[Main Blog Post] Understanding Spengler's Decline of the West Bit 3: The Soul Image

[jprussell]

I've gotten to one of the juicier bits of Decline of the West - the "Soul Image" that defines different Great Cultures. Here's the post.

Comments

[thinking_turtle]

Thanks, interesting update! I learned about Amine from the Future Boy Conan series, also by Hayao Miyazaki of Nausicaa fame. Amine's Japanese origin means I misinterpret many things. Yet it rewards you with a greater variety than Hollywood. I remember movies like "Wolf Children", "My Name" and "A Silent Voice" with joy.

That primitive people do not have culture seems logical: they don't have the free time to pursue it. Likewise, today's lower classes are mostly focused on work and keeping their possessions maintained or expanded. Their spare time goes to supporting sports teams, music or movies. Only students in the higher schools show interest in numbers, logic or debate.

I wonder at the role of energy in culture. When our resources dwindle, so will the number of elites and the "free time" our society can afford. Is lower energy the consequence of a dwindling culture, or the cause of its dwindling?

[jprussell]

1) Thanks much! Also, thanks for the title recommendations, I have not seen any of those, so I'll have to see if I can track them down. I don't watch as much anime now as I once did, but as you say, it's nice to get the variety.

2) I think whether you can say primitive people don't have "culture" depends very much on how you're defining that very abstract word. If you mean something like "high culture" or "familiarity with and/or facility with producing elements of a highly developed artistic, intellectual, and/or philosophical tradition" then, sure, folks at a subsistence level are going to have a lot less of that, especially material expressions of that. On the other hand, my cultural anthropology professor defined culture as something like "a society's shared understanding of how the world works" - something that literally every human society has. Generally speaking, I find the anthropological use more often helpful, and prefer to talk about the snobbish use by qualifying it (like I did with "high culture" above).

3) As for energy and culture, that's a good question. Certainly we have far more popular culture than ever before, and it's easier to contribute to it than ever before, thanks in large part to energy-intensive technologies and the lifestyles they enable. On the other hand, everything Apollonian culture ever made was done with muscle, wind, and wood for energy, so it seems like you can get plenty of High Culture without the glut of energy we take for granted.

[thinking_turtle]

2) Interesting, one definition is about individuals who have excess time to think about the world, develop new ideas and express them in art. The second is a society's shared image of the world.

3) Good point! There are choices even at a lower energy level. We could use some energy to develop culture instead of going on holiday.

Looking forward to the next installment!