of more. So the neo-Egyptians build another pyramid just before they die and it disintegrated to rubble... I also wonder if Spengler would feel similarly about technics given what it actually looks like today. The days of futurism, fast moving trains, the aero plane, and industrial innovation seem to me to be long over and now is the age of creating more apps and widgets for people to be sucked into. I don’t even see the technics to devote ourselves to even if he gives good reason to devote ourselves to technics.

Thanks for answering my questions though.

[Anonymous No.17064646]

How do new forms of media factor into this? Have video games reached peak greatness? Have TV shows?

[Anonymous No.17064652]

>>17063727
Thanks anon

[Anonymous No.17064654]

>>17064633
Again it's not a matter of 'the point', he just sees it as inevitable, this is what we have to work with in our times, so the noble thing to do is excel at what you can.

I have a suspicion that were Spengler alive to see the second world war and the ensuing castration of Germany he would say that the normal development of Faustian civilization had been disrupted by influence from an alien civilization(Russia). He was very clear about the Caesar coming from Germany, not the US, which always seemed a bit odd and even biased to me, but whatever.

[Anonymous No.17064704]

>>17064605
It's worth pointing out that according to Spengler, the entirety of the Roman Empire takes place after the "Winter" phase of classical culture. All their aqueducts, columns, palaces, etc. were built during the "Civilization" phase, which follows the Cultural Seasons.

[Anonymous No.17064721]

>>17064654
I agree that an American Caesar is more likely, I will laugh if that Caesar is the descendant of German immigrants.

[Anonymous No.17064741]

>>17064721
Octavian watches the Senate betray Caesar (44 BC, colorized)

[Anonymous No.17064929]

>>17061607
Spengler to a large degree pushes people forward towards what can create meaning for them in their age. He saw the west exiting its age where it had a need for art, science, and metaphysics and entering into an age of politics, war, and technics. If you want to make a name for yourself (Spengler is a nihilist) then you would want to go down the path of technics and not art since the likelihood of you joining the western cannon of art is near zero (rebuttal can be made regarding film but I'd say that time is now over as well.)
>>17063727
Please add the Megian climatic historical outlook.

[Anonymous No.17064958]

>>17061607
What kind of technology should I be involved with? CRISPR? virtual reality? quantum computing? AI?

[Anonymous No.17064996]

>>17064958
You clearly have no idea what you are talking about if you put quantum computing and VR in the same sentence. I recommend caring about stuff you do.

[Anonymous No.17065003]

>>17064996
Cringe

[Anonymous No.17065019]

>>17064721
>I will laugh if that Caesar is the descendant of German immigrants.
i will laugh even harder if that caesar is a mexican

[Anonymous No.17065112]

>>17063620
Pretty difficult to answer given that Junger's theory of technology, and his thinking in general, is unconventional. But this quote gets to the heart of the matter,I think it's from the rough translation:
>>/lit/thread/S14607086

Technology is not the law of the age, but rather its legislation. It acts as the clothing of the worker. Or in other words, it is the very means of the transitional age. For Junger there is no positive or negative relation, technology is not something that can be critiqued, it is rather a test of the age, something we must rise to. As in military drilling, the order can be finalised where repetition occurs in completion of character - the great danger in the modern era is that the period of nihilism is drawn out to its absolute degree. This makes it difficult even for those with the best vision to see where things will end up, one loses sight of being, and the paths which would allow for its return.

It may be useful to compare this to Schmitt's thinking, or his brother's, since they are the most similar and among the few other thinkers who hold to pre-Kantian methods. Schmitt says that one may not write against that which proscribes, and in his theory of technology a strengthened politics emerges after a period of depoliticisation and neutralisation. This is at the heart of the philosophical relation to technology, as well as the common revolt against it and within its form. Consequently, the radical politics which emerges can only deepen its relation to technology - one sees this clearly in the alignment of anti-technology sentiments which coexist with its increasingly destructive character, attacking nothing more than its superfluous appearances, and thus repeating the failures of luddism at a much more dangerous level.

What is most significant in the image of the Roman aqueducts and roads is the relation of eternal being to a transitional society. One can see in the Romans the completion of all the ends that humanism fashioned into technical measures. We exist in the substratum and can only anticipate movement, but it is there that movement is impossible - despite all appearances of a shift one approaches a standstill. For the Romans the path of transition was elevated into the highest law: gates of the underworld, the arches over which the lifeblood of the earth is returned to the pomerium, the eternal flame as the humility and danger of law, roads which do not extend the pomerium but return it to the earth forces, the elemental.

[Anonymous No.17065120]

>>17065112
In the Greek myths this is Midas and Marsyas, stories we can no longer interpret without turning into morals, allegories, symbols. The Romans do not worship the same gods but their myths are of a similar light, perhaps stronger because they never knew the Golden Age, they were born of the Heroic, or even returned it from the Iron. Empedocles leapt into the fiery volcano at his death, Rome was born of it. Man is central, but in a way that does not endanger myth creation.

We do not see in this way. We imagine machinery which is to be made invisible even as it becomes increasingly monstrous. We willingly hand over our dominion to it as an austerity measure against time - the riches shared in the last moment once being is finally revealed. Looking at old Bruegel paintings one senses that Bosch's machines have slowly begun to disappear, either because the social contract includes them in the neutralising territory or because the peasants begin to take on their form. Bruegel's Icarus as a middle territory between Socrates and Marx, an oppositional territory to the Archimedean point.

What seems to be a contradiction is that in the completion of technology our work will only increase. We are not freed by the end of modern technology, but rather conscripted into another transitional period. Thus technology cannot be the thing in itself, it is rather the very means of such thinking. To oppose technology is only a minor step away from the complete short-sightedness of economic thinking, which is really only an accommodating measure to the failure of technology (in the sense that it does not achieve its end, or that the costs become too great to bear and set themselves against infinite becoming).

Hopefully that makes sense, it's a lot to consider in short form.

[Anonymous No.17066314]

>>17064958
Funkopops

[Anonymous No.17066334]

>>17062072
high quality post

thank you, i wanna read more writings on technology

[Anonymous No.17066370]

>>17061607
WALT
THEY'RE NOT ROCKS
THEY'RE MINERALS

[Anonymous No.17066526]

>>17064628
The question concerning Technology in China is an excellent book, and definitely worth reading after Man and Technics. However it is a continuation of The Question concerning Technology by Heidegger, so I recommend reading that first. In the book he treats three millenia of philosophy on technics in east and west, in a readable professional manner. Read "cosmotechnics" as "role of technique in moral world view" and disregard all sections on Stiegler (his thesis advisor who he had to suck off)

>>17063620
Junger in The Worker imagines a great social transformation due to technology. He starts seeing technology as an inevitability, as any society that does not adapt to it will perish. Technological development destroys the warrior-aristocrat cast system as soldiers become components instead of actors. In this view he sees the coming rise of an industrial-aristocracy, as the fate of nations is decided within factories. However Workers have never learned to rule and command and therefore this transformation has to occur with a spiritual transformation, where the worker class become masters. I believe this is one of the reasons he advocates war, as a catalyst for this process. I think he sees technology as neutral, but the destruction of natural aristocracy as bad and the creation of it as good. Imo the concensus is the vision in The Worker never came to fruition. In later work (the glass bees) he laments the destruction of the warrior class and he is conflicted of its replacement by a soulless but highly efficient technocratic class. He got modern information warfare right in the 50's, which is impressive.

[Anonymous No.17066549]

>>17063727
Are these books available?

[Anonymous No.17067326]

>>17065112
>>17065120
>>17066526
Thanks a lot anons for the effort posts! Although I'm familiar with Jünger's fiction, I am not with his essays and I'm not used to this reading grid of the world. What could be a good starting point? Also do any one of you knows of he reacted to Hans Jonas' Das Prinzip Verantwortung, it was pretty big in Germany when it was published and I always thought Jünger hold more or less these views, which are deeply influenced by Heidegger (don't really know why I thought that though).

[Anonymous No.17067419]

>>17063608
>How accurate do you think the chart is for the Indian and Chinese concepts of time?
No opinion, since I would have to be familiar about those civilizations and I am not, so in their case I can only take Spengler and the chart at face value.

[Anonymous No.17067454]

>>17063608
I can hardly be called an expert on China, but I think there's something to Spengler's understanding of China. If we look at China, they have a really cool historiography. "The Spring and Autumn Period", "the Warring States", "the Wang Dynasty", "the Dong Dynasty". Space-time are broken up into discrete chunks where things operate by certain rules. The world is a certain way, and works a certain way, in the Zhuang dynasty, and then suddenly we round a corner, and it's the Pingpong dynasty, and now things are different. The Chinese Garden represents this, by literally being a collection of crafted nature scenes, each one related to, but distinct from, the last.

This is also reflected in Japanese historiography, where time is measured by the life of the Emperor. Japanese history is thus a series of discrete periods of a succession of men's lives. X is living, thus the world is like Y and works like Z. Of course, it's also interspersed with periods like the Sengoku, but these are even larger "groupings" of this sort.

[Anonymous No.17067455]

>>17061607
Spengler wants to ROOT men back into the world, where art comes from, and not make it just an idle distraction of which it became for many especially in Romanticism. He wants to do actions in the world, and not have an idle public and mind.

It is really the proper progress of the spirit.

[Anonymous No.17067584]

>>17067454
>the wang dynasty
>the dong dynasty

[Anonymous No.17067595]

Sorry baldie
T. Painter

[Anonymous No.17067646]

>>17067326
The Worker is part of a trilogy of essays with On Pain and Total Mobilisation. It's notoriously difficult but also the entry point for his entire philosophy.
His brother's work The Perfection of Technology is a great compliment, and would be a good start if you have difficulty with On Pain and Total Mobilisation. Familiarity with Plato, Tocqueville, and Schmitt would also be helpful.

[Anonymous No.17067661]

>>17061632
>artistic representation is just a shadow of a shadow, it's the least real
this is just plato yet again.

[Anonymous No.17067683]

I recently came across this bit by Junger on the topic at hand. Rough translation:
>There is not only a second religiosity; there is also a second décadence. In its first phase, décadence accelerates the catastrophe, as the finer minds tire of their responsibility and turn away from the leading disciplines. They turn to esoteric and exotic things and follow higher game drives. Huysmans' "A Rebours" is a treasure trove of this. No doubt Plato was reluctant to see the artist in his state for such reasons. Spengler follows him in this.

[Anonymous No.17067865]

>>17064741
Octavian, have you penetrated anyone yet?

[Anonymous No.17067918]

>>17067683
Great quote and suspiciously specific for the discussed topic. Also simultanously applicable to the demographic on this board using esoteric philosophy as escapism.

[Anonymous No.17067935]

>>17061607
He thought Western culture forms were complete, and that devotion to technics was the only untread path left to take for Faustian man

[Anonymous No.17068009]

>>17062343
>how Thucydides reveals the Greeks had no historical sense
can you explain this?

[Anonymous No.17068030]

>>17067683
Source?

[Anonymous No.17068189]

>>17061607
He never wanted that sitution, he loathed Mere Civilization, but he thought it was necessary since he expected that they would not have allies. Spengler would have been surprised at the resurgence of Art throughout America and Europe, but he would be very critical of its quality, probably aligning it with games and boxing matches, all the mindless pursuits of world-cities

[Anonymous No.17068258]

>>17068009
They had Figures of Description, but it was Character-based. Homer is all about the Character of Danaan Greece and their gods, while Herodotus is just a war diary. They're far more anecdotal, either itemizations or descriptions of social layouts, but not context. For example -- you may like Melville, but is Melville describing History? New Comedy is also just slave comedy with a philosophical bent. The specific distinction Spengler made was between Western explanations and Greek use of allusions. The Greeks never generalized in their use of allusions (except when discussing gods) the way we generalize in the scientific age. The Greeks therefore lived in *a continual present*. When Saint Paul arrived in Athens, he had to reintroduce them to the God of the Levant area, because they had so many different ways of looking at things, but lacked a sense for historical context.

[Anonymous No.17068432]

>>17067918
>Great quote and suspiciously specific for the discussed topic. Also simultanously applicable to the demographic on this board using esoteric philosophy as escapism.

Yes, I have been pointing out a while now that Traditionalism is basically a form of escapism for decadent middle class people, who cant manage to conquer the challenges of a modern world, who's intellectual life is far more complext then the average university educated individual could understand.

[Anonymous No.17068447]

>>17065003
retard
>>17064996
this post is correct

[Anonymous No.17068456]

>>17068258
Interesting. Thank you anon

[Anonymous No.17068585]

>>17068456
>>17068258
>>17068009
Apollonian man saw the world as a series of discrete uniform internally continuous bodies in space. But this space has no character to it, it's totally empty. Faustian Man sees the world as fields overlaid upon a 3D grid, a single point in space has some character of its own. Space to Apollonian Man only has any meaning in relation to bodies, and relations of bodies. The very idea of "dimensions" is absurd to Apollonian Man, as a dimension has some ontologically real character separate from what it is given by the bodies moving through it.

So to, then, with time. Rome is Rome, Athens is Athens, they are what they are. They can never change, merely move around in space and grow/shrink in size. Athens has always been Athens. Rather than a linear progression of events, the Greeks (and the Romans, and the coastal Semites, but NOT the Egyptians, or the interior Semites such as the Jews) just had Myths. A person, a city, whatever, had a collection of myths that described it. You can add to them, but their "order" only has any sense in relation to each other. Hercules founding the cult of the Olympians and his completion of the Twelve Labors are two totally discrete events, and while we can relate them to each other, there is no specific "distance" between the two. So to speak, Yahweh has a pocket watch going in the background, but the Olympians didn't.

This results in odd things, like the Greeks worshiping the Olympians exactly how Hercules sets down before Hercules did so, or Numa Pompilius demonstrating to Jupiter that he is the man most holy and pious and worthy of founding Roman Religion because he is the man who best adheres to the strictures of the religion that he has yet to found. The Greeks always worshiped the Olympians in the manner that Hercules set down, because they were the Greeks. The Newtonian idea of a "divine pocketwatch" is absent here. Time is unquantifiable, it's just a rough idea of "X happened, and then some time later, Y happened, and then some time later, Z happened". "Some time later" can never be expanded upon, for time isn't a "thing", it's just a manner of relation.

[Anonymous No.17068635]

>And I can only hope that men of the new generation may be moved by this book to devote themselves to sex gifs

[Anonymous No.17068651]

>>17068447
How is it correct, the guy was just listing random new technologies

[Anonymous No.17068685]

>>17066549
They're on Amazon.

[Anonymous No.17068704]

>>17068585
where do the terms faustian and apollonian come from in this context? I've only heard them used in other contexts, not relating to how one sees time

[Anonymous No.17068713]

>>17067683
So why did he convert to Catholicism...?

[Anonymous No.17068748]

>>17064654
How is it inevitable if I’m questioning it right now? I’m going to admit I have not read Spengler so maybe he answers this but I’m very unsatisfied with the answers ITT. Spengler seems to want us to devote ourselves to technics just because it’s a thing. He doesn’t provide any real justification for it and I question if he adequately illustrated if it really is simply technics which is now our only outlet.

Frankly, I used to think Spengler was really interesting and insightful but the more I ask questions about him, the more I’m left unsatisfied and highly suspicious that what he said was at all valuable. There are so many questions left unanswered and assumptions that he seemed to not have proven or thought through, it really surprises me that other people aren’t pointing this out.

[Anonymous No.17068765]

>>17064929
>He saw the west exiting its age where it had a need for art, science, and metaphysics and entering into an age of politics, war, and technics.
I think he was straight up wrong desu. Look around, do you see a modernist imperium of war and technics? Our “technics” are iPhone apps and gacha games. Spengler lived in a time where the engineering marvels that were rapidly developing were exciting, interesting, powerful, and awesome. Do you really see that today? I don’t. The 21st century obliterates his entire philosophy if you ask me.

[Anonymous No.17068812]

>>17062514
this is a very VGH moment

[Anonymous No.17068836]

>>17068585
>Rome is Rome, Athens is Athens, they are what they are. They can never change, merely move around in space and grow/shrink in size. Athens has always been Athens. Rather than a linear progression of events, the Greeks (and the Romans, and the coastal Semites, but NOT the Egyptians, or the interior Semites such as the Jews) just had Myths. A person, a city, whatever, had a collection of myths that described it. You can add to them, but their "order" only has any sense in relation to each other. Hercules founding the cult of the Olympians and his completion of the Twelve Labors are two totally discrete events, and while we can relate them to each other, there is no specific "distance" between the two. So to speak, Yahweh has a pocket watch going in the background, but the Olympians didn't.
thanks for this

>>17068585
>The Newtonian idea of a "divine pocketwatch" is absent here. Time is unquantifiable, it's just a rough idea of "X happened, and then some time later, Y happened, and then some time later, Z happened". "Some time later" can never be expanded upon, for time isn't a "thing", it's just a manner of relation.
Great allusions in myth are thus free of real historical contingencies? Or how would you view it?

[Anonymous No.17069157]

somebody do a spenglerian analysis on Evangelion pls :3

[Anonymous No.17069158]

>>17064420
i don't get it i just repeat it

[Anonymous No.17069174]

>>17068748
Technics and politics. His point was that there would be no more Beethovens. I think he may have been right.

[Anonymous No.17069184]

>>17064420
he looks like Hank from Breaking Bad whose actor once posted sex gifs as a comment on twitter, presumably because he is a boomer who was trying to search for porn

[Anonymous No.17069214]

>>17069174
I realize that. I still don’t think it answers my line of questioning.

[Anonymous No.17069224]

>>17069214
There can still be a Caesar, at least he thought there could, and other sorts of accomplishments in technical fields.

[Anonymous No.17069268]

>>17068748
That's because barely anyone on /lit/ has actually read Spengler despite constantly making threads about him. He is a historical determinist who believed in every civilization having a certain amount of finite artistic potential before exhausting itself and devolving into imitation and repetition. He is fundamentally an existentialist philosopher like Heidegger who believed the "life" of a civilization is in stark opposition to its "death", life here meaning mathematics, art, philosophy, and religion, the form languages that give a certain civilization its distinct style.

But these can only be developed up to a certain point before the fruitfulness of that civilization's way of looking at the world dries up. Once the potentiality of these form languages is actualized into the world, only the possibility of materialism is left, in the form of technology, science, and economics. Spengler says the West crossed this point in 1800 AD as Greece crossed it in 300 BC, with Wagner being the last great Western artist (in his opinion). That is why he says devotion to art these days is a pointless endeavor.

[Anonymous No.17069274]

>>17069224
>There can still be a Caesar
To what end? To assert tranny virtue signaling over the world? Spengler didn’t live to see the shitshow that is modern American Democratic politics.
>other sorts of accomplishments in technical fields
Such as? We make apps and widgets. How much of our technics is dedicated to internet technology and how much of that is porn? Show me the awesome and fearsome technical industrialization of Faustian man today.

[Anonymous No.17069283]

>>17069274
You look at the meteoric growth of the computer industry in the last 30 years and say technology is hitting a dead end?

[Anonymous No.17069303]

>>17068030
>>17067918
From "An Der Zeitmauer". It likely needs more context to make sense as he is quite critical of Spengler. Elsewhere he says this:

>We cannot therefore agree with Oswald Spengler in his call to the new generation: "to turn to technology instead of poetry, to the navy instead of painting, to politics instead of criticism of knowledge" - although one must certainly discard the superfluous before jumping. We have all had to do this, more or less reluctantly. But the poem belongs to the essence of man, not to his baggage. It remains his ID, his mark, his password.

>>17068258
>>17068585
In relation to historiography I think that Junger would basically say that Spengler cannot see the Greek relation to time, what lies behind it. Herodotus is the birth of history, but this is not history itself, it must have begun much earlier. History can only occur after the beginning of historical time. What Herodotus sees is the dawn, the wealth of a great light which penetrates a territory opening up before him - not necessarily a new territory, as we understand exploration, but one rising from within, against the old world. This is, in some sense, a defense against religiousness, rather than decline.

This experience is also of a great wealth of time, where it moves much more slowly. Not only the extent of what can be seen is increased, but also the inner light, its essence and force tied to the elemental. Herodotus sees through the eyes of a man who has lived a thousand years, but also with the brilliance of one whose remembrance is of a birth at the turn of a great century. Spengler is born of dead time, and proceeds to think through historical science, after the end of history - which prevents him from seeing the essential. Time and space for him appears vast, but in the opposite sense of Herodotus, a closing before which nothing can be approached. He applies to the Greeks the modern will to endure, and is incapable of seeing the great wealth of their relation to time.

In Hesiod we see something greater than historical time, in the myth of the ages. In it there is also its entirety, its dissipation; historical time can only appear within a single age. This is the parent of history, the great law of time. There is the infinite cycle of ages which necessitates that each may penetrate into the other without being diminished. Without this, time ceases. Homer gives us a glimpse of the origin of historical time in the image of Achilles and his Shield. He is a transitional figure, infinite becoming but also the curse of the old heroes experienced in the death of dominion, the forming constellation of an inner territory.

[Anonymous No.17069304]

>>17069268
Not that guy, but what should we do then?

[Anonymous No.17069306]

>>17069274
Just because technical accomplishment is made for "low" reasons doesn't make it less impressive.
Think about the amount of navigational techniques and inventions that were, in the end, just made in order to get curry powder from india.

[Anonymous No.17069307]

>>17069274
Well Spengler died in the 30s so it's hard to say what he would think of things now, I am just explaining his perspective and why he wrote the quote in the OP. It was an era of unprecedented technological advance, and there were many grand political designs in play.

And again there is no 'end', it's just the way the Culture necessarily develops according to a sort of metaphysical structure, like an organism that grows in a predictable pattern and then decays.

[Anonymous No.17069320]

>>17069304
Do whatever you want. It doesn't fucking matter. This whole thread is asinine.

[Anonymous No.17069322]

>>17069268
>That is why he says devotion to art these days is a pointless endeavor.
Anon, I understand that. What I’m asking why then is devotion to technics not also a pointless endeavor. Do you really see any trailblazing in the realms of technology, science, and economics? If not, why should we devote ourselves to them? Even if you do, why should we devote ourselves to them? So we build a few more skyscrapers and launch a few more satellites just before our culture dies. Why bother? He seems to think it was inevitable but there’s no good explanation as to why.

Sorry but I’m still not satisfied. I think I just need to read him. My hunch is that Spengler was shaped by the budding futurism of his time. He had a sort of industrial optimism that could’ve been found in 20th century Nazi Germany or America, but not in 21st century Germany or America. I hate to use this example but why did Mecha anime also die in the 80s? The industrial optimism is gone. We’re not going to the stars. There will be no great works of technics. We will devote ourselves to apps and widgets and VR and processed food and media as we’ve been doing for several decades now.

I don’t mean to take issue with you either. I just have to read him but also at the same time, I get less interested the more I ask questions to those who have read him.

[Anonymous No.17069341]

>>17069283
What has it accomplished?


>>17069306
In my opinion, it does. I think it would’ve in Spengler’s too but I don’t know. I don’t think the India example is a fair comparison.

>>17069307
Yeah, I get all that. I’m just asking along the lines of the OP which is like “Why did he want us to devote to technics?” I totally understand the rationale “because art is a dead end” but I don’t think that justifies devotion to technics. In fact, it seems like that might be dead too. It’s at least an idea that’s disagreeable to me personally. I’ve never had an interest in in the intricacies of modern science, technology, or engineering so perhaps I’m a biased cynic. I haven’t even read much of him either so.

[Anonymous No.17069351]

>>17069303
For us the transitional period is equal, in its extent,y to the infinite becoming of the Greeks. The extent of what they could see is a blindness for us. And where man achieves immortality in the utmost violence of law, where he passes through the nihilist phase with ease and nobility, we defend against it and only succeed in turning it into a legislation against time. The apparent eternal quality of Greek time was really only an effect of the peace in which man could pass through it, and be open to its violence. This is in all the 'petrified shadows' of the highest art. Laocoon is not cursed to a death which he endures nobly, he is returned to the earth and becomes one with it, dragged down by the serpentine as a being of the highest strength. It is the opposite movement to Cadmean Victory, the infinite which penetrates both eternal and ephemeral time equally.

By contrast we understand only the Katechon and the ticking of the clock. Time accelerates only to the degree that one wishes to conquer the eternal. In contradiction, it was the great peace before death and the ephemeral which allowed the eternal images to come forth naturally. In both Diomedes and Achilles we see that "the death of the world is in every moment." An impossible humility before time, which may also become the greatest curse.

Time is not a continual present, one can see the end of time just as well as the return to creation. Again, an idea of time formed of the mythical laws and figures, and lost in the transitional period of historical time. We wish to see a continual present, as for us it would be completion, a return to eternity from the divisions of time which we cannot overcome but only respond to with further mechanical separations.

[Anonymous No.17069364]

>>17069283
Cyberpunk 1985

[Anonymous No.17069374]

>>17069341
You seem to have a sort of existentialist disagreement with him, you are asking 'why should we do anything', for Spengler that isn't really a sensible question, religious and cultural meaning are just infused in a people inherently, and they will act it out accordingly.

[Anonymous No.17069395]

>>17069374
This seems rather lifeless, does it not? I think his protests make sense.

[Anonymous No.17069406]

>>17069395
Spengler would probably accuse people who aren't naturally animated by the desire to accomplish great things, whether in art or in technics, of being lifeless. He sees great men as being in tune with the metaphysical prime symbol of their culture, which is a sort of expression of what he calls Cosmic Beat, the underlying inherent meaning of the development of life.

[Anonymous No.17069482]

>>17069374
I do but it’s not just that. Again, I really have not read that much of him but I like to ask questions to people who have because I thought he was interesting and the more I get answers to my questions the more I get the sense that there are holes in his thinking which he simply never addressed and as a result, I find it hard to continue to find him interesting or convincing. That’s all.

[Anonymous No.17069498]

>>17069406
My objections lie with Spengler’s assessment of the landscape we find ourselves in, whether feats of technics are even still possible, or at least realistic and not with whether and why people are animated by that or not.

[Anonymous No.17069509]

>>17069406
>Spengler would probably accuse people who aren't naturally animated by the desire to accomplish great things, whether in art or in technics, of being lifeless
Or perhaps one who isn’t animated by a drive for technicals is simply not Faustian?

[Anonymous No.17069518]

>>17069482
You should just read the first volume of Decline of the West and see for yourself, it's not hard material.

[Anonymous No.17069552]

>>17069406
what would call the prime symbol of american culture?

[Anonymous No.17069553]

>>17065019
why? there is no irony if he is not german you racism obsessed mongloid.

[Anonymous No.17069561]

>>17069552
The Burger.
Trump is rightfully a Caesar and Great Man (TM).

[Anonymous No.17069570]

>>17069552
America is part of Faustian civilization, having been founded primarily by the English, and secondarily by other Faustian cultures like the Germans, Scottish, French, etc. The comparison to Rome is pretty much impossible to miss, though Spengler did not think the Faustian equivalent of the Roman empire would emerge there, but in Germany.

[Anonymous No.17069580]

>>17069570
>The comparison to Rome is pretty much impossible to make
Ftfy

[Anonymous No.17069589]

>>17069580
It's a giant military and economic empire that is culturally inferior but technically superior to its preceding locus of civilization(Western Europe for America, and Greece for Rome).

[Anonymous No.17069597]

>>17069570
>Spengler did not think the Faustian equivalent of the Roman empire would emerge there, but in Germany
Well, I think it did...

[Anonymous No.17069612]

>>17069597
Yeah it's an interesting question. I think Spengler was a bit critical of Hitler and National Socialism, but he does sort of fit the picture. I posted earlier that the interaction between Russia and Germany in the second world war may have been what Spengler would consider a disruption from an alien civilization to the natural development of the West. Maybe Hitler was intended to become the Caesar of Europe, who knows.

[Anonymous No.17069639]

>>17069283
I'm not 30 years old. It kind of is hitting a dead end. Not because there's nothing to do, though it is harder, but because the culture is spent, academics are awful and just want a closed playpit, and some other issues like corporations ruining things (pointing to the computer industry in that regard is really ironic). Overall it requires a level of intellectual spirit that we can no longer muster. Only in individuals who are what they are in spite of the culture not because of it. Indeed, they'll encounter hostility.

[Anonymous No.17069650]

>>17069612
It fits perfectly imo and the Anglo-American culture is probably something different to Faustian then in his view.

[Anonymous No.17069661]

>>17069650
Anglos are definitely a part of Faustian culture, and America is just an outpost of them and some other Faustian cultures.

>IN this book is attempted for the first time the venture of predetermining history, of following the still untravelled stages in the destiny of a Culture, and specifically of the only Culture of our time and on our planet which is actually in the phase of fulfilment - the West-European-American.

[Anonymous No.17070458]

>>17068765
You're a total mongoloid retard if you think the world of Modern tanks, jets, aircraft carriers and nuclear bombs can be boiled down to indians making iphone apps. The history of warfare for humans from forever ago to 900 Ad consisted of the developments of sharp sticks, spears, swords armor and good tactics. The first steam engine was made by a Greek in the 1st/2nd c. AD and it was a children's toy. Gunpowder was around in China because their emperors were trying different chemical formations to find an elixir of immortality, they used it for fireworks and their is one example of any weapon being made form it and it sucks ass. From 900 AD to now the Western mind has been responsible for the overwhelming majority of contributions to technics as a whole and especially in their military application. This reductionist mindset of making fun of everything might play well with other cynical retards in whatever cosmopolitan shithole you live in but it is so obviously untrue that it's mind numbing to see anyone even attempt to deny.

[Anonymous No.17070465]

>>17068748
>ow is it inevitable if I’m questioning it right now?
Are you implying that if you can question the inevitability of something then it isn't inevitable. Go "believe" it isn't "inevitable" that someone whose jumped off a bridge will hit the ground and amaze yourself as they freeze in mid air.
This is seriously bad argumentation not worthy of lit, which itself is not exactly a bastion of reasoned critique

[Anonymous No.17070499]

>>17070458
based. while retards think technics consists of sex gifs stuxnet blows out the arabs

[Anonymous No.17070602]

>>17069322
Most of your first paragraph is you wanting Spengler to tell you why the word has meaning, that's not the point it's a morphology of world history not a guidebook to finding meaning in the 21st century, a lot of those criticisms are just value judgements, if you don't want to pursue technics or find it meaningless then just... don't, you aren't required to for his ideas to remain true or even just interesting. As for the inevitable part it's been stated many times in ITT that he sees High Cultures like plants that go through phases of growth and decline, if it's the argumentation as to why he holds these beliefs that art loses value then you are correct in that you should read the book. No one can sum up a two volume tome in a lit post.

>There will be no great works of technics. We will devote ourselves to apps and widgets and VR and processed food and media as we’ve been doing for several decades now.
Maybe, but considering your criticism of Spengler is that he might have been heavily influenced by movements of his time and how things *seemed* to be going. Surely you should consider that that might be happening to you right now, and the reason you think we will be in App developer hell forever as our future is largely due to the media you consume, time you live in and people you socialize with?
Another anon already said a lot of this in fewer words when they pointed out that much of Rome's great engineering, triumphs and aqueducts came mostly after the establishment of the empire. The Colosseum began construction under Vespasian in 79 AD. Which is ~100 years from where Western civilization would place along it's own timeline (give or take a few decades). I don't mean to be rude in any way when I ask you to consider that you might have a near-sighted view of history, where we are currently and the future. It seems no anons have really gotten through to you in any way yet so hopefully you get smth out of this message, if not maybe Spengler's just not for you and you should focus on w/e else you're interested in.

[Anonymous No.17070609]

>>17070458
>they used it for fireworks and their is one example of any weapon being made form it and it sucks ass.
Congratulations, you are a retard

[Anonymous No.17070671]

>>17070458
Yeah because we’ve never had tanks before... this comment is so retarded it’s not even worth engaging. Everything that you’ve indicated has existed in their current state for fucking decades at least.

[Anonymous No.17070713]

>>17069509
This is actually a good assessment I hadn't considered. Could be true.

[Anonymous No.17070791]

>>17069661
What reasons did he give for Caesarism happening in Germany, because it seems from everything that I've read that America is the clear place for it.
t. Reading De Riencourt atm

[Anonymous No.17071164]

>>17070671
>decades at least.
Retard alert.
I'm well aware these things have been around for a while, Faustian man is far more interested in technics as a whole than other civilizations, the relationship between the West and the machine goes as far back as the first mechanical clocks in our (western man's) early history. Spengler doesn't require a new invention every decade to satisfy his claims, we are a civilization more interested in technics than any other, of that there is no doubt. As our art form plays itself out engineering, economics and technics will be what's left to pursue grand achievements in. And no 'we' haven't had tanks before, go ahead educate me on the ancient Chinese tanks you lunatic.
Is your claim that because we haven't made a grand advance in technics in the last ten years that actually we are just going to be iphone apps forever. The Iphone itself is a marvel of technics.
Now, all memes aside since I do purposefully write these posts more aggressively than necessary [and I get (you)'s so it works]. I would assume the point your making is that technics are not increasing, in fact we are slowing down our technological developments, that or you just don't like the things we are developing: "yeah rfid chips are cool, but I don't think we should force digital ID's and health passports to restrict access to areas and basic needs". In either case I agree with some of the sentiment and could see it happening. In my opinion, Caesarism is clearly on the rise in the US, and after an age of social upheaval unrest and war (foreign and domestic) then we will start seeing changes. Our nations are not incapable of great advancements in technics but are strangled by many factors, check out Ryan Faulk's Leaving the Cathedral where he talks about peer review and the bureaucracy of education. These are exactly the kinds of things a Caesar cuts down as they become centers of potential rebellion, so the guild of science gets dismantled because to stop the spread of critical theory, which ironically leads to better science since it is no longer controlled as tightly. Furthermore, I see things like Trump as leader when he was a business man/construction guy and promises of building a wall as a sign of things to come. Once Caesarism is in place and Faustian culture finishes ossification then the mega projects can begin. It is worth mentioning here the establishement of a space force and how most people who have a Faustian mindset bemoan the lack of efforts to get to space. I mean Elon Musk has gone from normal millionaire to one of the world's richest men alive and is doing all he can to develop space industry and colonize mars, that's pretty Faustian. Even Bezos is running a space company. There is a lot of potential developing in my eyes and once our social war period is over and we get our Caesar's I see those things being expanded to far greater degrees. But, this is just speculation.

[Anonymous No.17071187]

>>17071164
I missed a space in between my aggressive insults paragraphs and my genuine if total speculation paragraph and now it looks like a big wall of text that's not that readable. Dang.

[Anonymous No.17071189]

>>17071164
>Caesarism is clearly on the rise in the US
Can you explain this or did you fall for the Rubicon memes?

[Anonymous No.17071209]

>>17071164
I appreciate Musk's rocket stuff but he is a kind of sad example of 'Faustian spirit' tbqh. Also I read a fascinating book on the subject of the early mechanical clocks developed in monasteries, will see if I can find the title.

[Anonymous No.17071219]

>>17071164
>Elon Musk
OH NO NO NO

[Anonymous No.17071344]

>>17071189
Trust the plan

[Anonymous No.17071444]

>>17071189
In Spengler's thought, "Caesar" is a figure who solves an existentially unsolvable problem by radically redefining political power into his own person. Not his role, his person. In the case of Rome, this was Augustus, who solved the Pleb/Patrician divide by making it moot. That's what Caesar does: gains power IN HIS PERSON by making some dichotomy moot.

In the case of Faustian Man, it's Red State vs Blue State. You do not have to be American to be Red State or Blue State. Red State wants to be left alone. Blue State wants to tut-tut its fingers at the entire planet. If Red State gets what it wants, Blue State dies. If Blue State gets what it wants, Red State dies. Caesar will take political power (away from Red State and Blue State) and put it into himself AS A PERSON.

THE Caesar is preceeded by a succession of people increasingly trying this. This doesn't really have a single "starting point", because the transition is seamless. Who was the first big-man to try and take power in Rome? The actual structures that Augustus used to do this go back to Brutus, the FIRST Brutus, who overthrow the Tarquinii. It's the logical progression of the structure. Who was the first big-man to try and take power in the US? George Washington.

Trump isn't the first, he won't be the last. Biden is actually a return to form, and evidence that we're not actually that close to Caesar yet (he'll show up in a few decades) by NOT having a cult of personality around him. When he dies in office, we'll get plenty of YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS QUEEN SLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY, but we won't get a real cult of personality as Harris has no actual power, she's entirely powerless. Trump is a puppet, but he does have power, he's just not actually on our side.

[Anonymous No.17071453]

>spengler
>posts a picture of aleister crowley
fuck off

[Anonymous No.17071667]

>>17061632
Heidegger was the opposite

[Anonymous No.17071690]

>>17071444
I don’t see anything convincing about seeing red state vs blue state as equivalent to patrician vs pleb.

[Anonymous No.17071696]

>>17061607
Thought this was a photo of Jocko Willink for a sec

[Anonymous No.17071730]

>>17071189
He read moldbug or some other predictable person probably. The constant comparisons to Rome and drawing on Spengler are a giveaway. If you point out a flaw in their logic or thinking or ask questions they can’t answer they’ll reduce themselves to ad hominem and else just call you a retard while pointing at things which don’t actually answer the question. They make comparisons that don’t hold water but are just speculative enough to sound like maybe they’re on to something and that’s probably all it is.

[Anonymous No.17072950]

>>17071730
what's wrong with moldy?

[Anonymous No.17073175]

>>17071189
I don't think Trump is Caesar, but the idea that politics increasing revolves around people instead of parties seems to be going on. Also, I do simply believe that power tends to move toward the hands of a single individual, so I may be biased in what I infer based on how things are going. If you doubt this I'd recommend simply checking out Trump's twitter page and watching the Fight For Trump video he put out (with scenes of the military cheering him on) Fight For Trump is a pretty clear message. You can draw a clear distinction between GOPers that want to back down like always and members of their base that want to fight, and Trump/Trump's guys are clearly pandering to the latter, whether they do something, or anything at all is up for debate of course.

In terms of hard evidence see pic rel. The acceptance of political violence is increasing, this study ended in September 2020, do you think that percentage grew or shrank with a highly contentious election result with all that's happened. Do you remember in 2016 when before the election Trump was saying they might hack or steal the election, and Obama was doing the runs on tv talking about how American elections are safe, we got a secure democracy etc. Afterwards, the democratic camp took on the Russia hacked the election narrative, what can Trump do here? Say it couldn't have been hacked? Then he would have contradicted himself. Instead, neither "side" backed down, and so the hacking of an election became a real discussion in the dialogue of both parties, there was no pro-unity pro-demorcacy party. This is when I started to consider these ideas more carefully, when these ideas start to enter mainstream discussion they don't just go away.

Furthermore, Trump recently told his supporters that there will be a protest in DC on Jan 6th, told them to show up and that it will "be wild". Again, that is innocuous sure, but remember that there was not such a large group of people openly calling on him to "cross the rubicon don". If he lost in 2016, this would not have happened, we've gotten more polarized and faith in institutions has declined further, this year has shown political violence to be an increasingly normal event (something paralleled in Rome). Antifa and the Proud Boys and declining in membership, they're growing, street brawlers dedicated to low level political violence. If you believe what whoever it was that leaked a conversation heard from supreme court: "I don't give a shit we didn't have riots then" when talking avout Texas case, then you understand a simple message, violence works. If you don't believe that, well too bad, because republicans do and it is entering the public conscioussness whether you like it or not. Thus, I think that based on current trends we are heading the direction of the Roman Republic as it transitions to the Roman Empire, and I think Spengler has good ideas which is why I'm in this thread dedicated to talking about them.

[Anonymous No.17073183]

>>17071730
> If you point out a flaw in their logic or thinking or ask questions they can’t answer they’ll reduce themselves to ad hominem
>they
listen man I'm right here you can just talk to me instead of referring to me like you're talking behind my back at a high school party lmao. Despite saying that my claims don't hold water your entire post is just armchair psychology of me and my motives. If you have a problem feel free to type it out, this is a literature board after all.

[Anonymous No.17073193]

>>17072950
Honestly, nothing. I just think he’s highly predictable. He just relayed everything in American to the Roman Republic which is kind of a tired comparison and isn’t actually all that good but people don’t know enough about either America or Rome to be able to refute him publicly (note: that doesn’t mean he can’t be refuted).

[Anonymous No.17073211]

>>17071209
He is not my number 1 pick either but at this rate I'll take anything I get. I'm curious, how would you view figures like Leif Erricson, Magellan, Columbus or other explorers in their vein? Musk is a sad example of Faustian spirit but desu I would probably be overly critical of quite a few figures in our history unnecessarily. especially the ones I don't know as much about.
>>17071219
I don't like the guy personally and certainly am not part of his tesla/reddit cult. Don't lump me in with them.

That being said him having a cult and getting increasingly political on twitter.... hmmmm maybe he will be taking a more active role in a few decades? You heard it here first.

[Anonymous No.17073213]

>>17071730
The comparison to Rome comes from Spengler, not Moldbug, who is not actually that prone to Rome comparisons, since he focuses so much on the past 500 years of history being dominated by a totally new form of culture.

[Anonymous No.17073255]

>>17071444
nice trips bro, checked.

A lot of bros posting Trump Caesar memes will probably be somewhat disappointed by the coming decade. An anon posted in a thread a long time ago that it's by 2050 that Caesar will rule America. Even if Trump does something big I don't see him as the grand Caesar others think of. He would probably try and push wall and immigration and Israel bucks while attempting to shore up security of election. I vaguely remember reading that Sulla did something like this near the end of his reign where he realized how bad things were and tried to pass some laws to make it harder for military men to seize power and destroy the republic, might have been a different guy though, it's late.

[Anonymous No.17073267]

>>17073193
I'd be interested to hear your take on this issue, refute him. Most of the people I am interested in agree with him on this point and I've never seen someone make a real effort at dismissing America->Rome comparisons

[Anonymous No.17073273]

>>17073175
I forgot the pic rel

[Anonymous No.17073280]

>>17073211
Columbus was honestly a bit of an idiot. Leif Erikson and Magellan though are pretty impressive. The vikings crossing the northern Atlantic on their little longboats is one of my favorite mental images of all time, imagine them going over enormous dark swells in the night.

[Anonymous No.17073288]

>>17073280
fuark that pic freaks me out

[Anonymous No.17073294]

>>17061887
seems a load of bullshit

[Anonymous No.17073305]

>>17073288
check out the video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=gPy2DHHnlqQ

[Anonymous No.17073312]

>>17073305
look at that, there is a guy in the comment section making the exact same point about the Vikings

[Anonymous No.17073334]

>>17073305
You've sent me down a YT rabbit hole now. Love the dude's excited commentary though.

[Anonymous No.17073395]

>>17064331
decadence is a myth.

[Anonymous No.17073528]

>>17068585
What about the destruction of Troy? Does it not count because it's part of their mythological history instead of a (at the time) present entity?

[Anonymous No.17073650]

>>17069184
Lmao. Gold.
https://mobile.twitter.com/deanjnorris/status/999149383038971904?lang=en
Thanks for the origin story.

[Anonymous No.17073725]

>>17061607
It is because he was Jewish. Semitic peoples do not have the balance of reason and imagination like the Aryan (Indo-European) does. Our wealth of literary development and achievement far surpasses the forms and mimicry of the Semitic.

[Anonymous No.17073861]

>>17068765
>I think he was straight up wrong desu. Look around, do you see a modernist imperium of war and technics?
>engineering marvels that were rapidly developing were exciting, interesting, powerful, and awesome. Do you really see that today?
I think you misunderstand the point of technics. The atom bomb for example is a technic based off the idea of nuclear reactions. The refrigerator based off the concepts of fluids. But neither are particularly amazing pieces of technology since both are just conclusions of ideas already layed. This is more or less what the modern era has left for man. Also I beg you to reconsider the idea that we are not making huge strides in technics. Consider the internet, blockchains, quantum computing, solar power, rocketry, ect. Most of our technics have followed the 19th century when you think of it and his pattern has not reversed itself in any meaningful way yet. As far as war goes, the idea of the masses and annihilation wars is over, but the US has been in more years with conflicts since the end of WWII then it has not been in conflicts, they are just no longer wars of epic proportions since all meaningful states inside the west have been conquered in their sovereignty (an argument can obviously be made for states outside of the west but this is something that doesn't really concern Spengler much.)

To put this into perspective you will find that more technics you use have been thought up after Spengler's lifetime then before. Also consider that Rome never had a war that even compared to the Punic Wars till their Civil Wars of the late republic began (which I'd say we are 20-60 years off from).

>>17068704
Faustian is the myth that Spengler finds best describes the soul of the west. The Faust myth is that of a German doctor who sells his soul in return he gains infinite knowledge. Spengler claimed this is what the West longs for (the infinite and unraveling the universe's secrets) which is why this myth is so prevalent in the west. More or less the same with Apollonian. Its also a subtle nod to Spengler's two great influences Goethe and Nietzsche.

>>17068748
>How is it inevitable if I’m questioning it right now?
Spengler's ontology does away with causality. X does not cause y. He more or less uses Goethe on this point. He describes these two world views as the world as nature and the world as history. He extensively covers this in the first volume of decline of the west. In summary world as nature is are your Kants, Aristotles, and Newtons. People who set up universal laws that causality is necessary for. This implies something is following rules set out to it. Which in turn means it is dead. Spengler says this does not work for observing high cultures because they are alive. He says we need a morphological look at the culture which would require us to not apply laws to things that are causal but look at how similar organism have developed. Thus the reason why things are "inevitable" is because death is.

[Anonymous No.17073957]

>>17071730
>He read moldbug or some other predictable person probably. The constant comparisons to Rome and drawing on Spengler are a giveaway
Moldbug never read Spengler (his work may be good if he did) moldbug is ontological a realist where as Spengler is an anti-realist (one is anglo the other German so no surprise there) so the two are nearly incomparable. Also as pointed out besides an off hand remark that the US is part of the west but removed entirely from western form (basically Spengler saying fuck the US) Spengler never talks of the US in decline of the west. It is incident that the US is the Rome of the west not destiny. To Spengler destiny is the necessity of a high culture to go through its morphological life cycle and the touching upon these forms in its time. Incident is who or what does these things. The Caesar still may arise in Europe, but this is looking unlikely but can happen. There is no destined location where a Caesar will arise only that he will.
>>17072950
I hate Moldbug's ontology. Also his ideas are not universal and are limited to our time frame. His tracing back Marxism to Christianity is cute but that is like saying Man came from Lizards. Rather meaningless if you have read Spengler. Lastly is ideas of the Cathedral may be true (may not) but it doesn't' tell us where to head. It is basically an alternative to third positionism that doesn't have much substance (not that I don't think we need alternatives to it, but that I think its so flimsy that it doesn't work).
>>17071690
They are analogous. This again draws upon Spengler's idea of world as history for which if you want a better idea of read >>17073861 because its true that other then them being two factions that want to fucking murder each other have almost no similarities. A way to think about the analogous organs is the lung and the gills of a fish. The evolutionary part of the finish that became the lung was not the gill but a different organ. But both server to give the organism a supply of O2. Similarly, even if the organs of the culture (the two factions) have almost no similarities outside that they are two main parties inside the culture they both serve an analogous role in so far that they are two parties with ideologies that lead the culture to an unsolvable problem while they both exist. Another good way to think about this is they are different fruits of different trees. Both cannot be compared for the contents of their being but can be in relation to the organ they represent between the two.

[Anonymous No.17074024]

>>17073957
Moldbug has exactly one great insight, which is a kind of mirror image of Gramsci: the semi-autonomous institutions that Gramsci thought perpetuated the bidding of Capital Moldbug identified as their own vector of power, the cultural forces in academia, the press, the bureaucracy, etc. as a memeplex(idea taken from Dawkins), which exerts its own structural tides on history. This is genuinely interesting, and Moldbug should be commended for it as well as his championing of people like Nock, Froude, Carlyle, Pobedenostsev, he did a great thing by introducing skepticism and obscure texts to a generation of kids reading his blog. But his idea is not actually an exhaustive analysis of power as it really is, and since he is Yarvin he has shied away even more from that subject.

Spengler is an entirely different beast. I've already posted about him itt, and about 1000 times on this board, so I won't say anything but that he introduces a very interesting and profound mindset, but he is clearly not a totally accurate mystic reading the signs of reality.

[Anonymous No.17074075]

>>17074024
>the semi-autonomous institutions that Gramsci thought perpetuated the bidding of Capital Moldbug identified as their own vector of power, the cultural forces in academia, the press, the bureaucracy, etc. as a memeplex(idea taken from Dawkins), which exerts its own structural tides on history
I'm not exactly sold on it though I admit its an intresting idea.
>he is clearly not a totally accurate mystic reading the signs of reality
I agree with this to a point mostly because many of those who are commenting on Spengler have not read him and still assume the world as nature as a side effect. That said I think if you take the Spenglerian model as it should be its predictive power is very high even if due to the analogous comparisons a world as history would require make it not as easy for one to find exactly how every little event in a culture will unfold.

[Anonymous No.17074113]

>>17074075
I think Moldbug is a really smart guy(he's certainly smarter and better-read than me), but I also think he is ironically brainwashed by several beliefs we could contribute to his 'Cathedral'. I still think he is a fundamentally decent person, because he used to allow antisemites to post on his blog comment section, and he is totally against any antisemitism. That to me is the sign of a naturally charitable mind even though he didn't really properly respond to certain antisemitic posts in the comment section. I simply respect anybody that doesn't censor or block but responds, that is the deepest quality of virtue that exists in discourse, especially if your response tries to understand your opponent and reason with him, rather than insults or distractions. I'm not even particularly antisemitic myself, I have like Kant levels of it rather than Hitler, I just appreciate that he did that.

And my main problems with Spengler are his descriptions of the meaning of art, and his bias towards Germany. Otherwise he was bizarrely accurate, to the point that I took him very seriously as a teenager and really examined the possible implications of his system.

[Anonymous No.17074145]

>>17074113
To be clear I have not issue with Moldbug I just dislike most of his intellectual contributions and think they hold back many people from finding more meaningful systems. I think he has a unique angle even if I think what he has read which informs him ontologically is rubbish but I am a fan of his pet project (orbit) so much so that I've put some money behind it (I also go on /biz/ regularly so I'm a fan of blockchain's implications in general).
>bias towards Germany
Agreed Spengler is a Prussiaboo to an annoying degree.
>descriptions of the meaning of art
Which parts? Curious since I think this is an underrated criticism of Spengler.

[Anonymous No.17074190]

>>17074145
I think Moldbug is actually creating the sort of fascists he doesn't want to exist, he makes people question things, and they really don't stop at 'jew'.
>spengler is a prussiaboo
yeah he is, he might have had some point to it, Hitler does evince it, as we've said itt, though he didn't like hitler, etc
>>descriptions of the meaning of art
>Which parts? Curious since I think this is an underrated criticism of Spengler.
I don't believe in Spengler's system, the metaphysical pattern he associated with the prime symbol I think exists in everything. He is right that the great cultures are a different level of hiererachy than the tribes, but they are all 'cosmic beat' as he terms it.

[Anonymous No.17074228]

>>17074190
>fascists
>more meaningful
I'm not a fascist and I think Fascism overall is also a bad system.
>associated with the prime symbol I think exists in everything
Extrapolate.

[Anonymous No.17075347]

>>17066370
Based and henkpilled

[Anonymous No.17075370]

>>17061910
bbased

[Anonymous No.17075544]

>>17068836
How much times passes in between the slaying of the Ceryneian Hind and the slaying of Hippolyta? Not only can we not know, but it's an irrelevant question. Twelve events occurred. We know that some of the had to happen in a certain order. These events are related to Hercules. They have no independence from Hercules (and, if there are other characters in the myth, those other characters). They are, so to speak, "inside" the body of Hercules. But there is no "where" in a body, everything just sits inside the body, as if it were intangible. It all takes up the entire volume of the body. Bodies are discrete, uniform, internally continuous. We humans put the order to the events, to the things in a body, but that's just a human doing. Apollonian Man saw time as a series of events, an order, but that is it. Time is just a means of making sense of events, it doesn't have any ontological reality to it. Events, like bodies, only have meaning in relation to each other. The Bibliotheca of Pseudo-Apollodorus is an attempt at creating a unified chronology of myth, and it openly admits that this doesn't actually work. You CAN'T put a specific date to Classical myths, at best you can say that certain events occurred within X number of years from each other.

Faustian Man, however, sees the world as a 3D grid overlaid with an infinite number of fields (a field is a mathematical construct that gives a certain value or values to every point in space) while a divine pocketwatch ticks in the background (this is actually a type of field, but ignore that). The Crusades happened at specific dates, the Norman Invasion happened on a specific date, and a man landed on the moon on a specific date. Events are not defined by their relation to each other, but rather by their value assigned by the specific pocketwatch (in terms of time; spatially, they are defined by their place on the 3D grid and the values assigned by the fields). Time has an ontological reality to it, as much as place. This ontological reality means that it exists independent of things occurring at that time.

>>17073528
I would argue that the Trojan War does not actually involve Apollonians. It's why they're able to destroy Troy. To Apollonian Man, destruction of a body just doesn't compute. That's sort of what makes it such a tragedy. You can rearrange, you can shrink, you can grow, but you can't destroy. This is why the Romans end up adopting Magianism, precisely so they can mash Carthage into a fucking pulp and salt the earth. You cannot run an empire (for long) on Apollonian thinking.

[Anonymous No.17075586]

>>17073957
Moldbug doesn't argue that Christianity comes from Marxism, but rather that Marxism and Social Justice (alongside Prussian Socialism) trace their heritage back to Calvinism, albeit through two (three with Prussian Socialism) independent branches. This is just a simple fact, and I don't really see how one could argue against this without doing mega low-church fundie copes about dastardly orientals posing as THE QUEEN OF ENGLAND importing HINDUISM or whatever. Moldbug isn't the first to come up with this, this has been known since... Well, really, since Calvin himself. As usual, Moldbug's most important role in this is just collecting a bunch of books that discuss this (go read Albion's Seed if you seriously believe these ideas just come about in a vacuum).

>>17074024
I've long said that Moldbug is only useful for the Cathedral which takes Gramsci's totally worthless and patently absurd ideas of "Hegemony" and makes them useful, and bibliographies. Everything else that he says that is true, can be found elsewhere, and everything else that he says is false, is wrong anyways so who cares that Moldbug said it.

[Anonymous No.17075970]

>>17069268
My nigga. I encounter you in every Spengler thread, and you're the only one who has actually read him lol.

[Anonymous No.17075992]

There are a few good, well read spengler posters here but I will say a few things to straighten the record. The guy who said an African can be a Chinese person through spirit is a fucking idiot. Spengler himself highlighted the need to be White European in Hour of Decision. Thus bringing race into a core identity metric.

Secondly, his argument for technics and ventures are because of the exhaustion of Faustian creativity. He holds up Rhodes as an example of the Great Civilisation-Faustian man. As one anon rightly pointed out, Elon is this spirit in enterprise, a focus on technics, discovery, and domination. Just because you think he is cringe does not mean he doesn't embody the spirit of the Faust yearning for infinity.

He was also extremely fond of Mousillini, which gives his perspective on political leanings. He did not abide by Hitler's methods but was already disgusted by Soviet Russia to the extent we know he would have detested Stalin's USSR. And we also know he considered America Faustian.

Unfortunately for the Occident, the barbarians are already inside the gates. So our Caeser will likely have been born or will be in the next few decades.

[Anonymous No.17076004]

>>17070791
>t. Reading De Riencourt atm
where the hell did you get his books?

[Anonymous No.17076480]

>>17075992
Musk is a glownigger operation. Nothing more.

[Anonymous No.17076512]

>>17068432
dude i love the hustle and bustle of the city...

[Anonymous No.17076541]

>>17076480
The act of becoming the founder of a colony on Mars is Faustian epitomised you cretin.

[Anonymous No.17076566]

>>17076541
Let me know when he founds a colony on Mars then

[Anonymous No.17076573]

>>17075992
>He was also extremely fond of Mousillini
Does this not speak to the idea mentioned above that Spengler was a futurist and probably looked at everything through that lens, correctly or incorrectly?

[Anonymous No.17076588]

I just can’t take any of this stuff seriously when anons start pointing to Republicans vs Democrats or Elon Musk as evidence of Spengler’s claims. They only seem more and more ridiculous the more he’s talked about.

[Anonymous No.17076593]

>>17076541
>thinking you're going to Mars
All you'll get is MAD votes on reddit.

[Anonymous No.17076640]

>>17076004
https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Caesars-Amaury-Riencourt-ebook/dp/B00HPB57N2/
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0907855032/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i7
https://www.amazon.com/Soul-China-Amaury-Riencourt/dp/B0014Q3OA2

[Anonymous No.17077107]

>>17076588
why?

[Anonymous No.17077335]

>>17069303
>>17069351
Bumping for visibility since this may be the first time Junger's book has been discussed on this board.

[Anonymous No.17077344]

https://youtu.be/48DsupaVgoM

[Anonymous No.17077584]

>>17062343
>Spengler literally discusses this in the beginning of his book, of how Thucydides reveals the Greeks had no historical sense etc.


that´s bullshit, i don´t remember the name of the person but there was one greek writer who express insecurity about the possibility of his works that might be forgotten by time

[Anonymous No.17077666]

>>17064929
>and not art since the likelihood of you joining the western cannon of art is near zero (rebuttal can be made regarding film but I'd say that time is now over as well.)

this, i don´t care what he says, i´m sure as hell i´m going to devote myself to art, no matter what, i will try my best to give them depth, artistic value and by doing that, achieve my true will

[Anonymous No.17077713]

>>17076004
I've made a guide, follow these steps and you can discover the hidden secrets

[Anonymous No.17077722]

>>17077107
I think it’s nonsense. More and more Spengler seems like historical-philosophical astrology. It’s all so vague relativistic that you can basically apply it to anything if you really wanted to but that doesn’t make it true. I agree with the critique here.

[Anonymous No.17077767]

>>17076541
Even if he didn't succeed it would still be a very clearly Faustian desire and he is going out of his way to make it happen. Cringe/ironry bros on this board just can't engage with something on a real or intellectual level.

>>17076588
>Omg, like, are you like, like, totally being, like, serious right now, oh my gosh elon musk cringe cringe cringe.
Spengler writes about Cecil being an example of civilizational-Western man as other anon has pointed out. Read up on his "I would annex the stars if I could" quote. To say that Elon isn't currently engaged with that mindset and view is absurd. If you can't take these ideas seriously by all means write up how wrong everyone ITT is compared to your superior above-it-all knowledge. You won't of course, instead you decided to make a nonsense post where you dismiss out of hand ideas when you could've engaged with them.

[Anonymous No.17077771]

>>17073211
>>17073280
>>17073288
>>17073305
>>17073312
I just realised this exact imagery was used in the Ranger's Apprentice series I read as a kid.

[Anonymous No.17077821]

>>17077722
I mean he makes quite a few very specific predictions like the fall of the soviets and the time that will happen (because it's an alien form to Russian man) and the reemergence of orthodoxy in Russian society, both of which he gets right and at the right time as well. Also, there is no way you can apply ideas like Caesarism in a relativist fashiion the way people do with newspaper horoscopes, either the Western world is competing soldier emperors and democracy is a thing of the past within the timeline he lays out, or that doesn't happen. There are pretty clear conditions for him being right or wrong about the future. If you believe in Liberal democracy being the end of history or dialectical materialism then it's pretty easy to compare these ideas and see which one more accurately reflects the past century. A century form now it would also be fairly simple to look back on the 2000's and see who 'got it right'. Will we be in a utopian anarcho-communism/capitalism system? Empire led by a Caesar figure? liberal democracy continued? Seems like very straightforward conditions to measure the accuracy of these various ideas on history to me.

[Anonymous No.17077980]

>>17075586
>This is just a simple fact, and I don't really see how one could argue against this
In your defensiveness you completely fail in the realm of reading comprehension. Please re-read what I critique Moldbug regarding this point since your points are moot regarding everything I say.
Know what I'll explain it since I can tell your a midwit and it pisses me off when people jump in and try to throw words in my mouth. Moldbug is dumb regarding his tracing pack of Marxism to Christianity because like saying man descends from lizards its an obvious conclusion when you consider the prime symbols and the culture in which both modern conceptions derive from. Its cute but pointless if you read Spengler and in fact is frustrating given its not that Christianity and Marxism are related in ideas by that both are related to the Faustian soul image. This in turn makes Moldbug's claim regarding this point stupid not because the two are not related (what you thought I was saying which I do not deny) but because their is a variable in which he misses which makes his analysis dead wrong. Humans did not come from modern lizards, but both organism had a common ancestor.

>>17077666
To also be fair Spengler would say this only applies for the west. If you live in Japan or the Slavic world this point doesn't apply to you. But again if your content to not be a "great man" in terms of history there is no point in taking what Spengler said into consideration.

[Anonymous No.17078028]

bois, there´s still time left to create Great Works of Art and BTFO Spengler once it for all,
Who´s With Me?

[Anonymous No.17078043]

>people still take Spengler seriously

[Anonymous No.17078058]

>>17078043
I don’t after this thread

[Anonymous No.17078120]

>>17078058
Why not

[Anonymous No.17078127]

>>17074024
>But his idea is not actually an exhaustive analysis of power as it really is

read Chapter 4 from his book Nihilistic Prince then

[Anonymous No.17078159]

>>17075544
>It's why they're able to destroy Troy. To Apollonian Man, destruction of a body just doesn't compute.

mmmm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Thebes#Destruction_of_Thebes

[Anonymous No.17078189]

>>17077584
You mean Herodotus? He not only wanted the fame of the Greeks to be remembered, but also that of the barbarians. This is, as I said above, the vastness of a new vision made possible as a new dawn rises. It was the wealth of time which gave the Greeks their depth of vision, for them the perfection of art frees being from divine law, theomorphism, as Goethe said. Later it will only be the faithful, the magical, the historical and personal, then the experiential and finally technical. What Spengler misses, but Junger points to, is that the technical, in its modern sense, is wholly an artistic endeavour. What lies behind it is the becoming of a new form of man in complete opposition to historical figures, and in which greatness is impossible. Spengler's historiography merely represents the rapid nature of decline within particular types, the substratum of time as the age falls from the era. One may think of the quality of a forge derived from either lava or mined coals, the weapons do not hold the same quality in the latter workshop production, there can be no gods there. Charcoal heats to the maximum, but also cools to a hand touch almost immediately. This highlights the power of the vulcanic image, and perhaps why the Romans returned the Greek relation to nature, the mountainous, and the oceanic inwards, to the vast territory, underworld formations, the volcanic mountains.

Goethe said of the Greeks that they could never have represented in sculpture Hera with the cow, or a goddess nursing a child. This not only indicates a piercing vision of the elements, how each held a forceful dominion even as it was carved into a morphological image, but that they understood the heightened danger of the fall of gods to historical time. Theomorphism did not lessen this danger, if anything the sense was only increased, and the relation was something other than mercy, which we see in the Christian relation to God. This is perhaps the caesura of Homer's greatness, the violence of law in which the gods descend into the world and mortality, face their own destruction - an almost impossible task without falling to hubris. Homer begins to see the whole of what came before just as Herodotus saw the whole of a new form of time.

For the Greeks there was a sense of timelessness, but not to the degree that they could not see outside of the state, nor their 'era'. This may be clarified in the very founding of the cities, as in Athens which is not a singular entity as some have suggested. The founding of Athens is a conflict between Athena and Poseidon, an order of civil war founded from within divine laws. The sense of time encaptured in such an understanding of law and fate is almost impossible for us to imagine, and it is a contradiction, much like Zeno's paradoxes or Plato's Third Man. All war must also be a civil war, just as war must be kept in time with peace.

[Anonymous No.17078207]

>>17078189
This is the question, does Spengler's morphology approach anything resembling Goethe's? Perfection, for Goethe, exists where the parts are differentiated, in a freeing state, from the creation. The parts become less similar the more that the creation approaches its perfection, yet the parts are subordinated in the sense of a totality. One may think of a fruiting tree, or the most wonderful pinecones: in this there is greatness set almost entirely apart from the creation, yet of its being. The unfolding fern, or flower, is a similar image to this process which we may see at the given hour of its season.

The perfection of Greece may be understood in this way also, it was the great differentiation which bordered on that of a civil war which gave the entire national character a sense of freedom - the light extends into our own age, perhaps even overwhelms it, as Holderlin feared. In Sparta, opposed gods, customs, and laws to those of Athens. The exile of one city-state could be a hero in another, just as the heroes of each era would have been seen as foreigners in time (Pindar's opposition to Homer). This is perhaps Nietzsche's difficulty, one who thinks in suprahistorical time, the city-state of lions who would only destroy one another; as if Greece could have ever been built by Alcibiades figures. Spengler's vision is even more impoverished, seeing little more than the technical constructions, the substratum. Junger says that he cannot see the forest for the trees, but considered as a whole he sees what closely resembles a dead forest of stumps that may never regrow.

The entire wealth of Greece is lost where one sees only its symbols, especially when constructed under a second-order totality, or monism. This methodology is a pyrrhonism in reverse, constructing a fata morgana of a city-state which still plays by leviathanic rules.

[Anonymous No.17078219]

>>17077980
>Its cute but pointless if you read Spengler and in fact is frustrating given its not that Christianity and Marxism are related in ideas by that both are related to the Faustian soul image. This in turn makes Moldbug's claim regarding this point stupid not because the two are not related (what you thought I was saying which I do not deny) but because their is a variable in which he misses which makes his analysis dead wrong

what about this quote? i think it relates to what Moldbug says about the origins of progressivism and social justice

[Anonymous No.17078249]

>>17077980
>To also be fair Spengler would say this only applies for the west. If you live in Japan or the Slavic world this point doesn't apply to you. But again if your content to not be a "great man" in terms of history there is no point in taking what Spengler said into consideration.

what´s the measure of being a great man of history for you? Carlyle himself put the figure of the poet as someone who can be considered a great man of history too, either way, i think the mark of being great knows no bound to the historic timeline in which someone lives, sure they may be a trend like Spengler implies but it is not the golden rule

[Anonymous No.17078288]

>>17078189
>You mean Herodotus?

Theognis of Megara

He was the first Greek poet known to express concern over the eventual fate and survival of his own work[1] and, along with Homer,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theognis_of_Megara

[Anonymous No.17078291]

>>17061887
This is completely untrue, and anybody that has ever read any of the Greeks would know immediately

[Anonymous No.17078568]

>>17063339
learn some philosophical terminology you hopeless bastard

[Anonymous No.17078587]

>>17062343
>>17062125
Kill youirself subhuman trash. Try actually reading the Greeks you piece of shit.

[Anonymous No.17078697]

>>17061887
If you're looking for a serious answer: architecture.

[Anonymous No.17078754]

>>17078120
Because the anons here are asking good questions and offering critique which the readers of Spengler apparently cannot address because Spengler didn’t address it. No doubt some of it is useful but most of it seems not so much.

[Anonymous No.17078771]

>>17078028
1000 years of chaos? Really?

I’m with you btw

[Anonymous No.17078783]

>>17078028
George Lucas
Oops, sold out to Disney.

[Anonymous No.17078789]

>>17078028
>>17078771
Don't worry. Technology will speed things up a bit. Also, we will be meeting other civilizations, though we're but ants to them.

[Anonymous No.17078835]

>>17078754
Lol there's definitely only one or two here who gave actually read Spengler

[Anonymous No.17078843]

>>17078789
Doubt it. 'we' meaning the Chinese? The us is in terminal decline

[Anonymous No.17078861]

>>17078754
Which posts are you talking about specifically, what question has not been addressed

[Anonymous No.17078875]

>>17078028
kek what a shit meme. I knew Spengler was shit when some dude said he predicted mass transit.

[Anonymous No.17078881]

>>17078835
I don't know why you all keep saying this, and then not being specific. It's not like Spengler's ideas are hard to understand, or Decline is a difficult book. He spends a great deal of its pages basically repeating himself about the comparisons between the cultures. The basics of his system, the prime symbol, the predictable patterns of growth and decay, etc. have all been stated in the thread, what are you referring to when you say people are misrepresenting him?

[Anonymous No.17078939]

>>17078881
No one's misrepresenting him. It's just there's only a few here who have read him, and they're the same ones who always post in Spengler threads. I mean no criticism of them though

[Anonymous No.17079138]

reading this thread you can see Spengler making broad strokes in order to differenciate classical western culture with modern western culture, he may be onto something with his description but nonetheless you can see the biased nationalism that blinded him, the fact that the faustian man can still identify values and virtues of ancient greek and rome and embraced them tells you that it isn´t as foreign (culture, ideas, society, sports, military) as Spengler wanted you to think it is

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByvtBQoCbGE

[Anonymous No.17079209]

>>17068812
what does vgh mean?

[Anonymous No.17079218]

>>17068812
what is vgh?

[Anonymous No.17079251]

>>17078861
There’s multiple - his seemingly relativistic thinking, the sort of vague classifications that can really be applied to anything, whether you should devote ourselves to technics and if so why, whether were even still in age of technics, whether any of his historical analysis is even accurate, etc. There’s so many. Some anons have said that’s because they’re not reading him and that’s probably true but they’re not really giving good answers either. Elon Musk? Give me a break. The more people talk about Spengler the more I’m just not interested in what he had to say desu.

[Anonymous No.17079266]

>>17079251
Why would anyone care about your opinion of someone you haven't even read

[Anonymous No.17079313]

>>17079266
I don’t care if you value my opinion in the slightest.

[Anonymous No.17079322]

>>17079313
You have posted like 5 times in this thread about you're just not interested in Spengler, nobody gives a shit

[Anonymous No.17079337]

>>17079322
I have not retard. I responded to the anon and then the anon who asked me why as a follow up. You’re upset I don’t like your Spengler waifu or something. Fuck off if you don’t like it.

[Anonymous No.17079345]

>>17079337
Keep filling us in on your very interesting opinions on people you haven't read

[Anonymous No.17079366]

>>17079345
Go away retard. You’re doing a poor job of vindicating the guy.

[Anonymous No.17079404]

>>17077980
I'd recommend reading Spengler, and going and finding a summary of Moldbug's thought (there's zero point in reading through all of Moldbug's stuff unless you're harvesting book recs), it's pretty clear that you aren't really aware of what he's getting at and are just running of off LE DECLINE memes. It's a big book, I don't blame you for not tackling it, though. Check out Albion's Seed while you're at it. Ideas don't just spring up out of the ether (Spengler would laugh at you for your belief that they do).

>>17078249
Thank you for this, but he hasn't read Spengler, and next thread will be back pitching a fit about how Spengler is a post-modernist or whatever.

>>17079251
Given that we live in an age in which philosophy and art are dead, why would it shock you that men like Musk, materialists whose only goals in life are getting into the history books for making the biggest toy, the biggest numbers, the biggest machines, start cropping up? All of Rome's aqueducts, colosseums, arenas, roads, walls, and theaters were built when they were in their winter period. Musk is just one of many. Even Trump, who made his fortune and fame for being BIG SKYSCRAPER MAN BIG BUILDING WOWEEEEE, is an example of this. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, these are also men of an age of technics. Spengler is saying to devote yourself to technics precisely BECAUSE it is an age of technics. No one will remember the artist or poet of today, but they will remember Musk and his big machines. You want meaning? Go build a big machine. That's how you get meaning now.

[Anonymous No.17079505]

What interests me most is how's much better East Asian civilizations are at technics than the West, in some respects. E.g. NYC Subway barely works while Seoul's is automated and nfc integrated and still growing. That the West has lagged behind, though admittedly the center of innovation still lies within it for now.

For China, specifically, I've read recent analysis that the era of Deng Xiaopings pragmatic economic liberalism is decidedly coming to a close, especially as we see things like Xi stopping the IPO of Ant group just cuz he can more or less.

So the question becomes: has the east become Faustian, as the world itself too may become? Is globohomo capitalism not the logical conclusion of Faustian technics, where all is considered solely on value and all else falls away? Is China schizoid right now because it cannot accept the program, and is returning back to their usual ways?

[Anonymous No.17079519]

>>17079505
China is still Chinese, the West is still Faustian. The trains being shit in NYC has nothing to do with Spengler's thought. It's easy to think of technics in terms of things like trains, but consider the internet, consider the stock exchange, consider the telephone.

As others have said, Spengler's ideas have nothing to do with things like efficiency. The trains are shit in NYC because the people in charge want it to be that way, for the same reason that half of China is inhabited by literal subsistence farmers. China was under pressure to become Faustian when the Republic of China was a thing. Mao kept that from happening, and ensured it stayed Chinese.

[Anonymous No.17079603]

>>17078219
It relates to the point I'm portraying, that is both are related because EVERYTHING in the west is related as far as ideas go. Christian theology of the spring is the foundations for everything. Its true, but its not an interesting statement unless you understand the prime symbol idea Spengler lays out. Which is why this quote is often times used incorrectly.
>>17078249
For Spengler its someone who makes the most of his time and place. If your end goal is to produce art in an age where it'll be impossible for your art to become part of the western cannon you will not be a great man because you ignore where the potential of the Faustian soul currently lies (within the fields of politics, technics, and money). Elon in a great man of history because he is tapping into this field. Similarly, Hideaki Anno is a great man of history by Spengler's analysis due him producing great art in an age of summer where everything is about art and form. But its not just doing things in the right time but doing things in which the soul of a culture wishes to express in its potential. For example if Mozart were to have made statues he would not be a great man of history even if he was making art in an age of true form. Because the west had no need for the art of statues. This is the opposite of the Greco-Roman soul who had no need for music but had every need for sculpture. To Spengler this is what makes great men of history.
>>17079404
>I'd recommend reading Spengler
Bro get the fuck out, I've read Decline of the west 4 times. I'd recommend you read over the first volume again if you cannot understand the ideas I'm putting forth.
>Ideas don't just spring up out of the ether
Where the hell did I say this? I said that the relation between Christianity and Marxism is more complex then the genealogy that Moldbug puts forward even if both are obviously related to the culture's morphology. Please instead of being a snob (a midwit action) of saying anyone who doesn't agree with my exact ideas hasn't read Spengler. Because hell, maybe I'm getting something wrong, but what is more likely is you are. But neither of us will know since your not extrapolating. Hell with your own shitty takes I'm not even sure that you have read him once either.

[Anonymous No.17079666]

>>17079603
>Hideaki Anno is a great man of history by Spengler's analysis due him producing great art in an age

i´m sorry but i can´t take you seriously now, so if i follow this logic, Stanley Kubrick wasn´t great but Anno was?

[Anonymous No.17079676]

>>17079603
>Hideaki Anno is a great man of history

https://youtu.be/QT13kk8HDDo

[Anonymous No.17079747]

>>17079666
>>17079676
Lets start from the ground up, do you agree that Japan is a high culture?
If no then I can spoonfeed you through that.
Then is Japan in its cultural Summer?
If no then I can walk you through that.
If yes then is Anno's work expressing the inner soul image of Japan?
If yes then he is by Spengler's definition a great man of history.
If not then you haven't read Spengler.

Which of the following do you disagree on.

[Anonymous No.17079766]

>>17079747
>Lets start from the ground up, do you agree that Japan is a high culture?

no

>Then is Japan in its cultural Summer?

no

>If not then you haven't read Spengler.

no, i haven´t, that´s why i´m questioning your stance on art and artistic endeavor in times of decline, weeb-fag

[Anonymous No.17079798]

>>17079603
>>17079747
>marxism has no relation to christianity and just came from nowhere
>no really bro ive read a >1000 page book series four times and got literally nothing from it
>no really despite spengler literally saying that race and religion doesnt matter christianity is somehow intrinsically tied to faustian man in a way that islam isnt to magian man
>hideaki anno is a great man of the west because he is summer despite us being in winter
No, actually, I take that back. PLEASE don't read Spengler. He's boring. Go find something more interesting to do with your time, don't waste it here with us. Go hang out at /v/, the pretty lights are more your game.

[Anonymous No.17079828]

>>17079747
>Japan is a high culture

[Anonymous No.17079954]

>>17079798
1. Fuck you too.
2. I've never said that Christianity is tied to western man wtf (I have said that it christianity's forms in which speak to the infinite are ways the Faustian soul express its soul image.)
3. Japan is a high culture independent and separate from the west similar to how Rome had control of the Megian world in its infancy (though Japan is in its summer).
Please learn English, it may help. I see that your issue is reading comprehension more then anything else so I'd recommend you retake grade school.
>>17079828
>>17079766
I see that I'll have to work my way up from the start on this one and I'll need to write an effort post regarding this. I do not blame you for your skepitism though, I generally speaking dislike Japan and Anime but I'll give them credit where I think its due.

Let me begin with the a point many claim but I disagree with. That is Japan being a dead culture (either Fellaheen or outright Chinese in its soul image). Japan if it was Chinese in its soul image we would expect it to have its story being re-told in an imperium of barbarism again and again. This has not been the case even with my limited knowledge of Japan I know that they have transitioned political forms over time rather then been in a petrified winter form of repeating Chinese-esc dynasties (China's own take on its family politics of winter.)

So Japan lacks this so is it Fellaheen? Well not really we only need look at its neighboring Pacific Islands to see Fellaheen. They are timeless and without form Japan has form, and arguably very strict form today. But does it have a pattern to its form, a prime symbol? Yes there is a continuity to Japanese art in which is the Japanese prime symbol, I'm not a huge weeb or very scholarly in Japanese media so I cannot put it into a single word (most of my research has to do with meso-America) but it has to do with the inner self and identity. The Chinese man lets nature guide him (his Tao) western man seeks out infinite space alone to subjugate it to his will. Japanese man has no need for either and instead seeks to find himself. But this differs from Indian man in so far as Japanese man does this in a worldly medium.

I'm also not the only Spenglerian scholar who thinks this is the case, Sam Huntington also believed this to be the case.

I'll go more into the other two in a separate post.

[Anonymous No.17080116]

>>17078771
Can someone whose read Spengler talk about this. As far as I know there is no "years of chaos" in Spengler. In fact, the civilization can endure essentially forever until it gets swallowed by other cultures or fellaheen. How could 1K years of chaos be guaranteed when Spengler himself uses India and China as examples of ossified civilizations that are still going. No 1000 years of chaos there. I think this chart just has a minor mistake but I'll defer to someone more knowledgeable if they want to address it.

[Anonymous No.17080121]

>>17079603
You haven’t read moldbug. He never makes a claim about Marxism and Christianity - what he makes is a claim about the relationship between liberal progressivism and mainline Protestantism. Marxists aren’t the people who control the the universities, the civil service, the ngo’s, the media and the education system: it’s liberal progressives who do, and the ideology they uphold to maintain and control the modern structures is merely an outgrowth and replacement of the religious Protestantism they no longer believe in

[Anonymous No.17080126]

>>17079954
>Please learn English, it may help.
Not that Anon, but it is obvious English is your secondary language.

[Anonymous No.17080159]

>>17079138
I think he addresses this in a later work but hopefully someone else can jump in and confirm because I'm not sure if I'm mixing that up with someone else I've read who made the point I'm about to reiterate.

Apollonian man and Faustian man are similar, they have a large geographical overlap as well as West being being born out of the death of Apollonian man. Also, there is a closer genetic bond between them than others. It doesn't surprise anyone here that Faustian and Apollonian man are closer to each other than either is to Mesoamerican man for example, though I don't know how much Spengler wrote on this and why that is. I would argue shared history, geography and genetics would lead to them having many similarities compared with other farther away civilizations in place, time and biology.

[Anonymous No.17080183]

>>17079603
>Anime is culture

It literally is not, its just a mixture of American scifi, French comics, European art films and Disney.

Jean Giraud is a great artist from Faustian winter period, not second rate weeb shit.

[Anonymous No.17080201]

>>17080159
Spengler arqued Faustian and Apollonian man share nothing in common and are seperated by several centuries.

[Anonymous No.17080241]

>>17079251
This is really starting to bother me honestly. Multiple times people have written nearly the same message and I have to imagine it's just one or two guys doing this, but there are like 10 posts that all say "Elon Musk, c'mon". What's the point of entering this thread only to not actually explain your beliefs at all. In fact,
>The more people talk about Spengler the more I’m just not interested in what he had to say desu
nearly this exact same phrase has ended the messages of what I guess is the same guy writing it over and over again. Just type an actual post, with an argument. It's like your allergic to giving any opinion beyond tacit dismissal. I could care less about Spengler at this point I'm just so curious in how you can make essentially the same post writing "seriously? c'mon, uhhh really bro?" like 10 times and still not have written a single sentence of any substance. If this whole thread is making you want to read Spengler less why are you sticking around to continually dismiss it. Surely you have better ways to spend your time than going out of your way to make post after post in a thread about why the discussion topic doesn't interest you.

[Anonymous No.17080277]

>>17079505
>>17079519
Would anyone consider the idea that South Korea and/or Japan is influenced heavily by the Faustian culture?

[Anonymous No.17080278]

>>17080126
Close I'm dyslexic. And normally I'd assume that would be the reason someone would have issues understanding what I'm saying (given I might make bad grammar/spelling mistakes) but on the given subjects unless I am gravely mistaken (who knows maybe I'm just pissed someone is saying I haven't read my favorite book letting me cloud my judgement) the points I'm being criticized on I obviously point out not being the case. If I'm just being dense out of emotions feel free to call me out on it.

>>17079954
Let me also just say this again, this is all personal belief and interpretations of Spengler and I'm not a huge weeb so I cannot answer A LOT about Japan's unique spacial temporal worldview due to a lack in knowledge regarding this subject. That will be similarly said in other areas with regard to Japan but I know enough Japanese history to line them up nicely with a Spenglerian early Summer culture. So lets continue that part.

So if Japan is a summer culture why that? Why not spring like the Slavs? Or Autumn? Well lets start with why not spring then walk into why not autumn and that should land us nicely into Summer, specifically early summer. Now to get this started I'll be pointing a bit at the Slavs to give us a bit of direction (Spengler himself said they are a Spring people.) But wait don't Slavs have huge cities? Yes, that is because they are under the pseudomorphosis of the west similar to the Megian world under Apollonian man. This means there will be mainly forms that are false forms that Slavs (and Japanese) will take from the west but they are false forms alien to the high culture. The megalopsis is one of them. Also Faustian man does have a precence in the homeland of the Slavic world, as does Faustian man in the homeland of the Japanese. But this does not mean Japan has not birthed its own man just like how the Kievan Rus birthed its own man as well.

If Japan were to be spring we would expect them to be mainly like the Slavs, in a political state similar to that of Feudalism (pseudomorphosis aside). This does not seem to be the case. Japan has a single party "democratic" (they have elections I'll give them that) government. Its not a single party state because of dictatorship or election rigging, but because the people keep voting for the conservative party again and again as if they don't know how not to vote for a different government. This is very different from the oligarchy of Russia.

I cannot comment on philosophy or art but when it comes to the architecture the Japanese have created a unique style that is almost an between of the Aztec step temple and the Chinese Buddhist temples. The interesting part of this is their lack of step indicating a uniform but layered climb to a sudden end. But the age of them making temples as ended and today they have no need for it. Indicating that they are past their Spring phase.

[Anonymous No.17080319]

>>17079798
Ok this post is completely retarded and you clearly are either extremely moronic or just obsessed with winning an argument because every point you're bringing there is a gigantic misinterpretation that could only be done out of malice considering that the post you're replying to is not esoteric at all and is quite straightforward.

[Anonymous No.17080330]

>>17080278
>Close I'm dyslexic
Autistic sounds more likely.

You phrase sentences really weird for a native English user.

[Anonymous No.17080378]

>>17079954
>>17080278
I'm not entirely sold on Japan being it's own High Culture, though I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility, there is definitely an argument to be made for it. It being in it's summer I'm also unsure of, though I think your point on the architecture is very interesting. I would like to say that your posts are informative and it's good to have fresh takes in Spengler threads. Don't worry about the people trashing you, the writing is clear and if nothing else I'm enjoying reading (you)r posts.

[Anonymous No.17080382]

yo what video games do u think spengler would play

[Anonymous No.17080386]

>>17080382
He'd be a tripfag on /GSG/ of course.

[Anonymous No.17080393]

I'll take a break from the effort post before I write about why its not autumn to just post a few more things.
>>17078028
I'd be careful of this image Spengler despite first glance is not a cyclical history theorist, because a dead high culture doesn't necessarily mean a new one needs to come about. The birth of high cultures is entirely random so the death of one (or all) could mean that we will live in a universe indefinitely without high cultures.

>>17080277
It is under an immense pseudomorphosis. Which is why a ton of their art form take inspiration from the west. Which is more or less why I think >>17080183 is wrong. Because he can be entirely right, that anime is shit that Japan took (and moreover mostly awful.) But the higher art of it expresses not only through the medium but through how it mixes and matches them (Christianity had Megianess but had the Roman pseudomorphosis which integrated bloodiness into it Islam later removed this aspect declare one God and only one not one God in three bodies is a good example.) But the early Christians despite the pseudomorphosis were great men of history.
>>17080330
Probably not, though I don't doubt I am am cognitively impaired when it comes to writing (I always tested very low on these fronts and very high in others.) Could be learning 5 non-English languages (which I regularly use) has fucked me up, but probably not.
>>17080378
Thanks glad to hear.

[Anonymous No.17080412]

>>17080241
>there are like 10 posts that all say "Elon Musk, c'mon".
Because it’s stupid, anon.

[Anonymous No.17080427]

>>17080412
You just can't do it can you, can't actually explain any beliefs you hold.

[Anonymous No.17080436]

>>17080121
Moldbug does claim that Marxism draws from Christianity, he just argues that it's an alternate branch from Progressivism and Prussian Socialism. He does not, however, spend much time on this (that I've seen), and sorta just says
>okay I've proved it for Progressivism now just take my word that it applies to these other things that

>>17080378
Spengler goes over why Japan isn't it's own thing. The anon you are responding to has not read Spengler. Toynbee however, argues that Japan is a specific development in Chinese history frozen in time (in Toynbee, each world-spirit uses a "host" for a "step", culminating in a religion).

[Anonymous No.17080486]

>>17080427
It’s already been explained. Musk is a huckster and a corporate bureaucrat. Nothing about him screams Faustian nor technics and if you haven’t caught on to the scheme yet, then there’s nothing I could tell you nor do I have to. You failed to convince us. I’m sorry you don’t like that.

[Anonymous No.17080558]

>>17080486
You literally never explained that once ITT. him being ahuckster and a bureaucrat is an opinion you hold that you just stated and didn't defend at all. Reasons have been given for him being Faustian, you didn't refute them you just rejected them, shame. Haven't caught on to the scheme yet? Is this some gaslighting technique to make people agree with you, make them feel like fools?
>then there’s nothing I could tell you nor do I have to.
^Because you have nothing to tell anyone. You've been exposed. You would have to if you wanted to back up your opinion, you don't.
>You failed to convince us.
>us
you mean "me".
>I’m sorry you don’t like that.
No you're not, typing shit like this just exposes you more for what you are, dog. Your awkward posturing and lack of substance is exposed. I won't reply again because I know you have nothing to say worth reading. I remain unconvinced, good luck next time loser.

[Anonymous No.17080589]

>>17080436
I like his posts, whether they are undeniably true or entirely false. There's like 3 posts total ITT where anyone makes an actual argument for something or gives an insight, and I don't care for you saying he hasn't read Spengler, seems to me like he has.

Nonetheless, thanks for the clarification, I know Toynbee had a different take on Japan. Would you mind giving a QRD on world-spirit using "hosts" and "steps" culminating in a religion?

[Anonymous No.17080820]

>>17080436
>Spengler goes over why Japan isn't it's own thing.
Ah I see your making the argument Spengler mentions twice in his footnotes that Japan is nothing more then exported Faustian man (something I think holds better water for China today and not Japan.) I never liked it and thought it was Spengler just didn't know enough about Japan not to see how his model obviously fits nicely into Japanese history. But I think the next part will do well to explain why I think your wrong, feel free to criticize it with substance.

>>17080278
Lets begin with Japan's body politic. If it were a autumn civilization then one could expect them like the democracies of the western world to be ruled by money and intellect. But Japanese politics if you are aware of them at all are not ruled by either, Japanese politics does a surprisingly good job keeping money out of their politics. For instance in Japanese politics the only one who can campaign for themselves is themselves (which is in line with their prime symbol as I have mentioned). This shows how their form is still alive in their politics as well. As far as intellect goes it also does not have much sway over their aristocratic elite in which govern the Japanese. Today Japan's government is rule by its powerful bureaucrats who rule over Japan in a strict conservative form.

Similarly during an autumn or a winter one would expect the Japanese to be birthing political philosophy, ethics, and in winter we would expect these forms to have an especially large impact within their writings (or at the very least to be similar to Plato's republic where the political philosophy is entirely lacking of the world improvers as was akin to the Apollonian man.) But we find that this is entirely not the case within Japanese thought, in fact, Japanese thought is still mostly stuck at metaphysics with their importing of western metaphysicians mostly by far outnumbering their importing of political philosophers or ethists. We would also expect Japan to have no need for philosophy like western man's art today or of Autumn, either large and lifeless or meant to appeal to the masses (to which I cannot deny that most anime does in fact do.) But to the latter point, the most popular works of Japan actively integrate metaphysics into their quests. This would be indicative of a pseudomorphosis that being western man having a firm foothold in Japan, but Japanese man still breaking out in moments of genius to touch upon importantly Japanese ideas.

Now let me quickly walk through what Japan has done since their birth in the 13th century. To begin with why 13th? Well that is when the ruling warlords lost power to the first Shogun. There would be a interregnum in the 15th century and the Japanese would consolidate again. Later the Shogun (a spring form I propose) would lose power in the 19th century to the Emperor who would usher in an new much more open period (the flip from Spring to Summer). Next Japan moves away from feudal Samurai.

[Anonymous No.17081594]

>>17061607
because he acknowledged that Western Culture was near the end of its life, in the "Civilization" period (old age), and that different things are valued in late-stage Civilization as opposed to the youth of Culture.

[Anonymous No.17081648]

anyone else notice a similarity between Spengler's "Culture vs Civilization" and Saturn vs Jupiter archetypes?

Culture is Time, Saturn is Time.
Civilization is Space, Expansion and War. Jupiter is Expansion (Space) and War.

Culture is inward looking; Saturn is contraction.
Civilization is outward looking, Jupiter is expansion.
Culture as Plant, Life. Saturn is the god of agriculture (plants) and a fertility god (Life). Culture is also "Change", "Calculus" (the math of change), "dissolving". Saturn is Change, dissolving, in his function as Lord of Death (by pruning corruption, it preserves Life, thus effecting Change)
Culture is Night. Saturn is Lord of Darkness/Night.
Civilization is Day, Jupiter is Lord of Day/Light.

[Anonymous No.17081663]

>>17061632
Heidegger's beliefs on "techne" are in complete contradiction to Spengler's

[Anonymous No.17081751]

>>17074228
What would you describe yourself as? What sort of system do you want?

[Anonymous No.17082263]

>>17061887
What would be the Slavic/Russian conception of space-time?

[Anonymous No.17082312]

>>17062449
Monkes are no worse than us

[Anonymous No.17082329]

>>17061910
based

[Anonymous No.17082333]

>>17079766
That image is made by a catcher.

[Anonymous No.17082396]

>>17082312
Money itself is evil. Giving all of our evolutionary future to an abstract tool? Might as well have AI-based eugenics.

[Anonymous No.17082531]

>>17080393
>is not a cyclical history theorist
what did he mean by this?

[Anonymous No.17082578]

>>17073725
What's your literary achievement?

Also I guarantee you that he's more Aryan than you

[Anonymous No.17082621]

>>17061607
What would he think about the Internet?

[Anonymous No.17082664]

>>17080558
Fuck off, dude. No one’s trying to refute anything. You can’t give satisfactory answers to basic questions and subsequent challenges so now you’re upset because we don’t agree with your conclusions. Resorting to insults because you can’t convince someone of your point of view? Lol. Yeah real good job making this guy seem legitimate that way... It only seems more and more absurd every time you type. Do the author a favor and just go away.

[Anonymous No.17082744]

>>17080589
Spengler posits eight (Apollonian, Magian, Faustian, MesoAmerican, Indian, Chinese, Sumerian, Egyptian) "world-spirits". Some other anon on here calls them "Culture-Civilizations". These are ways of seeing space and time. They're sort of like memeplexes, or gods that live in another dimension, if you will. They're born, they go through a life-process, and then "ossify". They don't "die" of old age. China finished ossification in like 200AD, and India did it in 500BC. The Chinese and Indian world-spirits have continued on fine. Having said that, you CAN either forcibly convert the people who "believe" in a world-spirit to another one (like what happened to Apollonian Man, who was forcibly converted to Magian Man, or MesoAmerican Man, who was forcibly converted to Faustian Man), or the world-spirit can collapse into felaheen (people who don't "believe" in a world-spirit; this is purely theoretical). This is why Spengler argues that race and religion are irrelevant, these things are PURELY memeplexes to explain how people think about space and time. According to Spengler, Japan "believes" in the Chinese world-spirit, having converted to it from fellaheen status.

Toynbee proposes an alternate model where the world-spirit will take a "host" for each step in its life-process. This host will be the summation of a stage in its development, and will not move from that. So, you'd have early China at the Yellow River, mid china in Japan, late China in Beijing, etc. For Faustian man, you'd have Early Faustian in the Franco-German border, mid Faustian in France, Late Faustian in Britain, etc. The end result of this process is the total divorcing of the world-spirit from culture and biological race, culminating in a religion that has been perfectly honed to be able to spread. So, the "Faustian Process" ends with Protestantism, the "Magian Process" ends with Islam, etc.

This is why the anon saying that you have to be White to be Faustian is retarded, because Spengler (and Toynbee) disagree with him. We can posit a minimum IQ required to "believe" in a world-spirit, but that's all that's required. Some biological races may have an affinity one way or the other, but this is mere accident, mere technicality. Spengler uses "race" to refer to people who "believe" in a world-spirit, but again this is totally divorced from biology. Remember, the Japanese and Chinese are barely related and they're both Chinese, and Nigerians, Israelis, Brazilians, and Germans are all Faustian.

[Anonymous No.17082752]

>>17082744
Excuse me, nine, I forgot Russia. There's nine world spirits.

[Anonymous No.17082772]

>>17080820
>le china isnt really china because le cultural revolution XD
>taiwan is le real china XD
yeah, i would expect someone as dumb as you to hold this opinion despite spengler saying literally the opposite.

[Anonymous No.17082815]

>>17082744
Not the anon you’re responding to but I don’t get. Late Faustian in Britain? Faustian ends with Protestantism? Where do Germany and America come into it? None of us are Protestant anymore. We’re scientific atheists so how does it end with Protestantism?

[Anonymous No.17082821]

>>17082772
Why do you have to be a confrontational asshole because someone asks questions or disagrees with you? This isn’t a debate on what Spengler did or didn’t believe but what we believe.

[Anonymous No.17083162]

>>17082744
>Nigerians, Israelis, Brazilians, and Germans are all Faustian.
Nigerians and Brazilians are Faustian? Now I've never read Decline so I'm sure my understanding of the world-spirits is limited.
But in Man and Technics Latin Americans and Africans are grouped explicitly in the coloured category, along with Russians, East Asians and Indians, who will ultimately begin "the exploited world's revenge on its masters", referring of course to Faustian Civilisation.

[Anonymous No.17083664]

>>17082744
Read hour of decision and Prussianism and socialism and tell me with a straight face Spengler doesn’t think you need to be white to be Faustian. Fucking ignoramus

[Anonymous No.17083757]

>>17083664
Why don’t you just cite what passages make you draw that conclusion

Anyway, I’m not the person you’re debating with but I’m just curious. If we accept what you say as true, would that also mean that Spengler thought race necessarily implied spirit, in this case Faustian? If you’re white (let’s say, specifically German, Anglo, etc.), must you also be Faustian?

[Anonymous No.17083823]

>>17082815
The point being that we see discrete "stages" of a world-spirit's progression manifest in various places. Once the manifestation occurs, it will only progress further by being covered over by a later, foreign, progression. So, a certain development occurs in place A, and will later be covered over by a later one in place B. This all works to create an intellectual system that can spread fluidly across all peoples and places. One could say that Toynbee was wrong in this regard (he was writing in the 30s-60s, after all), OR, we could just come to the understanding that scientific materialism IS the logical progression of Christianity, stripped of all that gets in the way of spreading a certain packet of worldviews.

>>17083162
That's precisely the point, though: Faustian Man rules the world, all world-spirits are snuffed out except it. So, the colored hordes want a piece of the pie. It is precisely because Faustian Man can spread to everyone no matter their biological race that this arises. There really is no meaningful distinction between the Bantu tribesman and the German metalworker, so why does the German get better material goods? It's unfair! And it is, which is why the colored hordes take their revenge as they violently insert themselves into Faustian civilization. Or, Faustian civilization violently absorbs them, even if it damages Whites. It's the same thing in the end.

America, for example, is rooted in the universal equality of man. So, if you want to keep Niggity Nogs out, you either have to ditch America, or be a bad person. You cannot partake in a world-spirit rooted in universal mapping and the unification of man in one direction AND deny people partaking in that world-spirit and union of direction. One of the two has to give.

This is part of why Spengler is seen as a prophet of doom: he predicts the entire world goes to absolute fucking shit.

[Anonymous No.17083974]

who is the sign of decline for the Magians, and who was their Caesar?

[Anonymous No.17084065]

>>17083974
Obama

[Anonymous No.17084320]

Did caesarism historically unite the culture?

[Anonymous No.17084646]

>>17083757
It’s the entire first paragraph

“ Is there today a man among the White races who has eyes to see what is going on around him on the face of the globe? To see the immensity of the danger which looms over this mass of peoples? I do not speak of the educated or uneducated city crowds, the newspaper-readers, the herds who vote at elections - and, for that matter, there is no longer any quality-difference between voters and those for whom they vote - but of the ruling classes of the White nations, in so far as they have not been destroyed, of the statesmen in so far as there are any left; of the true leaders of policy, of economic life, of armies, and of thought. Does anyone, I ask, see over and beyond his time, his own continent, his country, or even the narrow circle of his own activities”

[Anonymous No.17084666]

>>17084320
Look at the caesers in Rome and China etc and you have your answer

[Anonymous No.17084685]

>>17083757
There is no must but if you are to live a collective spirit or will it will have to be the Faustian one because it is in your blood. Usually the Faustian spirit is reserved for those of genius, the rest will follow by impulse

[Anonymous No.17084709]

>>17083823
This is a poor reading of Spengler. Faustian civilisation crowds out any other world feelings but that means the sundry coloured people follow and leech, they don’t become Faustian. They cannot even fathom the Faustian will to power, they only know and seeks its ornaments; they are never the imitators.

[Anonymous No.17085217]

>>17084685
So ultimately this sort of spirit that Spengler refers to is essentially biological?

[Anonymous No.17085619]

>>17082772
I have no idea how this applies to anything I said your just trolling at this point.
>>17084646
He has conflicting answers on this last I checked. I think he backtracks because of Nazism’s obsession with race in some of his later letters but I overall agree that when a culture is exported beyond its original bounds (be it race, location, or creed) something is lost, I think Spengler makes this exact argument for Carthage and America (one being in his footnotes the other in the first chapter if I recall correctly.) I think it makes sense to a degree though I’d say and likely much to Spengler’s disliking that the US is a core member of the Faustian soul (all be it only in our civilizational forms.)