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 Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity

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PostSubject: Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity EmptySun Feb 03, 2013 9:42 am

How did Spengler characterize the "Decline"?

In the Book "The Decline of the West" ("Der Untergang des Abendlandes"), there are three charts of contemporary epochs.

The first regarding the spirit (the fundamental differenciation), the second the arts (the most obvious marker for changes within a cultur), and the third one: politics (the larger system, to look at change in society).

I attempt to point out that Spengler saw more necessity in the decline, than just looked at it as a mere disaster, like we tend to characterize "Modernity" or "Postmodernity" as. He might have seen in the decline, something necessary for something new to be born. That's why he used the analogy of the seasons.

Is "spring" better than "winter"? Is "summer" more noble than "autumn"? Is "spring" superior to the other "seasons"?

It is rather characterized by certain traits.

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The tables can be found page 1017ff in the PDF (at archive dot org).

In any case one has to "ride the tiger" of modernity a bit at least and surely cannot fight a battle for the whole of "humanity" or against the current (counter current) all the time.
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PostSubject: Spenglerx Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity EmptyWed Feb 06, 2013 4:36 pm

Spengler "The Decline of the West" p.181

"APOLLINIAN, FAUSTIAN AND MAGIAN SOUL
1
Henceforth we shall designate the soul of the Classical Culture, which chose
the sensuously-present individual body as the ideal type of the extended, by the
name (familiarized by Nietzsche) of the Apollinian. In opposition to it we have
the Faustian soul, whose prime-symbol is pure and limitless space, and whose
"body" is the Western Culture that blossomed forth with the birth of the
Romanesque style in the loth century in the Northern plain between the Elbe
and the Tagus. The nude statue is Apollinian, the art of the fugue Faustian.
Apollinian are: mechanical statics, the sensuous cult of the Olympian gods,
the politically individual city-states of Greece, the doom of Oedipus and the
phallus-symbol. Faustian are: Galileian dynamics, Catholic and Protestant
dogmatics, the great dynasties of the Baroque with their cabinet diplomacy,
the destiny of Lear and the Madonna-ideal from Dante's Beatrice to the last
line of Faust II. The painting that defines the individual body by contours
is Apollinian, that which forms space by means of light and shade is Faustian -
this is the difference between the fresco of Polygnotus and the oil painting of
Rembrandt. The Apollinian existence is that of the Greek who describes his
ego as soma and who lacks all idea of an inner development and therefore all
real history, inward and outward; the Faustian is an existence which is led
with a deep consciousness and introspection of the ego, and a resolutely personal
culture evidenced in memoirs, reflections, retrospects and prospects and
conscience. And in the time of Augustus, in the countries between Nile _
and Tigris, Black Sea and South Arabia, there appears - aloof but able to
speak to us through forms borrowed, adopted and inherited - the Magian
soul of the Arabian Culture with its algebra, astrology and alchemy, its
mosaics and arabesques, its caliphates and mosques, and the sacraments and
scriptures of the Persian, Jewish, Christian, •• post-Classical" and Manichrean
religions. [...]"
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PostSubject: Re: Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity EmptyWed Feb 06, 2013 4:44 pm

p.127f

"[...]
The final issue to which the Faustian wisdom tends - though it is only in
the highest moments that it has seen it - is the dissolution of all knowledge
into a vast system of morphological relationships. Dynamics and Analysis are in
respect of meaning, form-language and substance, identical with Romanesque
ornament, Gothic cathedrals, Christian-German dogma and the dynastic state.
One and the same world-feeling speaks in all of them. They were born with,
and they aged with, the Faustian Culture, and they present that Culture in the
world of day and space as a historical drama. The uniting of the several scientific
aspects into one will bear all the marks of the great art of counterpoint.
An infinitesimal music of the boundless world-space - that is the deep unresting
longing of this soul, as the orderly statuesque and Euclidean Cosmos was the
satisfaction of the Classical. That-formulated by a logical necessity of Faustian
reason as a dynamic-imperative causality, then developed into a dictatorial,
hard-working, world-transforming science - is the grand legacy of the
Faustian soul to the souls of Cultures yet to be, a bequest of immensely
transcendent forms that the heirs will possibly ignore. And then, weary after
its striving, the Western science returns to its spiritual home."
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PostSubject: Re: Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity EmptyWed Feb 06, 2013 4:50 pm

Looking at the first table, we see that "we" ("we" = the "Abendland" or "Western Civilisation") are in a time analogy to "practical fatalism in Islam" in the arab culture and "hellenic-roman stoicism" in the classical culture and "indian Buddhism past 500 AD" in indian culture. And we ourselves are in the time of "ethical Socialism" (which may be a self contradictory term actually).
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PostSubject: Re: Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity EmptyWed Feb 06, 2013 7:40 pm

on Julius Evola THE YOGA OF POWER:

"Translated into English for the first time, this book will come
as a surprise to those who think of India as a civilization
characterized only by contemplation and the quest for nirvana.
The author introduces two Hindu movements - Tantrism and
Shaktism - both of which emphasize a path of action as well as
mastery over secret energies latent in the body. Tracing the
influence of these movements on the Hindu tradition from the
fourth century onward
, Evola focuses on the perilous practices
of the Tantric school known as Vamachara - the "Way of the Left
Hand" - which uses human passions and the power of Nature to
conquer the world of the senses. During the current cycle of
dissolution and decadence, known in India as Kali Yuga, the
spiritual aspirant can no longer dismiss the physical world as
mere illusion but must grapple with - and ultimately
transform - the powerful and often destructive forces with
which we live.
Evola draws from original texts to describe
methods of self-mastery, including the awakening of the serpent
power, initiatory sexual magic, and evoking the mantras of
power."
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PostSubject: Re: Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity EmptyWed Feb 06, 2013 8:51 pm

Evola "Yoga of Power" (PDF) p.18f

"[...]Another text says: "Yoga siddhis are not obtained by
wearing yoga garments or by conversation about yoga, but only
through tireless practice. This is the secret of success. There is no
doubt about it."8
In the previous quotation referring to the body, another important
point was alluded to. The analysis of the last age, the "dark
age" or Kali Yuga, brings to light two essential features. The first is
that mankind living in this age is strictly connected to the body and
cannot prescind from it; therefore, the only way open is not that of
pure detachment (as in early Buddhism and in the many varieties
of yoga) but rather that of knowledge, awakening, and mastery
over secret energies trapped in the body.
"

"The second characteristic is that of the dissolution typical of this age.
During the Kali Yuga, the bull of dharma stands on only one foot (it lost the other three
during the previous three ages). This means that the traditional law
(dharma) is wavering
, is reduced to a shadow of its former self, and
seems to be almost succumbing. During Kali Yuga, however, the
goddess Kali, who was asleep in the previous ages, is now fully
awake. I will write at greater length about Kali, a prominent Tantric
goddess, in the following pages; for now, let us say that this symbolism
implies that during the last age elementary, infernal, and
even abyssal forces are untrammeled. The immediate task consists
in facing and absorbing these forces, in taking the risk of "riding
the tiger
," to use a Chinese expression that may best describe this
situation, or "to transform the poison into medicine," according to
a Tantric expression. Hence the rituals and special practices of what
has been named Left-Hand Tantrism, or the Path of the Left Hand
(Vama-marga), which despite some problematic aspects (orgies, use
of sex, etc.) represents one of the most interesting forms within the
trend analyzed in this study.
It is therefore stated - and this is significant - that considering
the situation of the Kali Yuga, teachings that were previously kept
secret may now be revealed in different degrees, though a word of
caution is issued concerning the danger they may represent for
those who are not initiated.9 Hence what we have so far mentioned:
the emergence, in Tantrism, of esoteric and initiatory teachings.
A third point must be emphasized. In Tantrism the passage
from the ideal of "liberation" to that of "freedom" marks an essential
change in the ideals and ethics of Hinduism. It is true that even
previously the ideal of the jivanmukta had been known. The word
means "one who is freed," that is, the one who has achieved the
unconditioned, the sahaja, while alive, in his own body. Tantrism
introduces a specification, however: to the existential condition of
mankind living in the last age, it relates the overcoming of the
antithesis between enjoyment of the world and ascesis, or yoga,
which is spiritual discipline aimed at liberation. "In the other
schools - thus claim the Tantras - one excludes the other, but in the
path we follow these opposites meet."10 In other words, a discipline
is developed that allows one to be free and invulnerable even while
enjoying the world, or anything the world may offer.
In the meantime,
the world ceases to be seen in terms of maya - that is, pure
appearance, illusion, or mirage - as is the case in Vedantic philosophy.
The world is not maya but power. This paradoxical coexistence
of freedom, or of the dimension of transcendence in one's self,
and enjoyment of the world, of freely experimenting with the world's
pleasures, carries the strictest relation with Tantrism's formula and
main goal: the union of the impassive Shiva with the ardent Shakti
in one's being and at all levels of reality.[...]"
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PostSubject: Re: Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity EmptyMon Feb 11, 2013 12:28 pm

"Ride the Tiger" chapter 8, p.50
"Life and transcendence are continually muddled in his [Nietzsches] philosophy, and of all the consequences of his anti-Christian polemic, this confusion has been one of the worst."

Ch.12 p.79
"Apart from their systematizing and their more elaborate philosophical apparatus, the philosophical existentialists' situation is analogous to Nietzsche's: they too are modern men, that is, men seνered from the world of Tradition and deνoid of any knowledge or comprehension of that world."

still talking about Existantialism (Sartre, Heidegger, Jaspers...):
"Such an order of ideas could obviously only appeal to a human type who was so off center with regard to transcendence as to feel that it was external to himself." (Ch.14 p.92)

"By fully accepting this reality and these processes, the differentiated man can essentialize and form himself according to a valid personal equation, activating the transcendent dimension within, burning out the dregs of individuality, and thus revealing the absolute person." (Ch.17, p.114)

Ch.17, p.116 (on "New Realism"/"New Realists": )
"The world must return to its stable, calm, clear, and naked state. In the last analysis, even the life of the soul has value for us only as a thing, as a given οf existence, with equal characteristics οf objectivity and fatality," wrote Matzke. "Rather than looking at the world from the point of view of the soul, we look at the soul from the point of view of the world. And then everything seems to us clearer, more natural, more evident, and that which is merely subjective appears to us ever more irrelevant and laughable."
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PostSubject: Re: Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity EmptySun Feb 24, 2013 4:04 am

Epicureanism

Stoicism
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PostSubject: Re: Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity EmptySun Mar 03, 2013 7:50 pm

Epicurus and (late) Stoics:

Epicurus:

“Not what we have But what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance.”

“Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.”

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”

“I have never wished to cater to the crowd; for what I know they do not approve, and what they approve I do not know.”

“To eat and drink without a friend is to devour like the lion and the wolf.”

“It is better for you to be free of fear lying upon a pallet, than to have a golden couch and a rich table and be full of trouble.”

“I never desired to please the rabble. What pleased them, I did not learn; and what I knew was far removed from their understanding.”


Epictetus:

“Don't explain your philosophy. Embody it.”

“Don't just say you have read books. Show that through them you have learned to think better, to be a more discriminating and reflective person. Books are the training weights of the mind. They are very helpful, but it would be a bad mistake to suppose that one has made progress simply by having internalized their contents."

“If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.”

“The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.”

“Other people's views and troubles can be contagious. Don't sabotage yourself by unwittingly adopting negative, unproductive attitudes through your associations with others.”



Marcus Aurelius:

“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”

“Remember that very little is needed to make a happy life.”

“Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect.”

“Do every act of your life as though it were the very last act of your life.”
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PostSubject: Re: Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity EmptyTue Mar 05, 2013 10:20 pm

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PostSubject: Re: Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity EmptyWed Mar 13, 2013 6:46 pm

At this point I'd say that Stoicism and Epicureanism correlate with Paganism much better than with any sort of Liberalism/Libertarianism/Nihilism.

It's a certain focus: on "happiness" and "inner peace" (rather than big questions on the origins and meaning of life, some earlier philosophical schools discussed). It is pragmatical: but focuses on wisdom. It's suitable for modernity, but not modern in itself. I can really recommend it!
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PostSubject: Re: Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity EmptySun Mar 24, 2013 9:51 am

Moving towards Spengler now. Just to clarify: Evola went counter currents (Revolt) in his (political) writings and not with the current like I might have stated (falsely) above. Though he was self-contradictory (his writings that dealt with the Magian, indicate that he also went with the current to some degree). And dealt too much with the Magian for my (current) taste.
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PostSubject: Re: Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity EmptyThu Mar 28, 2013 1:03 pm

Quote :

Apollonian / Magian / Faustian These are Spengler's terms for Classical, Arabian and Western civilisations respectively.


Apollonian Civilisation is focused around Ancient Greece and Rome. Spengler saw its world view as being characterised by appreciation for the beauty of the human body, and a preference for the local and the present moment.


Magian Civilisation includes the Jews from about 400BC, early Christians and various Arabian religions up to and including Islam. Its world feeling revolved around the concept of world as cavern, epitomised by the domed Mosque, and a preoccupation with essence. Spengler saw the development of this civilisation as being distorted by a too influential presence of older cultures, the initial vigorous expansionary impulses of Islam being in part a reaction against this.


Faustian Civilisation began in Western Europe around the 10th century and according to Spengler such has been its expansionary power that by the 20th century it was covering the entire earth, with only a few Regions where Islam provides an alternative world view. The world feeling of Faustian civilisation is inspired by the concept of infinitely wide and profound space, the yearning towards distance and infinity.

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PostSubject: Re: Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity EmptyThu Mar 28, 2013 9:02 pm

Nietzsche himself said it: there is no Faust and there is no Gretchen.
But we're all Mephisto's and Wagner's.

It's because Faust is the faustian archetype. And Gretchen: the magian archetype.

They're not based on real persons, by Goethe's intent.

Wagner and Mephisto are the real people with flaws and different conflicting drives (of all 3 archetypes: faustian, apollonian and magian).

There was no Faust. There was no Apollo. There was no Gretchen. And there will never be a pure archetype like that. Apollo is pure masculinity. The Magian (Gretchen) is pure femininity. And "Faustian" is something pure as well. Something impossible to endure as one person. It contains apollonian spirit and magian endurance. Apollonian reasoning and magian strength.

Something the modern new age Prometheanism (with it's transhumanist idea/l) is but a shell of. (Since it has not integrated the three archetyps. But operates on a superficial Faustianism.)

Look at male biology. How does an errection occur? (Relaxation, passiveness) My "porn addiction" topic (the science vid). The penis is no muscle one can flex (like a biceps), even if it looks like one. Therein lies the secret of faustian masculinity (the 4 dimensional kind, not the ancient greek -apollonian- 2 dimensional kind), The penis is faustian. It looks masculine, but it's being is feminine.

Look at what Lyssa wrote on plutonian sexuality. (in her "Han" topic)

The truth is faustian. Nietzsche speculated that the truth is a woman.. (in: Beyond Good and Evil)

The "essence" (magian) is a woman.

But the truth is the faustian combination of male and female. The male dominating the female element, by FULLY accepting and integrating it.
This is true masculinity NOT, the two dimensional apollonian kind, of the ancient Greeks, which is merely a representation of masculinity. True masculinity is of course four dimensional.

I see time as linear (though I appreciate it's cyclical quality as well and what is meant by kairos: the right moment) and I live in an expanding universe (though I can very much appreciate an ancient cosmological view, an ordering, in this day and age of anxiety and confusion).
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PostSubject: Re: Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity EmptyFri Mar 29, 2013 7:00 am

Nature is female.
The male is a soaring above it; a reaching upwards.
The male is idealistic, what form this idealism takes is determined by his relationship with the feminine....primarily within himself.

If reality is characterized by entropy, then the female is about this towards-chaos...and the masculine is the resistance to it.
Masculinity is ordering, and what is life, but an ordering.
The dominance of this masculine trait in the psyche is what makes one more or less masculine or more or less feminine.

Femininity is attracted to masculinity, because she cannot produce order in herself...she is this nature, this tumbling towards chaos.
The masculine in her is seduced by a higher form of it.

We might consider it as homoerotic, as it is the same element attracted to a higher representation of itself.
Ordering is attracted to ordering of a higher degree - the attraction of power without meaning to attract - indifference being an aspect of its superiority.

Masculinity should be considered an ordering which produces order, or wishes to establish order on its own.
Femininity is what wishes to abandon itself, give herself, be taken, absorbed, assimilated, by order. The feminine is attracted to power...this is why it represents nature: nature is the power that cannot be denied.
This is, also, why it is the feminine that finds comfort in religion or in belonging to social groups or is more likely to surrender to time, and its power, its undeniable pull towards the absolute void.
The female is more likely to imagine this absolute nil, as a form of order...a uniformity of emptiness, similar to absolute order, which would be this diminishing of possibilities.
This thinking of emptiness as the absence of possibilities, is akin to order. A singularity, whatever you like to define it as, is this reduction of possibility (time/space) to a one.
Absolute Order.

In my mind absolute entropy, or the approach towards it, would entail an increase is possibility - expansion of time/space - resulting in a near-infinite possibility....one of which is the emergence of a near-absolute singularity, and the start of a new universe.
Near-Absolute-Chaos, for me, would mean near-infinite possibilities, where each is just as possible as the other. The elimination of patterns, which are another way of saying ordering....and therefore the elimination or degradation of probabilities, because the possible would be uniformly so.

It is life, the masculine spirit, that resists this.
The female is attracted to one form of resistance or another.
Some forms of resistance take on the Nihilistic tendency. They redefine change, and this increase in entropy, and project there a more desirable finality: a uniformity of possibilities, not as an exticntion of all ordring, life and cosnciuosness being manifestations of ordering, but this merging into a sublime state of nothingness where all divisions are erased and all that is left is this oneness. Order, the absolute kind, is implied in this Nihilistic thinking.
The masculine is mystified, made other-worldly...so as to not shame anyone or embarrass anyone through comparison or competitiveness.

Those more insecure about their own masculinity find an alternative, by extricating it from themselves, and then surrendering to it, as some otherness. They distance themselves from their own masculine drive to dominate....and then they seduce indirectly, including themselves as a participant in the community of surrender.

The Jewish tactic or the priestly method - Will>Reason>Passion
In this case the Will is this Holy otherness, this absolute void or order or whatever, pulling all towards it - attracting all, as a masculinity does femininity.
The priest places his own Will outside of himself, so as to avoid the challengers and competition and the costs.
He displays himself as but a representative, a mouthpiece, of this Will. He is its voice. He then includes himself as another humble, feminine, spirit, attracted to this otherness.
It's a magic trick.

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PostSubject: Re: Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity EmptyFri Mar 29, 2013 8:30 am

Satyr wrote:

In my mind absolute entropy, or the approach towards it, would entail an increase is possibility - expansion of time/space - resulting in a near-infinite possibility....one of which is the emergence of a near-absolute singularity, and the start of a new universe.
Near-Absolute-Chaos, for me, would mean near-infinite possibilities, where each is just as possible as the other. The elimination of patterns, which are another way of saying ordering....and therefore the elimination or degradation of probabilities, because the possible would be uniformly so.

I disagree. If entropy increases and wherever entropy increases the possibilities become less. The ethical imperative by Heinz von Foerster is: "Act so as to increase the number of your possibilites." This is an ego perspective of course, but it would imply an ordering of ones own life. The same would go for any larger system than an individual. Where there is entropy, anything might happen for a very short while, but the system would collapse/die sooner or later. Entropy leads towards death. Ordering may increase the possibilities of a systems survival.

Take a football team. If they don't have a plan how to win the match against the other team, they most likely loose. If they have a plan, they might win. And even choose HOW they might win, with which tactic. So the possibilities of ordering are much greater, than of disordering.

Quote :

Nature is female.
The male is a soaring above it; a reaching upwards.
The male is idealistic, what form this idealism takes is determined by his relationship with the feminine....primarily within himself.

Here we have the problem of female is equal or unequal to a woman. And man is equal or unequal to a man.

Your black/white view (dualism) is a dead end in my opinion. Use Heidegger and Nietzsche and those more "modern", thinkers, to think beyond. Metaphysics. You are talking from an organic, but also purely biological side. If life was that easy, everything would be much more simple. Females wouldn't try to act like males: become teachers and so on like the Hypatia. Nurture you could say. But to all nurture, there has to be a correlation to something in nature. A nature that can be nurtured. Feminism for example. If females were happy in traditional 1950's US-tell-a-vision roles as mother and housewives, there would not have been this womens lib movement. Now some are rowing back. Of course this was enhanced by propaganda. But if womens nature was all traditional housewife and mother, none of these propaganda techniques would have worked. So womens nature is not fully covered by being a housewife and mother solely.

Propaganda doesn't have that much power. If the nature isn't there to react according to the nurture (in this case propaganda) it wouldn't have an effect at all.

Now some women see that they had it better in the 1950's picture of housewife and mother and they miss that role. But they also don't want to give up their newly acclaimed rights. And so they are torn.
Like men also. Do we want the picture of the 1950's US/European housewife or do we like the new liberated spirit within our women to some degree. And what parts of it?

This is what I am trying to figure out. And what any scientific study should aim at. To merely, put this old Nietzschean or Schopenhauerian (19th century) dualism out there, in my opinion isn't enough. Heidegger happened in the 20th Century. Feminism. And much more. Spengler's viewpoint of course. His trinity of: Apollonian, Faustian and Magian. But I am repeating myself with this.

Nietzsche laid the groundwork for Spengler and Heidegger. We should explore in which ways they exceeded him and his simplistic duality in the metaphysics of male/female.
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PostSubject: Re: Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity EmptyFri Mar 29, 2013 9:20 am

Laconian wrote:
Satyr wrote:

In my mind absolute entropy, or the approach towards it, would entail an increase is possibility - expansion of time/space - resulting in a near-infinite possibility....one of which is the emergence of a near-absolute singularity, and the start of a new universe.
Near-Absolute-Chaos, for me, would mean near-infinite possibilities, where each is just as possible as the other. The elimination of patterns, which are another way of saying ordering....and therefore the elimination or degradation of probabilities, because the possible would be uniformly so.

I disagree. If entropy increases and wherever entropy increases the possibilities become less. The ethical imperative by Heinz von Foerster is: "Act so as to increase the number of your possibilites."
No, chaos is randomness....possibility with no patterns.
As space/time expands, possibilities expand, because space is possibility...the projection of it - according to Heidegger.

Chaos can mean two things: complexity, due to the increase in (inter)activity...and/or the absence of patterns, a decrease in ordering.
Order is always a diminishing of possibilities.
This is why all totalatarian regimes, including monotheism, are characterized by a reduction in choices.

When I place myself in order, I will myself to order, I impose upon myself a restriction in activity. I limit my options.

Entropy is an increase in possibilities, since there is no order there to impose a limit, a restriction.
This is using the first definition.
Using the second definition, chaos can be defined as the irrational behavior of otherness or self.
Irrational meaning not in line with any perceptible pattern, objective, reason.
Total randomness would be insanity.

Laconian wrote:
Take a football team. If they don't have a plan how to win the match against the other team, they most likely loose. If they have a plan, they might win. And even choose HOW they might win, with which tactic. So the possibilities of ordering are much greater, than of disordering.
Therefore, the football team's "plan" is a restriction placed upon their conduct.

A team with no plan, would be a chaotic team.
Their play would be random and with no cohesion.

Laconian wrote:
Your black/white view (dualism) is a dead end in my opinion.
What black/white dualism?
Are you reading what I am saying?

The feminine/masculine is included within every individual, if (s)he is a sexual organism.
Asexuality places one outside this paradigm.

I did not invent two sexes, did I?
Why two, and not three?
Because two comes after one...and so a single-cell method of reproduction, through division, is surpassed with a cooperative splintering, heterosexuality.
This is also why dualism is so fundamental in human thinking.

But is it totally irrelevant?
No...because as I've said, from the near-absolute, the singular, chaos is characterized as a splintering.
Meaning that our dualism will be further disordered towards chaos.
The four forces of nature (Strong, Weak, Gravity, Electromagnetism) are dividing...when once they were two, and before that one.
Electromagnetism is splitting into magnetism and electricity...and the division will continue...because that's what it means to say "Entropy is increasing).

In the sexual game, this division of sexuality is occurring...
Masculinity/Femininity will be obsolete, and what will take their place I do not know.
But human social systems are masculine, in that they try to resist by imposing a singularity: oneness.

They reduce sexuality to a single sex....a totalitarianism over biology.

The duality is not created by man, in the case of the sexes. There are 2 sexes....there are two brain parts.
We think in dualisms because we are the product of a nature which creates dualities.

Did man invent two sexes...instead of four? If so, name them.
Heterosexuality is made up of two words: hetero...and sexuality.

Otherness is produced by the masculine energy of (re)action...this towards godliness, towards order, towards the singularity, towards power.
This is what makes dualism possible. 'I am other than you'.
Monism says 'we are all ONE'.
We are all one, splintering in multiplicity, but remaining one.
ONE is the Top, in the Top>Down thinking; it is the projected, self-evident, given...and it contradicts the perceived, the multiplicity, the sensual.
Nihilism has a masculine and a feminine tendency.
The masculine, represented by the state, tends towards absolute uniformity, and a slow restriction of options.
Here the elimination of sexual roles, is meant to produce the illusion of choice when it imposes a uniformity of no-choice.
It's a similar method used by Capitalism to produce the illusion of freedom, through consumer choices.
This is because the human brain has not, as of yet, been dumbed-down, and so it must go through these phases of degradation before the ant-like desired outcome is achieved.
Sex, race, stands in the way of uniformity...and so they must be destroyed and replaced by humanity....the only race accepted is the human race, which is a sexual designation....funny huh? But now it becomes a psychological unity...because the essence of man is in the "inside", and the "outside" (dualism) has no place....the towards monism.
The singularity is the State....the members of the state must be given roles, outside natural connections.
Choices are restricted and directed by the State....offering the illusion of choice when all choices converge.
The elimination of the sexual types is an internal ordering of a Superorganism.
But who will be this Superorganism's mind; what Idea(l) will direct its (inter)activities, what object/objective will it strive towards?
This si what is being debated and discussed and fought over.

In the masculine produced duality, 'I am other than...' is an other-than you, other than it...other than my self....as the "I" is the singularity I must create by rejecting otherness. I am, always in contradiction to you...
So, I deny entropy, so as to order myself.
By denying otherness I give myself the choice of being distinct. I gain choice.
Without this first rejection there is no choice.
The choice of surrendering to entropy is the final choice - a suicide. The choice of no choice.
I give-in to change and cease to resist.
The feminine.

Dualism are projected idea(l)s meant to orient the mind...placing self within the extremes.
If you wish to reject the female/male ideals then you wish to place yourself outside their natural determinations.
This, in itself, is indicative of your psychology in relation to sexuality and procreation and life, in general.
The MRA's suggest a mechanical alternative....a Transhuman cyborg existence, revolutionizing human nature to the point where the label "human" no longer applies.
This constitutes a dissatisfaction with nature and its constructs; an intervention, with unforeseeable repercussions.

One, possible, outcome, would be the obliteration of community.
Once machines become extensions of self, then the other biology, is no longer necessary.

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PostSubject: Re: Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity EmptyFri Mar 29, 2013 2:02 pm

That's what happens when theory becomes detached from reality.

If your own chaos/randomness/entropy increases, you are more likely to get ill, in an accident and or die than otherwise (if you try to establish order). THEREFOR the amount of your possibilities decreases. But have fun with your theoretical games.

What is the nature of nature? Is it entropy? Are females nature? What are males then? If they are not nature?
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PostSubject: Re: Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity EmptyFri Mar 29, 2013 2:45 pm

Males are those who try to correct, resist, replace nature.
Masculinity with no feminine is autocratic. Those males who reject the feminine in themselves, denying that it is there, wanting to obliterate their femininity, are the Fascist Nihilists, and they become absurd (See our resident specimen Purple Dragon); those who place it at par and above masculinity are effete and Nihilists (see the Moderns).

What did the Hellenes say?

Μηδεν αγαν.
The creed of balance...but absolute balance is not possible...and so the masculine must dominate but not retard the feminine.

Did I not explain the masculine and the feminine forms of Nihilism?
Both aim at the same END...but form different direction...just as the Big Bang is the reverse side of the Big Crunch.
All idea(l)s, all words symbolizing them, should not be taken as absolutes, and not literally. They are figurative and approximations....projections to establish understanding.

The 1 and the 0...what are they outside the human mind which has constructed an ambiguous abstraction?
They are useful metaphors; symbols of utility; referential points in space/time.

If you dream of eliminating the sexes, prey-tell what would you imagine the outcome to be like?
Would it be different than what Modernity is creating?
The Jews despise nature and all her constructs...do you, as well?

As entropy increases you are likely to get ill, yes....or grow old and die....yes....pushed further along, you are likely to be unlikely.
Is not life an ordering?
Is this not why we are attracted to patterns and symmetry (beauty)?

If so, then as we approach the near absolute infinite space/time, the absolutely random....how likely would life be then?
If you hate yourself and life and nature, as it determined you, then admit it.

Did man invent the sexes, little girl? Is that why there are only two?

Do not play these girly games with a Satyr.
Tell me something about my small penis, how I can't get laid, how i cannot adapt to the current socioeconomic structures, or play word-games, with a word-smith...or you can go fuck yourself and do us both a favor.

See?
I gave you 3 choices, not 2.
I am growing.

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PostSubject: Re: Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity EmptyFri Mar 29, 2013 3:04 pm

Satyr wrote:

If you dream of eliminating the sexes, prey-tell what would you imagine the outcome to be like?

Where did I ever state that? Point me to that.

Quote :

Would it be different than what Modernity is creating?

Quote :

The Jews despise nature and all her constructs...do you, as well?

I am not the Freudian. I just don't think like you and the others on here, who follow you, that Nietzsche, Weininger and Schopenhauer have already found out what Male and Female mean.. I think they are a good basis to be build on. That's why I give you my attention. But these findings to me are not engraved in stone. Take for example the "50 shades of grey". Can we say that since it is a women's cult book, that it must completely describe every aspect of the nature of women? Are women JUST what is depicted in that book? And nothing beyond that?

I don't think so.

Quote :

Is not life an ordering?

Conscious masculine life. Real faustian masculinity that is, not the 2-dimensional apollonian kind, which again is a suitable model to build on, but no end product, otherwise that civilization would still exist today, if it would have been IT.

Quote :

Did man invent the sexes, little girl? Is that why there are only two?

Do not play these girly games with a Satyr.
Tell me something about my small penis, how I can't get laid, how i cannot adapt to the current socioeconomic structures, or play word-games, with a word-smith...or you can go fuck yourself and do us both a favor.

If you see in the apollonian masculinity the highest ideal of masculinity, then I disagree. I think our faustian times and the magian as well, our great possible knowledge of the past, that is unlike any other civilization before, give us the possibility to develop to something greater, yes. Transhuman? No. Human. Conscious humans. Aware of the past and the present and with a vision for the future. And a capability to enjoy the present here and now as well.
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PostSubject: Re: Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity EmptySun Jul 27, 2014 11:49 am

Spengler wrote:
"And then, when Being is sufficiently uprooted and Waking Being sufficiently strained, there suddenly surges into the bright light of history a phenomenon that has long been preparing itself underground and now steps forward to make an end to the drama - the sterility of civilized man. This is not something that can be grasped as a plain matter of Causality; it is to be understood as an essentially metaphysical turn towards death. The last man of the world-city no longer wants to live - he may cling to life as an individual, but as a type, as an aggregate, no, for it is a characteristic of this collective existence that it eliminates the terror of death. That which strikes the true peasant with a deep and inexplicable fear, the notion that the family and name may be extinguished, has now lost its meaning. The continuance of the blood relation in the visible world is no longer a duty of blood, and the destiny of being the last of the line is no longer felt as a doom. Children do not happen, not because children have become impossible, but principally because intelligence at the peak of intensity can no longer find any reason for its existence.

Let the reader try to merge himself in the soul of the peasant. He has sat on his glebe from primeval times, or has fastened his clutch in it, to adhere to it with his blood. He is rooted in it as the descendant of his forbears and as the forbear of future descendants. His house, his property, means, here, not the temporary connexion of person and thing for a brief span of years, but an enduring and inward union of eternal land and eternal blood. It is only from this mystical conviction of settlement that the great epochs of the cycle pro-creation, birth, and death - derive that metaphysical element of wonder which condenses in the symbolism of custom and religion that all landbound people possess. For the "last men" all this is past and gone. Intelligence and sterility are allied in old families, old peoples, and old Cultures, not merely because in each microcosm the overstrained and fettered animal element is eating up the plant element, but also because the waking-consciousness assumes that being is normally regulated by causality. When the ordinary thought of a 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...

When reasons have to be put forward at all in a question of life, life itself has become questionable. At that point begins prudent limitation of the number of births. In the Classical world the practice was deplored by Polybius as the ruin of Greece, and yet even at his date it had long been established in the great cities; in subsequent Roman times it became appallingly general. At first explained by the economic misery of the times, very soon it ceased to explain itself at all." [Decline of the West]


The Polybius quote that Spengler refers to:

Polybius wrote:
"In our own time the whole of Greece has been subject to a low birth-rate and a general decrease of the population, owing to which cities have become deserted and the land has ceased to yield fruit, although there have neither been continuous wars nor epidemics. If, then, any person had advised us to send and ask the gods about this, and find out what we ought to say or do, to increase in number and make our cities more populous, would it not seem absurd, the cause of the evil being evident and the remedy being in our own hands? For as men had fallen into such a state of pretentiousness, avarice, and indolence that they did not wish to marry, or if they married to rear the children born to them, or at most as a rule but one or two of them, so as to leave these in affluence and bring them up to waste their substance, the evil rapidly and insensibly grew. For in cases where of one or two children the one was carried off by war and the other by sickness, it is evident that the houses must have been left unoccupied, and as in the case of swarms of bees, so by small degrees cities became resourceless and feeble. About this it was of no use at all to ask the gods to suggest a means of deliverance from such an evil. For any ordinary man will tell you that the most effectual cure had to be men's own action, in either striving after other objects, or if not, in passing laws making it compulsory to rear children. Neither prophets nor magic were here of any service, and the same holds good for all particulars."

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"All that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both." [Aeschylus, Prometheus]

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PostSubject: Re: Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity EmptySun Jul 27, 2014 11:51 am

Democracy and The Rule of [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Spengler wrote:
"Thinking in money is always, in one way or another, trade or business thinking. It presupposes the productive economy of the land, and, therefore, is always primarily acquisitive, for there is no third course. The very words "acquisition," "gain," "speculation," point to a profit tricked off from the goods en route to the consumer an intellectual plunder and for that reason are inapplicable to the early peasantry.

He who commands this mode of thinking is the master of money.

In all the Cultures evolution takes this road. Lysias informs us in his oration –against the corn-merchants that the speculators at the Piraeus frequently spread reports of the wreck of a grain-fleet or of the outbreak of war, in order to produce a panic. In Hellenistic-Roman times it was a widespread practice to arrange for land to go out of cultivation, or for imports to be held in bond, in order to force up prices. In the Egyptian New Empire wheat-corners in the American style were made possible by a bill-discounting that is fully comparable with the banking operations of the West. Cleomenes, Alexander the Great's administrator for Egypt, was able by book transactions to get the whole corn-supply into his own hands, thereby producing a famine far and wide in Greece and raking in immense gains for himself.

To think economically on any terms but these is simply to become a mere pawn in the money-operations of the great city. This style of thought soon gets hold of the waking-consciousness of the entire urban population and, therefore, of everyone who plays any serious part in the conduct of economic history. "Peasant" and "burgher" stand not only for the difference of country and city, but for that of possessions and money as well.

All highly developed economy is urban economy. World-economy itself, the characteristic economy of all Civilizations, ought properly to be called world-city-economy. The destinies even of this world-economy are now decided in a few places, the "money-markets” of the world in Babylon, Thebes, and Rome, in Byzantium and Baghdad, in London, New York, Berlin, and Paris. The residue is a starveling provincial economy that runs on in its narrow circles without being conscious of its utter dependence.

Finally, money is the form of intellectual energy in which the ruler-will, the political and social, technical and mental, creative power, the craving for a full-sized life, are concentrated…. What is here described as Civilization, then, is the stage of a Culture at which tradition and personality have lost their immediate effectiveness, and every idea, to be actualized, has to be put into terms of money. At the beginning a man was wealthy because he was powerful; now he is powerful because he has money. Intellect reaches the throne only when money puts it there. Democracy is the completed equating of money with political power." [Decline of the West]

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"All that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both." [Aeschylus, Prometheus]

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PostSubject: Re: Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity EmptySat Nov 01, 2014 6:07 pm

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"All that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both." [Aeschylus, Prometheus]

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PostSubject: Re: Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity EmptyFri Mar 10, 2017 5:03 am

Spengler wrote:
Materialism — in its essence an English product — which was the fashion among the half-educated during the latter half of the nineteenth century, and the philosophy of liberal journalism and radical massmeetings, of Marxist and social-ethical writers who looked upon themselves as thinkers and seers.

If the characteristic of the first class was a lack of the sense of reality, that of the second was a devastating shallowness. Its ideal was utility, and utility only. Whatever was useful to “humanity” was a legitimate element of Culture, was in fact Culture. The rest was luxury, superstition, or barbarism. Now, this utility was utility conducive to the “happiness of the greatest number,” and this happiness consisted in not-doing — for such, in the last analysis, is the doctrine of Bentham, Spencer, and Mill. The aim of mankind was held to consist in relieving the individual of as much of the work as possible and putting the burden on the machine. Freedom from the “misery of wage-slavery,” equality in amusements and comforts and “enjoyment of art” — it is the panem et circenses of the giant city of the Late periods that is presenting itself. The progress-philistine waxed lyrical over every knob that set an apparatus in motion for the — supposed — sparing of human labour. In place of the honest religion of earlier times there was a shallow enthusiasm for the “achievements of humanity,” by which nothing more was meant than progress in the technics of labour-saving and amusement-making. Of the soul, not one word. [Man and Technics]

Spengler wrote:
Movement on these paths we call Progress. This was the great catchword of last century. Men saw history before them like a street on which, bravely and ever forward, marched “mankind” — meaning by that term the white races, or more exactly the inhabitants of their great cities, or more exactly still the “educated” amongst them.

But whither? For how long? And what then?

It was a little ridiculous, this march on infinity, towards a goal which men did not seriously think about or clearly figure to themselves or, really, dare to envisage — for a goal is an end. No one does a thing without thinking of the moment when he shall have attained that which he willed. No one starts a war, or a voyage, or even a mere stroll, without thinking of its direction and its conclusion. Every truly creative human being knows and dreads the emptiness that follows upon the completion of a work.

To development belongs fulfilment — every evolution has a beginning, and every fulfilment is an end. To youth belongs age; to arising, passing; to life, death. For the animal, tied in the nature of its thinking to the present, death is known or scented as something in the future, something that does not threaten it. It only knows the fear of death in the moment of being killed. But man, whose thought is emancipated from the fetters of here and now, yesterday and tomorrow, boldly investigates the “once” of past and future, and it depends on the depth or shallowness of his nature whether he triumphs over this fear of the end or not. An old Greek legend — without which the Iliad could not have been — tells how his mother put before Achilles the choice between a long life or a short life full of deeds and fame, and how he chose the second.

Man was, and is, too shallow and cowardly to endure the fact of the mortality of everything living. He wraps it up in rose-coloured progress-optimism, he heaps upon it the flowers of literature, he crawls behind the shelter of ideals so as not to see anything. But impermanence, the birth and the passing, is the form of all that is actual — from the stars, whose destiny is for us incalculable, right down to the ephemeral concourses on our planet. The life of the individual — whether this be animal or plant or man — is as perishable as that of peoples of Cultures. Every creation is foredoomed to decay, every thought, every discovery, every deed to oblivion. Here, there, and everywhere we are sensible of grandly fated courses of history that have vanished. Ruins of the “have-been” works of dead Cultures lie all about us. The hybris of Prometheus, who thrust his hand into the heavens in order to make the divine powers subject to man, carries with it his fall. What, then, becomes of the chatter about “undying achievements”?

World-history bears a very different face from that of which even our age permits itself to dream. The history of man, in comparison with that of the plant and animal worlds on this planet — not to mention the lifetimes prevailing in the star world — is brief indeed. It is a steep ascent and fall, covering a few millennia, a period negligible in the history of the earth but, for us who are born with it, full of tragic grandeur and force. And we, human beings of the twentieth century, go downhill seeing. Our eye for history, our faculty of writing history, is a revealing sign that our path lies downward. At the peaks of the high Cultures, just as they are passing over into Civilizations, this gift of penetrating recognition comes to them for a moment, and only for a moment.

Intrinsically it is a matter of no importance what is the destiny, among the swarms of the “eternal” stars, of this small planet that pursues its course somewhere in infinite space for a little time; still less important, what moves for a couple of instants upon its surface. But each and every one of us, intrinsically a null, is for an unnamably brief moment a lifetime cast into that whirling universe. And for us therefore this world-in-little, this “world-history,” is something of supreme importance. And, what is more, the destiny of each of these individuals consists in his being, by birth, not merely brought into this world-history, but brought into it in a particular century, a particular country, a particular people, a particular religion, a particular class. It is not within our power to choose whether we would like to be Sons of an Egyptian peasant of 3000 B.C., of a Persian king, or of a present-day tramp. This destiny is something to which we have to adapt ourselves. It dooms us to certain situations, views, and actions. There are no “men-in-themselves” such as the philosophers talk about, but only men of a time, of a locality, of a race, of a personal cast, who contend in battle with a given world and win through or fail, while the universe around them moves slowly on with a godlike unconcern.[Man and Technics]

Spengler wrote:
The unique fact about human technics, on the contrary, is that it is independent of the life of the human genus. It is the one instance in all the history of life in which the individual frees himself from the compulsion of the genus. One has to meditate long upon this thought if one is to grasp its immense implications. Technics in man’s life is conscious, arbitrary, alterable, personal, inventive. It is learned and improved. Man has become the creator of his tactics of living — that is his grandeur and his doom. And the inner form of this creativeness we call culture — to be cultured, to cultivate, to suffer from culture. The man’s creations are the expression of this being in personal form.[Man and Technics]

Spengler wrote:
The soul of these strong solitaries is warlike through and through, mistrustful, jealous of its own power and booty. It knows the intoxication of feeling when the knife pierces the hostile body, and the smell of blood and the sense of amazement strike together upon the exultant soul. Every real “man,” even in the cities of Late periods in the Cultures, feels in himself from time to time the sleeping fires of this primitive soul. Nothing here of the pitiful estimation of things as “useful” or “laboursaving,” and less still of the toothless feeling of sympathy and reconciliation and yearning for quiet. But instead of these the full pride of knowing oneself feared, admired, and hated for one’s fortune and strength, and the urge to vengeance upon all, whether living beings or things, that constitute, if only by their mere existence, a threat to this pride.

And this soul strides forward in an ever-increasing alienation from all Nature. The weapons of the beasts of prey are natural, but the armed fist of man with its artificially made, thought-out, and selected weapon is not. Here begins “Art” as a counterconcept to “Nature.” Every technical process of man is an art and is always so described — so, for instance, archery and equitation, the art of war, the arts of building and government, of sacrificing and prophesying, of painting and versification, of scientific experiment. Every work of man is artificial, unnatural, from the lighting of a fire to the achievements that are specifically designated as “artistic” in the high Cultures. The privilege of creation has been wrested from Nature. “Free will” itself is an act of rebellion and nothing less. Creative man has stepped outside the bounds of Nature, and with every fresh creation he departs further and further from her, becomes more and more her enemy. That is his “world-history,” the history of a steadily increasing, fateful rift between man’s world and the universe — the history of a rebel that grows up to raise his hand against his mother.

This is the beginning of man’s tragedy — for Nature is the stronger of the two. Man remains dependent on her, for in spite of everything she embraces him, like all else, within herself. All the great Cultures are defeats. Whole races remain, inwardly destroyed and broken, fallen into barrenness and spiritual decay, as corpses on the field. The fight against Nature is hopeless and yet — it will be fought out to the bitter end.[Man and Technics]

Spengler wrote:
The original object of speech is the carrying out of an act in accordance with intention, time, place, and means. Clear and unequivocal construction is therefore the first essential, and the difficulty of both conveying one’s meaning to, and imposing one’s will on, another produced the technique of grammar, sentences, and constructions, the correct modes of ordering, questioning, and answering, and the building-up of classes of words — on the basis of practical and not theoretical intentions and purposes. The part played by theoretical reflectiveness in the beginnings of speaking in sentences was practically nil. All speech was of a practical nature and proceeded from the “thought of the hand.”[Man and Technics]

Spengler wrote:
A “collective doing by plan” may be more briefly called an enterprise. Speech and enterprise stand in precisely the same relation to each other as the older pair hand and implement. Speaking to several persons developed its inner, grammatical form in the practice of carrying out jobs, and vice versa the habit of doing jobs got its schooling from the methods of a thinking that had to work with words. For speaking consists in imparting something to another’s thought. If speaking is an act, it is an intellectual act with sensuous means. Very soon it no longer needed the original immediate connexion with physical doing. The epochmaking innovation of the fifth millennium B.C. was, in fact, that thereafter the thinking, the intellect, the reason, that which (call it by what name you please) had been emancipated by speech from dependence upon the doing hand proceeded to set itself up against Soul and Life as a power in itself. The purely intellectual thinking-over, the “calculation,” which emerges at this point — sudden, decisive, and radical — amounts to this, that collective doing is as effectively a unit as if it were the doing of some single giant.

Man, the preying animal, insists consciously on increasing his superiority far beyond the limits of his bodily powers. To this will-to-more-power of his he even sacrifices an important element of his own life. The thought of, the calculation for, intenser effectiveness comes first, and for the sake of it he is quite willing to give up a little of his personal freedom. Inwardly, indeed, he remains independent. But history does not permit one step to be taken back. Time, and therefore Life, are irreversible. Once habituated to the collective doing and its successes, man commits himself more and more deeply to its fateful implications. The enterprise in the mind requires a firmer hold on the life of the soul. Man has become the slave of his thought.[Man and Technics]

Spengler wrote:
The role of the rest of the world was to absorb the product, and colonial policy was always, for practical purposes, directed to the opening-up of new markets and new sources of raw material, not to the development of new areas of production. There was coal elsewhere, of course, but only the white engineers would have known how to get at it. We were in sole possession, not of the material, but of the methods and the trained intellects required for its utilization. It is this that constitutes the basis of the luxurious living of the white worker — whose income, in comparison with that of the “native,” is princely — a circumstance that Marxism has turned to dishonest account, to its own ruin. It is being revenged on us today, for from now on, evolution is going to be complicated by the problem of unemployment. The high level of wages of the white worker, which is today a peril to his very life, rests upon the monopoly that the leaders of industry have created about him.

And then, at the close of last century, the blind will-to-power began to make its decisive mistakes. Instead of keeping strictly to itself the technical knowledge that constituted their greatest asset, the “white” peoples complacently offered it to all the world, in every Hochschule, verbally and on paper, and the astonished homage of Indians and Japanese delighted them. The famous “dissemination of industry” set in, motivated by the idea of getting bigger profits by bringing production into the marketing area. And so, in place of the export of finished products exclusively, they began an export of secrets, processes, methods, engineers, and organizers. Even the inventors emigrate, for Socialism, which could if it liked harness them in its team, expels them instead. And so presently the “natives” saw into our secrets, understood them, and used them to the full. Within thirty years the Japanese became technicians of the first rank, and in their war against Russia they revealed a technical superiority from which their teachers were able to learn many lessons. Today more or less everywhere — in the Far East, India, South America, South Africa — industrial regions are in being, or coming into being, which, owing to their low scales of wages, will face us with a deadly competition. The unassailable privileges of the white races have been thrown away, squandered, betrayed. The others have caught up with their instructors.  Possibly — with their combination of “native” cunning and the over-ripe intelligence of their ancient civilizations — they have surpassed them. Where there is coal, or oil, or water-power, there a new weapon can be forged against the heart of the Faustian Civilization. The exploited world is beginning to take its revenge on its lords. The innumerable hands of the coloured races — at least as clever, and far less exigent — will shatter the economic organization of the whites at its foundations. The accustomed luxury of the white workman, in comparison with the coolie, will be his doom. The labour of the white is itself coming to be unwanted. The huge masses of men centred in the Northern coal areas, the great industrial works, the capital invested in them, whole cities and districts, are faced with the probability of going under in the competition. The centre of gravity of production is steadily shifting away from them, especially since even the respect of the coloured races for the white has been ended by the World War. This is the real and final basis of the unemployment that prevails in the white countries. It is no mere crisis, but the beginning of a catastrophe.

For these “coloured” peoples (including, in this context, the Russians) the Faustian technics are in no wise an inward necessity. It is only Faustian man that thinks, feels, and lives in this form. To him it is a spiritual need, not on account of its economic consequences, but on account of its victories — “navigare necesse est, vivere non est necesse.” For the coloured races, on the contrary, it is but a weapon in their fight against the Faustian civilization, a weapon like a tree from the woods that one uses as house.timber, but discards as soon as it has served its purpose. This machine-technics will end with the Faustian civilization and one day will lie in fragments, forgotten — our railways and steamships as dead as the Roman roads and the Chinese wall, our giant cities and skyscrapers in ruins like old Memphis and Babylon. The history of this technics is fast drawing to its inevitable close.. It will be eaten up from within, like the grand forms of any and every Culture. When, and in what fashion, we know not.

Faced as we are with this destiny, there is only one world.outlook that is worthy of us, that which has already been mentioned as the Choice of Achilles — better a short life, lull of deeds and glory, than a long life without content. Already the danger is so great, for every individual, every class, every people, that to cherish any illusion whatever is deplorable. Time does not suffer itself to be halted; there is no question of prudent retreat or wise renunciation. Only dreamers believe that there is a way out. Optimism is cowardice.

We are born into this time and must bravely follow the path to the destined end. There is no other way. Our duty is to hold on to the lost position, without hope, without rescue, like that Roman soldier whose bones were found in front of a door in Pompeii, who, during the eruption of Vesuvius, died at his post because they forgot to relieve him. That is greatness. That is what it means to be a thoroughbred. The honourable end is the one thing that can not be taken from a man.[Man and Technics]
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PostSubject: Re: Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity EmptyFri Apr 16, 2021 8:01 pm

Lyssa wrote:
Spengler wrote:
"And then, when Being is sufficiently uprooted and Waking Being sufficiently strained, there suddenly surges into the bright light of history a phenomenon that has long been preparing itself underground and now steps forward to make an end to the drama - the sterility of civilized man. This is not something that can be grasped as a plain matter of Causality; it is to be understood as an essentially metaphysical turn towards death. The last man of the world-city no longer wants to live - he may cling to life as an individual, but as a type, as an aggregate, no, for it is a characteristic of this collective existence that it eliminates the terror of death. That which strikes the true peasant with a deep and inexplicable fear, the notion that the family and name may be extinguished, has now lost its meaning. The continuance of the blood relation in the visible world is no longer a duty of blood, and the destiny of being the last of the line is no longer felt as a doom. Children do not happen, not because children have become impossible, but principally because intelligence at the peak of intensity can no longer find any reason for its existence.

Let the reader try to merge himself in the soul of the peasant. He has sat on his glebe from primeval times, or has fastened his clutch in it, to adhere to it with his blood. He is rooted in it as the descendant of his forbears and as the forbear of future descendants. His house, his property, means, here, not the temporary connexion of person and thing for a brief span of years, but an enduring and inward union of eternal land and eternal blood. It is only from this mystical conviction of settlement that the great epochs of the cycle pro-creation, birth, and death - derive that metaphysical element of wonder which condenses in the symbolism of custom and religion that all landbound people possess. For the "last men" all this is past and gone. Intelligence and sterility are allied in old families, old peoples, and old Cultures, not merely because in each microcosm the overstrained and fettered animal element is eating up the plant element, but also because the waking-consciousness assumes that being is normally regulated by causality. When the ordinary thought of a 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...

When reasons have to be put forward at all in a question of life, life itself has become questionable. At that point begins prudent limitation of the number of births. In the Classical world the practice was deplored by Polybius as the ruin of Greece, and yet even at his date it had long been established in the great cities; in subsequent Roman times it became appallingly general. At first explained by the economic misery of the times, very soon it ceased to explain itself at all." [Decline of the West]

That passage on infertility is one of the most important in Spengler's major work. When the people of a culture begin to attach no more importance to offspring, then they are civilized, then the culture has become civilization.

Kultur wrote:
"Infertility and Decay.And now from the fact that existence becomes more and more rootless, the wakefulness more and more tense, finally that phenomenon emerges, which was prepared in silence long ago and now suddenly moves into the bright light of history to put an end to the whole spectacle: the infertility of civilized man. This is not something that could be understood with everyday causality, for example physiologically, as modern science has naturally tried to do. Here is a thoroughly metaphysical turn to death. The last man of the world cities does not want to live any more, certainly as an individual, but not as a type, as a multitude; in this total being the fear of death expires. That which afflicts the true peasant with a deep and inexplicable fear, the thought of the extinction of the family and the name, has lost its meaning. The continuation of the related blood within the visible world is no longer felt as the duty of this blood, the lot of being the last is no longer felt as a doom. Not only because children have become impossible, but above all because the intelligence, which has been increased to the utmost, no longer finds reasons for their existence, they remain absent."  (Translated by me.)
- Oswald Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes, 1918, S. 678-679.

According to Spengler, the civilization of a culture is its downfall and the time after that, if it still exists, i.e. a petrified, frozen, solidified being in winter. When the culture becomes civilization, its urbanites begin to reject the community, all tradition and history, even the parents. And in the end, the culture/civilization consists almost entirely of city dwellers (except the most faithfully country people). The individual culture/civilization member just wants to be himself, not a member of his culture/civilization anymore.
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PostSubject: Re: Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity EmptyFri Apr 16, 2021 8:20 pm

Yes, it has to do with being invested in the culture and in its future.
Childless males and more so childless females indicate decline.

The non-invested are interested in decadence: distracting and self-pleasing themselves until the end of their lifespan.
They are free-radicals, or distracting and destructive to the welfare of the whole.
Modern systems have a more sophisticated form of human husbandry to deal with these accumulating fre-radicals, e.g., pornography, entertainment, alternate realities via computers, and drugs.
Transsexuality is partially due to testosterone reductions - due to environment and nutritional norms - memetic indoctrination - social engineering - and males unable to fully express their masculinity - criminalization of masculinity.

I encompass them all in my thesis, The Feminization of Man.

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PostSubject: Re: Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity EmptyFri Apr 16, 2021 8:58 pm

Satyr wrote:
Yes, it has to do with being invested in the culture and in its future.
Childless males and more so childless females indicate decline.

The non-invested are interested in decadence: distracting and self-pleasing themselves until the end of their lifespan.
They are free-radicals, or distracting and destructive to the welfare of the whole.
Modern systems have a more sophisticated form of human husbandry to deal with these accumulating fre-radicals, e.g., pornography, entertainment, alternate realities via computers, and drugs.
Transsexuality is partially due to testosterone reductions - due to environment and nutritional norms - memetic indoctrination - social engineering - and males unable to fully express their masculinity - criminalization of masculinity.

I encompass them all in my thesis, The Feminization of Man.

Unfortunately, this also affects women - in their own way: just think of the increasing number of "masculinized" women, lesbians, etc..

Spengler said: "They all belong to themselves and they are all infertile."
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PostSubject: Re: Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity EmptyFri Apr 16, 2021 9:04 pm

When males are feminized the vacuum forces females to behave more masculine...though they cannot do more than pretend by imitating social caricatures.
Another by product of feminization is hypermasculinity, like that displayed in cRap.

Those who have no experience with real masculinity associate it with caricatures they were sold by pop-art, i.e., Hollywood; they hyperinflate some traits, like aggressiveness, because they have no clue what a man is or how real men behave.
Hyperbole is a sign of insecurity and ignorance.

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PostSubject: Re: Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity EmptyFri Apr 16, 2021 9:09 pm

Both males and females are being feminized.
Masculinization - including hypermasculinity - is a side-effect of this feminization - imitating what is being eliminated.

In females and males this feminization is a regression to adolescence, when boys and girls complete their gender divergence.

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PostSubject: Re: Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity Spengler: Riding the Tiger of Modernity EmptyFri Apr 16, 2021 10:03 pm

Guest wrote:
Is "spring" better than "winter"? Is "summer" more noble than "autumn"? Is "spring" superior to the other "seasons"?
In "spring" culture goes up as it does in nature, from the equinox to the summer solstice: birth, blossoming, upward striving to the peak.

Compared to "summer" and "autumn", when harvesting is already possible, "spring" is not yet so stable for a culture, because almost everything is still under construction, while summer and autumn are already about deconstruction (decomposition, at last: degeneration), which is finished when winter begins.

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