/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.13892943]

>tfw just finished Decline and depressed as fuck
So is there no way out? is civilization itself truly doomed?

[Anonymous No.13892950]

>>13892943
Guenon

[Anonymous No.13892955]

Depressed about what? What day to day problems are you having in the contemporary West that came with the "decline"?

[Anonymous No.13892979]

>>13892955
>no purpose
>global hegemony of Anglo-Saxon liberal capitalism
>Decline of art and philosophy, replaced by fetishization of science (although even science is reaching its limits)
>demographic decline of the west
>looming climate apocalypse
etc.

[Anonymous No.13892984]

Why would you want to gain anything from this wretched """""""""""""""civilization""""""""""""? Decline means you can benefit from it without benefiting it. Get enough for you and yours so your descendants (biological, political, and/or ideological) can build something better. Rome was pretty glorious, but post-Roman Europe at its height was even more so (Remember, Rome's height lasted less than 100 years).

If nothing else, you can take solace in the fact that the collapse of the West means that everyone whose not White effectively dies off.

[Anonymous No.13892990]

>>13892979
>no purpose
That's entirely up to you.
>demographic decline of the west
Do you part and have sex, then.

[Anonymous No.13892996]

The great optimism that's defined Northwestern European civilisation is likely dead for good. The institutions created by our ancestors to facilitate their power processes have completely choked our own.

[Anonymous No.13893056]

>>13892943
We're in the kali yuga so yeah lmao. Ride the tiger anon, it's your best option.

[Anonymous No.13893062]

>>13892979
>no purpose
>global hegemony of Anglo-Saxon liberal capitalism
But anon the Eternal Anglo is all about autistically and obstinately committing yourself to a "useful" purpose that has no meaning but that you attach yourself to anyway. It's literally the best time for autistic hobbies.

[Anonymous No.13893072]

[Anonymous No.13893181]

>>13893072
This guy gets it, thanks for the gif based honkler poster

[Anonymous No.13893187]

>>13892950
Meme on

[Anonymous No.13893191]

>>13893062
>It's literally the best time for autistic hobbies.
As long as you can sell those hobbies to the market.

[Anonymous No.13893194]

>>13892943
Am I the only one happy about the collapse? I´d take collapse over linear/exponential progress. Especially with shit like automatation and neuralink on the horizon.

[Anonymous No.13893200]

>>13893072
That gif is cute af. Thanks anon

[Anonymous No.13893209]

>>13892943
This nigga looks like he was in breaking bad lmao

[Anonymous No.13893311]

>>13892943
no, the only thing to do now is to bury the corpse

>Today the West is the GI who dashes into Fallujah on an M1 Abrams tank, listening to heavy metal at top volume. It’s the tourist lost on the Mongolian plains, mocked by all, who clutches his credit card as his only lifeline. It’s the CEO who swears by the game Go. It’s the young girlchchases who chases happiness in clothes, guys, and moisturizing creams. It’s the Swiss human rights activist who travels to the four corners of the earth to show solidarity with all the world’s rebels — provided they’ve been defeated. It’s the Spaniard who couldn’t care less about political freedom once he’s been granted sexual freedom. It’s the art lover who wants us to be awestruck before the “modern genius” of a century of artists, from surrealism to Viennese actionism, all competing to see who could best spit in the face of civilization. It’s the cyberneticist who’s found a realistic theory of consciousness in Buddhism and the quantum physicist who’s hoping that dabbling in Hindu metaphysics will inspire new scientific discoveries.

>The West is a civilization that has survived all the prophecies of its collapse with a singular stratagem. Just as the bourgeoisie had to deny itself as a class in order to permit the bourgeoisification of society as a whole, from the worker to the baron; just as capital had to sacrifice itself as a wage relation in order to impose itself as a social relation — becoming cultural capital and health capital in addition to finance capital; just as Christianity had to sacrifice itself as a religion in order to survive as an affective structure — as a vague injunction to humility, compassion, and weakness; so the West has sacrificed itself as a particular civilization in order to impose itself as a universal culture. The operation can be summarized like this: an entity in its death throws sacrifices itself as a content in order to survive as a form.

[Anonymous No.13893317]

The first global slaughter, which from 1914 to 1918 did away with a large portion of the urban and rural proletariat, was waged in the name of freedom, democracy, and civilization. For the past five years, the so-called “war on terror” with its special operations and targeted assassinations has been pursued in the name of these same values. Yet the resemblance stops there: at the level of appearances. The value of civilization is no longer so obvious that it can brought to the natives without further ado. Freedom is no longer a name scrawled on walls, for today it is always followed, as if by its shadow, with the word “security.” And it is well known that democracy can be dissolved in pure and simple “emergency” edicts — for example, in the official reinstitution of torture in the US, or in France’s Perben II law.

In a single century, freedom, democracy and civilization have reverted to the state of hypotheses. Our leaders’ work from here on out will consist in shaping the material and moral as well as symbolic and social conditions in which these hypotheses can be more or less validated, in configuring spaces where they can seem to function. All means to these ends are acceptable, even the least democratic, the least civilized, the most repressive. This is a century in which democracy regularly presided over the birth of fascist regimes, civilization constantly rhymed — to the tune of Wagner or Iron Maiden — with extermination, and in which, one day in 1929, freedom showed its two faces: a banker throwing himself from a window and a family of workers dying of hunger. Since then — let’s say, since 1945 — it’s taken for granted that manipulating the masses, secret service operations, the restriction of public liberties, and the complete sovereignty of a wide array of police forces were appropriate ways to ensure democracy, freedom and civilization. At the final stage of this evolution, we see the first socialist mayor of Paris putting the finishing touches on urban pacification with a new police protocol for a poor neighborhood, announced with the following carefully chosen words: “We’re building a civilized space here.” There’s nothing more to say, everything has to be destroyed.

[Anonymous No.13893321]

An encounter, a discovery, a vast wave of strikes, an earthquake: every event produces truth by changing our way of being in the world. Conversely, any observation that leaves us indifferent, doesn’t affect us, doesn’t commit us to anything, no longer deserves the name truth. There’s a truth beneath every gesture, every practice, every relationship, and every situation. We usually just avoid it, manage it, which produces the madness of so many in our era. In reality, everything involves everything else. The feeling that one is living a lie is still a truth. It is a matter of not letting it go, of starting from there. A truth isn’t a view on the world but what binds us to it in an irreducible way. A truth isn’t something we hold but something that carries us. It makes and unmakes me, constitutes and undoes me as an individual; it distances me from many and brings me closer to those who also experience it. An isolated being who holds fast to a truth will inevitably meet others like her. In fact, every insurrectional process starts from a truth that we refuse to give up. During the 1980s in Hamburg, a few inhabitants of a squatted house decided that from then on they would only be evicted over their dead bodies. A neighborhood was besieged by tanks and helicopters, with days of street battles, huge demonstrations — and a mayor who, finally, capitulated. In 1940, Georges Guingouin, the “first French resistance fighter,” started with nothing other than the certainty of his refusal of the Nazi occupation. At that time, to the Communist Party, he was nothing but a “madman living in the woods,” until there were 20,000 madmen living in the woods, and Limoges was liberated.

We know that individuals are possessed of so little life that they have to earn a living, to sell their time in exchange for a modicum of social existence. Personal time for social existence: such is work, such is the market. From the outset, the time of the commune eludes work, it doesn’t function according to that scheme — it prefers others. Groups of Argentine piqueteros collectively extort a sort of local welfare conditioned by a few hours of work; they don’t clock their hours, they put their benefits in common and acquire clothing workshops, a bakery, putting in place the gardens that they need.

[Anonymous No.13893324]

It’s well known that the streets teem with incivilities. Between what they are and what they should be stands the centripetal force of the police, doing their best to restore order to them; and on the other side there’s us, the opposite centrifugal movement. We can’t help but delight in the fits of anger and disorder wherever they erupt. It’s not surprising that these national festivals that aren’t really celebrating anything anymore are now systematically going bad. Whether sparkling or dilapidated, the urban fixtures — but where do they begin? where do they end? — embody our common dispossession. Persevering in their nothingness, they ask for nothing more than to return to that state for good. Take a look at what surrounds us: all this will have its final hour. The metropolis suddenly takes on an air of nostalgia, like a field of ruins.

All the incivilities of the streets should become methodical and systematic, converging in a diffuse, effective guerrilla war that restores us to our ungovernability, our primordial unruliness. It’s disconcerting to some that this same lack of discipline figures so prominently among the recognized military virtues of resistance fighters. In fact though, rage and politics should never have been separated. Without the first, the second is lost in discourse; without the second the first exhausts itself in howls.

No need to dwell too long on the three types of workers’ sabotage: reducing the speed of work, from “easy does it” pacing to the “work-to-rule” strike; breaking the machines, or hindering their function; and divulging company secrets. Broadened to the dimensions of the whole social factory, the principles of sabotage can be applied to both production and circulation. The technical infrastructure of the metropolis is vulnerable. Its flows amount to more than the transportation of people and commodities. Information and energy circulates via wire networks, fibers and channels, and these can be attacked. Nowadays sabotaging the social machine with any real effect involves reappropriating and reinventing the ways of interrupting its networks. How can a TGV line or an electrical network be rendered useless? How does one find the weak points in computer networks, or scramble radio waves and fill screens with white noise?

[Anonymous No.13893326]

As for serious obstacles, it’s wrong to imagine them invulnerable to all destruction. The promethean element in all of this boils down to a certain use of fire, all blind voluntarism aside. In 356 BC, Erostratus burned down the temple of Artemis, one of the seven wonders of the world. In our time of utter decadence, the only thing imposing about temples is the dismal truth that they are already ruins.

Annihilating this nothingness is hardly a sad task. It gives action a fresh demeanor. Everything suddenly coalesces and makes sense — space, time, friendship. We must use all means at our disposal and rethink their uses — we ourselves being means. Perhaps, in the misery of the present, “fucking it all up” will serve — not without reason — as the last collective seduction.

In a demonstration, a union member tears the mask off of an anonymous person who has just broken a window. “Take responsibility for what you’re doing instead of hiding yourself.” To be visible is to be exposed, that is to say above all, vulnerable. When leftists everywhere continually make their cause more “visible” — whether that of the homeless, of women, or of undocumented immigrants — in hopes that it will get dealt with, they’re doing exactly the contrary of what must be done. Not making ourselves visible, but instead turning the anonymity to which we’ve been relegated to our advantage, and through conspiracy, nocturnal or faceless actions, creating an invulnerable position of attack. The fires of November 2005 offer a model for this. No leader, no demands, no organization, but words, gestures, complicities. To be socially nothing is not a humiliating condition, the source of some tragic lack of recognition — from whom do we seek recognition? — but is on the contrary the condition for maximum freedom of action. Not claiming your illegal actions, only attaching to them some fictional acronym — we still remember the ephemeral BAFT (Brigade Anti-Flic des Tarterêts) — is a way to preserve that freedom. Quite obviously, one of the regime’s first defensive maneuvers was the creation of a “banlieue” subject to treat as the author of the “riots of November 2005.” Just looking at the faces on some of this society’s somebodies illustrates why there’s such joy in being nobody.

[Anonymous No.13893330]

>itt nobody reads the book
Fucking hell /lit/ if you read the book you would know we still have at least 200 years of caesarism before the "west" truly disappears.

[Anonymous No.13893331]

>>13892943
Yes, and that's a good thing. Read Zapffe.

[Anonymous No.13893343]

There is no “clash of civilizations.” There is a clinically dead civilization kept alive by all sorts of life-support machines that spread a peculiar plague into the planet’s atmosphere. At this point it can no longer believe in a single one of its own “values”, and any affirmation of them is considered an impudent act, a provocation that should and must be taken apart, deconstructed, and returned to a state of doubt. Today Western imperialism is the imperialism of relativism, of the “it all depends on your point of view”; it’s the eye-rolling or the wounded indignation at anyone who’s stupid, primitive, or presumptuous enough to still believe in something, to affirm anything at all. You can see the dogmatism of constant questioning give its complicit wink of the eye everywhere in the universities and among the literary intelligentsias. No critique is too radical among postmodernist thinkers, as long as it maintains this total absence of certitude. A century ago, scandal was identified with any particularly unruly and raucous negation, while today it’s found in any affirmation that fails to tremble.

No social order can securely found itself on the principle that nothing is true. Yet it must be made secure. Applying the concept of “security” to everything these days is the expression of a project to securely fasten onto places, behaviors, and even people themselves, an ideal order to which they are no longer ready to submit. Saying “nothing is true” says nothing about the world but everything about the Western concept of truth. For the West, truth is not an attribute of beings or things, but of their representation. A representation that conforms to experience is held to be true. Science is, in the last analysis, this empire of universal verification. Since all human behavior, from the most ordinary to the most learned, is based on a foundation of unevenly formulated presuppositions, and since all practices start from a point where things and their representations can no longer be distinguished, a dose of truth that the Western concept knows nothing about enters into every life. We talk in the West about “real people,” but only in order to mock these simpletons. This is why Westerners have always been thought of as liars and hypocrites by the people they’ve colonized. This is why they’re envied for what they have, for their technological development, but never for what they are, for which they are rightly held in contempt. Sade, Nietzsche and Artaud wouldn’t be taught in schools if the kind of truth mentioned above was not discredited in advance. Containing all affirmations and deactivating all certainties as they irresistibly come to light — such is the long labor of the Western intellect. The police and philosophy are two convergent, if formally distinct, means to this end.

[Anonymous No.13893367]

>>13892943
Why are you posting a picture of crowley?

[Anonymous No.13893371]

Why do people read this garbage
Pick up a Walter Benjamin reader instead you fuckin pseuds

[Anonymous No.13893376]

>>13893191
>As long as you can sell those hobbies to the market.
The most successful You tuber plays video games for a living in his late 20s and has the net worth of 30 million dollars. What can't you sell to the market.

[Anonymous No.13893379]

>>13893371
1) It's really informative and entertaining.
2) A lot of his prophecies are coming true despite Spengly's total lack of any sort of quantitative analysis or rigor. Almost the opposite of Marx, despite the fact that there's some marxist influence in Spengler if you know where to look for.

[Anonymous No.13893391]

If he thought it was dead back then just imagine what he would have to say now

[Anonymous No.13893395]

>>13893379
>Marx having any quantitative analysis or rigor
nice troll

[Anonymous No.13893402]

>>13893395
just because there's some numbers and math in there doesn't mean they're correct, ok?

[Anonymous No.13893417]

>>13893391
He didn't think Western Civilization was dead then, nor did he predict it'd be dead now. It dies in the 2200s.

[Anonymous No.13893421]

>>13893417
Well it came sooner

[Anonymous No.13893422]

>>13893391
He lived in the peak of its decadence, we're just living in a kind of milquetoast post-decadent era.

[Anonymous No.13893440]

>>13893379
What "prophecies" are coming true?

[Anonymous No.13893460]

>>13893440
http://avery.morrow.name/blog/2014/10/oswald-spenglers-decline-of-the-west-the-100th-anniversary-update/
And this is just in 2014. In 2019 another one has come true, with the rise of populist authoritarians replacing liberal politics.

One thing that he seems to have gotten wrong was the rise of a "second religiousness", though. Maybe it'll come later, but I don't see any sign of it in europe or the US.

[Anonymous No.13893483]

>>13893460
>21st century: All other forms of social division will take a backseat to the huge, ever-deepening gulf between mega-city cosmopolitanism and “provincialism”.
>21st century, after 2000 AD: Mega-cities will support the population of 10-20 million people.
I knew this sounded familiar

[Anonymous No.13893546]

>>13893376
Damn, I want in on that YT money, but I fear I may have missed the heyday of monetized content. I'm about to just flood the internet with my own rambling nonsense disguised as content and hope people pay me enough to escape wageslavery. We've got a good 200 years left; make me rich, why don't'cha?

[Anonymous No.13893588]

>>13892943
we can fix this issue if we remove the reliance on big states to hold us together morally and rely more on culture. The cycle of
>mass immorality
>authoritarian government comes to power
>it reaches a peak in where morality and culture are at their high point
>state crashes and burns because the people feel like they're being forced rather than making a choice
>mass immorality
>repeat
can be stopped if one of those big authoritarian governments put their focus not on holding the state together for as long as possible but rather reviving the spirit of the people and then decentralizing the system and allowing more freedom once people won't become immoral and still have the choice because of the culture and spirit of the nation.

[Anonymous No.13893608]

>>13893460
He was definitely wrong on Russia. In his essay (https://besboshnik.wordpress.com/2013/02/09/the-two-faces-of-russia-essay-by-oswald-spengler/)) he lays down the claim that Bolshevism will be defeated by peasantry. However communism was cancelled by it´s own oligarchy who desired western opulous lifestyle and the "Peterburgian zapadniks"¨who desired western freedoms. He underestimates the genuine Russian utopianism and kosmism which played well together with communism.

[Anonymous No.13893616]

>>13893311
Source

[Anonymous No.13893629]

>>13893460
What're you talking about, we're currently living in a flourishing of Neo-Puritanism. "Social Justice" is secular Calvinism, having stripped out Yahweh in order to seek ever further heights of purity and virtue.

[Anonymous No.13893636]

>>13892979
>Nihilistic anticapitalist climate doomsday cultist.
People who think like you are one of the greatest contributing factors to the death of the West.

[Anonymous No.13893647]

>>13893460
The second religiousness is the counterpart to Caesarism, so we're still 100 or so years away from that prediction.

[Anonymous No.13893652]

>>13893588
I´m afraid that´s naive notion.
>Culture has tendency to formalize itself, because formalized culture is more efficient and capable of dealing with alienated subjects (e.g. cosmopolitans)
>Power has tendency to centralize itself to achieve greater and greater power that trumps over the smaller ones

It´s strangely simmiliar to the laws of thermodynamics.

[Anonymous No.13893662]

>>13893546
Honestly if you can pull it off, you can become rich with any kind of doctrine nowadays.
The best part is when you fake a slow descent into radicalism so that your followers become attached to you over time and when you finally snap and say Hitler is the reincarnation of Buddha and youtube takes down your channel you already have a backup niche forum where your followers (now devotees) will ramble about how you're a misundersood genius.

[Anonymous No.13893666]

>>13893460
>One thing that he seems to have gotten wrong was the rise of a "second religiousness",

superficial buddhist and eastern philosophy = female religion of the current west

"logic" and modern science (also mostly superficial) = Male religion of the current west

[Anonymous No.13893670]

>>13893636
its a climate APOCALYPSE because SCIENCE

[Anonymous No.13893675]

>>13893608
He certainly was wrong on how it fell.
But to say that the Soviets wouldn't last till the end of the century was a pretty bold prediction to make in the 1930's.

[Anonymous No.13893697]

>>13893675
Not really. Hitler himself said something along the lines of "one kick and the rotten house will fall down" when planning Barbarossa. In the time between Tukhachevski´s defeat at Warsaw and victory in Great patriotic war, the bolsheviks weren´t really taken very seriously.

[Anonymous No.13893711]

>>13893636
Jesus, are you actually falling for the gigabait that's Thurnberng? She'll be forgotten by the end of the year and she's been designed to get that reaction from you.

[Anonymous No.13893718]

>>13893666
>superficial buddhist and eastern philosophy
Don't you mean witchery and astrology? The heyday of eastern philosophy has already come and gone anon, get on with the cool kids.

[Anonymous No.13893725]

>>13893675
>>13893697
Honestly I find it more impressive that he predicted the Third Reich wouldn't last past 1946. That's a pretty specific date (and rather short term compared to most his predictions) and he pretty much nailed it.

[Anonymous No.13893731]

>>13893725
That´s indeed hillarious, but sounds more like luck than anything.

[Anonymous No.13893734]

>>13893718
I always considered the witch thing as a dark variant of the same genius. Different form same thought.

[Anonymous No.13893936]

>>13893616
The Coming Insurrection by the invincible committee

[Anonymous No.13894000]

>>13893936
*invisible

[Anonymous No.13894012]

>>13893588
>authoritarian government
>peak in morality and culture
Choose fucking one.

[Anonymous No.13894064]

>>13893588
>>13894012
Yup. Authoritarianism happens once morals have already fallen apart. It is more of a desperate attempt to hold things together. Think of how decadent Rome was when the republic fell apart. They didn’t become less decadent just more politically coherent

[Anonymous No.13894080]

>>13893367
Pic for comparison

[Anonymous No.13894192]

Can someone summarise what this book is about? I'm considering reading it, but I'm worried its not what I think it is.

[Anonymous No.13894247]

>>13894192
it a boomer whining about "muh culture" and "we wuz kungz an sheeet"

[Anonymous No.13894267]

Why do Ceasars nowadays wear a red nose?

[Anonymous No.13894274]

>>13892979
>Decline of art and philosophy, replaced by fetishization of science (although even science is reaching its limits)
This is the most depressing one.

[Anonymous No.13894283]

>>13894247
it's nothing like that, nigger.

[Anonymous No.13894292]

>>13893662
You're making it sound even better than I had imagined.

[Anonymous No.13894300]

>>13894283
KUNGZ WE WUZ ROME AND SHIIIIIIIITTTTT KUNGZ IM TELLLING YOU KUNGZ AN SHEEET MONA LISA AND SHEET PIZZA TOWER WOOOF WOOF AND SHEEET

[Anonymous No.13894305]

>>13894192
Cultures and societies are born, grow, live, age, and die in an organic fashion. History ultimately moves in cyclical patterns wherein states and cultures that are similar to each other tend to act similarly and grow, live, and die in similar and predictable patterns. Whig History (the "point" of history is for it to move towards some end event) is fundamentally incorrect. Western Civilization, and the various cultures within it, have crossed the peak and entered a period of decline. We have about 200 more years (now, in Spengler's day it was about 300) before terminal collapse: The West as we know it will die. For comparison, see the collapse ofbthe Western Roman Empire. Note that this does not mean that all of the people will die, nor will the world end.

[Anonymous No.13894306]

>>13894300
Cringe. Read the book, nigger.

[Anonymous No.13894317]

>>13893460
kek, these were almost all happening in his time
and this is meaningless without quotes
For example:
>long after A.D. 2000, cities laid out for ten to twenty million
This already happened before 1980, and it is unclear if he is discussing the west. In the west there are no 10 million pop cities and these populations will likely collapse in coming years after a minor spike.

[Anonymous No.13894328]

>>13894305
roll.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKyi2qNskJc

[Anonymous No.13894333]

>>13894274
The really depressing part is that the are no limits for science as long as we remain human.

[Anonymous No.13894573]

>>13892943
>tfw you get pooperdoomergloomer 4chan blackpilled again F*ckj.......................

[Anonymous No.13894591]

>>13894305
Probably true, all civilizations come to an end, but why is this depressing? I'm not gonna live to to see the end, do what you can to live a good life and move on

[Anonymous No.13894603]

>>13892943
Spengler is just a conspiracy theorist and no reputable historian thinks there is any merit in him.

[Anonymous No.13894661]

>>13892943
There are two things of greater importance happening this century:
-Drop in IQ in European populations, as showed by Michael Woodley of Menie and Edward Dutton.
-Mass immigration into the West.
These are mostly the two things that will destroy the West. There are more symptoms (lack of morals, spirit, sexual decadence, feminism, heavy taxation, stupid politics, incompetence etc.) but the most deterministic ones are demographics and genetics.
Joseph Tainter also demonstrated the similarities between our current situation and the collapse of the Roman Empire etc.
Since the industrial revolution we live in a Dysgenic (Lynn) society that favors deleterious mutations. Why we have our drop in IQ etc. That's why we have so many leftists out there as well.

The destruction of "the West" does not necessarily mean that European peoples and their genes will not survive or carry themselves elsewhere, only that the power-structures of our societies and worlds will crumble on its contradictions. Something else will probably replace it.
The only thing that we should strive for is to secure life of Europeans for a future Renaissance. If we can't do this. Then it'll be the Planet of the Apes until Asians decide what to do next.

[Anonymous No.13894681]

>>13894661
>-Drop in IQ in European populations, as showed by Michael Woodley of Menie and Edward Dutton.
>-Mass immigration into the West.
>These are mostly the two things that will destroy the West.
These are symptoms of technology. Technology will destroy the west, which is Spengler's point by the way.

[Anonymous No.13894699]

>>13894661
>Drop in IQ in European populations, as showed by Michael Woodley of Menie and Edward Dutton.
Wrong
>Mass immigration into the West.
Correct
>similarities between our current situation and the collapse of the Roman Empire
Every fucking brainlet and his dog have been compares their situation to the collapse of the roman empire for every reason possible

[Anonymous No.13894705]

>>13894603
His work is not scientific if that's what you mean but his work is far from conspiracy theory.
He's more like Foucault really

[Anonymous No.13894712]

>>13894705
but Foucault is not dumb...

[Anonymous No.13894731]

>>13894661
Immigration wave might seem like a new thing but really this sort of thing has happened before it's just bigger scale now. I'd actually compare our situation more to that of the Ancient Middle East than anything.

[Anonymous No.13894739]

>>13894699
Because there's no other past entity to compare it to. The Ottomana, Habsburgers, [Enter Chinese Dynasty], none of them reflect the current situation better than Rome, and no situation has been closer to Rome than now

[Anonymous No.13894741]

#burythecorpse

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEEpulUefFc

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-second-american-civil-war/id1449762156?i=1000433661458

[Anonymous No.13894745]

>>13894661
Materialism is brainlet tier. Trying to reduce the infinite complexity of human intelligence to a number is the exact type of nihilistic fatalism that characterizes late stage civilizations.

[Anonymous No.13894770]

Why is /lit/ so triggered by Spengler?
Is it because he appears in some of the le epic /pol/ charts?
/pol/ can't read, they don't know what this is about.

[Anonymous No.13894772]

>>13894681
Technology does not have an impact on g (general intelligence, the most hereditarian/genetic base of intelligence) but does have a negative effect on various traits less determined by g. In other words, technology does dumb us a bit down but does not effect our genes and alleles responsible for our intelligent "capabilities".
And mass immigration has other ideological roots. Mainly, it is a fanatization/radicalization of the universality of Human rights, the Enlightenment movement, and a convergence of capitalistic interests at the top, a radical left-wing agenda at the bottom etc.
But it has become a new faith. There are no signs anywhere that it should be a good prospect to welcome the Third-world into the West. All of the data we have points to the opposite, i.e they are costly, violent, unable to assimilate and less intelligent populations.
But despite that, our elites still insist in creating a "diverse" society. Despite all of that data, which for some reason, are labelled as "hateful" and used by the "far-right" to divide us. To me this is the epitome of human's desire for irrationality. Ideologies are stronger than facts and reasons. Ideologies coupled with emotions and the hysteria of the mass media.
The rest is laughably predictable, because when your society is composed of 30-40% of non-White populations, human nature strikes back, and then hostilities and conflicts are inevitable. We already are at a tipping point in France and the UK in some parts.

[Anonymous No.13894777]

>>13894705
Foucault is another example of worthless trash.

[Anonymous No.13894789]

>>13894739
Current situation can´t be reflected through Rome, because it is entirely different situation. Also according to Spengler, we would be closer to Marius/Sulla than to Romulus Augustulus/Odoacer.

[Anonymous No.13894791]

>>13894739
Spengler is way ahead of you

[Anonymous No.13894808]

>>13894739
The "West" is not a single entity like the Roman Empire was.

[Anonymous No.13894813]

>>13894772
>Technology does not have an impact on g (general intelligence
But it does since it is technologies which have an impact on general intelligence. Do pesticides manufacture themselves? Do migrants come via foot or via the techno-logistical apparatus? Do these migrants live an honest life working the land or do they shop at supermarkets? Can europe sustain such a massive population without the use of tech?

[Anonymous No.13894817]

>>13892943
Time to read part 2 OP

[Anonymous No.13894819]

>>13892943
The cycle is dependent on will and passion. The way out will be when we would either finally understand and control them or replace them with something more effective.

[Anonymous No.13894823]

>>13894777
>>13894712
I guess you are both right in a way but we can't forget the state of academia nowadays

[Anonymous No.13894826]

>>13893194
Cultural collapse =/= technological collapse. If it were not for the near post-scarcity technological level the cultural collapse would have already caused a societal collapse

[Anonymous No.13894847]

>>13894826
You can´t sustain the technology without proper institutions, machines and division of labour. It´ll come back eventually stronger than before but there will be a drop.

[Anonymous No.13894855]

>>13894808
the "west" has become "everywhere". is china "east"? is Saudi Arabia "east"? the "west" has not content. it lack a specificity. its just a huge corpse rotting in the open.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJZ8RuWbOYU

[Anonymous No.13894856]

Why are you depressed? Are you usually depresded at passing of the seasons or weather?

[Anonymous No.13894865]

>>13894808
The Roman Empire wasn't a single network either, it was a decentralized network of city-states and client states held together by a vast economic web and the military might and patronage of the Roman Senate (later the Emperor).

>>13894789
I'm not implying we're at Augustus/Odoacer.

[Anonymous No.13894880]

A government that declares a state of emergency against fifteen-year-old kids. A country that takes refuge in the arms of a football team. A cop in a hospital bed, complaining about being the victim of “violence.” A city councilwoman issuing a decree against the building of tree houses. Two ten year olds, in Chelles, charged with burning down a video game arcade. This era excels in a certain situation of the grotesque that seems to escape it every time. The truth is that the plaintive, indignant tones of the news media are unable to stifle the burst of laughter that welcomes these headlines.

A burst of laughter is the only appropriate response to all the serious “questions” posed by news analysts. To take the most banal: there is no “immigration question.” Who still grows up where they were born? Who lives where they grew up? Who works where they live? Who lives where their ancestors did? And to whom do the children of this era belong, to television or their parents? The truth is that we have been completely torn from any belonging, we are no longer from anywhere, and the result, in addition to a new disposition to tourism, is an undeniable suffering. Our history is one of colonizations, of migrations, of wars, of exiles, of the destruction of all roots. It’s the story of everything that has made us foreigners in this world, guests in our own family. We have been expropriated from our own language by education, from our songs by reality TV contests, from our flesh by mass pornography, from our city by the police, and from our friends by wage-labor. To this we should add, in the West, the ferocious and secular work of individualization by the power of the state, that classifies, compares, disciplines and separates its subjects starting from a very young age, that instinctively grinds down any solidarities that escape it until nothing remains except citizenship — a pure, phantasmic sense of belonging to the Republic. The Westerner, more than anyone else, is the embodiment of the dispossessed, the destitute. His hatred of foreigners is based on his hatred of himself as a foreigner. The mixture of jealousy and fear he feels toward the “cités“ expresses nothing but his resentment for all he has lost. He can’t help envying these so-called “problem” neighborhoods where there still persists a bit of communal life, a few links between beings, some solidarities not controlled by the state, an informal economy, an organization that is not yet detached from those who organize.

[Anonymous No.13894882]

>>13894813
Oh alright, I'm talking with an eco-fascist. Well, I'm not denying the global-complex-consumption architecture, it is not sustainable in the long term. I'm all for localism, which is the only way to do everything right. From politics to culture. But that also means to actually free oneself from the global-mindset, cosmopolitan cities etc.
Are we getting poisoned by our food, our air, water, everything? We have been for a century, people still live and die, may get some diseases, cancers. I don't believe endocrine disruptors are responsible for a drop in IQ in populations though. Dysgenics is to me, the most plausible explanation, from an evolutionary point of view. It makes the most sense, basically.
So what more can we do? Dismantle our economy? Completely get rid of science, medecine, future tech etc.? Why? What if China doesn't do it and then dominate us because they went full transhuman-CRISPR9 and robot waifus? These topics are complex, there has to be a third position between corporate monopolies, the global collapse catastrophy and the Mommy-State-knows-it-all. But that would require individuals with competence, calm, rational and with an allergy to hysteria and appeal to emotions.

[Anonymous No.13894892]

Shit, I'm a brainlet and I just realized that the Roman Empire came after (not before) the Roman Republic. Spengler is right. This shit is cyclical.

[Anonymous No.13894894]

The commune needs money, but not because we need to earn a living. All communes have their black markets. There are plenty of hustles. Aside from welfare, there are various benefits, disability money, accumulated student aid, subsidies drawn off fictitious childbirths, all kinds of trafficking, and so many other means that arise with every mutation of control. It’s not for us to defend them, or to install ourselves in these temporary shelters or to preserve them as a privilege for those in the know. The important thing is to cultivate and spread this necessary disposition towards fraud, and to share its innovations. For communes, the question of work is only posed in relation to other already existing incomes. And we shouldn’t forget all the useful knowledge that can be acquired through certain trades, professions and well-positioned jobs.

The exigency of the commune is to free up the most time for the most people. And we’re not just talking about the number of hours free of any wage-labor exploitation. Liberated time doesn’t mean a vacation. Vacant time, dead time, the time of emptiness and the fear of emptiness — this is the time of work. There will be no more time to fill, but a liberation of energy that no “time” contains; lines that take shape, that accentuate each other, that we can follow at our leisure, to their ends, until we see them cross with others.

ome former MetalEurop employees become bank robbers rather prison guards. Some EDF employees show friends and family how to rig the electricity meters. Commodities that “fell off the back of a truck” are sold left and right. A world that so openly proclaims its cynicism can’t expect much loyalty from proletarians.

On the one hand, a commune can’t bank on the “welfare state” being around forever, and on the other, it can’t count on living for long off shoplifting, nighttime dumpster diving at supermarkets or in the warehouses of the industrial zones, misdirecting government subsidies, ripping off insurance companies and other frauds, in a word: plunder. So it has to consider how to continually increase the level and scope of its self-organization. Nothing would be more logical than using the lathes, milling machines, and photocopiers sold at a discount after a factory closure to support a conspiracy against commodity society.

The feeling of imminent collapse is everywhere so strong these days that it would be hard to enumerate all of the current experiments in matters of construction, energy, materials, illegality or agriculture. There’s a whole set of skills and techniques just waiting to be plundered and ripped from their humanistic, street-culture, or eco-friendly trappings. Yet this group of experiments is but one part of all of the intuitions, the know-how, and the ingenuity found in slums that will have to be deployed if we intend to repopulate the metropolitan desert and ensure the viability of an insurrection beyond its first stages.

[Anonymous No.13894908]

>>13894865
>I'm not implying we're at Augustus/Odoacer.
Then when we are?

[Anonymous No.13894911]

The police are not invincible in the streets, they simply have the means to organize, train, and continually test new weapons. Our weapons, on the other hand, are always rudimentary, cobbled-together, and often improvised on the spot. They certainly don’t have a hope of rivaling theirs in firepower, but can be used to hold them at a distance, redirect attention, exercise psychological pressure or force passage and gain ground by surprise. None of the innovations in urban guerilla warfare currently deployed in the French police academies are sufficient to respond rapidly to a moving multiplicity that can strike a number of places at once and that tries to always keep the initiative.

Communes are obviously vulnerable to surveillance and police investigations, to policing technologies and intelligence gathering. The waves of arrests of anarchists in Italy and of eco-warriors in the US were made possible by wiretapping. Everyone detained by the police now has his or her DNA taken to be entered into an ever more complete profile. A squatter from Barcelona was caught because he left fingerprints on fliers he was distributing. Tracking methods are becoming better and better, mostly through biometric techniques. And if the distribution of electronic identity cards is instituted, our task will just be that much more difficult. The Paris Commune found a partial solution to the keeping of records: they burned down City Hall, destroying all the public records and vital statistics. We still need to find the means to permanently destroy computerized databases.

“This business shows that we are not dealing with young people making social demands, but with individuals who are declaring war on the Republic,” noted a lucid cop about recent clashes. The push to liberate territory from police occupation is already underway, and can count on the endless reserves of resentment that the forces of order have marshaled against it. Even the “social movements” are gradually being seduced by the riots, just like the festive crowds in Rennes who fought the cops every Thursday night in 2005, or those in Barcelona who destroyed a shopping district during a botellion. The movement against the CPE witnessed the recurrent return of the Molotov cocktail. But on this front certain banlieues remain unsurpassed. Specifically, when it comes to the technique they’ve been perfecting for some time now: the surprise attack. Like the one on October 13, 2006 in Epinay. A private-security team headed out after getting a report of something stolen from a car. When they arrived, one of the security guards “found himself blocked by two vehicles parked diagonally across the street and by more than thirty people carrying metal bars and pistols who threw stones at the vehicle and used tear gas against the police officers.” On a smaller scale, think of all the local police stations attacked in the night: broken windows, burnt-out cop cars.

[Anonymous No.13894916]

>>13894305
when was the peak?

[Anonymous No.13894930]

>>13894916
Peak of what?

[Anonymous No.13894936]

>>13894930
western civilization

[Anonymous No.13894942]

Take up arms. Do everything possible to make their use unnecessary. Against the army, the only victory is political.

There is no such thing as a peaceful insurrection. Weapons are necessary: it’s a question of doing everything possible to make using them unnecessary. An insurrection is more about taking up arms and maintaining an “armed presence” than it is about armed struggle. We need to distinguish clearly between being armed and the use of arms. Weapons are a constant in revolutionary situations, but their use is infrequent and rarely decisive at key turning points: August 10th 1792, March 18th 1871, October 1917. When power is in the gutter, it’s enough to walk over it.

Because of the distance that separates us from them, weapons have taken on a kind of double character of fascination and disgust that can be overcome only by handling them. An authentic pacifism cannot mean refusing weapons, but only refusing to use them. Pacifism without being able to fire a shot is nothing but the theoretical formulation of impotence. Such a priori pacifism is a kind of preventive disarmament, a pure police operation. In reality, the question of pacifism is serious only for those who have the ability to open fire.

From a strategic point of view, indirect, asymmetrical action seems the most effective kind, the one best suited to our time: you don’t attack an occupying army frontally. That said, the prospect of Iraq-style urban guerilla warfare, dragging on with no possibility of taking the offensive, is more to be feared than to be desired.

When things get serious, the army occupies the terrain. Whether or not it engages in combat is less certain. That would require that the state be committed to a bloodbath, which for now is no more than a threat, a bit like the threat of using nuclear weapons for the last fifty years. Though it has been wounded for a long while, the beast of the state is still dangerous. A massive crowd would be needed to challenge the army, invading its ranks and fraternizing with the soldiers. We need a March 18th 1871. When the army is in the street, we have an insurrectionary situation. Once the army engages, the outcome is precipitated. Everyone finds herself forced to take sides, to choose between anarchy and the fear of anarchy. An insurrection triumphs as a political force. It is not impossible to defeat an army politically.

[Anonymous No.13894943]

>>13894936
In regards to what?

[Anonymous No.13894954]

>>13894943
You said western civilization has crossed a peak and is now in decline. So when was this peak? Stop dodging the question, bugman, and give a straight answer.

[Anonymous No.13894958]

In times like these, the end of centralized revolutions reflects the decentralization of power. Winter Palaces still exist but they have been relegated to assaults by tourists rather than revolutionary hordes. Today it is possible to take over Paris, Rome, or Buenos Aires without it being a decisive victory. Taking over Rungis would certainly be more effective than taking over the Elysée Palace. Power is no longer concentrated in one point in the world; it is the world itself, its flows and its avenues, its people and its norms, its codes and its technologies. Power is the organization of the metropolis itself. It is the impeccable totality of the world of the commodity at each of its points. Anyone who defeats it locally sends a planetary shock wave through its networks. The riots that began in Clichy-sous-Bois filled more than one American household with joy, while the insurgents of Oaxaca found accomplices right in the heart of Paris. For France, the loss of centralized power signifies the end of Paris as the center of revolutionary activity. Every new movement since the strikes of 1995 has confirmed this. It’s no longer in Paris that the most daring and consistent actions are carried out. To put it bluntly, Paris now stands out only as a target for raids, as a pure terrain to be pillaged and ravaged. Brief and brutal incursions from the outside strike at the metropolitan flows at their point of maximum density. Rage streaks across this desert of fake abundance, then vanishes. A day will come when this capital and its horrible concretion of power will lie in majestic ruins.

[Anonymous No.13894960]

>>13894882
>Oh alright, I'm talking with an eco-fascist
Facism is anti-thetical to the anti-tech movement since the government is part of the technological apparatus and governance requires technological means. You've mistaken me for an anglo. I'm not an ideologue or a moralist. I can actually use my brain.

Like I said; everything you've stated is a direct consequence of technology. You're extremely dishonest, or dumb.

[Anonymous No.13894968]

Will the faggot spamming le comité invisible just stop it already? It's weak shit for weak urbanites. Even my lefty friends in Nantes realize that it's bullshit.

[Anonymous No.13894972]

>>13894954
The peak is relative, mutt. The point is we´ve crossed it.

[Anonymous No.13894994]

>>13893194
Why would you be happy about a scenario that involves unimaginable suffering?

[Anonymous No.13894995]

>>13894968
shit was written in 2008... how's France doing ten years later?

oh, right...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euYtLs2LthQ

[Anonymous No.13895009]

>>13894968
in matter of fact, how's EVERYWHERE doing ten years later? that's right...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fa_wgTXI5dA

[Anonymous No.13895014]

>>13894995
kek an anglo teaching me a lesson about my country. I've read le comité invisible t'étais même pas né mdr

[Anonymous No.13895025]

>>13894995
Any chance for them to go Maidanmode once the recession hits?

[Anonymous No.13895030]

>>13895009
You should've stopped after the first link, now you lost all credibility. HK protests are literally backed by the CIA. The gilets jaune is the first and only organic, spontaneous revolt in over 30 years.

[Anonymous No.13895039]

>>13895014
no anglo here im from israel..and this was here like 3 months ago... so.. yeah.. i guess they had a point ....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=826OcbRzyK4&fbclid=IwAR3kg1zJvvyUVo5CJ7eOsHPdx12TKE7X31hNe9BEAZr4dhD9az1SjSp--B0

[Anonymous No.13895042]

what is the invisible committee?

[Anonymous No.13895082]

>>13895014
>>13894995
Does someone have that webm where there's the Paris subway and it's literally full of packs of hundreds of niggers only? Kek that made me laugh. Fuck France.

[Anonymous No.13895142]

>>13895042
a collective suspected of "terrorism". google them. they wrote 4 books. this is the last of them.


“Nothing’s right anymore,” say the poor losers. “Yes, the world’s in a bad state,” says the conventional wisdom. We say rather that the world is fragmenting. We were promised a new world order, but it’s the opposite that’s occurring. A planetary generalization of liberal democracy was announced but what is generalizing instead are “the electoral insurrections” against it and its hypocrisy, as the liberals bitterly complain. Zone after zone, the fragmentation of the world continues, unceremoniously and without interruption. And this is not just an affair of geopolitics. It’s in every domain that the world is fragmenting, it’s in every domain that unity has become problematic. Nowadays there is no more unity in “society” than there is in science. The wage-work system is breaking up into niches, exceptions, dispensatory conditions. With the consequence that there can no longer be a shared experience of its stoppage either, and the old myth of the general strike must be put on the shelf of useless accessories. In like manner, Western medicine has been reduced to tinkering with techniques that break its doctrinal unity into pieces, such as acupuncture, hypnosis, or magnetism. Politically, beyond the usual parliamentary messing around, there’s no more majority for anything. During the conflict in the spring of 2016, precipitated by the loi Travail, the most astute journalistic commentary noted that two minorities, a governmental minority and a minority of demonstrators, were clashing in front of a population of spectators. Our very ego-self appears as a more and more complex, less and less coherent puzzle, so that to make it hold together, in addition to pills and therapy sessions, algorithms are necessary now. It’s pure irony that the word “wall” is used to describe the solid stream of images, information, and commentary by which Facebook attempts to give a shape to the self. The contemporary experience of life in a world composed of circulation, telecommunications, networks, a welter of real-time information and images trying to capture our attention, is fundamentally discontinuous. On a completely different scale, the particular interests of the elite are becoming more and more difficult to posit as the “general interest.” One only has to see how hard it is for states to implement their infrastructure projects, from the Susa Valley to Standing Rock, to realize that things aren’t working anymore. The fact that now they have to be ready to bring the army and its special units into the national territory to protect building sites of any importance shows rather clearly that these projects are seen for the mafia-type operations that they are.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/the-invisible-committe-now#toc2

[Anonymous No.13895152]

>>13895042
3* books

[Anonymous No.13895609]

>>13893317

>was waged in the name of freedom, democracy, and civilization

I disagree

[Anonymous No.13895621]

>>13895142
>Western medicine has been reduced to tinkering with techniques that break its doctrinal unity into pieces, such as acupuncture, hypnosis, or magnetism.
this is wild exaggeration. Modern medicine has come very far despite its many failings

[Anonymous No.13895827]

>>13893072
based