Was he right?
I fear so.
sex gifs
is that Hank from Breaking Bad
>>25586829To you, sure; may as well be.
>>25586377Mostly.
>>25586377He was quite objectively proven correct considering he wrote about the decline of liberalism and the emergence of a Caesar before Hitler arrive. I feel like people just forget that everything happening today already happened in the past. The post-WW1 years were very, very degenerate and unstable. WW2 was just a big reset and we're going through the same motions of decline and war again today.
Is he worth reading as a first serious foray into history? I am otherwise well-read especially around the turn of last century.
>>25586377THE PORTRAYED IS ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THIS PARTICULAR IMAGE, COMPOSITION-WISE - HE IS PORTRAYED IN THE RIGHT VERTICAL HALF OF THE IMAGETHUS: YES
Absolutely. The West has completely lost touch with its historical roots and is a deracinated, rotten culture with only a passing resemblance to what it once was. It is in a zombified state, with the Civilization peaking and moving past into a spiritually dead, ideologically-based void of culture driven by the dogmas of theoretical systems imposed. A culture dies when its spiritual core rots, leaving behind a hollow, mechanical "Civilization" obsessed with comfort, technology, and administration, and modern civilization, where life is constantly assessed in terms of metrics, measurements of consumption, production, raw output and data, attempting to systemize human behavior rather than act, certainly fits the bill. Governance becomes an exercise in optimization experiments by transient technocratic ruling classes more connected to a broader global sphere than any sort of root to the land, tradition, or countryman, the embodiment of Spengler's intellectual nomad, endlessly searching for ideas that fulfill a similar religious impulse (a "Second Religiousness") but remain fragmented. We are clearly in a state of final, exhausted phase of a cultural cycle before total collapse. We are outright living in the winter of the West. We can only preserve what fragments of the old heritage we can within our own immediate networks, at best.A relevant excerpt here of something that is quite observable in the West today, a noticeable pattern where the more liberal and economically advanced a society is, paradoxically the birth rate tends to lower.>“Children do not happen, .. mainly because intelligence at the peak of intensity, can no longer find any reason for their existence.” (p.72)>“When the ordinary thought of highly cultivated people begins to regard ‘having children’ as a question of pro’s and con’s, the great turning point has come. … For Nature knows nothing of pro and con. Everywhere, where life is actual, reigns an inward organic logic, an ‘it’, a drive, that is entirely independent of waking being.” (p.72)And of course this very relevant chestnut here>"democracy is the completed equating of money with political power"The battle is now between money and blood in the terminal stage. Caesarism is to naturally follow.
>>25587091Great post, thanks. What does he say about the arts in his three periods? Anything especial, or only that they share the fate of all else?
>>25587099ARTS? YE ASKETH ABOUT THE ARTS? LET ME SOLEMNLY AND GRAVELY TYPE UNTO THEE: WHEN THEE ASKETH ABOUT THE ARTS,ASKETH NOT 'WHAT'ASKETH 'HOW'
>>25587115Oh shut up you.
>>25587118HOW?
>>25587091>Governance becomes an exercise in optimization experiments by transient technocratic ruling classes more connected to a broader global sphere than any sort of root to the land, tradition, or countrymanAnd in order to solve this crisis we elected a rapist billionaire golem who gives anti-human AI developers and Jews infinite power. This was our Hail Mary to save the West.
>>25587172america has been doomed since the bad guys won the civil war
>>25587099Early period is more rooted in the religious and metaphysical, emotive,authenticity. The Late period/Autumn of culture, refines itself to achieve the heights of technical achievement. Eventually, civilization, mutated from "culture", metricized and materialist, sprawling, novelty, revivalism, gaudiness, repetition, size, simplicity. We can definitely see this today. Photoshop and airbrushed photos, makeup, AI, remakes everywhere in music/television/cinema, literature reduced to YA novels and erotica or ideological texts, worship of Mammon, technocracy, spectacle. An interesting continuation from Spengler is Adorno. Adorno despite his Marxism had some sympathies with Spengler and engaged with him, he wrote an essay in fact dedicated to Spengler (Spengler Today 1941) and agreed with some of his diagnoses and disagreed on many others. But on this, a good parallel. Spengler approached the death of authenticity in art over cultural evolutionary stages, Adorno gave this mechanism a name (the Culture Industry) although assigned to economic mechanisms, which was only one facet of a whole. Adorno explained how capitalism and industrialization turned art into the mechanical, repetitive commodity that Spengler predicted. Spengler saw the Late Period as a time when art forms grew organically out of a deep cultural soul. In the Winter period, this organic growth hardens into mechanical, intellectual formulas. Spengler noted that in a dying civilization, there is an illusion of vibrant artistic experimentation (exoticism, radical fashions, shock value), but it is empty because it lacks a unifying, living style. We saw this phase in the late 20th century and alternative/indie sort of cultures, counter culture, post-irony, all that. Everything has been debased and deconstructed and nothing is left except references to something we already killed before anyone living can remember.
>>25587172>”Caesarism is our fate, just as much as it was the fate of the Romans, the Chinese, and every other mature civilization. But billionaires or generals, bankers or bureaucrats of the highest order—that is the eternal question.”
>>25586377About what? Nobody is right or wrong about everything. Specify or fuck off.
>>25587280AI is really the death knell of culture. I do not see how we possibly survive it.
>>25587360By "incorporation"
>>25587348The thesis of Decline of the West
>>25587280>>25587360This is why I’m skeptical of Spengler. The conditions for a Caesar to emerge are utterly nonexistent today. Our world is so flattened that the kitsch of his time is high art to us. There is nothing of any soul in this world anymore besides memetic LARP, the heroic strongmen of our age like Trump are the ultimate avatars of Mammon worship and corrupt moneyed interests. The Germany that Spengler hoped would counter the liberalism of its neighbors no longer exists. Today it’s possibly the most libtarded country on earth. Even Spengler’s own fans today are brain-dead American conservatives who are the exact kind of post-religious manipulated masses that he railed against. And so if things have gotten so bad that a Caesar is unimaginable, if AI now threaten to put a lid on all human creativity and ambition entirely, then it calls into question Spengler’s entire relativistic framework of civilization. Since this Western process of self-abolition now concerns the entire globe because of technology then it points to a more universalist theory of history being more accurate. Again, Marx and communism endure against other theories.
>>25587091>>"democracy is the completed equating of money with political power"Is he stupid? that is the most classic Aristotelian definition of oligarchy.
>>25587399THE DECLINE OF THE THESIS OF THE WESTTHE WESTERN OF THE THESIS OF THE DECLINETHE THESIS OF THE WESTERN DECLINE
>>25586377Who?(and about what?)
>>25586377There aren't cycles. We are not part of nature.All evil is inflicted on us by unnatural sources created by demons themselves.Don't fall for the lies of those that compare us to animals, nature, etc.We are different. The world is just a sandbox created for our souls to grow - this is the meaning of life.As for evil - there is the evil that gets channeled(via temptations) into us, by demons themselves, and there's the evil that demons crafted: golems that they can control to invade and infect our Christian nations.
>>25587348>>25587501Spengler, obviously. The thesis of Decline of the West, obviously.
>>25587496you will never be CVMGENIUS
The decline is where the juice is. It’s pure deterritorialization. Spengler thinks the death of the West is a tragedy, but it’s actually just the ultimate decentralization. Deleuze, Nick Land, that's where I want to go. I want transcendence. The ultimate liberation of the Ego from the state apparatus, the structure needs to die so man can fly. Stirner, Deleuze, Hegel, Nietzsche. The individual is the center. There is no territory. Why should my unique ego care about the preservation of Western metaphysics? It’s the ultimate playground for the individual. You can be your own idol. Nomadic flow of desire that escapes the rigid and we flow into the new singularity.
>>25588689Without western civilization you'd be a peasant, living in hellish conditions, unable to tend to your ego.
>>25588689>hegelwtf hegel is not an individualist lmao lay off the drugs
Literally no one well read takes him seriously. Only people who are genuine retards read this hack
Didn't he believe jacking off healed shit
>>25588702>Adorno a hackToday's academics are children of liberalism and are true hacks
Way too much of a mystic who just made shit up as he went along
>>25588689baseddude fuck the old codesthe old system old bourgeoisethe people are the real the hands the raw output the hammer the sicklepol pot, mao, stalinindividualism is only afforded in context of liberal degeneracy. stirner was refuted in german ideology by marx (pbuh)
>>25586377no, he wasn't.
>Even though Spengler consistently described himself as a philosopher and his book as a work of philosophy, he was often taken to be a historian.>Consequently, the bulk of the secondary commentary on Decline tends to be of a historical or historiographical nature and is rarely of direct relevance to a philosophical assessment of Spengler’s historical outlook. >Secondary works on Spengler as a philosopher are far fewer and most stem from the early to the mid-1900s. >A second, related point is that Spengler’s work is not viewed as particularly significant within the field of the philosophy of history. >He is held to be neither of historical importance in the conceptual development of the field nor of relevance to issues of contemporary concern.8 >Subsequently, secondary literature on Spengler’s philosophy of history is rather rare.9 >He no longer merits a section of his own in most encyclopaedias or dictionaries of philosophy, and at most receives a fleeting mention in the paragraphs on cyclical theories of history in the section on the philosophy of history.>8 On the latter issue of contemporary relevance, Peter Munz, for example, notes that “metanarratives or philosophies of history” such as Spengler produced “are at present out of fashion.” Peter Munz, “The Historical Narrative,” in Michael Bentley, ed., Companion to Historiography (London: Routledge, 1997), 746-764; 749>9 Russell suggests that “focusing on figures such as Spengler does not enhance academic reputations.” Ford Russell, Northrop Frye on Myth (New York: Routledge, 2000), xv
>>25587172Biden is not in office anymore but anyway AI developers are many times more “pro-human” than the Luddite, antiwhite leftist faggots who believe in the “dignity” of humans laboring to dig with a spoon what an excavator could do with a single motion.
>>25588689Fuck that
>>25588777Care to elaborate? >>25588757You're absolutely idiotic, spooked beyond belief.
>>25588689Retard
reactionary bullshitpseudo philosophy
>>25588793Highly disagree. He's been vindicated.
>>25588702Wittgenstein admired him and listed him among his principal influences.
>>25588689nick land of the 90s feels optimistic by modern standards. he actually believed we'd progress further into a cool cyberpunk future and accelerate. instead everything just became more boring and domesticated
>>25588808You say "modern day bad", I say "modern day good". Society is better for me today as a homosexual.
>>25588879>I can openly be a sodomite and get married Last Man behavior.
>>25588903What exactly is last man about that?
>>25588769Provide a detailed explanation for how you think handing the fate of Western civilization over to faggot Jew oligarchs like Sam Altman and Dario Amodei will benefit the right-wing. Explain how a future where mass culture is flattened, egalitarian and where the competent white experts of the West are made obsolete by AI is an "anti-leftist" world.
>>25586377Why yes
>>25587172If you actually believe any of that, you deserve to be as impotent and angry as you clearly are.
>>25588912>what is last man about drug addicts rubbing shit on their dicks and pretending to be in love
