Fellow anons, now that the dynamics of the postmodern age have destroyed every cultural and institutional norms left out there, how do we deal with this new world? What books cover this topic?
this is what (good) existentialists doheidegger's discourse on thinking, what is called thinking, etc. On the essence of truth and question concerning technology as well I guess. https://www.holybooks.com/wp-content/uploads/Discourse-on-Thinking.pdfit's 10 pages starts on pg 43 just read thisGabriel Marcel's man against mass societyMcluhan's work on media theory like the medium is the massage is important contextually. Anyone who tells you to "avoid technology" or something is basically the worst thing you can read and will totally undermine your ability to deal with it. I also tend to agree with thinkers like Alisdair Macintyre's (his book ethics in the conflicts of modernity is fantastic) recommendation that you basically need to take up a religious tradition in order to get back in contact with reality. Lots of way of understanding and dealing with reality conceptually are embedded in the religious traditions and the only way of accessing that older wisdom (and actually getting in contact with reality as opposed to the socially engineered pseudo-reality) is through actual genuine commitment to one of those religious traditions. I'd recommend going to a Catholic Church they have OCIA programs for actually learning about it. As heidegger ends his speech with this quote:>We are plants which—whether we like to admit it to ourselves or not—must with our roots rise out of the earth in order to bloomThe actual means of engaging and understanding ourselves and our culture can only be gained by gratefully receiving them, if you do not there is nothing you can do as you have cut off the limb of the tree you are sitting on. It will be imperfect and somewhat larpy but it's legitimately the best we can do and once you do it much more opens up. For a different directionhttps://www.amazon.com/All-Things-Shining-Reading-Classics/dp/141659616XThis is some heidegger scholars with a popular book advocating the restoration of greek polythiesm lol However I think that comes more from them being academics and it comes off as rather silly. This also touches on some interesting stuffhttps://www.amazon.com/Senior-Restoration-Realism-Father-Francis/dp/0997314001/rIn general>Humans are animals and we must be engaged bodily and with our history>have practical physical skills that involve bodily coping, playing an instrument, gardening, tending animals, martial arts are import ways to stay in contact with reality>be mindful of what little culture you have to do everything you can to maintain it and pass it onAnother root issue is the delusion we don't have an inheritance and there is nothing to tend to or pass on. We do, you are lying if you say otherwise. We still have the best culture on earth and there is still some inheritance you can tend to and pass on. So no race mixing and do what we can to ensure the existence of our people and a future for white children.
>>24762304Oh yeah and Chesterton's non fiction and fiction in general orthodoxy is a decent place to start as well as his novel a man who was thursday. it basically all does come down to his cosmic patriotism but other people have worked it out a bit more explicitly.From orthodoxy>Let us suppose we are confronted with a desperate thing--say Pimlico. If we think what is really best for Pimlico we shall find the thread of thought leads to the throne or the mystic and the arbitrary. It is not enough for a man to disapprove of Pimlico: in that case he will merely cut his throat or move to Chelsea. Nor, certainly, is it enough for a man to approve of Pimlico: for then it will remain Pimlico, which would be awful. The only way out of it seems to be for somebody to love Pimlico: to love it with a transcendental tie and without any earthly reason. If there arose a man who loved Pimlico, then Pimlico would rise into ivory towers and golden pinnacles; Pimlico would attire herself as a woman does when she is loved. For decoration is not given to hide horrible things: but to decorate things already adorable. A mother does not give her child a blue bow because he is so ugly without it. A lover does not give a girl a necklace to hide her neck. If men loved Pimlico as mothers love children, arbitrarily, because it is THEIRS, Pimlico in a year or two might be fairer than Florence. Some readers will say that this is a mere fantasy. I answer that this is the actual history of mankind. This, as a fact, is how cities did grow great. Go back to the darkest roots of civilization and you will find them knotted round some sacred stone or encircling some sacred well. People first paid honour to a spot and afterwards gained glory for it. Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.
>>24762304Thank you for this extensive answer. I’m actually catholic and I take my faith quite seriously, however I have considered myself an Aristotelian for a few years (I’ve read Macintyre and was interested in Neoplatonism). Then I made the mistake (jk) of working through modern philosophy starting with Descartes. And this experience somehow shattered my world view (apart from my faith). I see myself very close to an existentialist position for now, but I’m still curious how other people cope with and interpret the tides of the current age.
>>24762363Gabriel Marcel is a Catholic who coined the term existentialism you should read himI have no idea how the early moderns like descartes could shatter your faith they are basically just jokes to post moderns. Charles Taylor and Hubert Dreyfus have a good general refutation in Retrieving realism. I think the largest gap the Catholic intellectuals have is kind of the heideggarian particularity/nazi aspect. I don't think that's actually escapable (ethnic particularity as the foundation for political organization).We are genetically shaped to have an "intelligible world" around people of the same ethnicity as that's how we lived for basically all of human history. Mixing them up is largely a way for the machine to destroy locality and particularity (which they did so openly and explicitly through mass education and that sort of thing). In general I think the existentialists frame the response the best however I do not think Catholics are typically willing to go where that ends up. For lots of people they still respect science, rights, and abstract sense of laws and order that came from that liberal/scientific modernity which is their fundamental error. Paul Feyerabend and other philosophers of science might help with that but I also push people to dig into astrology as a way of understanding what the historical attitudes towards what science actually was. I don't think existentailism is really terribly at odds with the classical view, I think nieztsche is very good for people to read (if you've actually read homer, the tragedians, plato and aristotle and have a good grasp of the medievals). The more being orienated anti-systematic view actually fits the classical and even the medieval traditions quite well. The "false" views are more typically the modern re-interpretations of medieval philosophy trying to pay more respect to science and the sort of printing press influenced culture (which kind of destroys actual culture). I think heidegger articulates that the best with mcluhan also pointing out some clear stuff (and this is not an uncommon view Graham Harman is in agreement with me) but most pople are so trapped in that academic/printing press view they aren't actually willing to follow reality where it points. You kind of need to understand social engineering, the technological impacts on history (through the phonetic alphabet on the greeks (aletheia vs verum in heidegger) as well as the printing press on europe), as well as sort of inhabit the classic view in seeing politics as arising from a people rather than being a technical or systematic thing. Surface level understandings are the things more likely to contradict if you actually go in deep the existentialist and classical really go hand in hand.
>>24762363Oh yeah you might appreciate this book by a Catholic philosopher I quite like who has some deep engagement with Nietzsche while also doing lots of work for the thomistic institute. https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-about-Meaning-Techno-Nihilism-Veritas/dp/B0CMBYGYF4Might point you in a helpful direction
>>24762261From "The Reenchantment of Science: Postmodern Proposals"
What are these dynamics?The fracturing of the world into increasingly atomized and personalized world-bubbles that are irreconcilable with each other as far as any basic facts or values.An interconnected world demands a world with an unprecedented factor of unification, but all the existing unifying factors are woefully insufficient, and worse yet *one isn't even sure where to begin to look* because the subject is literally "everything."The philosophical language doesn't exist to describe what exists, much less what to do with it.>>24762403This essay posits that the situation is "telling stories," to tell more expansive and non-anthropocentric stories about existence that more accurately reflects its co-participatory and massively interdependent nature.The problem is basically that philosophy doesn't know what to do with the facts and theories of modern science, and a lot of that has to do with the nature of the universe being radically different than our traditional speculation.We need a radically different account of the universe that conforms to the scientific facts without overstating, while appealing to our deepest spiritual sentiments.There's no avoiding metaphysics, and thus spirituality. And this steps on everyone's toes.
>>24762393I know Gabriel Marcel, haven’t read him yet but will soon. I’m reading pascal and Kierkegaard at the moment.I honestly can’t really explain what exactly shattered my previous understanding of the world, but I was thinking a lot about truth and perspective and how reason relates to both and I had a lot of discussions with non-believing friends about faith and about what god is in philosophy compared to how he reveals himself in religion. To my shame i had initially thought that I could argue my friends to accept the notion of god and the need for a connection with the divine, but this obviously failed. In the meantime I was trying to understand how modern philosophy was born from the nominalism in late scholasticism. By the time I read Kant and later on Wittgenstein, I somehow knew that my previous realism wasn’t tenable anymore.I had read Nietzsche way before I became catholic but returned to him every now and then and found him to always be a fruitful encounter.My faith was strangely strengthened through this whole process though. So I thank god for this grace.
>>24762399>>24762403These look quite promising, thank you.
>>24762261Nietzsche of course
And now a whole lot of conservatives need to die.After that the survivors will be able to work out new norms without the discussion being derailed by conservatives.
>>24762261Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self.
