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Oswald



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PostSubject: Modernity Modernity EmptyWed Jan 04, 2023 3:48 pm

[Hi team, I'm new here and also relatively unfamiliar with the whole message-board thing. So if I'm doing it wrong (i.e. posting in the wrong category, talking when I should not, etc.) please do correct me. I did read the guidelines but I all too human.]

Those days, it seems there is only one thing everyone (left, right and often even center) agree on: the proud, loud, and dignified rejection of 'modernity'. Whether it is equated with navel-gazing individualism, with extractive imperialism, with the illusory separation of man from nature, with totalitarian collectivism or with an anomic lack of commitment, it's hard to find anyone who doesn't hate it, whatever they associate with that word. But surprisingly, it's also hard to find anyone who acknowledge qui how popular and widespread such criticisms are, because those who reject modernity (basically, everyone) also like to think themselves part of an embattled minority or elite, standing heroically against the age.

However widespread its critique, quite what is meant by modernity is generally unclear. Since most people seem to agree it is an 'epoch', presumably we should also be able to roughly date when it begins. Below I'm gonna list a selection of how people defined modernity, particularly in term of time. I'll update as I remember new examples. If you can think of any other definitions (the more far out the better!) please post them in the comments, and I'll update accordingly.

Modernity as Nominalism: For [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] and a few others, modernity arises from the medieval 'Quarrel of Universals'. Basically, it's a century long debate among Christian theologians and philosophers that starts over the existence (as in, ontological status) of abstract categories. For example, does sharpness exists of its own, independently of particular instances of sharp objects. But it also branches out in a separate debate regarding over the nature of God: for those denying the independent existence of qualities (like sharpness), this also implied that everything, all the time, was created by God's will, rather than following a logical order on the Aristotelian model, as it did in medieval Thomism. This God, continuously engaged in creatio ex nihilo, was quite different from the earlier God who, at the beginning of times, had drawn a plan for mankind and the world, and tended to stick to it. This new vision of God was voluntaristic, that is to say, it was unconstrained by any prior engagements, and entirely free (for example, to revoke any covenant he had established with men before, or even to change the laws of nature temporarily or permanently). According to various commentators (for example, [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]), it was this model of a voluntaristic God that was transfered to the king to produce absolute monarchy, which in that logic marks the end of the feudal Middle Ages, and the beginning of modernity. This same logic of absolute voluntarism was then transfered to the individual, for example in Stirner or in Nietzsche. That would have modernity start somewhere during the XIIth or the XIIIth century AD.

Modernity as the experience of modernisation: that sounds a bit tautologic, doesn't it? Well it's because [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] divides 'modernity' in three distinct concepts: modernisation, which is a technological and economic change (i.e. new trade routes and territorial discoveries during the XIVth c., discovery of the printing press and the compass, Venetian accounting techniques, the rise of the bourgeoisie, etc.) Those are changes which in a medieval context: they transform it, but arose from it. Then comes modernity proper, by which he designates the culture that develops as a consequence of modernisation: from the influx of foreign commodity, like textile dies, spices, coffee or porcelain; via the invention of perspective and the Renaissance rediscovery of classical antiquity; to the Reformation or heliocentrism. The third concept is modernism, which designates not a celebration of modernity (as it is sometimes used by political theorists and those who don't know better) but a largely critical reaction to modernity, foremost in the arts and literature (if you find it hard to believe modernism is critical of modernity, read this [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]by the canonical Anglo-american modernist.) They don't all reject modernity outright (though many do), but they are all dissatisfied with the form it take in their epoch. Berman is some sort of Marxist (though of the 'nostalgic' and somewhat conservative British kind, like EP Thompson), so unsurprisingly modernisation, the material and economic process, comes first, and culture later follows. That story would have modernisation start at the beginning of the XIVth century, and modernity between the XVth and the XVIIth, depending whether you look the arts or the sciences.

Modernity as Christianity: or rather, Christianity as modernity! In Latin, modernus means of 'of the present', as in actual rather than inactual, to put it as Nietzsche does. Since Christianity claims to be replacing Judaism (its universal message is supposed to cancel the Jewish laws like the kashrut), it's not surprising that it also insists that it insists on the superiority of the its 'new' testament over the 'old' (or rather, to be '[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]' it). And so some of the earliest uses of modernitas are found in early Christian theology, as in St Augustine. It was in also this early theological context that it acquired its polemical sense, when it became opposed to antiquus, a vague term designating 'the bad old days' of Paganism.
What's particularly interesting for me is that, in the same period (IVth and Vth c. AD), in the same circles (late-imperial theologians in the wake of Chistianity's acceptance by Constantine), the concept of tradition was being elaborated. In the Catholic context, tradition designates the body of knowledge that must complement and interpret the Bible, and which is transmitted via institutions (from Apostolic succession to the medieval universities). The importance granted by Catholics to tradition, would be forcefully rejected in the XVIth c. by Luther, in favour of sola scriptura. So even as the early Christians were theorising themselves as moderni, they were arguing that legitimate authority comes from the past, from tradition. I am yet to find study of tradition among the Latin Fathers, so if you heard of one, do let me know. When does that date modernity then? Well 0 if you heed the Christian tale, sometime between May 337 and September 476 if you don't.

Modernity as the 'Barbarian Invasions': nowadays, most people probably agree that whatever modernity is, it starts after the Middle Ages. Since Romanticism, the Middle Ages have been imagined as some sort of utopia where everyone knew their place, religion pervaded society and where the distribution of wealth, power and knowledge went uncontested. Well it was not always like that: as mentioned above, for a long time modernity was opposed to antiquity, and so the Middle Ages were actually placed in modernity. Not just the 'high' Middle Ages (the XIIth c. Renaissance and all that), but the Middle Ages as a whole! For a number of (often German) XIXth c. historians, the 'dawn' of modernity was the 'Barbarian invasions', so it occured sometime between the Fall of Rome and Carolus Magnus. According to those (often nationalist and/or racist, as in Treitschke for example) guys, it is during this period that the various 'people' of Europe acquired their present territorial position. In their logic, since history was primarily the result of the contact of each Volk's 'inherent nature' with its immediate environment, it had acquired its current, modern form during the Völkerwanderung, the period of great migration around the fall of Rome. Precisely because that theme was so popular in the XIXth c. (and probably because it is 'tainted' with racial doctrines), it [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]appear in contemporary scholarship, though it is an interesting reminder of how intertwined the discourses of race and of modernity always were.

Modernity as Renaissance Individualism: according to [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], Nietzsche's friend and colleague in Basel, and one of the earliest proponents of cultural history, everything modern derives from a new sense of what the individual is. The individual in the Middle Ages was enthralled to conventions and customs, unable to exert their full creative talent and to transform the world in its image. Renaissance Florence, instead, sees a new value being ascribed to individuality as such. From a sin it becomes a virtue, in the Machiavellian sense of a 'force'. If (like me) you're unsure that the aristocratic individualism people find in Nietzsche can really be reconciled with any genuine commitment to tradition or stability, here you'll find someone who explicitly associate the Nietzschean culte du moi with modernity. Besides that, Burckhardt is an interesting character: an aristocratic liberal sometimes compared with Tocqueville, his life and scholarship confirms Oakenshott's quip that conservatism is a disposition rather than an ideology. Presumably, he would place the beginning of modernity some time at the height of the Medici power, so between the second half of the XVth and the first half of the XVIth century.

'Modernity is a qualitative, not a chronological, category': that's Theodor Adorno. Wait, you say, isn't that the same guy who also writes that the A[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]? Yes, that's the one, but Adorno does not actually equate Enlightenment and modernity, as virtually every other thinkers (even his co-author Horckheimer) are wont to do. So he can both condemn the Enlightenment and celebrate modernity, provided that it is understood as a quality of specific events, rather than a period with a beginning and an end. Many later epigones of the Frankfurtian conviction fleshed out this insight. For example, [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] writes that ‘Modernism and postmodernism are not chronological eras, but political positions in the century-long struggle between art and technology'.
That seems at first like quite an expedient solution to the proliferation of modernities: nominalism, early Christianity and Renaissance individualism can all be seen as punctually modern events, rather than as inaugurating an epoch. Some might even posit modernity and non- or post-modernity as two poles of a dialectic. But ultimately it only evade rather than answer the question which 'modernity' was, imo, invented to answer: why is the past so strange? Why is it so difficult to understand the mindset of a pilgrim, or that of pharaoh?
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PostSubject: Re: Modernity Modernity EmptyWed Jan 04, 2023 4:03 pm

All that...
Here we deal with modernity as the ambiguous ideological point when man abandoned traditionalism, and a focus on the past as a source of identity and wisdom, and focused on the future, as a source of hope and transcendence, leading to postmodernism that established the rift as artistic/linguistic, and redefined man as life with no past, but only a present/presence and a future.
I describe this as nihilistic - nullifying existence as it is.

God was replaced by man as the will/consciousness that creates ex nihilo, and man's first creation is a recreation of himself - sold as liberation.
Taking hold in the US, land of those who wanted liberation from old-Euroepan hierarchies and established order.

Now it is reaching its own logic's absurd end, exposing it as naïve romanticism, because man cannot erase the past - existence is a continuos past made present as presence - nor can man simply forget it - because his body contains the memory of it as DNA, making the body a source of evil to be transcended - nor can the past be rewritten, or linguistically redefined, because words have no power beyond the minds that share them and how they are defined.

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PostSubject: Re: Modernity Modernity EmptyWed Jan 04, 2023 4:37 pm

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] is the current manifestation of this "progress" from modernity to postmodernity towards increasing detachments from reality....
America's "self made man" its "individualist ideal citizen", is the conclusion of this psychology - rebelling against existence, proposing a manmade alternate existence.
A mindset currently infected by a fatalistic messianic cult that conceals itself in and through words.

This romantic escape from the past may be achievable through technologies. But, at what cost?
At that point we are no longer dealing with mankind but what may evolve further, threatening to become independent - creator overcome by his creation.

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PostSubject: Re: Modernity Modernity EmptyWed Jan 04, 2023 5:58 pm

I think I can agree with your definitions of tradition as 'the past as a source of identity', and of modernity when 'God was replaced by man'. I expect most people here and elsewhere would also agree with your definitions of modernity and tradition.
But how do we recognise 'tradition'?
Most pop-conservatives those days seem satisfied with 'I know it when I see it'. That's pretty convenient, because with so flexible a notion of tradition, you can basically conduct your modern life like everyone else (and indeed, as perhaps you have also noticed, the themes that most concern pop-conservatives today--videogames, sex, pop culture, etc.--are preoccupy normies of the most average kind. For those conservatives, 'tradition' come as a thin layer of veneer, only to help them sustain their delusion of belonging to some kind of elite, when they are actually at the bottom of the pecking order. You've probably met as many of those I have: Catholics who never attend mass, Hellenists who don't learn Greek, broke libertarians, nationalists who know f*ck-all about their own history, etc. That kind of 'traditionalism' is really nothing more than identity politics: they 'put it on' to look profound or edgy, only when it suits them, but otherwise it has no influence on their life-choices.

But imo it is not entirely their fault: as it stands, 'tradition' is so vague as to be nearly meaningless. Unless we define precisely what life was like before 'modernity', anyone and everyone will have their version of it, and 'tradition' will be as meaningless a concept as 'progress' (most revolutions, for example, were done in the name of a tradition: the Reformation wanted to return to the Early Church, the French Revolution was obsessed with Republican Rome, the English civil war to restore the old pristina libertas, etc.) The idea of a 'big T' singular Tradition (omnipresent and eternal) is good for reiki therapist and Guénonian crystal healers, but as soon as you demand practical commitment, you need to define that tradition pretty clearly.

That's why the question of when was tradition seems to me pretty important. If you consider that tradition ends with the Middle-Ages and modernity starts with the Renaissance, your version of tradition will look very different than, say, if you consider that tradition ends in the XVIIIth c. and modernity begins in the XIXth c. I cannot help but suspect that leaving tradition 'undefined' is so popular today precisely because it allows people to do whatever they want, whenever they want, and still claim to be 'traditional'.
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PostSubject: Re: Modernity Modernity EmptyThu Jan 05, 2023 7:08 am

Oswald wrote:
I expect most people here and elsewhere would also agree with your definitions of modernity and tradition.
But how do we recognise 'tradition'?
You recognize it, first, by how far back you can trace it....and secondly, by its connections to the present - nature.

Traditions refer to a way of doing and thinking - thinking is another way of doing, acting.
The act has to be something external to all subjects.
So, the act of preparing food; the act of worshipping nature via the representation of gods or your ancestors; the way of relating to others of your own kind, and others not of your kind; the way of identifying and being identified, i.e., discriminating; the way one confronts and prepares for death etc.


Oswald wrote:
That's why the question of when was tradition seems to me pretty important. If you consider that tradition ends with the Middle-Ages and modernity starts with the Renaissance, your version of tradition will look very different than, say, if you consider that tradition ends in the XVIIIth c. and modernity begins in the XIXth c. I cannot help but suspect that leaving tradition 'undefined' is so popular today precisely because it allows people to do whatever they want, whenever they want, and still claim to be 'traditional'.
Even nihilism can establish a tradition....a way of doing and thinking that is transmitted from generation to generation.

The tradition I refer to is whatever connects man to his past, and this past to a relationship between a specific population with a specific environment.

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PostSubject: Re: Modernity Modernity EmptyFri Jan 06, 2023 4:14 am

The Antithesis of Post/Modernity is Traditionalism.

What is more traditional than the act of Marriage and building a family, which will then be integrated to represent the Body-politic and Society?

So what is most "Modern" of all, except to assault this tradition? To claim that Marriage/Family is unnecessary? To offer Maternalism as "equal to" Paternalism? Why should family names be passed-along the Father? Why have family names at all? Why not name children randomly?

The Internationalists want to destroy the family, therefore the culture/society, of their enemies. Meanwhile, back in their home country, on the other side of the world, they are strongly Traditional and Anti-modern. Back in their home country, they promote Closed-borders, Heterosexuality, strict Marriages, etc.

So it's no wonder why these internationalists promote "Modernity" to you, but practice Traditionalism among themselves, back at "home".
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PostSubject: Re: Modernity Modernity EmptySat Jan 07, 2023 10:02 am

Æon wrote:
The Internationalists want to destroy the family, therefore the culture/society, of their enemies.  Meanwhile, back in their home country, on the other side of the world, they are strongly Traditional and Anti-modern.  Back in their home country, they promote Closed-borders, Heterosexuality, strict Marriages, etc.
So it's no wonder why these internationalists promote "Modernity" to you, but practice Traditionalism among themselves, back at "home".

That's a very interesting take, Aeon. So basically, if I follow you correctly, you see modernity as purely instrumental, a 'cultural weapon' used by hegemonic powers to infeudate resilient cultures? And 'modernity' only designates the erosion of national traditions which sustain national identity and the ability to compete politically and economically?

This raises some interesting questions: before the Westphalian system (1648) there were so to speak no nation-states, and most of Europe was dominated by dynasties which were thoroughly internationalist.
To take one random example, the Netherlands pass from the Valois-Burgundy (arguably 'local' if not exactly Dutch) to the house of Habsburg at the end of the XVth c. ; Spain would soon follow the same trajectory ; The higher ranks of European nobility, already in the late Middle Ages, are thoroughly international, partly because of alliance through marriage, and partly because literate culture (virtually all Latin) was so rare that it had little occasion to develop into distinct national cultures (when the Netherlands pass to the Habsburg, 5 to 10% of the male population of Western Europe can read).
The Habsburg are also thoroughly Catholic, and will become the beacon of tradition (as opposed to Reformation) in the wars of religion of the following century. They also introduce the inquisition, that most traditionalist of institutions, to the Netherlands. But they can be said to promote internationalism among their subjects, as do most monarchs at the time, because international trade brings in tax revenue, and before modern banking, trade is primarily conducted by families scattered in various port cities. And obviously, since they are perceived by the Dutch as either Spanish or Austrian, they need to minimize any difference between those regions.
So, as I see it, the Habsburg tradition is thoroughly internationalist. The Eighty Years' War (1568) will pit Habsburg forces against an alliance of the Dutch bourgeoisie and petty nobility. The Dutch reached 'national consciousness' because of the Reformation: even more than ousting the Habsburg/Spanish dominion, they wanted to get rid of 'decadent' Catholicism. So if you regard Protestantism as more modern than Catholicism, the Dutch nation and republic came into being as a modern reaction against the traditionalist Habsburg internationalism.
The imbrication of the Reformation and nationhood are pretty interesting, but even in the Catholic countries to the south, the 'romantic' nationalisms of the XVIIIth and XIXth century largely saw themselves as modern. They reject the immediate past (usually, their subjection to a dynastic empire), advocating a historical caesura (often a 'revolution'), in the name of reconnecting with an older past (usually rather nebulous, if not downright made up). If you take the Risorgimento for example, where Italy fights for unification against a variety of more 'traditional' powers (Habsburg Austria, the Papal States and the Spanish Crown), they do so in the name of Italy's past unity and glory, somewhat fancifully projected on the Middle-Ages. But the same lot who fight for this unification (Mazzini, Cavour, etc.) also advocate thorough modernization and economic liberalism (sometimes even British-style free markets).
So if I caricature a little, we have two traditions fighting it out, here: one is 'continuous' with the immediate past, that of long-established empires like Habsburg Austria; and another, which is revolutionary or 'discontinuous' with the immediate past, and looks back to an older (mythical) history. And both are in some way internationalist: the Habsburgs because they themselves are foreigners, and the Italian revolutionaries because they are economically liberal.
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PostSubject: Re: Modernity Modernity EmptySat Jan 07, 2023 10:11 am

Internationalism is part of the Abrahamic dogma.
Modernism - through the secularization of Abrahamic messianism and ethics, begins with the Renaissance culminating in the French Revolution.
Freedom/Liberty replaces the Abrahamic ideal of salvation from nature, meaning salvation from the past.

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PostSubject: Re: Modernity Modernity EmptySun Jan 08, 2023 4:15 am

Oswald wrote:
That's a very interesting take, Aeon. So basically, if I follow you correctly, you see modernity as purely instrumental, a 'cultural weapon' used by hegemonic powers to infeudate resilient cultures? And 'modernity' only designates the erosion of national traditions which sustain national identity and the ability to compete politically and economically?

This raises some interesting questions: before the Westphalian system (1648) there were so to speak no nation-states, and most of Europe was dominated by dynasties which were thoroughly internationalist
...
So if I caricature a little, we have two traditions fighting it out, here: one is 'continuous' with the immediate past, that of long-established empires like Habsburg Austria; and another, which is revolutionary or 'discontinuous' with the immediate past, and looks back to an older (mythical) history. And both are in some way internationalist: the Habsburgs because they themselves are foreigners, and the Italian revolutionaries because they are economically liberal.
Primarily, yes, it is used as a historical political weapon by large empires, institutions, and corporations, to break-down resistances of their own population who does not fall in line, or especially foreign populations where domestic moral constraints do not apply.  Consider Post/Modernity/Traditionalism in the context of Inter/Nationalism.

What are societies and cultures defending and fighting for, if not the necessary traditions which bind them together?  What does it mean to be European?  To be Swedish or Russian or Greek or Italian or German or Spanish or English, Etc.?  Ethnogenesis, Languages, customs/dress/culinary art, all of these are bound together into Culture, which form histories of peoples.  Hence this is Political.

Some groups are "allowed" to preserve themselves, if they pay the price for it, while others are not.  These political attacks & defenses are ongoing and continuous across time.


As you point-out, there is a tripartite division of Europeans: Protestantism/Anglicanism, versus Catholicism/Orthodoxy, versus Paganism/Barbarianism.  These cultural forces battle against each other.  Europeans were converting each other for centuries, often times underneath threat of sword.  These battles were temporarily suspended by foreign threats (Ottoman/Islamic incursion was repelled), and then immediately resumed.

As Satyr mentioned, the French Revolution and Locke's Blank Slate Theory worked to atomize/individualize humanity back into "Persons/Personhood", which allowed for greater schemes of political control: Divide & Conquer.  In recent US history, Freud and Bernays used this advantage to further Commercialization and "manufactured dis/content", television and now internet social "programming".  The most recent outcrop of all of this is "Cancel-Culture", Marxist and Communist methods of subversion between sub-cultures and international borders.


There are many other factors, including natural ones too.  I don't mean to imply that Modernization is only-political.  Technology, scientific improvements, standards-of-living, bounty and excess, all of these attack social and cultural Traditions.  Now, more than ever, old and ancient customs are under attack across the world.  What does Eastern Civilization do?  How does the Old World Order react to these changes?  Look at the Chinese Communist Party.  Look at Fundamentalist Arab/Semitic Islam.  Look at hardliner Jews and Zionists in Israel.  Look at Rome and the Papacy.  Look at small, isolated Sub-Saharan African tribes.  Look at uncontacted tribes in South America.

Isolation does offer relative immunity from Modernization; this is why the Hellenes developed Stoic and Ascetic philosophies.
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PostSubject: Re: Modernity Modernity EmptySun Jan 08, 2023 4:46 am

The wealthy & merchant, mercantile classes tend to be the most International-ist. Nobles/Elitists/Aristocrats are semi-Internationalist. But Monarchies/Royalists are the exception, because a brunt of requirement of being a Monarch, is to have blood-ties, a genealogical-political justification for Rites: ethnogenesis. Monarchs would not last long unless their bloodline is intertwined with their home country. Monarchy is also Paternalistic, wives could be taken or captured from neighboring rivals, but the King must have a clear, linear bloodline of political/religious Ascension.

Feudal and Medieval Europeans would never allow a foreigner to Lord over them, which was a basis for much Middle Age warfare.
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PostSubject: Re: Modernity Modernity EmptySun Jan 08, 2023 12:28 pm

A relevant topic on 4chan here: "So why haven’t these guys been targeted for destruction yet?"

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]


The Amish are at the forefront of Traditionalism (Anglican-Puritanism) versus Post-Modernity in the Post-colonial, New World.
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PostSubject: Re: Modernity Modernity EmptySun Jan 08, 2023 12:56 pm

Æon wrote:
Monarchs would not last long unless their bloodline is intertwined with their home country.

I'm not so sure, Æon: In [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] (esp. ch. 10) Girard produces a surprising number of traditional (mostly archaic and primitive) contexts where sacral kings were specifically selected because they came from without the host society. This bizarre practice is obviously related to the notion of the sacred as standing outside normality, which, in a primitive/horizontal context still includes the whole of society. From a functionalist pov, it also has a pretty clear logic, with a foreign kingly justice being more inclined to impartiality.
As you note, a 'foreign ruler' is obviously inevitable for most nations caught within empires and/or federations, from the Roman to the Holy Roman. This does represent a pretty significant portion of European territory from the Hellenistic period onward. But more generally, also in the differentiated/stratified societies of medieval and early modern Europe, the proportions of kings (and especially queens) which were of foreign extraction is quite high: from William of Orange, a Dutchman whom the English parliament set on the throne after exiling the English-born James II, to Catherine the Great, born in Prussia to two German parents, who overthrew her husband to popular acclaim and became Russia's most beloved Tsarina.
There's some debates about when arose the idea of 'the nation', but what's pretty clear is that for the very vast majority of the people involved (including the nobility), it had some pretty blurry boundaries until the late XVIIIth century. If ethnostates ever had a historical reality outside the Romantic imagination, it would be in the early (pre-Carolingian) Middle Ages, and I'm not even sure. Now saying that is not the same as to say that every community was ethnically mixed (or that half the nobility was of sub-Saharan descent, as Hollywood would have it lol). Most rural communities were indeed endogamic and ethnically homogenous, insofar as they had no contact with the state. In terms of function, the state in an agrarian civilization is primarily here for the coordination of public interests (infrastructure and defense) and markets (welfare and tariffs). This it can only do by acting as go-between more or less homogenous communities (obv. this is super schematic, but you get the gist).

Æon wrote:
Isolation does offer relative immunity from Modernization; this is why the Hellenes developed Stoic and Ascetic philosophies.

Here I totally agree with you. Tokugawa Japan is perhaps the most successful example. But 9 times out of 10, this also means sacrificing economic and technological growth (i.e. post Zeng He China), and as with politics, the fact you're not interested in the outer-world does not mean the outer-world is not interested in you: those cultures, like China or India, which in the Renaissance were economically and militarily ahead of Europe ended as colonies or protectorates because they thought they could just withdraw from the game. In short, as Enrico Corradini once wrote, it's 'modernize, or be modernized'.
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PostSubject: Re: Modernity Modernity EmptyMon Jan 09, 2023 4:05 am

While it's true that Royalty have often been assigned control over foreign countries/nations/peoples throughout history, and are thereby International, doesn't this demonstrate the very point though? Who are those leaders responsible for, the foreigners, or their 'home' country? Isn't this the significance? Don't people, and leaders, want to ingratiate themselves where they identify as their home? Wouldn't soldiers feel more confident and inspired by brethren leading their armies and wars, higher morale, than foreign nations?

I understand the point of Modernity and Internationality—the largest and most powerful armies usually span across many political borders. This doesn't mean however that Culture and "Home" are lost to those who are absorbed by the largest mass. Wars and political alliances don't last forever. If they could last forever, then they would have to be based on a Tradition.
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PostSubject: Re: Modernity Modernity EmptyMon Jan 16, 2023 8:02 pm


Concealed beneath a veneer of rebellious, counter-cultural, distinctions....admittedly superficial and fashion based.
For moderns/postmoderns appearances are....superficial, so they admit that their own fashionable differences are all concealing a uniformity of thought - or, one that ought to become universal.

They seek the connector in the lowest-common-denominator....or they invent it by defining concepts out of existence - idealizing all concepts so that they become mental constructs - easily manipulated and used to manipulate.

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PostSubject: Re: Modernity Modernity EmptyTue Jan 17, 2023 8:13 pm

Satyr wrote:
Concealed beneath a veneer of rebellious, counter-cultural, distinctions....admittedly superficial and fashion based.
For moderns/postmoderns appearances are....superficial, so they admit that their own fashionable differences are all concealing a uniformity of thought - or, one that ought to become universal.
They seek the connector in the lowest-common-denominator....or they invent it by defining concepts out of existence - idealizing all concepts so that they become mental constructs - easily manipulated and used to manipulate.

That's a pretty good quote, because I think (as a lot of De Benoist's very perceptive writings, actually), it highlights the paradox I was trying to show:
Modernity is both monolithic and fluid, both individualism and totalitarianism, both aimless dissolution and mindless conformity, bBoth perpetual peace and unprecedented violence. I could go on and on.
Basically whatever concept you use to describe the world, whatever value to assess it, it seems that if you look at it close enough, you'll find it synonymous with modernity. I mean, even 'tradition' which is supposed to be its antonym, clearly acquires its present meanings in modernity: before modernity there was no 'tradition' precisely because there was no modernity to resist.

On a separate note, I'm not all that convinced by the Nouvelle Droites solutions: essentially he prones uniformization at the national/regional level, in order to resist uniformization at the global level. Problem is: unless you happen to travel, that will make no difference to you whether the world or is not uniform beyond your own local community. And as history makes abundantly clear, it is travel (as trade) that brings modernization and cultural uniformization.
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PostSubject: Re: Modernity Modernity EmptyTue Jan 17, 2023 8:25 pm

There are a multiplicity of factors contributing to uniformity....technology being the means.
The destruction of the family, by removing the father from the picture, is one; open border policies promoted in countries that need to be disciplined to world dominion, being another; pop-culture, Hollywood, soft-power being another....

What matters is that uniformity is a dumbind-down, a lowering of all to a lowest-common-denominator...necessitating the destruction of all cultures, all traditions, all institutions, all political and religious beliefs that stand in the way - biological identifiers being the first to go.....race, sex, ethnicity...anything that contradicts uniformity of ideals.

External diversity is supposed to make-up for this internal uniformity - creating the illusion of diversity when the population is dumbed-down and indoctrinated within the same ideals....allowed only a individual expression of the same.

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PostSubject: Re: Modernity Modernity EmptySun Jan 22, 2023 8:14 am

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PostSubject: Re: Modernity Modernity EmptyFri Jan 27, 2023 2:50 pm

Satyr wrote:
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Berdyaev (for example [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]) is a fine example of the important distinction between modernity and modernism. I attributed the distinction to Marshall Bermann, because he develops and synthesize it, but you can find it everywhere in modernist texts from the 1900s to the 1940s: Berdyaev is critical of modernity, but he is enthusiastic about Cubism, Expressionism or Futurism precisely because they, too, are critical of modernity, which like him they associate with XIXth century culture, and especially with figurative art.
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PostSubject: Re: Modernity Modernity EmptyFri Jan 27, 2023 3:45 pm

I am critical of anything that distorts - inflates deflates - or abstracts reality or nature.....especially language the primary art-form.
Mostly because it can be used to exploit and manipulate the average mind which is prone to need superstitions and hope to cope with his existence - easily confused between representation and represented, or thing-in-itself, or what Schopenhauer called Will, and was adopted by Nietzsche confusing millions of young males for generations.

I divide art into two general types: representation world and representing the artist's reaction to reality, or the artist's representation of what he imagines underlies reality.
Most often, in the latter category we find fArtists, or self-declared talentless artists, motivated by the objective of fame & fortune and/or narcissism.

Similarly I am suspicious and critical of any philosophy that begins with the metaphysical and has not first shown an acuity for the physical....using words - like a cRapper - as a sequence of emotionally triggering pop-cultural references.

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