/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.17219683]

>predictions literally coming true in real time
What a time to be alive

[Anonymous No.17219716]

>>17219683
name three
and not just general predictions that anyone could think of

[Anonymous No.17219725]

did Spengler predict that nothing would happen? because nothing happened

[Anonymous No.17219751]

>>17219683
Personally I put more stock in van Rensburg's predictions.

[Anonymous No.17219779]

>>17219716
>from the year 2000 the West would enter a century long crisis of democracy that would necessitate the rise of popular military dictators like Julius Caesar and Augustus
>political institutions cease functioning as mob violence escalates due to zero sum political mentality
>political parties and ideologies disappear, all political gravity centers on the personalities of the Caesars

[Anonymous No.17219790]

>>17219716
Collapse of the Occidental culture and its replacement by the Western civilization with its complete and ongoing abandonment of western romano-germanic ideals e.g. Christianity, medieval pattern of nuptiality (Hajnal line), commoners owning land, constitutional monarchies etc. that defined Europe for more than 1200 years.

Demographic replacement of the original population by a new immigrating population which will cause the complete collapse of the original culture because the original cultural and biological basis is irreversibly destroyed.

The complete lack of new genuine developments in Western philosophy, literature, architecture etc, their degeneration, the inability to replicate them and the intrusion and increasing prevalence of non-Western cultural elements and symbols in the Western world.

[Anonymous No.17219828]

>>17219779
Based

[Anonymous No.17219891]

>>17219790
>western civilization is collapsing because of people abandoning western values
havent read him, but does he actually say this? or is that people interpreting him as such? does he actually imply causality?

[Anonymous No.17219917]

>>17219891
The values have been exhausted.

[Anonymous No.17219930]

>>17219891
No he doesn't say that. For one thing he didn't think Western civiliation was collapsing, he thought it was entering its empire mode(though he does occasionally say somewhat ominous things about outside influences). For another the empire mode, while culturally and religiously bereft, is still imbued with 'Faustian' values, they just show themselves in politics and technics.

[Anonymous No.17219933]

>>17219891
He basically says the West has run out of enthusiasm for living and has grown nihilistic and self hating, he's a fatalist who says we can never recover from our situation.

[Anonymous No.17219940]

>>17219891
Far as I know, he never says west abandons its ideals, it just exhausts them. Which makes westerners strive towards the exotic, borrowing alien forms to express itself.
But he does speak about rootless world-city people, who technically have no culture (they still have the Faustian world-feeling), they're just parts of the political machine.

[Anonymous No.17219973]

>>17219933
I really wonder if high culture will ever come back. If we could guarantee total collapse--return to hunter-gatherer society--men with spirit could evolve again. But the Asians should keep the machines of Mulatto World running for the foreseeable future. Dysgenic fertility will continue to accelerate. Things are gonna be gross and dumb for a long long time before it all breaks down. Lotta capeshit coming. Probably more inflation adjusted $ going to CGI than the premodern world economy

[Anonymous No.17219979]

>>17219930
The empire state is a symptome. It occures once the culture has become a civilization. A civilization can last for several hundred years, yet ultimately a civilization is always a demise.

[Anonymous No.17219989]

>>17219979
>a civilization is always a demise.
Semantics isn't it? Most people don't see the entire (western) Roman empire as a demise, but it is according to that definition.

[Anonymous No.17219996]

>>17219779
Fuck how do I start reading Spengler? Is it just Decline of the West or is there some leadup?

[Anonymous No.17220004]

>>17219989
It's what Spengler says. A civilization can be the birth place for a new culture but a civilization can't recover. It's the final stage of any culture.

[Anonymous No.17220009]

>>17219996
Some Nietzsche and Goethe and a Master's Degree in history of the entire world and mathematics.

[Anonymous No.17220011]

>>17220004
>A civilization can be the birth place for a new culture but a civilization can't recover. It's the final stage of any culture.
That's not really relevant to what we're talking about. For the average person the concepts of collapse and giant empire are somewhat at odds.

[Anonymous No.17220014]

https://i.4cdn.org/wsg/1608656690562.webm

explain the
>space exploration is a subversion of the Faustian spirit
in Spengler terms
yes I have read the decline of the Occident

[Anonymous No.17220021]

>>17220014
Doesn't look Spengler related, space exploration is the fucking fulfillment of the Faustian spirit in Spengler terms

[Anonymous No.17220022]

>>17220009
Sure, but is his other stuff important to read first? I saw he wrote Man and his Technics as a precursor, but is it really that important?

[Anonymous No.17220041]

>>17220022
Not really, but you can if you want to start with it before doing Decline. Man and Technics isnt a long read compared to Decline anyway.
But MnT came out after Decline, and it's noticeably more pessimistic.

[Anonymous No.17220043]

>>17220021
>space exploration is the fucking fulfillment of the Faustian spirit in Spengler terms
That what I would have thought as well.
I can only have this line somehow cope if used in the weak mindset of "Escape from failure on earth".

[Anonymous No.17220047]

>>17219779
lmao, and literally none of these are true
we have no military dictators, mob violence was going on for a while in the US without seriously touching the institutions, and ideological rifts between people are stronger than ever in recent memory

[Anonymous No.17220055]

>>17219973
>I really wonder if high culture will ever come back
the early internet was a period of high culture

[Anonymous No.17220056]

>>17219973
Faustian culture came after the Apollonian one, I don't see why not. Also, Spengler believed that next high culture will be Russian one. China is a civilization, which is just waiting for something to kill it.
>>17219996
Start with the Man and Technics.

[Anonymous No.17220059]

>>17220021
I had a dream last night that I met Kubrick(who was somehow still alive) and we were discussing his films and he confessed that he had in fact staged the moon landing, and for some reason this registered in my dream-mind as a nightmare scenario and I panicked. For the record I do believe the Americans went to the moon, idk why I had this dream.

[Anonymous No.17220082]

>>17220059
>for some reason this registered in my dream-mind as a nightmare scenario and I panicked. For the record I do believe the Americans went to the moon
well it should be very obvious why it would be a nightmare then.
>failing at conquering the world now combined with never actually having achieved the beginning of off world exploration.

[Anonymous No.17220091]

>>17220047
>we have no military dictators
Not yet. have you missed all the people calling for Trump to declare martial law?
>mob violence was going on for a while in the US without seriously touching the institutions
There was a serious uptick of rioting in 2020 if you hadn't noticed, along with half the country calling a democratic election fraudulent, and now we have a mob storming DC in support of Trump
>ideological rifts between people are stronger than ever in recent memory
The only political ideology in the 2020 election was whether or not you supported Trump, nothing else mattered

[Anonymous No.17220096]

>>17220011
>For the average person the concepts of collapse and giant empire are somewhat at odds.
You completely missed the point.
The emergence of a empire state has nothing to do with size or power and it doesn't matter whether or not a layman associates an empire with something that is huge or big. Spengler uses this term only in terms of how a state is organized which is derived from the observation how cultures or cultural spheres like the Roman, Hellenic, Sinic cultures etc. became imperial at the end of their existence before they were absorbed or reorganized themselves. Even Occidental Europe saw the rise of imperial states which culminated at the start of the 20th century.

[Anonymous No.17220097]

>>17220091
>we are witnessing in real time
>none of this has happened yet, just speculation of loonies

[Anonymous No.17220109]

>>17219790
The demographic replacement of the original population happened from 1518-1918, as the aristoi bloodlines were culled in increasingly mechanized warfare. We have been ruled since then at the latest by upjumped hick peasants. Ironically the only place where the old blood still pumps is in Appalachian America and the rural midwest, where the last scions of this noble race are succumbing to opioid genocide.

[Anonymous No.17220110]

>>17220096
i have not missed the point, I responded to someone asking about collapse, the empire is emphatically not collapse. Collapse happens hundreds of years later

[Anonymous No.17220120]

>>17220097
I'm a Trump supporter and even I realize he is reaching Caesarian status. Never in recent history has someone upset the system so much, the entire Senate has basically colluded to backstab him.

[Anonymous No.17220135]

>>17220120
take your meds, you're delusional. He was a schizo president who made a lot of noise for 4 years and will be irrelevant in another few years. Comparing Trump to Caesar shows a complete misunderstanding of both

[Anonymous No.17220160]

>>17220110
The empire precedes the collapse. I don't know who you're responding to but the formation of imperial states occurres at the final state of the fourth phase where cultures degenerate and turn into a civilization. Spengler makes no comment on how long civilizations can endure. In fact, they can endure for centuries. He only tells that such civilizations will eventually collapse, that these civilizations do not have the possibility of ever recovering the original culture and that their collapse gives raise to a new culture.

[Anonymous No.17220166]

>>17220021
Faustian fulfillment is the empire/civilization. Space exploration is a Faustian drive and expression, but feeding the fire really doesn't kill or satisfy it, neither does space have anything that can stop the decline of Faustian culture.

[Anonymous No.17220175]

>>17220160
Spengler predicted a timeline for the West of centuries past the year 2000 before collapse

[Anonymous No.17220179]

>>17220135
I do think one thing older writers like Spengler never considered is how much consent could be manufactured among the population through propagandistic techniques. Older power was always the iron hand in the velvet glove. New power is soft power-- manipulation of people by altering their perception of reality.

That you can't see what is happening to your country right in front of you is proof of this.

[Anonymous No.17220199]

>>17220175
>>17220166
>>17219683
If you ever wanted to know what a Roman from the 4th century felt, you're experiencing it right now.

[Anonymous No.17220207]

>>17220199
we are not even at 27BC yet

[Anonymous No.17220208]

>>17220047

[Anonymous No.17220213]

>>17220135
Trump isn't Caesar, nobody said he is, he just shows Caesarist tendencies that Spengler predicted would occur. It's going to get much worse in the next few decades if Spengler continues to be proven right. We haven't even had a Marius / Sulla civil war yet.

[Anonymous No.17220215]

Rome: Caesar
France: Napoleon
USA: Trump
The embodiment of the ironies of the old age

[Anonymous No.17220218]

>>17220213
>continues to be proven right
nothing he's said has happened yet. you're just doomsaying.

[Anonymous No.17220226]

>>17220218

[Anonymous No.17220231]

>>17220215
>France: Napoleon
here is what he says about that
>Napoleon has hardly ever been discussed without a side-glance at Caesar and Alexander - analogies of which, as we shall see, the first is morphologically quite inacceptable and the second is correct - while Napoleon himself conceived of his situation as akin to Charlemagne's.

[Anonymous No.17220232]

>>17220218
>Sees everything that happened in 2020 up to now
>You're just doomsaying!
My god, are you fucking for real right now?

[Anonymous No.17220254]

is talking about the end of western civilization is just doomsaying when folks stormed the capitol hill and shot someone like an hour ago

[Anonymous No.17220257]

>>17220232
yes. what makes you think everything will not be back to normal when biden takes over

[Anonymous No.17220266]

>>17220232
happeners are actually braindead monkeys. how can you not see that all the habbenings just make those in power more powerful? there is no doom, nothing that will actually change the way you live, besides stricter control. it's all fabrication. read a book

[Anonymous No.17220274]

>>17220257
Half the country thinks the election was rigged and Biden is illegitimate.

[Anonymous No.17220276]

>>17220231
any short explanation of why he says that?

[Anonymous No.17220278]

>>17220135
Do you really think things aren’t going to keep escalating in the coming years?

[Anonymous No.17220296]

>>17220278
he's part of the same political bubble that didn't think someone like Trump could ever get elected. they're still just as delusional when it comes to judging the political climate in their country even now, somehow.

[Anonymous No.17220303]

>>17220257
People are literally storming the capital right now. Actual revolutions in the 20th century have less mass movement than this. You're braindead.

>happeners
Literally storming the capital as we speak retard.

[Anonymous No.17220317]

>>17220296
no I understood why Trump got elected lol. I'm sure we will have more presidents with aspects of him, but I don't think the process of election every 4 years with peaceful transfer of power will change for the foreseeable future.

[Anonymous No.17220318]

>>17220276
Napoleon and Alexander mark the beginning in their respective civilizations of an age of increasingly destructive and nihilistic wars that culminate with the World Wars and the Punic Wars in which one side stops at nothing to completely and utterly annihilate the other. Napoleon and Alexander took their ambitions to the extreme and sought to dominate every surrounding nation.

[Anonymous No.17220320]

>>17220303
>a few hundred boomers are going to the wrong building

[Anonymous No.17220343]

>>17220303
And that event will be forgotten in due time.

Did you know there were over 2,000 bombings in the 1970s in the US? Of course not because it's been forgotten and nothing substantial came from it. People always think contemporary happenings are end-times when it's been far worse before -- FAR worse.

[Anonymous No.17220345]

>>17220318
>Napoleon and Alexander mark the beginning in their respective civilizations
napoleon certainly started out as the end of feudalism on mainland europe but in the end he was the one fighting as the emperor to subjugate neighboring states which were fighting for their independence. i find that to be ironic, almost symbolic.

[Anonymous No.17220353]

>>17220278
Things are escalating all over. Flu is used to centralize more power to the governments, not too different how patriot act was done in America. There is variety of crises that are not given any attention, while energy is wasted on solving non-problems of wealthy urbanites.

[Anonymous No.17220401]

>>17219716
1. decline in quality of western engineers, youth turning against the machine
2. tedium vitae of the great cities, declining fertility, anti life attitudes
3. emancipation of the coloured world from the white world order in ww2 (coloured axis vs white supremacist allies)

[Anonymous No.17220423]

>poltards are going to get my comfy book board taken down

[Anonymous No.17220463]

>>17220014
>>17220021
Space is an unviable frontier, so the Faustian spirit is drained away while perusing a goal it has no hope of attaining and so keeping it pacified with promises.
Rather than applying it as it historically has been used, to conquer and subjugate the rest of the planet.
Or at least that is my interpretation of the meme.

[Anonymous No.17220491]

>>17220047
>no military dictators
We have media dictators instead.
And significant parts of the near and Middle East are under military or quasi-military dictatorships.
>mob voilence
Occurs in all periods, but this is mindless meaningless mob violence.
The new mob violence is distinguished by the clashing of opposing camps.
>people are more divided
Into red v blue.
If you gave them fascist policies without the label fascist or that of the opposing side both the average republican and democrat would agree.
There is not really much difference economically, politically or socially between the republicans and democrat establishments with a bit more difference between the supporters.
It's only on the fringe that we see the ideological differences, for most it's just red v blue.

[Anonymous No.17220501]

>>17220120
Trump is a failed Brutus at best, but he still is a Caesarian figure.
I cannot wait to see who will play Caesar this time.

[Anonymous No.17220515]

>>17220423
the truth is, it was rigged from the start
the comfy book forum would either become a transgender lobbying group or be shut down
there is no alternative

[Anonymous No.17220618]

>>17219683
What would he think about the internet? Is it a variable?

[Anonymous No.17220639]

>>17220120
>>17220135
>>17220213
>>17220501
Trump is no Caesar, he is only illusively seen as a solution from within the system as he speaks against it, but in practice he does its bidding as any other politician.
It is only when people finally realize how fake and gay democracy is that Spengler might be proven right.

[Anonymous No.17220693]

>>17220618
He would point out the Hegelian character of the internet, in that it has essentially united the entire civilization into one supreme god-consciousness unbeholden to time or space, a collective expression of the will to power

[Anonymous No.17220739]

>>17220693
Just like the human instrumentality project, and just as horrifying

[Anonymous No.17220799]

>>17220014
It's wrong. Space exploration is the single most Faustian thing imaginable. Faustian Man's "end goal" is to constantly explore and endless expanse forever. Faustian Man does not, and never has, and never will, had the desire to "conquer the Earth". It was made by some dumbass who thinks "Faustian Man" means HECKING BASED CRUSADERS and EASTERN ORTHODOX MONKS.

[Anonymous No.17220822]

>>17220215
Imagine thinking Trump is comparable to Caesar or Napoleon at all

[Anonymous No.17220830]

>>17220047
This.
Spengler predictions are trash.

[Anonymous No.17220862]

>>17220830
Shouldn't you be freaking out about RADICAL ALTRIGHT RETHUGLIKKKANS STORMING THE CAPITAL to OVERTHROW DEMOCRACY and LYNCH POC (Persons of Crime)?

[Anonymous No.17220867]

>>17220822
Imagine treating everything this literally

[Anonymous No.17220881]

>>17220501
Trump is definitely no Caesar, more like a Gracchi Brother. He correctly identified problems within society and seriously upset the current order, but failed to really solve them. His identification of these problems was probably more by chance or self interest than anything.
Trump Jr. or someone like that will probably be Gaius.
>>17219891
They're not abandoned, they're exhausted meaning they're still there but no longer work.
>>17220501
I'm more interested in who Sulla and Marius will be, after them Caesarism was all but inevitable.

[Anonymous No.17220932]

>>17220881
>problems within society
Thing is the problems are largely the same, massive wealth inequality, mass urban poverty caused by slavery (industrial offshoring to China) which began following the defeat of Carthage (the USSR) which means Rome, no longer having a credible external threat, turns to fighting itself.
When Cletus, Juan and D'shanquin realise they're problems are one and the same, throwing off the mind poisoning obfuscation that is CRT, it's over.

[Anonymous No.17220941]

>>17220932
*their

[Anonymous No.17221477]

>>17220047
>and ideological rifts between people are stronger than ever in recent memory
not really. it's ideology as a tribe not actual political differences and discussion.

[Anonymous No.17221501]

I'm a bit surprised that no one is talking about this guy but the realization why is dawning on me.

Evidently, people really, really don't like doomers no matter how correct they seem.

[Anonymous No.17221897]

>>17221501
The blackpill is the hardest to swallow.

[Anonymous No.17222204]

Who has the brainlet picture with pegs and square holes. That's literally Spengler.

[Anonymous No.17222213]

>>17220862
The only reason you larping fags like Spengler is because you want a Caesar figure, not because there are compelling reasons for it happening.

[Anonymous No.17222277]

>>17220047
Putinputinputinputinputin

[Anonymous No.17222286]

>>17222213
That's like the most boring aspect of Spengler, his stuff on the artistic and religious periods is much more entertaining

[Anonymous No.17222291]

>>17222222

[Anonymous No.17222305]

>>17222286
What's so good about it? If it's just entertainment it's trash.

[Anonymous No.17222319]

>>17222305
name one thing that isn't entertainment

[Anonymous No.17222676]

>>17222319
hardcore mathematic proofs

[Anonymous No.17223406]

>oh no the West is not pillaging others anymoreee(not even true in the slightest), the western culture is dyinggg
Is this really what spengler boils down to?

[Anonymous No.17223504]

>>17223406
No.
In fact, I suggest you bother even skimming the Wikipedia article on the book because you're actually so far off the mark it's laughable.
>Spengler has a low opinion of Civilizations, even those that engaged in significant expansion, because that expansion was not actual growth. One of his principal examples is that of Roman "world domination". It was not an achievement because the Romans faced no significant resistance to their expansion (!!!). Thus they did not so much conquer their empire, but rather simply took possession of that which lay open to everyone. Spengler asserts that the Roman Empire did not come into existence because of the kind of Cultural energy that they had displayed in the Punic Wars. After the Battle of Zama, Spengler believes that the Romans never waged, or even were capable of waging, a war against a competing great military power.
I mean, I know nobody on /lit/ actually reads, but fuck me.

[Anonymous No.17223513]

>>17223406
contrarian subhuman tard

[Anonymous No.17223515]

What if civilization has always been in a decline? What if the stone at one point seemed superior to the stick? Civilization is a akin to a kind of impossible geometrical form (one which continually expands and bends back into itself).

[Anonymous No.17223567]

>>17219683
We know something will change, but the real question is... will it be a moral one?

Or will we just be chained by technocratic elites for the next hundred or so years?

[Anonymous No.17223569]

>>17223515
Sometimes you shouldn't try to find a logos to everything, when you don't know enough as a foundation.

[Anonymous No.17223603]

The recent storming of what is arguably the capitol of the world felt so empty and banal
this is our reality now and no one cares anymore

[Anonymous No.17223614]

>>17223603
It's going to take a while for the realization of how big that was to hit.

[Anonymous No.17223627]

>>17223603
You are now a Roman the day after hearing Tiberius Gracchus was killed in a riot.

[Anonymous No.17223646]

>>17223614
do you really think it's a big deal? to me, it seems more like a knock-off. like an amateur acting troupe portraying a rebellion. when the first rebels entered the main hall, they looked more lost than threatening, like children who don't know where to stand and are looking for a sign from their parents. the signs of rebellion contrast so strongly with the posture, the shuffling gait and the colorful little helmets of the yelping soccer moms – it's a comedy.

[Anonymous No.17223651]

>>17223504
I think the war against the Cimbri proves this false

[Anonymous No.17223665]

Trump is more of a Clodius figure, leader of the populares faction before caesar

>gets killed
>supporters burn down the senate as retribution

[Anonymous No.17223668]

>>17223646
That in itself is a marker of the surreality and feebleness of the age. It's all fitting in terms of being symbolic of our decline. Even the pandemic we mismanaged was milquetoast as fuck.

[Anonymous No.17223670]

[Anonymous No.17223676]

>>17223670
Is it real or photoshopped?

[Anonymous No.17223685]

>>17223676
No idea, but this one def seems to be
lmao

[Anonymous No.17223693]

No one in this thread has read the decline of the west.

[Anonymous No.17223699]

>>17223646
>>17223668

Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language. Thus Luther put on the mask of the Apostle Paul, the Revolution of 1789-1814 draped itself alternately in the guise of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, and the Revolution of 1848 knew nothing better to do than to parody, now 1789, now the revolutionary tradition of 1793-95. In like manner, the beginner who has learned a new language always translates it back into his mother tongue, but he assimilates the spirit of the new language and expresses himself freely in it only when he moves in it without recalling the old and when he forgets his native tongue.

[Anonymous No.17223700]

>>17223693
And you got filtered by the comparative mathematics at the start

[Anonymous No.17223709]

>>17223699
hoyl based dubs

[Anonymous No.17223716]

>>17223685
Sad thing is it could be pro or anti.

[Anonymous No.17223728]

>>17219683
Sex gifs

[Anonymous No.17223747]

>>17223699
>Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please;
damn

[Anonymous No.17223767]

>>17220047
Arent you congress and senate burning right now mutt?

[Anonymous No.17223783]

>>17219683
Why is West faustian again? What kind of deal with the devil did we make?

[Anonymous No.17223825]

the trve Caesar is yet to reveal himself, his father will probably be a MIC contractor in Iran in 10 years

[Anonymous No.17223858]

>>17220881
>Trump Jr. or someone like that will probably be Gaius
I know you want to keep it in the family so the poetry rhymes, but it's more likely to be Tulsi or someone.

[Anonymous No.17223893]

>>17223614
>these cowards are leading most powerful state on earth
At least roman senators would probably use arms on the plebs trying to break in

[Anonymous No.17223906]

>>17223858
Tulsi/Tucker/Trump jr are future ceasar/pompeus/crassus, respectivly

[Anonymous No.17223924]

>>17223893
and that is why rome fell (among other things): because its senators were too self-absorbed to carry out certain necessary but pathetic actions. the leader's task is not to be strong: his task is to stay alive and to lead.

[Anonymous No.17223925]

>>17219683
The Washington shit won’t even be a footnote. This is the buildup. A short introduction. The real stuff will be in the coming years, maybe even decades.

[Anonymous No.17223966]

>>17223906
>>17223858
Who is Sulla?

[Anonymous No.17223971]

>>17223614
I don't agree with the rioter's politics, but man was it satisfying to see. Cathartic.
And hey, at least they were beating on people who deserve it, instead of ransom small businesses.

[Anonymous No.17224002]

>"Ducunt fata volentem, nolentem trahunt"
>"Fate leads the willing, and drags the unwilling"
That's how Spengler ends Decline of the West. How could this be interpreted? That the decline is inevitable and you shouldn't fight it?

[Anonymous No.17224034]

>>17224002
He also said "optimism is cowardice", so I think you're on the money.

[Anonymous No.17224088]

>>17219996
>or is there some leadup?

[Anonymous No.17224114]

>>17223646
welcome to simulation and simulacra

[Anonymous No.17224119]

>>17224002
You can't fight it. Fighting it just speeds it up. This is why he encouraged Faustian Men to get into technics (roughly, STEM; think Elon Musk): Faustian Man has entered the stage of its life wherein that is the way to glory. Want to have your name remembered forever? Go build a big fucking rocket and push it farther than anyone else has before. It's very "Ride the Tiger".

It should be noted that, broadly, "Decline" (in German, "untergang") refers not to "death", but a slow ossification. The end result of a world-spirits life is not it dying, but it ossifying. Chinese Man has since been ossified. Chinese Man finished it's decline in like, 200BC, and it's still kicking. It will just never make anything really "new". It will see everything in terms of Dao and Filial Piety. Maoism is the ultimate example of this, with Mao literally saying he was doing this.

Having said that, the West will actually fucking die, for reasons separate from the standard progression of a world-spirit.

[Anonymous No.17224137]

>>17224119
>Go build a big fucking rocket and push it farther than anyone else has before. It's very "Ride the Tiger".

too poor for it, i will concentrate on the arts

[Anonymous No.17224149]

>>17224137
an actual impossibility to create new art i'm afraid

[Anonymous No.17224153]

>>17224149
filmmaking still a new and fresh medium, i will take my chance with it

[Anonymous No.17224163]

>>17224153
>filmmaking still a new and fresh medium

[Anonymous No.17224167]

>>17224153
>

Spiderman 68 will surely be an artistic gem that'll stand time

[Anonymous No.17224178]

>>17224163
>>17224167

how old is cinema? 100 years?, too young!, most of the arts (painting, poetry, literature, theathre) are more than 1000 years old and they already exhausted everything one can do in those mediums, Cinema still has opportunity to develop in new ways, of course it´s something difficult to see nowadays because current filmmakers are hacks addicted to star wars and capeshit, but fear not!, i will try to do my best if i ever become a filmmaker

[Anonymous No.17224184]

>>17224149
Entertainment it is, then. I'm fine with that.

[Anonymous No.17224212]

>>17220881
>Trump is definitely no Caesar, more like a Gracchi Brother.
You need to go back to pol mate. To suggest that Trump, a president supported by the most conservative voters of the U.S., is somewhat similar to a Gracchi brother is ludicrous. Even a person with the most basic understanding of the formation of the optimates would see the clear fallacy of your statement.
>They're not abandoned, they're exhausted meaning they're still there but no longer work.
Do you know how I know you come from /pol/? It's because you believe in simple words intended to suit the simple mind. You choose to dumb down the western ethos and hundreds of years of ideological strife by assuming the west to be some kind of monolith. The actual discussions on this board which require thoughtful arguments fly over your head because you are glued to outlandish conclusions. These only seem outlandish because you have managed to read them out of context whilst embarrassingly reading the entire context.

[Anonymous No.17224228]

>>17224178
Try to create your own unique style then, like Wes Anderson for example. There are probably handful of directors who actually produce anything worthwhile these days

[Anonymous No.17224235]

>>17220881
Trump is Nero, especially obvious after yesterdays farce, end of discussion

[Anonymous No.17224237]

>>17223603
It was cool.

[Anonymous No.17224239]

>>17224212
Try not to take everything so literal, maybe he meant both are the signs that republic is ending, plebs are rising up, and dictators are coming

[Anonymous No.17224255]

>>17224212
It is however clear that trump was the candidate of the disowned proles massively suffering from opiod crises and diminishing income/status

not unlike a populares candidate, the fact that these people are morally conservative is irrelevant

[Anonymous No.17224270]

>>17220343
/Thread

The S&P500 ended yesterday in the green (+0.57). Retarded boomers breaking into the halls of Congress couldn't even cause a pullback on the market lol

[Anonymous No.17224274]

>>17224255
Americans "liberals" are actually the conservative moralist faction, it's completely in line with the Northern Protestant traditions they used to believe in ~60 years ago. Do you actually think Bubba from AL takes "Conservatism" that seriously beyond a casual dislike of homos or transexuals, and disapproval of immigration?

[Anonymous No.17224276]

>>17224212
See >>17220862

>>17224235
Not at all. Trump is nothing like Nero.

[Anonymous No.17224294]

>>17224274
yes i mostly agree.

The frogposter is wrong though

[Anonymous No.17224340]

>>17220109
Pretty sure Appalachians and Midwesterners were mostly Old World peasants, same as anyone else here.

[Anonymous No.17224357]

>>17224276
except the tyranny, debauchery, corruption and extravagance.

i guess the closest figure is the anti-christ since Trump embodies all capital vices: pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth

[Anonymous No.17224369]

>>17224357
Trump definitely does not embody sloth, envy, or wrath. Pride, gluttony, greed, lust clearly yes

[Anonymous No.17224378]

>>17219725
The Boston tea sperg out and storming of Bastille were nothings at first too, until they became the start of something. That's how history works.

[Anonymous No.17224381]

>>17224228
>Try to create your own unique style then

i will

[Anonymous No.17224387]

>>17224270
The S&P is irrelevant

[Anonymous No.17224450]

>>17224255
>>17224276
>>17224294
just go back to /pol/ I'm not even kidding

>It is however clear that trump was the candidate of the disowned proles massively suffering from opiod crises and diminishing income/status
I don't care who he appears to be to his voters when his actions in office do not even remotely resemble to be in favour of the populares, which is the point you're making. Please tell me how his class position, in other words, his commitment to preserving and enhancing the position of the wealthiest Americans has not, over the past four years, improved the social fabric, which is enabling the exploitation of the populares. You can't because you're incapable of seeing that the same neo-liberal economic agenda (which ironically furthers the progressive social movement in the long run) has been forced on us for the past couple of decades and that Trump has done no different in this regard.

[Anonymous No.17224458]

>>17223603
It was curious but it's no tennis court oath. If anything, this proves how unlikely it is for things to change. A bunch of angry protestors storm into the capitol and do... nothing? There was never any real threat here because these people are powerless. The most that could have been done is the murder of congressmen, but I don't seriously believe any of these people have that in them.

[Anonymous No.17224460]

>>17224450
Why can't wealthy Americans just sit back and let Trump cut their taxes, instead of mobilizing their nonprofits against him?

[Anonymous No.17224463]

>>17224369
do i really have to argument for wrath or envy? have you seen him rail against anyone who are more succesful than him?

sloth since he rather plays golfs and twitter than do anything remotely constructive and beneficial for the country. he's basically a 4channer running the country, which of course is the reason so many of you guys like him.

[Anonymous No.17224496]

>>17224450
Imbecile

I never said he ruled as a candidate of the populares only that he was elected as one.

The fact that his actions were entirely neoliberal, (i agree with your point, maybe an exception could be made for his intentions on foreign policy) does not chance that the image of Donnie is one of "bringing jobs back" etc. Even though his rule was not that different from what jeb bush would have done, he is still despised by the elites and establishment. Here the reason is the image of Donnie, not his actions.

[Anonymous No.17224507]

>>17224450
I'm not them and not a Trump supporter, but it's obvious that their observation is correct. That's why these riots are so much more interesting than the Black Lumpenprole-White PMC alliance during the BLM riots this year.

Trump talks the talk very skilfully and he has managed to rile up a significant portion of the average working population, especially among those who will be squeezed the hardest by the pandemic. It doesn't matter if he personally doesn't deliver, the rabble has been roused nonetheless. Trump might have sparked this thing, but it will not end with him. The left are starting to realize that while they themselves have been domesticated by the neolibs the populists have instead become the revolutionaries.

[Anonymous No.17224528]

>>17224496
>>17224507
true, it's about the pathos he wakes in both lovers and haters.

although i think Trump is the incarnation of evil, the blindness of not understanding why people follow him is even more destructive than he is, and in reality, what conjured him into existence in the first place.

[Anonymous No.17224549]

>>17224528
>although i think Trump is the incarnation of evil
>a goofy reality tv show host is the incarnation of evil
Kek.

>the blindness of not understanding why people follow him is even more destructive than he is, and in reality, what conjured him into existence in the first place.
People mostly followed him because they thought he would enact policies to bring jobs back to dilapidated parts of the US, disliked immigration, and disliked other left-wing social policies. Why do people try and mystify this so much?

[Anonymous No.17224563]

>>17224357
What was the last book you read? Harry Potter doesn't count.

>>17224450
>the same neo-liberal economic agenda (which ironically furthers the progressive social movement in the long run) has been forced on us for the past couple of decades
/pol/ has been shitting on Trump for being a Jew puppet for years, anon. You should look at what people actually think, instead of just what Fox News tells you to think.

[Anonymous No.17224566]

>>17224549
because these are a danger to the plans of the financial elite

[Anonymous No.17224588]

>>17224549
why do you think stephen king chose the clown figure for it...

> Why do people try and mystify this so much?
i don't disagree with him enacting right-wing policies also attributes to his popularity, but there certainly is a great deal of mythos linked to his persona. and then there is his constant spewing of conspiracy theories, talking about draining the swamp when he does nothing of the sort, bringing job backs, when he in fact is ruining the economy. it's a mix the two.

[Anonymous No.17224593]

>>17224566
Blumpf literally did nothing during his term
>Muslim ban didn't stick
>North/South Korea talks led nowhere
>swamp not drained
>wall not built
>China not stopped
What has he been doing except posting tweets to appease his fanbase by "owning the libs"?

[Anonymous No.17224606]

>>17224593
he annoyed leftists which is by enough

[Anonymous No.17224613]

>>17224588
>why do you think stephen king chose the clown figure for it...
Because actual clowns are unsettling. I'm not sure whether you're approaching this assessment from a Communist-moralist angle or a Christian-moralist angle.

[Anonymous No.17224623]

>>17220047
>neo-/lit/

[Anonymous No.17224624]

>>17224613
just a mystical angle: he's a nightmarish caricature of america; as you said, a goofy reality tv host who happens to rule the most powerful country in the world.

[Anonymous No.17224632]

>>17224613
>a Communist-moralist angle or a Christian-moralist angle.
This is /spengler/, so we can say that by regurgitating tepid Puritan values he picked up from CNN, he's actually doing both, because they bubble up from the same foul well.

[Anonymous No.17224675]

>>17224632
i guess you could say that from a /spengler/ angle.. you could also try loving others, it's actually pretty nice when you let go of pretences and self-hating nihilistic authotarianism ;)

[Anonymous No.17224712]

>>17224675
you are a faggot

[Anonymous No.17224796]

>>17224712
i can see that you are talking from a place of hurt,
so i hope you have a nice day anon.

[Anonymous No.17225031]

>>17224675
Cringe

[Anonymous No.17225047]

>people actually buying Spenglerian idealism

[Anonymous No.17225342]

People that are saying what happened in the Capitol yesterday was just a bunch of old boomers causing chaos which will be forgotten in time are forgetting that the American Civil War was started by John Brown mentally disturbed preacher that marched on Harper's Ferry. Like shit can and probably will escalate quickly, especially with the unrest from all the lockdowns and shit. The 2020s will be a bad decade.

[Anonymous No.17225558]

>>17224002
If you're on the wrong train, running to its end won't help you.

[Anonymous No.17225619]

>>17220047
The US capitol was literally stormed by a mob yesterday. Ideological differences are more about being built around the camps gathered by personalities

[Anonymous No.17225696]

>>17223646

I think the fact that it happened like it did is just a testiment to the nature of the times, confused and nonsensical

[Anonymous No.17225886]

>>17222213
I like Spengler but I don’t “want” a Caesar

[Anonymous No.17225902]

>1920: Fine art is over as a Western tradition. (1.VII.10)

The Western aesthetic, “fine art”, has achieved what it set out to express and has nothing left to accomplish. Art will no longer be able to be characterized as a well-defined thing with shared characteristics across the West, but will be a matter of schools, individuals, and mere commercial design. Borrowings from non-Western sources will become unavoidable.

Prediction came true: Yes. This wasn’t a very difficult thing to figure out by 1915-1920, honestly. Spengler names Wagner as the last identifiable fine artist — not an uncontroversial choice, he admits, but certainly a poignant one.

>1920-2000: Inevitability of historical progress thrown into question. (1.III.6)

The 20th century will think harder about history and critique the predominant Western narrative of Darwinian “historical progress”, which gave rise to the myth by which man marched out of the Dark Ages into the Enlightenment and shed off his medieval superstitions through the force of science and reason. The cultures of other eras will be considered on their own terms.

Prediction came true: Yes, among historians and the well-educated. Progress remains the watchword among the general public, but historical methodology has improved tremendously. Spengler presaged an entire century, not only in his literal predictions but in his historiographical expertise.

>1940: A second World War. (2.XI.9)

Just as the Hague conference of 1907 laid the groundwork for World War I, the Washington Naval Treaty of 1921 has made it obvious that a second World War is inevitable. The alternative is the extinction of several great powers, which is not a plausible choice at this point in Western civilization.

Prediction came true: Yes. Remember that Spengler wrote this at the beginning of the Weimar Republic. When the Nazis did come to power, Spengler wrote to a friend that their “thousand year Reich” would come to an end no later than 1946.

>20th century: Conscription armies replaced by volunteer forces, dispatched to destroy smaller states. (2.XI.9)

The size of armies will shrink from millions of conscripted men to hundreds of thousands of volunteers. Central commands in the great cities will dispatch these volunteer armies around the world. The massive death tolls in these distant wars will command the sympathies of humanitarians, but not the political upheaval that would be induced by a war where the armies are based.

Prediction came true: Yes, depressingly so.

[Anonymous No.17225909]

>1990: Russia will throw off the mantle of communism and revive a Christianity which will sustain it for many centuries. (2.VII.2)

Communism is a Western ideology and fundamentally un-Russian. The alienated Russian bourgeoise, seeking reunion with the peasantry, forced communism onto an unwilling Russia, but Russia’s metaphysical perfection cannot be sought in Western forms but only in the Orthodox Christianity articulated by Dostoyevsky (the work Demons is specifically mentioned). Communism will therefore go into the wastebasket of history and Russia will renew its vows to a religion to which “the next thousand years will belong”.

Prediction came true: Yes. Not only did Spengler predict the end of Communism in 1917, but he was able to explain why it would fail and what it would be replaced with in completely unambiguous language; the mark of the sort of expert “psychohistorian” whom Isaac Asimov could only imagine in the vaguest of allusions.

>2020: All remaining sciences will become extensions of understanding human behavior. (1.III.5, 1.XI.15)

The intellects of the late West will recognize that the attempt to systematize or categorize anything is more of a reflection of the psychological and socio-historical paradigms that engender the imagination of such systems than it is something that really exists “out there” in Nature. Interpreting the signs and symbols of past centuries is in fact the “last Faustian philosophy” and the only possibility remaining to the Western mind (1.IV.12). [Tangent: Herman Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game describes a post-collapse society where such interpretation has become the highest and only art-form left in the world.]

Prediction came true: Yes. By the late 1960s, the “objective” status of the scientific observer in sociology and anthropology was already subject to some doubts. In the 1980s, the social sciences and philosophy were thoroughly wrecked by the work of Jacques Derrida. These two categories of study never recovered from this Copernican revolution but are basically running on steam. Since roughly 2005, the humanities have also made a definite turn towards what Spengler calls “physiognomical” analysis, and it is fair to assume that the hard sciences will begin to turn inward in a similar way in the coming years, especially after the failure of ITER and other mammoth experimental projects.

For those who think Spengler ultra-conservative, it is interesting to note that he is eager to promote (in 1.IV.12) what basically amounts to cultural relativism.

[Anonymous No.17225916]

>21st century: A “United States of Europe” will become a counterpart to the Roman Empire. (1.IV.9)

Napoleon’s fault was in his French monarchic vision; the actual conquering spirit of the West is the English spirit of liberal democracy, by which Europe will be able to unite under a single political unit and obtain the Augustan classicism of all exhausted cultures.

Prediction came true: Perhaps. The European Union is certainly a liberal-democratic union of the entire continent, but it’s not clear if this is really analogous to the Roman Empire. The EU was not founded by a “matter-of-fact Caesar” as Spengler insinuates, and its structure seems unlikely to support a single imperial leader. Perhaps Spengler was dreaming too big when he saw Cecil Rhodes as the model for his Faustian Caesars; the real EU founders were content with being political engineers, to whom we dedicate neither statues nor paeans.

>20th-21st centuries: Money becomes increasingly detached, complex, and abstracted from reality before finally vanishing in a cloud of meaninglessness. (2.IV.4, 2.XI.10, 2.XII.12, 2.XIII.3)

The transition from a nascent culture to a powerful civilization is bound up with the discovery of the monopoly the dominant regime holds over coinage. By the late 19th century, the Anglo-Saxon world had figured out that the creation of money was too powerful a weapon to be left in the hands of the common people, and assumed total dominance over paper money. The 20th century opened with increasingly complex forms of money manipulation, which Spengler dubs “other money dimensions,” likening them wryly to “non-Euclidean geometries.” It will eventually be recognized that the reins of money-power cannot be entrusted to states with poor judgment but must be kept secure and centralized by expert hands. The promise of money will accordingly sour in the eyes of the common people. It will come to look like an unjust power, concentrated in the hands of a few to control the masses and escape justice, and in the age of Caesars it will be crushed and supplanted entirely by direct, concrete power.

Prediction came true: Yes, but this was not much of a prediction; Spengler simply articulated a general principle based on observation of the “money markets” of his own time. Although he correctly predicted the idea of hyperinflation, this is more of a correctly described trend that has become much more readily apparent in our own era, to the extent that the masses are beginning to question the modern idea of money. One wonders if Spengler was able to read the complete works of Sima Qian; he would have found a like mind in depth of consciousness about money.

[Anonymous No.17225929]

>21st century: All other forms of social division will take a backseat to the huge, ever-deepening gulf between mega-city cosmopolitanism and “provincialism”. (2.IV.4 and 5, 2.XI.5)

It will no longer matter whether one is ethnically Russian, German, Brazilian, or Nigerian, religious or non-religious, male, female, or Other, or indeed sexually reproductive or sterile. The only distinction that will be made will be between the inhabitants of a few “gigantic” global metropolises, and the inhabitants of land, town, and city outside these places, who will be backwards rustics and provincials. Cosmopolitanism will assume and invert all of the social superiority previously assigned to the noble class. “Rights” will become the privileges of these new elites. Even those urbanites who grow tired of the pretentiousness of the mega-city will prove unable to go back to their roots, given the ostracism this would involve.

Prediction came true: Yes. This is fairly well visible in America, where living in a conservative city is considered as bad as living in a small town. Within a generation it will probably hit Europe as well; Russia is already viewed as “provincial” against Europe. The emergence of this trend was very accurately described by Charles Murray in his 2010 book Coming Apart, and the formation of the present and future cosmo-polis was documented by David Brooks in Bobos In Paradise, a book Spengler would have loved.

>21st century, after 2000 AD: Mega-cities will support the population of 10-20 million people. (2.IV.5)

Spengler strikes an unusually concrete prophetic tone: “I see, long after A.D. 2000, cities laid out for ten to twenty million inhabitants, spread over enormous areas of countryside, with buildings that will dwarf the biggest of today’s and notions of traffic and communication that we should regard as fantastic to the point of madness.”

Prediction came true: Yes. Wikipedia lists the following metropolitan areas with populations of over 10 million each: Tokyo, Jakarta, Seoul, Delhi, Shanghai, Manila, Karachi, New York, Sao Paulo, Mexico City, Beijing, Guangzhou, Mumbai, Osaka-Kyoto, Moscow, Cairo, Los Angeles, Kolkata, Bangkok, Dhaka, Buenos Aires, Tehran, Istanbul, Shenzhen, Lagos, Rio de Janeiro, Paris, and Nagoya. The largest cities of Spengler’s time were London and New York with 7.5 million each, but London does not even rank in today’s list. Wikipedia itself is an example of urban communication that Spengler would have found fantastic.

[Anonymous No.17225944]

>21st-22nd centuries: Population of the civilization plummets; immigration serves as dilution. (2.IV.5)

The world-weary inhabitants of the mega-cities find life in decadent Civilization to have little drive, and have no interest in raising children. Marriage becomes a matter of preference. Governments institute laws (precursors in the 1940s in northern Europe, in earnest in 2010 in Japan) rewarding families for producing children, or else (around 20 B.C. in Rome) penalizing those without offspring. However, the only real choice is between open borders and disappearance. In A.D. 193, the Roman Empire allowed anyone who spotted untenured land in Roman territory to take legal possession of it by farming it; this should be a signal that Rome had lost all demographic coherence by that time, although a farce of political continuity lingered on for a few centuries more. Conservatives fear immigration, for as Spengler puts it, “a people is only really such in relation to other peoples” (2.XI.1); but the alternative is burnout.

Prediction came true: Yes. The choice in the West between open borders and disappearance is already upon us and is a regular talking point of political pundits. Our own fallow land law will likely be written by our grandchildren, if we have any.

>Mid-21st century: The final draw to Western civilization will not be the promise of bread and circuses, but the promise of jobs. (1.X.8, 1.IV.6 in passing)

The dictatorship of the proletariat will come and go, but in a broader sense, socialism is here to stay — socialism as the ethical conviction that destiny is achieved by collective effort. When all the Western dreams fall short and the citizens no longer believe in peace on earth and goodwill to men, Western civilization will continue to draw them in with the promise of, and I quote, the “Right to Work.” Furthermore: “in the last terrible stages of evolution it will culminate in the Duty to Work.” This will be the last political problem of the democratic era: even as all other dreams fail for want of money, the dream of existential reward for work will continue to appeal to Westerners. Arbeit macht frei.

Prediction came true: Yes. A principal goal of “second-wave feminism”, which should not be seen as a rebellious movement but as an integral part of the Western spirit, was to give women the right to work, and in the United States we already have right-to-work laws that allow people to take jobs without having to join unions. An ethical imperative to work is probably some decades down the line, but the belief that working at a job is the fulfillment of what God made you for is already given in the West.

[Anonymous No.17225956]

>Late 21st century: As the population becomes a formless mass motivated by poverty, Caesars take over promising employment to all, ushering in an age where raw power is superior to money. (2.XI.10, 2.XII.12, 2.VI.7, Table III)

The Caesars will come when democracy has been so corroded by money that the people long for nothing more than the destruction of both moneyed power and democracy. They will wave the flag of all that the West holds dear, but their reality is a reflection of a spiritually vacant age, and their victory marks the end of all care for politics. As Alexander the Great (King of Asia, 331-323 B.C.) was to Augustus Caesar (Emperor, A.D. 14, 330 years later), so will Napoleon (Emperor-King, 1805-1814) will be to these fellows. After a century of their leadership, voter turnout across the West will be virtually zero. Marauding thieves and pirates will present more rigorous and admirable forms than the mega-city elites.

This prediction is of a time still to come. Note that Spengler was certainly not predicting the Nazis and their ethnic obsessions, but was speaking of an age when a diverse Western population no longer possesses ethnic or indeed any defining characteristics, comparable to China in the time of the Qin or the Roman Empire under Caesar (for details on Rome, see The Ancient City by Fustel de Coulanges).

>22nd century: The Second Religiousness. (2.IX.6)

The realities of suffering that all Western civilization had attempted to avoid return in full force, and the trendy religious experiments of the mega-cities lose their excitement. No longer will the West fawn over the traditions of the East; such “inspiration” will not be desirable. Instead the West instead will turn entirely inward, towards early medieval Christianity or something similar to it. The task of winnowing and preserving the knowledge of the West will be taken up and contemplated by something akin to monastic communities; perhaps they will be especially interested in history books?

>23rd century: The Caesarist state machinery, a relic of centuries prior when the Westphalian nation-state concept made sense, breaks down under the weight of total irrelevance. (Table III)

This is not actually discussed by Spengler, but can be seen as entry in his comparative timeline. The state of the world in this century is easy to imagine. When Caesarism becomes indistinguishable from banditry, as was the case by the 5th century in Rome, there will be no point to having a “job” and doing “work” with no chance of reward, as a wild and free world awaits just over the hills surrounding the exhausted remains of the mega-city. Both the French and the Germans thought of themselves as free peoples beyond the reach of what was left of Roman state machinery; the very word France can be easily traced back to the word “free”.

>Roughly 24th century: Western culture ceases to exist. (1.V.2)

[Anonymous No.17225967]

Original post:
http://avery.morrow.name/blog/2014/10/oswald-spenglers-decline-of-the-west-the-100th-anniversary-update/

[Anonymous No.17225983]

>>17225956
thanks for posting anon, an interesting read

[Anonymous No.17225993]

>>17225342
You don't even have to go that far. The capitol building is analogous to the Temple Mount, and the chambers themselves are, despite the incompetence of the politicians, the Holy of Holies. The protection and security of that chamber is then the prime directive of any governing security apparatus.

What happened yesterday was that the US failed to keep that room secure, in images broadcast to the entire globe. The governing apparatus failed both to check the people's anger and prevent these demonstrations, and they failed to maintain security in the face of this uncontrollable anger. In terms of damage to people, it's innocuous, only one person was killed and it was by the USSS, not by rioters. But in terms of images to catalyze revolution abroad this is worse than a thousand 9/11s.

China is a rising power and what is going to happen in Russia when Putin steps down is completely up in the air. A healthy imperial power would be showing strength and unity in preparation to meet a rising threat, instead the government came off looking toothless and disorganized, and a magical transition to a Biden government, despite what some people think, won't fix that because Biden is ALREADY known to be a toothless pushover. Any power opposed to the American Empire is fucking salivating right now, and the news taking the opportunity to attack Trump and Trump supporters right now (what else can they do without looking like fools?) will only exacerbate this because now no layman is paying attention to what this says about the organs of the state.

[Anonymous No.17226093]

>>17225956
Great posts, thanks

[Anonymous No.17226108]

>>17225967
it's shii hory shet

[Anonymous No.17226109]

>>17225909
>and it is fair to assume that the hard sciences will begin to turn inward in a similar way in the coming years, especially after the failure of ITER and other mammoth experimental projects.
In which way the STEM sciences would change in the "physiognomical" way? Is it even possible for the quantitative natural and fundamental sciences?

[Anonymous No.17226185]

what do you need to read to be able to understand Decline of the West?

[Anonymous No.17226195]

>>17226109
I agree that this is a weak point. ITER is really an applied science project, not a physics experiment.

[Anonymous No.17226216]

>>17226185
would also like to know

[Anonymous No.17226239]

>>17226185
>>17226216
General knowledge of the history of Europe and of the Western philosophical tradition. He will blow your mind with the connections he makes but only if you know who/what he's talking about.

[Anonymous No.17226258]

>>17226185
Keep Wikipedia open for reference when he makes a reference you don't understand. I would recommend just taking his word for it on the math stuff unless you've studied some math in college.

[Anonymous No.17226272]

>>17226239
>Western philosophical tradition
I know Plato and Aristotle but not much more, will I need Kant and the like?

[Anonymous No.17226279]

Newfag here. What does "Faustiam man", "Faustian Civilization", and "Faustian X" mean? And why Faustian?

[Anonymous No.17226298]

>>17226279
white devil

[Anonymous No.17226313]

>>17226272
Absolutely. As the central figure of modern philosophy Spengler returns to Kant frequently throughout the book.
>>17226279
Spengler calls Western civilization Faustian after the German myth of Faust who sold his soul to the devil. He describes the West as willing to stop at nothing to conquer the Earth even if that means destroying itself and the Earth with it. Potentially catastrophic climate change, if you believe in it, is one such consequence of the Western psychological makeup that seeks to control the world via industry and technology.

[Anonymous No.17226332]

>>17226313
how does this apply exclusively to Western civilization though? China and India engage in the same techno-fetishization and environmental destruction

[Anonymous No.17226336]

>>17226313
>. As the central figure of modern philosophy Spengler returns to Kant frequently throughout the book.
guess I finally have to tackle Kant.

[Anonymous No.17226349]

>>17226332
they got infected by the west

[Anonymous No.17226378]

>>17226332
That is the effect of Western expansion. China and India have been culturally conquered by the West to the point that they now think and feel mostly the same as Westerners do. Mishima summed it up best when he said that in the future all nations will think and perceive the world in the exact same way as Western culture bulldozes other cultures and imposes its way of thinking upon them. "Universal rights of man" for instance. Only a Westerner could conceive of such an expansionist doctrine that must a priori apply to all men and all cultures.

[Anonymous No.17226469]

>>17220047
your guy ran on a platform of literally just "not being trump" and nothing else

[Anonymous No.17226485]

>>17226378
>That is the effect of Western expansion. China and India have been culturally conquered by the West to the point that they now think and feel mostly the same as Westerners do.
I would love to read som eliterature on this that would approach it from some intelelctual standpoint like Spengler rather than some seething academic not enjoying the progress in whatever way they perceive it.

for example:
>named as such, critically, by Benjamin Noys, it was already there, in its entirety. The relevant passage is worth repeating in full (as it would be, repeatedly, in all subsequent accelerationist discussion):

> "… which is the revolutionary path? Is there one?—To withdraw from the world market, as Samir Amin advises Third World countries to do, in a curious revival of the fascist “economic solution”? Or might it be to go in the opposite direction? To go still further, that is, in the movement of the market, of decoding and deterritorialization? For perhaps the flows are not yet deterritorialized enough, not decoded enough, from the viewpoint of a theory and a practice of a highly schizophrenic character. Not to withdraw from the process, but to go further, to “accelerate the process,” as Nietzsche put it: in this matter, the truth is that we haven’t seen anything yet."

[Anonymous No.17226518]

>>17226378
I’ve lived in other countries as well as Western ones and I simply can’t accept that to be the truth and I also don’t think that’s what Mishima actually said or meant. Please provide the quote.

[Anonymous No.17226596]

>>17226518
Fine, but geopolitical facts speak for themselves. The quote is from Mishima Aesthetic Terrorist

[Anonymous No.17226770]

>>17226279
It's all amerimutt cope actually lol.

[Anonymous No.17226808]

>>17226596
that comparison to der letzte mensch makes no sense if you are trying to be sympathetic to Mishima here.

[Anonymous No.17226828]

>>17226332
Despite the Romanticism the barbarians beyond the frontier where heavily romanised.

[Anonymous No.17226834]

>>17226808
Not that anon but mishima was pretty westernized. He was probably self aware enough to realize his samurai LARP is getting sad and put himself with the rest of last men