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Spengler's The Decline of the West: technology liquidates values

I'm listening to this series on Spengler's Decline of the We...
Gaped arousing range
  01/25/22
ftge
aqua motley electric furnace abode
  01/25/22
...
Vivacious location mad cow disease
  01/25/22
be careful reading spengler
Yapping cyan trust fund brethren
  01/25/22
way too dense to read - on the point about liquidating value...
Gaped arousing range
  01/25/22
...
Vivacious location mad cow disease
  01/25/22
...
maniacal nudist legend
  01/26/22
start with venkman, much easier
excitant canary parlor liquid oxygen
  01/25/22
have u read venkatesh subramanian
Yapping cyan trust fund brethren
  01/25/22
...
Vivacious location mad cow disease
  01/26/22
What do you mean
ocher ape pit
  01/26/22
You can’t unSpengler your mind
provocative primrose gaming laptop university
  01/29/22
give us your rationale
naked turdskin
  07/31/22
100% agree with this.
excitant canary parlor liquid oxygen
  01/25/22
...
Gaped arousing range
  01/26/22
...
Vivacious location mad cow disease
  01/26/22
What is the series you're listening to?
rambunctious native mad-dog skullcap
  01/25/22
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA7E2840B724C6695
Gaped arousing range
  01/25/22
Thanks for the scholarly sweet treat
thriller voyeur
  01/26/22
...
startling goal in life stock car
  01/26/22
...
Vivacious location mad cow disease
  01/26/22
...
Crawly site
  01/26/22
You should just read the book, it's great.
unholy contagious fanboi brunch
  01/26/22
...
Yapping cyan trust fund brethren
  01/26/22
fuck it, buying it
Gaped arousing range
  01/26/22
not like pubs/bars were some kind of elite haven of intellec...
Twisted fear-inspiring space
  01/26/22
...
Gaped arousing range
  01/29/22
...
maniacal nudist legend
  01/29/22
Very low IQ take
provocative primrose gaming laptop university
  01/29/22
Innovation in general is great for individuals who are bound...
diverse costumed stag film
  01/29/22
...
maniacal nudist legend
  01/29/22
but until zen, ve just import ze -2 st dev “citizens&r...
aqua motley electric furnace abode
  01/29/22
...
Vivacious location mad cow disease
  01/29/22
...
Vivacious location mad cow disease
  01/29/22
...
diverse costumed stag film
  01/30/22
...
Vivacious location mad cow disease
  01/30/22
...
angry rough-skinned boltzmann
  02/28/23
The gramophone example makes no sense
Awkward Theater Stage Sandwich
  01/29/22
Yes it does
onyx appetizing patrolman wagecucks
  01/29/22
No it doesn’t
Awkward Theater Stage Sandwich
  01/29/22
I'll bet you $10k it does
onyx appetizing patrolman wagecucks
  01/29/22
(low IQ shtick)
excitant canary parlor liquid oxygen
  01/29/22
I know people wild about Heidegger but I never hear them men...
wonderful laser beams
  06/24/22
...
naked turdskin
  07/31/22


Poast new message in this thread



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Date: January 25th, 2022 10:11 PM
Author: Gaped arousing range

I'm listening to this series on Spengler's Decline of the West and thought i'd share some parts XO would find interesting

Spengler contrasts his model of history with the flat, British model of cause and effect - the formulae and rites of the priests just become equations for the modern day scientists. For Spengler - historical forms are concrete, unfold over time and have distinct lifecycles. Civilization itself unfolds like a giant organism - an early phase, a late phase, a climax, budding, and then disintegration.

Almost everything is treated as a biological metaphor for Spengler, which I find especially interesting / useful - eg civilizations are superorganisms, and you can tell the health of the immune system by various behaviors / stages in its lifecycle (like for example how well a society responds to attacks on its founding myths is a critical immune response - there's also a relationship between the intellect and disease I need to go back over that has to do with decadence ..)

One of the foundational ideas is that civilizations (he lists 9 total) go through these two primary phases - culture phase, then civilizational phase. The coulture/culture phase is intensive, civilization phase extensive - inward looking and concerned with metaphysics versus outward looking and extending geographically. Typified when we think of the Greeks versus the Romans - the Greek soul versus Roman intellect. In the culture phase the main concern is metaphysics and art, then passes through and gives way to concerns with extensivity - social problems, politics, etc - society is motivated by politics, economics and ethics

It's too dense to cover but one especially interesting idea - he's talking about the idea of how technology liquidates values - all values -

we see another clash between the Germans and allies - where the world wars were a collision between the two ideas of utopia. The Germans were trying to escape the world they saw coming under British/allied hegemony. For the Germans, utopia was a moment frozen in time that preserved their ways of life. For the allies - a world governed by science and reason, a cult of change. Hanging on to metaphysical cosmic depth vs all surfaces and no depth - seen in the two genres fantasy vs science fiction. Wagner creates the mythology of the fantasy genre, backwards looking and a world of myths and mystical wonders, versus Jules Verne and the sci-fi - a world of proliferating gadgets of science and technology. Whether it's berating the Socratic man (and Socrates himself) for worshipping intellect/reason, or the allies' utopia - a consistent theme is that Spengler hates this worship of rationality - people think it's liberating them from convention but it just creates a sterilized world drained of all its life, and questioning / deconstructing everything just fractures tradition, communal values and is a path to lonely, sterile world

Spengler and the German philosophers nailed this - they saw what such a world would amount to - pure nihilism and a technopolis consumer shopping mall of proliferating gadgets where nothing matters but how much money you make.

New technology liquidates values, *all* values - allies and the germans, left and right - an example was the introduction of the gramophone, which brought the concert into the home, so musical education completely fell out since if you wanted to hear music you just popped on a record. A modern example is the proliferation of TVs into pubs/bars and restaurants - which killed singing in bars, killed the communal atmosphere, and just locked people into this private modality. A society that embraces change for the sake of it is a society that has no values or just willingly surrenders them



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5016809&forum_id=2#43847876)



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Date: January 25th, 2022 10:23 PM
Author: aqua motley electric furnace abode

ftge

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5016809&forum_id=2#43847932)



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Date: January 25th, 2022 10:28 PM
Author: Vivacious location mad cow disease



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5016809&forum_id=2#43847959)



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Date: January 25th, 2022 10:24 PM
Author: Yapping cyan trust fund brethren

be careful reading spengler

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5016809&forum_id=2#43847934)



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Date: January 25th, 2022 10:26 PM
Author: Gaped arousing range

way too dense to read - on the point about liquidating values, my attention span is fucked these days i can't read more than 10-15 min at a time, thinking about tossing my cell phone

Guy who does the series is *incredibly* good - tells you what Spengler nails, what he gets wrong etc (eg Indian civilization doesn't fit this model)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5016809&forum_id=2#43847949)



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Date: January 25th, 2022 10:30 PM
Author: Vivacious location mad cow disease



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5016809&forum_id=2#43847976)



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Date: January 26th, 2022 2:14 AM
Author: maniacal nudist legend



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5016809&forum_id=2#43848676)



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Date: January 25th, 2022 10:27 PM
Author: excitant canary parlor liquid oxygen

start with venkman, much easier

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5016809&forum_id=2#43847953)



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Date: January 25th, 2022 10:27 PM
Author: Yapping cyan trust fund brethren

have u read venkatesh subramanian

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5016809&forum_id=2#43847957)



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Date: January 26th, 2022 1:33 PM
Author: Vivacious location mad cow disease



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5016809&forum_id=2#43850832)



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Date: January 26th, 2022 12:55 AM
Author: ocher ape pit

What do you mean

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5016809&forum_id=2#43848564)



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Date: January 29th, 2022 8:30 AM
Author: provocative primrose gaming laptop university

You can’t unSpengler your mind

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5016809&forum_id=2#43867343)



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Date: July 31st, 2022 8:03 PM
Author: naked turdskin

give us your rationale

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5016809&forum_id=2#44944354)



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Date: January 25th, 2022 10:27 PM
Author: excitant canary parlor liquid oxygen

100% agree with this.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5016809&forum_id=2#43847950)



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Date: January 26th, 2022 12:24 AM
Author: Gaped arousing range



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5016809&forum_id=2#43848498)



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Date: January 26th, 2022 2:54 AM
Author: Vivacious location mad cow disease



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5016809&forum_id=2#43848714)



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Date: January 25th, 2022 10:30 PM
Author: rambunctious native mad-dog skullcap

What is the series you're listening to?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5016809&forum_id=2#43847975)



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Date: January 25th, 2022 10:35 PM
Author: Gaped arousing range

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA7E2840B724C6695

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5016809&forum_id=2#43848011)



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Date: January 26th, 2022 1:42 AM
Author: thriller voyeur

Thanks for the scholarly sweet treat

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5016809&forum_id=2#43848642)



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Date: January 26th, 2022 2:10 AM
Author: startling goal in life stock car



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5016809&forum_id=2#43848675)



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Date: January 26th, 2022 2:54 AM
Author: Vivacious location mad cow disease



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5016809&forum_id=2#43848713)



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Date: January 26th, 2022 3:00 AM
Author: Crawly site



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5016809&forum_id=2#43848721)



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Date: January 26th, 2022 12:24 PM
Author: unholy contagious fanboi brunch

You should just read the book, it's great.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5016809&forum_id=2#43850315)



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Date: January 26th, 2022 12:33 PM
Author: Yapping cyan trust fund brethren



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5016809&forum_id=2#43850376)



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Date: January 26th, 2022 8:35 PM
Author: Gaped arousing range

fuck it, buying it

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5016809&forum_id=2#43853207)



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Date: January 26th, 2022 1:38 PM
Author: Twisted fear-inspiring space

not like pubs/bars were some kind of elite haven of intellectual discourse. its in the main just rowdy morons without intellect killing time, which means their reallocation of time to television etc is not a big deal. and in fact technology affords new, in some ways more authentic ways of building community e.g. via the computer. its just a different kind of community based on one's inner self-perception and less on one's determined persona. This creates all kinds of difficulties in navigating a new society. But the idea that being and becoming is some kind of new problem whose solution is one over the other is to misunderstand the fundamental antinomic problem of being in becoming and becoming through being.

great content but at the same time who the fuck is spending genuine time with spangler lol.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5016809&forum_id=2#43850875)



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Date: January 29th, 2022 12:28 AM
Author: Gaped arousing range



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5016809&forum_id=2#43866621)



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Date: January 29th, 2022 7:57 AM
Author: maniacal nudist legend



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5016809&forum_id=2#43867275)



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Date: January 29th, 2022 8:31 AM
Author: provocative primrose gaming laptop university

Very low IQ take

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5016809&forum_id=2#43867344)



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Date: January 29th, 2022 4:27 AM
Author: diverse costumed stag film

Innovation in general is great for individuals who are bound by morals. It's not inherently harmful. Tech can make us more capable and productive. But ofc we're not all the same. Hyper wealthy are bound to see tech as a weapon, and because they consider themselves more important than the plant itself (to use the author's analogy) they will never allow tech to create a level playing field. Instead the playing field disappears and the plant lives at the mercy of its host. Most of us use tech to make daily life convenient, for entertainment, for socializing, and maybe even a hobby to make money on the side. Hyper wealthy otoh are doing everything they can to stay ahead of the curve to control innovation to turn trillions into tens of trillions, finance wars, buy political seats, alter population demographics, bring about transhumanism and change the course of humanity. Maybe not a first, but every "innovation" eventually gets subsumed into their sphere of control to enslave humanity. Ad agencies hijack everything into another opportunity to catch eyeballs and clicks. It's all repurposed in Darwinian fashion to do one thing mainly - increase spatial distance between accumulated power from those who might threaten it. If you are useful to the power structure, tech increases your political engagement. If you're a threat, tech is a prison for escapism and self destructive habits - the power structure needs threats to be powerless yet appear ever threatening to progress. There's a problem of distribution as tech gets more sophisticated. The wealthy have access to the best tech to better obscure wealth and form public opinion - change societal attitudes to their benefit while bleeding the people behind a ring of gyges. If you could use tech to change human behavior (not for profit for the sake of profit but to put pressure on people to act against their better judgment) you could change diets, habits, and major life decisions like religious affiliation and mate selection. For the hyper rich the best world possible would be one where the 99 iq drops a full standard deviation or two - all prudential inhibitions and barriers get removed that would otherwise prevent a healthy citizen from choosing a life of enslavement.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5016809&forum_id=2#43867129)



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Date: January 29th, 2022 7:57 AM
Author: maniacal nudist legend



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5016809&forum_id=2#43867274)



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Date: January 29th, 2022 8:25 AM
Author: aqua motley electric furnace abode

but until zen, ve just import ze -2 st dev “citizens” and kill ze rest

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5016809&forum_id=2#43867332)



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Date: January 29th, 2022 11:42 PM
Author: Vivacious location mad cow disease



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5016809&forum_id=2#43872200)



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Date: January 29th, 2022 11:42 PM
Author: Vivacious location mad cow disease



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5016809&forum_id=2#43872199)



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Date: January 30th, 2022 12:57 AM
Author: diverse costumed stag film



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5016809&forum_id=2#43872481)



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Date: January 30th, 2022 1:17 AM
Author: Vivacious location mad cow disease



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5016809&forum_id=2#43872537)



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Date: February 28th, 2023 12:51 PM
Author: angry rough-skinned boltzmann



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5016809&forum_id=2#45992650)



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Date: January 29th, 2022 8:32 AM
Author: Awkward Theater Stage Sandwich

The gramophone example makes no sense

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5016809&forum_id=2#43867346)



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Date: January 29th, 2022 8:59 AM
Author: onyx appetizing patrolman wagecucks

Yes it does

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5016809&forum_id=2#43867417)



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Date: January 29th, 2022 9:01 AM
Author: Awkward Theater Stage Sandwich

No it doesn’t

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5016809&forum_id=2#43867420)



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Date: January 29th, 2022 9:10 AM
Author: onyx appetizing patrolman wagecucks

I'll bet you $10k it does

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5016809&forum_id=2#43867441)



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Date: January 29th, 2022 10:28 AM
Author: excitant canary parlor liquid oxygen

(low IQ shtick)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5016809&forum_id=2#43867730)



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Date: June 24th, 2022 1:22 PM
Author: wonderful laser beams

I know people wild about Heidegger but I never hear them mention Spengler.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5016809&forum_id=2#44735666)



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Date: July 31st, 2022 8:02 PM
Author: naked turdskin



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5016809&forum_id=2#44944351)