39 Comments

1. RWE:

“If we do not continue the lives of those who preceded us, nor prepare the lives of those who will follow us, then we are defined by our physical existence and nothing more.”

One of the things that I have noticed about dictatorships is that even if they do not fall, they must periodically announce that they revile their predecessors. Khruschev started the process of condemning Stalin. Later Soviet leaders condemned the earlier ones, and Gorbachev ultimately condemned them all. Later Russian leaders condemned Gorbachev. In 1986 the Communist Party of China denounced Marxism and Mao came to be seen in the most negative of terms.

I have assumed that this approach was the necessary to enable them to throw off the crimes and errors of their past to be renewed and absolved. Perhaps it did that, but only at the cost of their very existence.

Jan 10, 2009 - 4:24 pm 2. mohammedan:

‘Osama bin Laden’s vision of a totally Islamic world ‘
Big lie. Bin Laden’s fight with the west started from the presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia and the use of non-Muslims troops in the Muslim countries. Anything else came afterwards. Stop spreading propaganda.

Jan 10, 2009 - 5:11 pm 3. Bob Murphy:

Spengler is a hoot but he is still seeing things from an archetypal Euro/intellectual viewpoint (though he may well be a Yank. See his article about New Orleans and others).
In his article above he is limited by his addiction to chatter mind. Reality is not a mental/intellectual construct no matter how sublime Spengler’s observations and projections might be.
He cannot see outside his behaviourist mental projection.
The Hindu and especially Buddhist world view is something else again.
God need not be sentient per se and hence a much less demanding and intellectual and far more subtle view of something bigger than the individual ensues.
Conscious is everything is one view so they see divinity in everything that happens. It is all perfection including human antics and all we need do is develop the ability to see that.
One of the niftiest types of meditation I ever did was called Vipassana which you practice on 10 day retreats so you can clear chatter mind first and then get serious.
The whole “goal” was to learn to see things as they really are.
You aren’t the centre of things, neither am I in the ego sense.
You experience consciousness outside the body, outside of words and outside the ego. Then you see that the racial/cultural demographic suicide being practised in the West, especially Europe, is just another mental projection, a tempest in a teapot, though no less deadly in a way for all that.
Previous manifestations of such an intellectual projection to me include Prussian fascism, Marxism, Italian fascism and Hitler’s own variant. They were all part of the same collective intellectual delusion thang.
I think America’s and Europe’s mutual frustration with each other is rooted in the European tendency to enter into mass mental projection time after time where they cannot tell the difference between social consensus and reality and America’s traditional abhorrence of that sort of thing.
It’s no fluke that America had to rescue Europe from its own mental proection 3x in the 20th century. (Four if you count Bosnia and the wider Balkans).
Spengler is wrong in the real world sense but right in the intellectual chatter mind sense.
The corpses of the societies that believed the mass delusions will be as real as if there had been a real world basis for their despair.
If it wasn’t so funny it would be tragic. Ummm, if it wasn’t so tragic it would be funny.
Life is tough when you believe your own wank. I think I shall go work in my garden. The tomatoes are just turning red and need tending to.

Jan 10, 2009 - 5:17 pm 4. Blindman:

Spengler’s article is an extraordinary reach into the soup of social metaphysics. For all the diversity we are blessed with it seems that only beans,rice, and chicken are going to survive. There must be no nutritional value to he spice,the salt, and of course the water.

Just take the case he makes about Israel. The tiny nation struggling to maintain its difference. It has been my impression that Israel is to act as light to the world to show others a way to sanctify themselves so as to be worthy. It appears that the prophet benefited from that idea. Israel does not desire to be alone by itself.

Surely ideas change over time. Those who ignore new discoveries are just as at risk as those who forget old knowledge. The notion that civilizations fail due a collective mental menopause is as plausible as some of the science underpinning global warming.

And someone should have told John Lennon “to love the one your with” rather than bemoaning the inability to fulfill a dream. Dreams are just dreams and so are some ideas.

Jan 10, 2009 - 5:22 pm 5. whiskey:

First of all, China is most assuredly a Han Chinese nation. Let no one tell you otherwise. Anyone who’s been there knows this. Angry revanchist nationalism is the order of the day in China. And that nationalism is centered around Han Chinese ethnic identity.

Secondly, China, India, and America face disintegrating nation-states with powerful ethnic-religious forces supremely hostile to their identity on their borders. India has Pakistan. China has Central Asia and the collapse their into Muslim supremacist states, and the US has Mexico’s collapse with the rise of the narco terrorists into political battles with the government.

None of these border groups has any intention of integrating with the neighbor group, rather they are hostile and dream of revanchist gains. For Mexico this is the Reconquista, for Pakistan it’s part of India, for the Central Asian places it is Western China.

If anything, nationalism is on the rise in South Korea, Japan, China, Mexico, Eastern Europe, Russia, Turkey, and so on. The trans-national elite who want a new Holy Roman Empire or what have you, the new “Gentry” or “Priesthood” seeking to supplant nations are thin on the ground and while having a stranglehold on the European and American Media/Government power centers, rely on patronage through the Welfare state which is coming apart in bad times.

Not for nothing did FDR throw Mexicans out the US (or indeed, anyone who “looked” Mexican) and limit participation in the New Deal to US Citizens (and mostly Whites at that). This is how patronage models work — patronage for the majority population, not privileged minorities. Certainly not in bad times.

For all Obama’s Chicago style politics, he understands Nationalism not at all and even less traditional Majority population patronage. Sending trillions of dollars to Jessie Jackson and a few Black/Hispanic leaders does not build a patronage network in bad times with the majority population angry and desperate.

Jan 10, 2009 - 6:31 pm 6. Ron Hardin:

The Jews’ “Chosen People” means chosen for special responsibilities, namely taking on the burdens of the poor and the suffering. Its resonance is that it describes human morality in general. Every man is a Jew.

That (Levinas’s interpretation) would undermine Spengler.

Jan 10, 2009 - 6:32 pm 7. NahnCee:

Any time Lennon’s “Imagine” is quoted, in fairness to him it should be followed up immediately by the lyrics to “Revolution”:

“You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it’s evolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
But when you talk about destruction
Don’t you know that you can count me out
Don’t you know it’s gonna be all right
all right, all right

You say you got a real solution
Well, you know
We’d all love to see the plan
You ask me for a contribution
Well, you know
We’re doing what we can
But when you want money
for people with minds that hate
All I can tell is brother you have to wait
Don’t you know it’s gonna be all right
all right, all right ”

(mohammadan is a dreary unimaginative little poster dude, isn’t he?)

Jan 10, 2009 - 7:33 pm 8. james wilson:

Nations lose their will to exist AS they lose their distinctiveness.

Jan 10, 2009 - 9:23 pm 9. Brock:

whiskey is right about China, but also wrong. I’ve been there and married into a Chinese family, so I’m pretty certain about this one. There are minority ethnicities within China, but they are not treated as “true” Chinese. That would be the Han.

But it’s not really the ethnicity that’s the problem. I’m your average red-haired Caucasian, but many individual Chinese, once they get to know you and understand that you can speak and write the language, know the history, etc., revert pretty quickly to treating you the same as “anyone else.” (meaning, any other Chinese). But meeting non-Han who can do this happens so rarely to individual Han that it’s something you need to do over and over. And over. And over. So they have the potential to be pan-ethnic one day, with practice and more non-Han.

But Spengler is on to something when he notes that Civilizations are more important than nations (not that he’s the first to do so). Nations are an artifact of feudal politics of the European Late Middle Ages, and Bismark’s success as reuniting most of the German civilization under one nation confused the matter. “Hey, this worked! Let’s do it for all of Europe now!” Nope. Doesn’t work. It’s the Civilization that matters, not the Nation. That’s why the USA could theoretically absorb Canada, Australia and/or the UK, but not France. Hell, Canada still hasn’t absorbed Quebec.

But on the other hand, Civilizations are not static, and there is a “European” civilization emerging. The EC is doing with time and trade what Hitler could not; all you need is patience. Unfortunately, as Spengler has also noted, it will be stillborn unless the demographic problem is solved. And I believe that is happening because another one of Spengler’s observations is correct: that Civilizations need a reason to live, and that Eurussia has adopted a religion (Marxism) that does not provide one. Likewise the Japanese have lost their old one (the Emperor) and not found a new one. China, India and the USA have religions that meet basic needs.

Jan 10, 2009 - 9:25 pm 10. programmr:

IMHO, we live in one of the most amazing times in the history of humankind (or at least, the history that I am aware of). The horizons of possibilities are being driven into unforseeably unlimited futures by the minds of men and women. It is scary, but at the same time exciting. There are dangers, but there are promises of enhancing our powers to literally, for all intents and purposes, look like magic.

While haters hate, stoners get stoned, swingers swing, the inquisitive minds of physicists, chemists, biologists, engineers and other scientists pave the way for really doing what dreamers can only dream about. While pundits ponder, chatterers chat, these quiet, pragmatic wizards build and expand the range of our knowledge and technology. More and more real power is being placed in the hands of the average person. Some are using it well. It is a race between the dark and the light. Who will win? How can anyone be quietly resigned to just be born, exist, and die in this time of exhiliration? Accelerate the process of bring order out of chaos wherever you can. Live with all the zest you can manage, learn all you can absorb, teach all who will listen. Build whereever you can. Push back the dark where you can, hold it at bay where you cannot push. Don’t fricking sleep. Death comes to us all, some sooner, some later. Faith says it is just a transition, but who really KNOWS? Don’t waste any of the daylight given you.

I say again, how can anyone be quietly resigned to just be born, exist, and die in this time of exhiliration? Frickin’ idiots.

Jan 10, 2009 - 9:33 pm 11. Josh:

Samuel Huntington.
Have a nice day.

Jan 10, 2009 - 9:46 pm 12. Michael Hoskins:

I can only comment from an American perspective. America is an idea. It is free for the taking. The United States is a place. It must be protected.

Civilizations, to my mind, are based on a central idea. The central idea (or system of related ideas) must be internally consistent and sufficiently functional to united groups larger than extended families.

Nation states are general geographic constructs supported by a unifying idea. The idea need not be very sophisticated if the geography is particularly strong. I.e. Britain and Australia, being islands, scream out to be single nation states.

So to Spengler. His point focuses on the big idea, civilization, over geography. The big idea is necessary but not sufficient. It is necessary for the idea to be shared by neighbors of great enough extent for a geographic construct to develope that fills in the practical blanks of a functional nation; economy, defense, nurture etc.

Mo at #2 is an example of a total disconnect. No central idea, no nation, pure fatalism.

Brock. Yea Anglosphere.

Jan 10, 2009 - 9:53 pm 13. Michael Hoskins:

P.S. Bob Murphy…see the most recent Mark Steyn. Could be Steyn with wit in the O-F-F position.

Jan 10, 2009 - 10:07 pm 14. Michael Hoskins:

…Spengler could be Steyn…(my brain in O-F-F position-shesh!)

Jan 10, 2009 - 10:08 pm 15. Lifeofthemind:

This thread has brought out the best in Bob Murphy and whiskey and NahnCee. Like the Baker Street Irregulars or Mad magazine’s Usual Gang of Idiots the Belmont Club members are open to new ideas but not mislead by trolls.

Islam is a thrashing beast fueled by the Western addiction to imported energy. This is however a very narrow window of vulnerability. Soon the oil will run out, other energy sources are coming on line. America, like Israel, is a nation built on an idea. In a sense America versus Islam is a Manichean struggle. That is why even though they despise the Europeans they really hate the Americans. In a sense Fukuyama was half right. One struggle, for ideas was won by the west. Islam is just attempting to strike as an opportunistic infection. That is what they did at their moment of weakness to the Byzantines and Persians. The other consequence of the Cold War ending was the revival of suppressed nationalisms.So there is a race to see what takes root in all the artificial countries like Syria that were created by external diplomats. Could an ideology take root that moves the population away from the dead end of fear, hate, despair, self pity and anti-intellectualism that is Islam? Frankly I doubt it. So maybe the best we can hope for is they learn a healthier nationalism that allows them to form mutually respectful relations with other nations. The reasonableness of that answer is not great either. More energy has been poured into creating a Palestinian identity than for any other community on earth in the hope that they would reciprocate with just that level of maturity. See how well that is working out?

Jan 10, 2009 - 10:17 pm 16. Lifeofthemind:

Brock, Michael Hoskins, programmer etc. kudos to you too.

Jan 10, 2009 - 10:22 pm 17. Walt:

There are five stages in man’s political ascent – 1) family; 2) clan; 3) tribe; 4) city state; and 5) nation state. Now Spengler wishes to add a sixth, Civilizatons. There was a Greek Civilization while they were still at #4. There is a Western Civilization now composed entirely of nation states, who are likely to remain nation states, even when subsumed into the larger sense of a Western Civilization. Spengler is often right, but this time he is wrong.

Jan 10, 2009 - 10:27 pm 18. trangbang68:

The Last verse of John Lennon’s opus is:

Imagine there’s no Mark Chapman
It’s easy if you try
Until he pulls out a heater
And shoots you til you die

Lennon’s life like all liberal dreams faded to black.

Jan 10, 2009 - 10:45 pm 19. Alexis:

Suffice it to say that I fiercely oppose Samuel Huntington’s worldview, one that appears to be largely shared by Osama bin Laden. My view of the essential nature of civilization is vastly different, principally because the very nature of civilization in and of itself necessitates cooperation and social structure. I believe that civilization has one origin, and that origin is the essence of existence. (Yes, I’m talking about Him.)

Yes, there have been cities built upon a foundation of tyranny. Tenochtitlan is one example of this. And yet the Aztecs fell to an indigenous revolution under Spanish leadership. All the Aztecs had to keep their empire was a reign of terror to induce obedience; once exotic men with horses, guns, and iron came onto the scene, the Aztecs lost their former power.

Few civilizations endure unless they have a robust social fabric and an unspoken tradition of consensual government. This tradition is partly religious and it is partly philosophical. Ideas are the glue that keep societies together. Men such as Plato and Socrates understood this. They called it “The Noble Lie”, although strictly speaking the founding myth of a society need not be untrue. Confidence in the prowess of one’s own culture is very necessary. Religion can instill such confidence, and yet religion is a two-edged sword. It is hardly uncommon for religious leaders to become a civilization’s fifth column. Atheism typically undermines itself because its very existence is built upon a negation. Likewise, monotheism is positive so long as it celebrates existence rather than being merely a negation of polytheism.

I see Israel as a bridge, not between the human and the supernatural, but rather between East and West, between modernity and antiquity. Other nations have memories of antiquity, but few are so vivid. That which makes Judaism so vital is the fact that it nearly died out in antiquity, not once but many times over. Time after time, the keepers of the Jewish archives were faced with pressures that would have led any other people to give up the fight to exist as a nation, and yet the Jewish scholarly class soldiered on.

If there is any consistent marker of whether a culture may endure, it is the tenacity of its mandarins, for a great mandarin cares less for the honors bestowed by the Emperor than for whether the ways for which he is a custodian endure. It is no accident that great merchants come from peoples who revere the mandarin, for such merchants have the social responsibility of promoting education as opposed to merely seeking riches for themselves.

The twentieth century was a trauma for Europe, enough to bring almost any civilization to its knees. Yet, Europe’s fall came before World War I. King Leopold II’s depredations in Congo vastly undermined the European colonial enterprise because this was one of the most soulless conquests in human history. His was a regime of the severed hands, and Europe’s sense of moral superiority has never recovered from his atrocities. Then, there was the Russo-Japanese War. Russia lost. Russia lost horribly to an Asian upstart. Japan, a rustic medieval backwater from the far orient, had watched the conquest of Asia with horror and sought to learn the magic of the West. Japan not only learned western technology, but beat a major European power with superior arms.

World War I, World War II, and the Cold War merely consolidated a loss of confidence that started with Congo and Japan. And yet, this loss of confidence would not have happened one century earlier. The reason why should be obvious – racism. In the nineteenth century, it became fashionable to base a sense of European superiority not upon religious or ethical superiority as had been the fashion earlier, but rather upon a sense of racial superiority. If a sense of European superiority had been based upon culture, the atrocities of the Congo would not have been seen as a repudiation of imperialism but rather as a repudiation of King Leopold II’s lack of Christian virtue. Likewise, Japanese victories against Russia would have showed that Japan was more westernized than Russia (which would have been a more accurate understanding of the situation). Yet, the smug racism of the late 1800’s set up a fall, and more importantly gave birth to a peculiar variety of “liberal” who cares more about racial self-flagellation than about the welfare of the very “natives” he purports to defend.

Civilization is like water. Water can be here, water can be there, water can be yonder, but water is water no matter where it is. One can no more talk of a “clash of civilizations” than talk of a clash of deities. All civilizations have rules, laws, social structure, and the basic cooperation necessary for people to work together. One nation may have a rule that cars must drive on the left side of the road, while another nation mandates that cars must drive on the right side of the road, and yet all civilized nations will have rules for the road designed to ensure safety and convenience.

Religion is no more fated to motivate wars than any other motivation. The Thirty Years War started as a Catholic holy war to redeem Protestant lands, and devolved into a national and dynastic free-for-all. Few people would have guessed in 1617 that Bourbon France would subsidize a Lutheran Swedish army to make war on Hapsburg Austria and Spain, fellow Catholic powers.

The notion of a “clash of civilizations” is problematic in another way. It is little different from Marxist-Leninism and Nazism. Communists talk of “class war”. Nazis talk of “race war”. Huntingtonians talk of “civilizational war” or “clash of civilizations”. What’s the difference? What if Adolf Hitler had pointed out that Jews were some alien civilization that got in the way of the “Teutonic Civilization”? What if Benito Mussolini had pointed out that Italian imperialism was justified on the basis of a superior “Roman Civilization”? What if Joseph Stalin had pointed out that “Western Capitalist Civilization” must be destroyed to make way for “Socialist Civilization”? What if he had called his massacre of Ukrainian kulaks “liberation against the kulak civilization”? The list of nasties goes on and on!

The very word “civilization” is fluid. Very fluid. I am offended when Samuel Huntington put the United States, Canada, and Western Europe into the same “civilization”. (This also accentuates rivalry between France and the United States because France typically regards itself as the leader of the “West”.) Why does Spain count as “western” but not Argentina, Mexico, or Brazil? Are Serbian-American neighborhoods in Chicago part of “western civilization” or part of “Orthodox Civilization”? Worse, the internal divisions Samuel Huntington points to within the United States are based upon race and not upon culture.

I would have an easier time taking Samuel Huntington’s definitions seriously if they weren’t arbitrary and capricious. As it is, it is clear that he saw what he wanted to see and not necessarily what actually existed.

Osama bin Laden, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and much of the Arab political establishment implicitly accept the Huntingtonian equation of “civilization” with religious bigotry. They may talk of “dialog of civilizations”, but they, like Mr. Huntington, accept the premise that “civilizations” could talk or clash as if they were run by different deities. I don’t accept the essentially polytheist premise that separate deities control separate cities. That is a premise I flatly reject.

Instead, it is wiser to talk of civilization in terms of economic complexity, levels of cultural refinement, and advances in technology. Some religions, with their reverence for learning, have served to advance science. Other religions, which seek obedience at the expense of the liberation of one’s soul, have served to stunt science. Cultures that follow brittle codes of backwardness eventually lose to those cultures which are robust.

The existential question that faces Islam is whether it wishes to be civilized or not. If Islam follows the path of al-Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah, it will wither. If Islam learns from what works and doesn’t work in other countries, it will flourish. Islam could potentially be a great living religion, but it is now withering and dying from doubt ironically induced by the Islamists themselves. Were it not for the Islamists, Islam could have survived and even thrived. Yet, it is dying, suffocated by pools of money gained from the petroleum industry, much as Romania stagnated in the early twentieth century.

If Japan had sat on a huge pool of money in 1855, it would not have felt the need to modernize. When South Africa sat on giant gold reserves, it regressed into an apartheid state instead of becoming a modern industrial economy. As a rule, rental economies lead to stagnation.

Al-Qaeda seeks to destroy the bonds of civilization that lead people to at least provisionally trust one another. Its very existence attacks the sinews of civilization much as the murder of Hypatia undermined the vitality of Alexandrine civilization in late Roman antiquity. To talk of a “clash of civilizations” gives too much credit to a band of feudal ruffians financed by oriental petro-despotism. Such talk gives too much credit to al-Qaeda.

Jan 10, 2009 - 11:17 pm 20. NahnCee:

“There are five stages in man’s political ascent – 1) family; 2) clan; 3) tribe; 4) city state; and 5) nation state. Now Spengler wishes to add a sixth, Civilizatons. There was a Greek Civilization while they were still at #4.”

Anti-Americans (like mohammaden, for example) like to quote failed civilizations of the past like the Roman empire and the considerably diminished Egyptian civilization as being the reason that for certain-sure, America is also inevitably doomed to similar failure, and is probably even as we speak in decline to that end.

Given this new theory of Spengler’s, however, we can perk up now because America as an experiment is *not* in decline, but merely morphing into its own civilization.

I’m not sure how that’s different from the Roman “civilization” or the Egyptian one that failed and are both gone now, but if Spengler says it’s a new and unusual formation that’s never been seen before, I can get behind that as a theory simply because it’ll annoy all the Muslims.

Jan 11, 2009 - 12:22 am 21. Contrarian:

I find it difficult to understand Spengler’s argument about these countries having “little cause for conflict anywhere on their borders.” Does he not stay up with current events? Did he miss Mumbai and the tension on the Indo-Pak border? India also has continuing problems with ethnic “liberation” movements. China’s relationship with the Tibetans also comes to mind. America’s uniqueness in this respect is that most of our ancestors left their former nationalities at the border when they voluntarily emigrated to their new country. In the case of China and India, and I think we can add Russia also, the absorption was rarely, if ever, voluntary.

Jan 11, 2009 - 12:24 am 22. Bob Murphy:

I think a very good case could be made for the unique, strong cultural density of both India and China and I would include the US but with some concerns about the pseudo-Euro yuppie types including Obama.
China and India’s cultural density would make them almost impossible to subdue now, even if Pakistan were to nuke India.
And neither country has the European disease (self doubt, repudiation of things spiritual etc etc).
Unless we shake off our pygmies the future belongs to them.
The Jews? Culturally they are still strong but Israel could be destroyed by a couple of nukes or at least shaken enough for it to be invaded by the surrounding rabble.
My money’s on China and India.
And I’d sure like it to be on the US as well. Back to you in a couple of years on that one.:)

Jan 11, 2009 - 1:42 am 23. ADE:

Spengler’s off the wall.

I submit that the basis for our great civilizations (Judeo-Christian, Chinese, Hindu, Orthodox Christian, Islamic) is existential. Civilizations exist because men wish to overcome death, and have learned that ties of blood and language are not sufficient to win immortality.

Not so. Families, tribes, countries exist because the definition of enemy expands as your world expands. I daresay that the Germanic tribes had no word for civilization when they bumped into the Roman Empire.

Spengler
Why have so many branches of the human family lost the will to live?
Because of the discovery that their Gods, their witchdoctors, their spells, were false. Worse, they discover that they are at the bottom of a Global social heap. (See Islamic societies, Russia, Germany post Gas Chambers, France post La Gloire). (Incidentally, want to know why Stalin is being “repositioned” in Russia? They need their Gods too.)

So, from New Guinea to Berlin University, who is the Anti-God in all of this?

Modernity, of course.

And who are the Modernity Imperialists? Step forward the Anglosphere. What to America, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, even Ireland, is day to day life, is a serious challenge to France, Germany, Russia, Japan, Islam, India, China.

Whoever would have thought that denim and Fender Stratocasters would undermine civilisations? They did, and that’s why Spengler is way over the top. It’s not Lack of God, it is false God.

Now, as for the reproduction rate, correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t the US, Australia, South Africa, and even India projecting an increase in population?

So the new Gods are us. Jeez, who knew?

I did.

ADE

Jan 11, 2009 - 3:29 am 24. what is occupation:

I am a Jew….

I am a PROUD LOYAL American….

I am a Zionist…

Israel COULD be destroyed tomorrow and I still would be a Jew….

Jews seek the world to find it’s own way to the top of the mountain without crushing other’s paths…

We teach OUR children all we wish for other’s is to be “good”

We are the “Chosen”, that is we CHOOSE to live to the the 613 Mitzvot.. or Instructions…

We believe that all ethical gentiles (gentiles = other nations) have a share in the world to come and that all peoples of the world must follow Noah’s 7 laws…

Nations? Civilizations? all temporary constructs…

The Jew is Eternal…

Just as the civilizations, tribes, klans & nations that have committed themselves to MY destruction…

Jan 11, 2009 - 7:09 am 25. what is occupation:

ops

just ask

Jan 11, 2009 - 7:10 am 26. Medea:

Civilizations are comprehensive modes of interpeting reality that are shared by large numbers of people otherwise organized in all sorts and sizes of survival-oriented communities, families, clans, tribes and nations included.
Civilizations collapse when their capacity to interpret reality breaks down. Survival-oriented communities collapse when they cannot ensure survival, i.e., when they suffer defeat in the hands of an extrenal threat to their survival.
By contrast, civilizations as modes of interpreting reality cannot suffer defeat in this sense. They die when they recognize that they can no longer interpret reality. When a civilization has lost the capacity to interpret reality but is in denial about the fact, it turns nasty and senselessly violent, including the violence of suicide.
Classical Greek civilization died with dignity when the Delphic Oracle informed the Emperor Julian the Apostate that his attempts to revive the Greek gods are doomed to failure — “Apollo’s speech has dried up.”
Islamic civilization has chosen to die in the abject indignity of murder and suicide.
As for our friend Spengler (the highly gifted ex-LaRouchie David Goldman), he is attempting to return to his long-rejected Jewish roots in a desperate attempt to restore his comprehension of reality after his LaRouche experience. He should be encouraged to return to the faith of his fathers, but he should trim his contempt for the goym.

Jan 11, 2009 - 7:23 am 27. Jay:

I read that Spengler is a German who has an MBA from Wharton and who works in international finance.
Did you folks read the interview of Hussein O by a LaMonde reported in 1996? What would a major French newspaper interview this obscure Chicago lawyer-agitator? This is very odd. Many of us have written about the foreign contributions to the savior’s campaign but 1996. The gang behind him is more that George Soros.

Jan 11, 2009 - 7:54 am 28. Dennis:

It seems to me that civilization is qualified by a precondition of freedom, therefore Huntington’s Clash is not between civilization but between civilization and tribalism.

Many years ago, my Filipino grandfather forgave me for being half American. He was a lawyer and a an educator, an insignificant actor in the politics of Manila. He laid his case out to me in two grand lectures, the first a correct history of the Philippines (how Yanqui culture blotted out the Filipino culture) and the struggle between East and West and how the former is superior to the latter. He hated the USA because he saw the West as a threat, that the solvent of individualism places the family (as a basic social unit) in jeopardy.

Ever since then, for better or worse, I saw the world as this Manichaean struggle between the tribe (slavery to the tribal chief) and civilization, where civility cannot be understood outside of a precondition of the a priori state of freedom. The tribalism of the Philippines to me is on the same level as that of China, or India, or Pakistan, or any Arab nation, of Eskimos, of any society whose basic unit is comprised of family-centric, group-centric elements.

The narrative which places this precondition of freedom originates solely in the culture of the Jews. Judaism’s central tenant is a gift of freedom from G-d, and this gift is housed and protected by a fortress of memes called the Torah. The Jews have been tasked to protect this fortress for the sake of mankind. They rebuild this house yearly, daily much like ritual rebuilding of Japan’s Ike Shrine. In this way, they are soldiers of a sort. They are not special in the eyes of G-d in terms of favoritism, they are elected to execute a responsibility.

One interesting irony is that freedom required a tribe to protect it. Certain features of the West, of civilization, spill out as a consequence of it: that the labor of a free person is their private property, that this property can be bartered in a common marketplace, that people deserve a limited series of negative rights in order to define and protect this state of freedom, that these rights must be spelled out in a constitutional manner, that democracy and the nature of a republic (representative government) must reinforce one another, that government must strive to minimize itself while simultaneously maximizing its effects…

The hatred of the Jews goes to the heart of freedom and it’s ramifications. Anti-Semitic cultures are united in their defense of the group, the organizing principal of family. The tribe in all it’s forms hates freedom just as my grandfather hated the Yanks. They all fear their dissolution into a sea of individuality. But guess what? The Jews are not only invulnerable to this threat, they survive and prosper to boot.

Long live Israel, and Mazel Tov to their efforts in Gaza!

Jan 11, 2009 - 11:13 am 29. Josh:

Walt, Alexis,

Islam, or at least Arab Islam, does not go beyond tribe to your #4 or #5, so it is not an increase to #6 to believe what Huntington says about a clash of civilizations, it is a regression back to #3.

Note that neither do the modern Euros like the idea of nation-states. They too like to think they are “beyond” that, but in their case perhaps they do like to think of some kind of universal #6.

And this itself is an aspect of the clash of civilizations, each group has a different idea of just what civilization is.

Is the idea of the caliphate a post-tribal idea, or just a mega-tribal idea? Discuss.

Jan 11, 2009 - 1:25 pm 30. NahnCee:

When we do get to the point of heading out to the stars, it will be the equivalent of the Pilgrims setting sail to the New World because they just couldn’t stand all the stupid rules any more.

Which means that about 200 years after that initial blast-off into space, Mars or the moon or wherever the neo-pilgrims land should be successful enough to be the new overlords of Earth.

Jan 11, 2009 - 1:36 pm 31. Wadeusaf:

An Intimate Conversation with Michelle and Barack Obama, was taped for a book about American marriages and was never published until recently when ABC’s Tom McCarthy found it in LeMonds printed in French. –Mercy Boucups.

I cannot believe that spengler believes the clash of culture/civilizations has not been a part of the growth and struggle of man for quite some time. Historically tracing mans footsteps out of Africa and then tracing the bump of the first migration given by the second migration given to the third migration and the feedback of the first migration having reached an end point and sounding out the trail to the last migration and so forth and so on. Feed back loops and noise, motivation is mainly to get away from everyone else, whether it is Daniel Boone running from the neighbors chimney smoke or Paul Bunyon running away from shame, everybody has a story about seeking nirvana and finding something altogether else.

So the balance is how to live with yourself while remaining respectable in the eyes of your neighbors, given that they have the same fears that you’ll find out what they don’t want you to know about them too. And it is the women folk who always chatter on with each other and mess everything up, so the mongol hoard had to ride into China proper and later took on india and yada, yada, yada. Just like Paris stole some greecian delight and got chased back to Cambridge, erm Troy. Feedback loops and noise.

Eventually some storytellers will figure out stories that enough of us can live with to leave the other guy alone for a while, even if we can see the whites of their undies and smell the vapors of their noodle roni. Till then it would be a shame to be left with only the doors…,

“Keep your eyes on the road
Your hands upon the wheel.”

Yeah, the back of the roadhouse,
They’ve got some bungalows.

They dance for the people
Who like to go down slow.

Let it roll, baby, roll.
Let it roll, all night long.

Roll, roll, roll, roll-a
Thrill my soul.

Ashen-Lady.
Give up your vows.
Save our city.

Well, I woke up this morning
And I got myself a beer.

The future’s uncertain
And the end is always near.

Let it roll, baby, roll.
Let it roll, baby, roll.
Let it roll, baby, roll.
Let it roll, all night long.”

But can we be content with…,

Tales Of Brave Ulysses
by Eric Clapton and Martin Sharp

You thought the leaden winter would bring you down forever,
But you rode upon a steamer to the violence of the sun.

And the colors of the sea blind your eyes with trembling mermaids,
And you touch the distant beaches with tales of brave Ulysses:
How his naked ears were tortured by the sirens sweetly singing,
For the sparkling waves are calling you to kiss their white laced lips.

And you see a girl’s brown body dancing through the turquoise,
And her footprints make you follow where the sky loves the sea.
And when your fingers find her, she drowns you in her body,
Carving deep blue ripples in the tissues of your mind.

The tiny purple fishes run laughing through your fingers,
And you want to take her with you to the hard land of the winter.

Her name is Aphrodite and she rides a crimson shell,
And you know you cannot leave her for you touched the distant sands
With tales of brave Ulysses; how his naked ears were tortured
By the sirens sweetly singing.

The tiny purple fishes run lauging through your fingers,
And you want to take her with you to the hard land of the winter.

Stratocasters, heyeah, not a bad way to build a civilization either, played by the right band.

Jan 11, 2009 - 2:59 pm 32. Bob Murphy:

28. Dennis

You’re cracking me up with that notion of “Judaism’s central tenant is a gift of freedom from G-d…”
So their exceptionalism then has the same basis as American exceptionalism where freedom (rights) are given by G-d and not the gift of some damn government as with most countries in the world, the concomitant being, of course that they are thus intrinsic and not to be messed with by mere mortals or social engineers.

No wonder the Left and the tribals hate both Israel and the Great Satan.:)

Jan 12, 2009 - 5:45 am 33. Bob Murphy:

We are so intractable.

Jan 12, 2009 - 5:46 am 34. Fletcher Christian:

The future of human civilisation is technological – and therefore has some components usually called Western although some technological societies are strange indeed to Anglos; witness Japan. If not, then it doesn’t have a future at all.

And the future of civilisation is out in the wild black yonder, or nowhere. Everything we need to run civilisation is running out – easily available energy, vital strategic metals, everything. Out there, everything is available in astronomical amounts – literally.

Fast forward to 2200 AD; Earth will be a backwater of no importance, and perhaps baseline humans won’t be of any importance either. Either that, or we won’t have a civilisation at all.

Jan 12, 2009 - 6:15 am 35. Fresh Bilge » Clash, Crash, or Trash?:

[...] an exceptionally interesting comment thread at this Belmont Club post on the thesis of Samuel Huntington. Is there really a “clash of civilizations?” Does the thesis grant too much credit to [...]

Jan 12, 2009 - 6:17 am 36. Dennis:

Bob Murphy:

Exactly. The category of freedom has to be exceptional. That’s why it is secured within the realm of G-d, to remove it conceptually away from the danger of redefinition, the language games of the intelligencia. I don’t know if you have noticed already, but the contest of meaning is the principal weapon of the power hungry.

And by the way, freedom does not mean rights, but it does lead to a formulation of an array of rights that serves to frame and defend the state of freedom.

While the Left and the tribalists are flinging the epithet of “Great Satan”, they silence dissenters within their ranks, both with soft and hard means. Are you aware of the lynching within the Palestinian community? Who will defend those who are trapped within the tribalist world?

Jan 12, 2009 - 10:53 am 37. Bob Murphy:

36. Dennis
“Who will defend those who are trapped within the tribalist world?”
If not us (the US and the rest of the Anglosphere)then no one that I know of.
And our advocacy need not be through kinetic warfare only.
We need a Radio Free Europe type entity broadcasting into Iran, the Arab countries and elsewhere in the 3rd world to offset the Al Jazeeras and other mad mouthpieces.
We need to support those people everywhere who want modernity and freedom from intimidation by corrupt governments and screwball fundamentalists and marxist social engineers.
The White Man’s Burden

Jan 12, 2009 - 3:16 pm 38. Bob Murphy:

Sorry, Nahncee. I couldn’t help myself.

Jan 12, 2009 - 3:18 pm 39. El_Heffe:

About rights from God…

Mankind’s inalienable rights can be neither surrendered nor transfered nor taken away, but they can be violated (ie if a man is enslaved his right to liberty has been violated but not removed, he retains an ongoing right to liberty despite his enslavment).

Violated rights constitute an injustice. God sees to it that sooner or later all injustices are made good. Thus one violates another’s rights at one’s own peril.

Jan 14, 2009 - 1:21 pm

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