[Main Blog Post] Understanding Spengler's Decline of the West, Bit 6 - Odds and Ends

[jprussell]

Well, I am late in posting this, as things got a bit hectic this weekend and I failed to ready myself for that by getting this done sooner. This brings me to 2 late posts for the year, I think, out of the five I'll allow myself and still say I've met my boast. At any rate, here's what I think will be the last in my series of posts on Spengler, which pulls together a grab bag of sayings, thoughts, and links to other things I've read. You can read it here.

Comments

[scotlyn]

"I wonder what might come of rigorously applying his "Culture as organism" metaphor here - are the societies of "Primitive Men" a "different species" or merely an early phase of the same organism as "Great Cultures"? What might we learn by assuming each?"

It strikes me that if an organism is a whole made up of parts, we have to observe what "parts" actually make them up. Perhaps some humans are part of bigger-than-human ecosystem organisms, in which the humans participate in that ecosystem organism as only one part of it, through their special strengths (such as, for eg, storytelling, tool-making). And perhaps, what Spengler is studying are the times when some humans breakaway with a specific story and/or a specific toolset, to form a separate organism with only human parts, or with only human stories, human tools and human beings as its component parts.

Perhaps "primitive" is a word Spengler and others use for a human who is still a component of an ecosystem organism, but not of a culturesystem organism. (Obviously I'm using language idiosyncratically here, just to get this speculation across).

[jprussell]

Hmm, that's interesting. So, if I'm following, you're saying something like that "primitive" humans have some suite of cultural folkways and/or tool, but that these are just one of other "ecosystem" factors that have just as much bearing - for example, the migrations of prey animals, the turn of the seasons, and so forth. A "culturesystem organism," to use your words, or one of Spengler's "Great Cultures" would then be a group of humans treated as an organism for whom the set of folkways, understandings of how the world works, and approaches to getting things done come to dominate how the organism functions. The other ecological factors (herds, seasons, etc) would all be subordinated to the cultural much more completely.

Is that roughly where you're going?

[scotlyn]

Yes, I think so. Somewhere in my many readings in anthropology (it was my degree many, many, many moons ago), I read that the sense of "separateness" from our environments is quite a "WEIRD" (Western, educated, industrialized, rich and Democratic) experience, and not shared by members of many (here goes) "primitive" cultures. If there are people who experience non-humans as active parts of their world, then they may actually *be* parts of different organisms to people who experience themselves as "separate" from everything non-human.

I was also struck by your later note on the idea of "freedom" - and how it is the appeal of the city - the chance to re-invent yourself - in a way that necessitates uprooting yourself from some *place* elsewhere... this one is going to give me a couple of headachy meditation sessions, I guess. Because I value freedom AND I value "plantedness". What can this mean?

I appreciate your reviews. :)

[jprussell]

Yeah, that rings a bell from my own, no doubt less-extensive reading in the topic, including Owen Barfield's Keeping Up the Appearances.

And yes! The conflict between "freedom" and "rootedness" is indeed a tough one! Please let me know when you solve it for the rest of us ;)

And thank you much, glad they've been helpful.

[scotlyn]

I have not "solved" it... ;)

But, I am finding this series of posts from 2017 rather instructive... https://samzdat.com/the-uruk-series/

[jprussell]

Yes! That series is fantastic! I find it pairs well, if depressingly, with Zvi Mowshowitz's series on "Immoral Mazes".

[scotlyn]

Since you know the Uruk series, perhaps you know something about its author, Lou Keep? The thing is his posts seem to peter out in 2019 or so... Is he still writing somewhere else? Has he gone silent? passed on? Do you know?

[jprussell]

Unfortunately, I do not know. He started a <a href="https://loukeep.substack.com>substack</a> about history right before he went silent, but I think he only posted once or twice there. And he hasn't posted anything on Twitter since 2020. @deketmoisont also read sam[]zdat and followed that space somewhat - maybe he knows something I don't?

[thinking_turtle]

Thanks for the link to Star Wars as a Norse myth. I always wondered how Star Wars could feel so superficial and so deep at the same time. It looks like the superficial technological fantasy is masked by the deep family drama.

"I think he's a bit too sweeping in claiming there's no value in applying abstract thinking to politics." From 1990 to 2010 I followed politics. Talk shows, party events, newspaper analysis, mainstream and alternative. There is nothing useful there. I think Spengler is on to something.

The quote about the "Blues" and the "Greens" of Byzantium is great. I read about that before, and it seems many functioning societies split in two political groups. The center of the groups is the will of the people. This works for current US politics as well. Democrats and Republicans both go for the voter that will get them a majority, and so they end up exactly in the middle. This also explains why a change in governing party does not result in a change in policy. It does periodically replace the rulers without violence, which is a great thing about democracy.

[jprussell]

1. Glad you enjoyed it! I think the "family drama angle" has been played up to fit the saga genre, but I agree, it makes much of it better, especially the prequels!

2. Oh, sure, I largely agree most, maybe even darn-near-all abstract thinking is not helpful to getting things done politically, but I read Spengler as making the far stronger claim that academics, philosophers, or other "thinkers" have never, and can never, say anything that can or will have any relevance in the conduct of politics. This seems transparently false. One example: along with all of the practical, historical examples used, the US Founding Fathers were heavily influenced by John Locke, and to a lesser degree, Adam Smith, in how they set up the government.

3. I agree that under most circumstances, a democracy or representative republic will tend to shake out into two parties (you get a bit more variation in parliamentary systems, with coalition-forming, but usually there's fairly stable "sides"), and that the push and pull between those usually has a centralizing effect. You can get some problems, though, when the two sides become different enough, and/or when there is a sizable enough minority within each party that is harder-lined and insists on not compromising and going toward the middle. These folks are often the most likely to vote, the most likely to vote in primaries (in systems with those), and the most likely to contribute money to campaigns, so they can end up pulling the party more toward them. The whole "playing to the base" trope, basically. If both parties get far enough toward this, it can make finding, much less enacting, the actual "center" of opinion much harder.

Oh, and all of the above assumes that the elected officials are actually running the show, and not unelected bureaucratic or administrative entities.

[thinking_turtle]

For point 3, think about the elections of Reagan, Clinton, Obama or Trump: how much really changed?

Looking forward to your next subject!

[jprussell]

Not much, certainly, for which I point back to my caveat about the assumption that the elected officials matter all that much.

And thank you!