Tocqueville predicted stupidity of Zoomers:

[Anonymous No.18155397]

"Thus intellectual authority will be different, but it will not be diminished; and far from thinking that it will disappear, I augur that it may readily acquire too much preponderance, and confine the action of private judgment within narrower limits than are suited either to the greatness or the happiness of the human race. In the principle of equality I very clearly discern two tendencies; the one leading the mind of every man to untried thoughts, the other inclined to prohibit him from thinking at all. And I perceive how, under the dominion of certain laws, democracy would extinguish that liberty of the mind to which a democratic social condition is favorable; so that, after having broken all the bondage once imposed on it by ranks or by men, the human mind would be closely fettered to the general will of the greatest number."

This explains why young people on Twitter are so fucking stupid and why they use primitive language.

[Anonymous No.18155410]

>>18155397
Read Montesquieu, nigger.

[Anonymous No.18156965]

Based Tocqueville.

[Anonymous No.18157042]

Plato literally said this thousands of years earlier. Democracy produces tyranny and despotism, which is why it is a shitty form of government.

[Anonymous No.18157049]

>implying the people here do not also use primitive language

[Anonymous No.18157059]

>>18157042
What we call democracy is not what Plato called democracy
But hey, let's reduce everything to X said Y that confirms my gut feeling, right?
Fucking brainlets

[Anonymous No.18157066]

>>18157049
shut the fuck up!

[Anonymous No.18157090]

>>18157059
I have actually read the Republic, Anon, and I know that Plato's conception of democracy, the Democracy of Athens, is not the same as modern representative democracy.

But Plato would have disliked our modern democracy just as much, because he would see in in the same tendencies: the tendency to elevate the man who can play to the masses, who can whip up a furor against an enemy, who can imagine an opposition for you and make you hate it with your life. These are the sorts of things that democracy breeds. It does not make for a solid, stable form of government. And America has become increasingly unstable since the 1960s, precisely because it has abandoned its old model of government, which might be termed an "aristocratic republic," and has embraced more purely a democratic mode of government. You can see this in the general abandonment of the caucus system and the old party bosses in determining nominees for the presidency, and the various governorships and senatorial offices.

It's all a mess, and Americans have no one to blame but themselves for thinking that listening to the idiot masses will ever lend itself to stable, solid rule.

[Anonymous No.18157120]

>>18155397
the only real democracy is the dictatorship of the proletariat, everyone knows bourgeois democracy is degenerate

>>18157042
it produces tyranny and despotism because the bourgeoisie work tirelessly to destroy the consciousness of the proletariat and banish them from the political sphere, deadening conflict and thereby leading to natural degradation as decay sets in the the bougie dogs become more reactionary as they inevitably descend into infighting and the rate of profit decreases

[Anonymous No.18157130]

>>18157120
Stalin/Mao/Castro say hi.

[Anonymous No.18157145]

>>18157130
xi jinping thought will inherit the world

[Anonymous No.18157151]

>>18157145
Xi is going to go full retard and invade Taiwan and then China will get roflstomped by the US, Japan, Australia, and India.

[Anonymous No.18157201]

>>18155397
Oh wow, the young are stupid. Such a discovery

[Anonymous No.18157215]

>>18155397
tyranny of the majority was criticized by literally everyone and it has nothing to do with zoomers. most people here are equally retarded. whenever someone doesn't start with the Greeks or thinks the Greeks are outdated or Plato is only important for literary merit or Aristotle's logic is no longer relevant, they exhibit the same stupidity encouraged by democracy

[Anonymous No.18157218]

>>18157120
>the only real democracy is the dictatorship of the proletariat,
Rule by the lowest type of human being, couldn't agree more.

[Anonymous No.18157223]

>>18157151

US will be rolfstomed by China while Japan, Australia and Japan will sit back and do nothing

[Anonymous No.18157224]

>>18157120
>Marxist vocabulary
Brainlet detected

[Anonymous No.18157227]

Tocqueville described democracy better than Plato.

[Anonymous No.18157231]

>>18157215
Based.

And absolutely agreed. It's amazing to actually read Plato and realize that he predicted and diagnosed virtually everything happening in our own world today. And whatever HE didn't get, Aristotle covers.

They really are the greatest of all the philosophers. These two. Everyone else lives in their shadow. It's just a matter of which of the two of them you like better.

[Anonymous No.18157232]

>>18157215
>tyranny of the majority was criticized by literally everyone
It's not about muh tyranny of majority but about liberalism and what Tocqueville called "equal liberty". Twitter shows that young people have no brains anymore. They just ceased to use concepts and to have any thoughts in mind.

[Anonymous No.18157239]

Aristotle or Plato didn't predict what Tocqueville did! Stop confusing people here. Tocqueville's description is much more detailed & insightful.

[Anonymous No.18157241]

>>18157090

democracy becomes especially unstable when it is multiracial

[Anonymous No.18157260]

>>18157239
>Aristotle or Plato didn't predict what Tocqueville did!
Yes, they did. Of course, not specifically with respect to the development of French democracy, but in general with democracy, of which Tocqueville merely gave a detailed summary with respect to France.

[Anonymous No.18157284]

>>18157260
>Tocqueville merely gave a detailed summary with respect to France.
Cringe. Read a book retard or at least look at the wikipedia.

[Anonymous No.18157304]

>>18157151
>>Xi is going to go full retard and invade Taiwan and then China
you cant invade your own country

[Anonymous No.18157323]

Schmitt on Tocqueville
>>/lit/thread/S18025251#p18058537

[Anonymous No.18157328]

>>18155397
>they use primitive language

>This explains
>fucking stupid
>and why they

[Anonymous No.18157346]

>>18157223
>being this delusional
I am not American but even thinking that you can compete with the US is ridiculous.

[Anonymous No.18157448]

>>18157260
Dude. Tocqueville's description is incomparably more detailed and insightful than Plato's.

[Anonymous No.18157707]

>>18157090
1960? Don't make me laugh, America ended in 1860 with Lincoln.

[Anonymous No.18157826]

>>18157346

china has the overwhelming advantage of being very close to taiwan

[Anonymous No.18157868]

>>18157151
They're not retarded. It's a spectacle. Also China has to do is wait and America will destroy itself.

[Anonymous No.18158714]

>>18157346

it will be like the russo-japanese war redux, at the time, nobody believed that a powerful european nation can be defeated by a poor asian country.

[Anonymous No.18158732]

>>18157151

china is quickly building up an alliance of Turkey-Iran-Pakistan-China to contain India

https://asiatimes.com/2021/03/china-shows-it-too-can-play-rough-in-the-middle-east/

[Anonymous No.18158759]

>>18157241
Well, it was the American themselves who brought negroes into their country as slaves and later slaughtered each other over their liberty. They can only blame themselves.

[Anonymous No.18158790]

>>18158759
>Roman Empire falls due to an oversaturation of slaves
>Amerimutts decide to center the development of a new continent around slavery

[Anonymous No.18159007]

>>18158732
And what's funny is it's due to America's endless dick sucking of Pissrael that made Iran pivot to China. Iran wanted to be allies with the USA humurously enough, but it is too late now.

[Anonymous No.18159059]

>>18159007
Imagine talking about China in a Tocqueville thread.
None of you fucking read.

[Anonymous No.18159078]

>>18159059
I admit, I don't read political philosophy outside of selected passages because I consider it largely a waste of time. Politics is a lot more simple than people think. I refuse to read any thinker that focuses largely on political philosophy.

[Anonymous No.18159115]

Also America is not a representative democracy. It is a rudimentary form of technocratic corporatism. All elected officials engage in theatrics and are following plans already drafted by think tanks that work in close coordination with corporations, wealthy families like Rockefellers, and lobbyists.

[Anonymous No.18159134]

>>18159078
>Politics is a lot more simple than people think.
Then give us the answer.
Also, Tocqueville was a historian and historiographer.

[Anonymous No.18159239]

>>18159134
I answered above. Also social engineering is a real and confidential field. Once a senator spilled the beans a bit. Prior to periods of economic downturn, the frequency of visual cues pertaining to normalizing social deviancy are increased in advertisements, media, and more. This relates to maintaining social cohesion and protecting assets of the wealthy. During more economic prosperity, the opposite is socially engineered or so. Regardless, we live in an unprecendeted age with IOT and machine learning, so a fake pandemic was used to spread surveillance technologies for the purposes of data mining more. There is also a plan for massive depopulation, which I consider necessary. I predicted all of this many years back, so I guess I am a better thinker that Tocqueville. Also, I would be suspicious of the vaccine. The rabble already don't have a voice in short. If the rabble did have a voice, a system this large-scaled would collapse overnight. In regards to mass migration, it is being used to break up worker's unions and create conflict among rabble as elites draft a plan for a "great sacrifice".

[Anonymous No.18159253]

>>18159134
>>18159239
Also a lot of these wealthy elite like Pallavicini, Rockefellers, Sassoon's, etc. do have aristocratic blood. They also collect original paintings.

[Anonymous No.18159840]

>>18157120
dictatorship of the proletariat is only tyranny of anarchy

[Anonymous No.18159877]

>>18157059
What we call Democracy, Plato called Oligarchy. It's still on the same axis that inevitably ends in despotism.

[Anonymous No.18159885]

>>18157707
Based.

[Anonymous No.18159936]

>>18157090
>>18159877
All states, and all types of government end in collapse and anarchy
There are no exceptions
You all need to get out of your little political cave. Sparta was conquered, as Athens was, and Rome, and every polity after
You are banal to cry about comfortable decadence, everything always ends in collapse

[Anonymous No.18159985]

>>18157120
Just shut up

[Anonymous No.18161374]

fuck zoomers

[Anonymous No.18161550]

>>18155397
Should have listened to Nietzsche during his professorial days, back when he assessed that in order for democracy to work it must do the following:

1. Enforce that every single person living within the democratic state vote, because "a law that decrees that the majority shall have the decisive voice in determining the well-being of all cannot be erected on a foundation that is first provided by that law itself," "universal suffrage may not be an expression of the will merely of the majority; the whole country must desire it," "as hardly two-thirds of those entitled to vote, perhaps indeed not even a majority of them, come to the ballot box, this is a vote against the entire suffrage system," and "nonparticipation in an election constitutes precisely such an objection and thus brings about the downfall of the entire voting system."

2. Permit minorities to secede from the state freely if they cannot, on the same basis of self-determination as the majority, constitute smaller sovereign communities of their own, so as to prevent the unassented and undemocratic rule of a majority.

3. Prevent the organization of parties and prevent those who possess no property and who are genuinely rich to vote or run in politics, because "the three great enemies of independence [...] are the indigent, the rich, and the parties" because the poor are too dependent on others and therefore easily swayed, the rich are simply too powerful and therefore have too much sway, and the parties stifle independent thought in the name of the party line.

Of course, Nietzsche viewed democracy like Plato, as an "involuntary exercise in the breeding of tyrants" and as the degeneration of the state, and was personally anti-democratic and only in support of it insofar as it was valuable in creating a new aristocracy, so it's funny that he understood what policies would be needed to make it work better than the democrats seemed to.

[Anonymous No.18161562]

>>18157090
Democracy is also the easiest system to infiltrate, subvert and destroy which is why Jews became the new American aristocracy.

[Anonymous No.18161605]

Its funny how accurate Tocqueville, Nietzsche, Jefferson, Burke, Coleridge, Carlyle, etc, were about the future of democratic states. Its just another rung on the endless ladder, what happened in Athens now occurs in America, Britain, Germany, etc. And you can predict it almost scientifically. But the mistakes are made anyway, so that knowledge of history has no effect at all on the course of societies.

[Anonymous No.18161623]

>>18161562
>which is why Jews became the new American aristocracy.
Except wasps outnumber them exponentially

[Anonymous No.18161938]

>>18157707
To be fair the regime of the united states had already changed quite a bit before that. Relaxing suffrage requirements was a mistake.

[Anonymous No.18162242]

>>18161550
source?

[Anonymous No.18162586]

>>18162242
Human All Too Human and Beyond Good and Evil. If you want specific aphorisms I can dig them up if I have time.

[Anonymous No.18162618]

>>18157323
yes, but why is there a can of lone star beer next to his picture, which you always use?
I'm not american so I've never even seen a lone star beer, does it have any conotations?

[Anonymous No.18162656]

What is Tocqueville's best work to read?

[Anonymous No.18162872]

Holy fuck I just looked at a youtube video about Tocqueville and he pronounces it "alecksis de tockvill" fucking anglos

[Anonymous No.18162886]

>>18162586
my idea for having democracy to work was something akin to a decentralized federalist country with ethnic homogeneity and social cohesion but it seems Neetszche hit the mark way bettter than me

[Anonymous No.18162908]

>>18162872
yeah, it´s funny they take such efffort to pronounce such simple words, i was listening to a podcast and there this british guy who couldn´t pronounce Maquinaria (spanish word for machinery) and he was like Mackuineira, i wanted to punch him in the face

[Anonymous No.18162969]

>>18161550
You haven't read Tocqueville.

[Anonymous No.18163088]

>>18162969
Tocquevillefag? Is that you?

[Anonymous No.18163240]

>>18155397
I just want to say Ancient Regime is glorious. It makes me want to cry to know such a man ever existed.

[Anonymous No.18163279]

>>18162586
Please post them.

[Anonymous No.18163292]

>>18162969
And you suck too many dicks.

[Anonymous No.18163310]

>>18162969
You will never be a woman

[Anonymous No.18163402]

>>18163088
No. Not my thread.
But worth posting the Tocqueville / Nietzsche thread since it shows how much better Tocqueville's understanding was.
If Nietzsche had read Tocqueville he wouldn't have started from such a naive and ignorant position.

[Anonymous No.18163406]

>>18163402
>>/lit/thread/17345896

[Anonymous No.18163466]

>>18163402
What is Tocqueville's answer to the problem of greatness in democracy?

[Anonymous No.18163546]

"In centuries past, no sovereign was ever so absolute and so powerful as to undertake to administer by himself, and without the assistance of secondary powers, all the parts of a great empire. No ruler ever attempted to subject all his people indiscriminately to the minute details of a uniform code, or descended to their level to dictate and manage the lives of each and every one of them. The idea of such an undertaking never occurred to the mind of man, and had anyone conceived of such a thing, the want of enlightenment, the imperfection of administrative procedures, and above all the natural obstacles created by the inequality of conditions would soon have halted the execution of such a vast design."

This is an example of the strength in Tocqueville's analysis, it sees contradiction as a lived form, coming from someone who has lived in its power at the highest level. This is opposed to Nietzsche who deployed a type of critique to try and see from the outside what he had never experienced.
Strangely, the despotic aspects of democracy sound all too familiar with what Nietzsche desired of the overman. The Will to Power is a thoroughly democractic drive, and Nietzsche's commentary on democracy and law only prove that his critique was largely unconscious, accidental.

[Anonymous No.18163577]

>>18163279
You'll find all those quotes / points in the following:

Human, Volume I, 438 & 472
Human, Volume II, The Wanderer and His Shadow, 276 & 293
Beyond Good and Evil, 242

[Anonymous No.18163579]

>>18158759
>American themselves
ngmi
[[[British]]] legacy networks importing them & the 2% owning 85% of slaves used beyond domestic help applications conform to the current year ethnic distributions of wealth at the top of the fiat pyramid

[Anonymous No.18163606]

Tocqueville covering many of Nietzsche's concerns, while also including his solutions as the traits of democracy.
One may say that voting is really only one of the softening techniques, and as much of democracy unfolds on both sides of the battlefield, the non-voting populace already see this despotic strength, but are unconcerned with it. Their strength is one with the ruthless power of nature. And perhaps beyond it.
A true will to power, as it never needs to be acknowledged. It is a natural law.
Those who do not vote are those without need of confession.


"When I think of the petty passions of men today, of the softness of their mores, the extent of their enlightenment, the purity of their religion, and the mildness of their morality, of their laborious and orderly habits, and of the restraint that nearly all of them maintain in vice as well as in virtue, what I fear is not that they will find tyrants among their leaders but rather that they will find protectors.

I therefore believe that the kind of oppression that threatens democratic peoples is unlike any the world has seen before. Our contemporaries will find no image of it in their memories. I search in vain for an expression that exactly reproduces my idea of it and captures it fully. The old words “despotism” and “tyranny” will not do. The thing is new, hence I must try to define it, since I cannot give it a name.

I am trying to imagine what new features despotism might have in today’s world: I see an innumerable host of men, all alike and equal, endlessly hastening after petty and vulgar pleasures with which they fill their souls. Each of them, withdrawn into himself, is virtually a stranger to the fate of all the others. For him, his children and personal friends comprise the entire human race. As for the remainder of his fellow citizens, he lives alongside them but does not see them. He touches them but does not feel them. He exists only in himself and for himself, and if he still has a family, he no longer has a country.

[Anonymous No.18163610]

>>18163546
>Strangely, the despotic aspects of democracy sound all too familiar with what Nietzsche desired of the overman.
The overman is no despot. Nietzsche hated tyrants. Read Nietzsche and Deleuze.

[Anonymous No.18163619]

>>18163606
"Over these men stands an immense tutelary power, which assumes sole responsibility for securing their pleasure and watching over their fate. It is absolute, meticulous, regular, provident, and mild. It would resemble paternal authority if only its purpose were the same, namely, to prepare men for manhood. But on the contrary, it seeks only to keep them in childhood irrevocably. It likes citizens to rejoice, provided they think only of rejoicing. It works willingly for their happiness but wants to be the sole agent and only arbiter of that happiness. It provides for their security, foresees and takes care of their needs, facilitates their pleasures, manages their most important affairs, directs their industry, regulates their successions, and divides their inheritances. Why not relieve them entirely of the trouble of thinking and the difficulty of living?

Every day it thus makes man’s use of his free will rarer and more futile. It circumscribes the action of the will more narrowly, and little by little robs each citizen of the use of his own faculties. Equality paved the way for all these things by preparing men to put up with them and even to look upon them as a boon.

The sovereign, after taking individuals one by one in his powerful hands and kneading them to his liking, reaches out to embrace society as a whole. Over it he spreads a fine mesh of uniform, minute, and complex rules, through which not even the most original minds and most vigorous souls can poke their heads above the crowd. He does not break men’s wills but softens, bends, and guides them. He seldom forces anyone to act but consistently opposes action. He does not destroy things but prevents them from coming into being. Rather than tyrannize, he inhibits, represses, saps, stifles, and stultifies, and in the end he reduces each nation to nothing but a flock of timid and industrious animals, with the government as its shepherd."

[Anonymous No.18163625]

>>18163610
Stop reading.

[Anonymous No.18163641]

>>18163625
Stop reading what? You are mistaken about the overman.

[Anonymous No.18163647]

>>18163641
Retard.

[Anonymous No.18163663]

Why is it always the ones who don't read Nietzsche who attempt to criticize Nietzsche?

[Anonymous No.18163667]

>>18163579
>[[[British]]] legacy networks importing them & the 2% owning 85% of slaves used beyond domestic help applications conform to the current year ethnic distributions of wealth at the top of the fiat pyramid
No they don't, the majority at the top in both Britain and America are newmoney merchants

[Anonymous No.18163669]

>>18163619
Incredible.

[Anonymous No.18163681]

>>18163663
You tried this last time, but in the end someone posted a Nietzsche scholar who completely agreed with my analysis.
Cope more.

[Anonymous No.18163726]

>>18163681
>You tried this last time, but in the end someone posted a Nietzsche scholar who completely agreed with my analysis.
I remember that thread. The scholar posted was William Plank, and the analysis posted only agreed with you on the surface. You thought the analysis was grounds for rejecting Nietzsche when it was grounds for affirming him.

The bottom line is that both Tocqueville and Nietzsche had similar things to say about democracy (there are several papers online that show this, you can Google them), but only Nietzsche posited the overman as a way out of the labyrinth of mediocrity created by democracy. Tocqueville was a defeatist who resigned to accept the mediocrity. Similar analyses, different goals.

[Anonymous No.18163746]

>>18163726
So you're the guy that spammed the thread and didn't understand a word of it.
Thanks for pointing that out...

[Anonymous No.18163756]

>>18163746
I understood it. I also understood that you didn't have a rebuttal, just like now.

[Anonymous No.18163791]

>>18163756
A rebuttal to what, a scholar who agreed with me?
I can point this out again >>18163619
But there's no point because reading can't help people like you. You're petty, passive aggressive, and don't even have the will to step away from the computer. So not only do you not read anything besides Nietzsche, you haven't learned a thing from reading him.
Stop reading. It's the best thing you could ever do to affirm a hierarchy.

[Anonymous No.18163802]

>>18163791
If that scholar really agreed with you then you would be in support of the overman / will to power, like that scholar is.

[Anonymous No.18163829]

>>18163606
>>18163546
More in regards to voting, perhaps similar to what Jünger says of the Worker as the part of the wheel always in contact with the ground. Or technology as the great series of levers and pulleys in portaging a ship across a mountainous continent.

"Our contemporaries are constantly wracked by two warring passions: they feel the need to be led and the desire to remain free. Unable to destroy either of these contrary instincts, they seek to satisfy both at once. They imagine a single, omnipotent, tutelary power, but one that is elected by the citizens. They combine centralization with popular sovereignty. This gives them some respite. They console themselves for being treated as wards by imagining that they have chosen their own protectors. Each individual allows himself to be clapped in chains because he sees that the other end of the chain is held not by a man or a class but by the people themselves."

[Anonymous No.18163878]

>>18161623

please learn math so you know what "exponential" means

[Anonymous No.18163913]

"What inclines a democratic people to centralize power is not only its tastes. The passions of all its leaders constantly drive it in the same direction.
It is easy to foresee that nearly all ambitious and capable citizens in a democratic country will work unremittingly to extend the prerogatives of the social power because all hope some day to lead it. It is a waste of time to try to prove to these people that extreme centralization can be harmful to the state because it is for their own benefit that they seek to centralize.
Among public men in democracies, virtually the only ones willing to decentralize power are those who are either very disinterested or very mediocre. The former are rare and the latter powerless."

[Anonymous No.18164012]

Tocqueville on Universal Suffrage

"Many people in Europe believe but do not say, or say but do not believe, that one of the great advantages of universal suffrage is that it brings men worthy of public trust into positions of leadership. The people, it is argued, may not know how to govern themselves, but they always sincerely want what is good for the state, and their instinct is unlikely to overlook men animated by the same desire and eminently capable of wielding power.
For my part, I must say that what I saw in America gives me no reason to believe that this is the case. On arriving in the United States, I was surprised to discover how common talent was among the governed and how rare in government. There is no escaping the fact that in the United States today the most outstanding men are seldom called to public office, and one is forced to acknowledge that this situation arose as democracy developed beyond all former bounds. It is clear that over the past half century the race of American statesmen has singularly shrunk in stature.
Several causes of this phenomenon may be adduced.
Whatever one does, there are limits to the degree to which the people can be enlightened. Try as one might to make knowledge more accessible, improve teaching methods, and reduce the cost of acquiring learning, there is no way for people to educate themselves and develop their intelligence unless they can devote time to the effort.

[Anonymous No.18164031]

How easy or hard it is for people to live without working therefore sets a necessary limit to their intellectual progress. In some countries that limit is a long way from being reached; in others it is not so far off. But in order for there to be no limit, the people would need to be freed of worries about their material needs, in which case they would no longer be the people. Hence it is as difficult to conceive of a society in which everyone is highly enlightened as of a state in which every citizen is wealthy; the two difficulties are related. I am perfectly willing to concede that most citizens very sincerely want what is good for their country. Taking this one step further, I would go so far as to add that in general the lower classes of society seem to me less likely than the upper classes to adulterate this desire with considerations of personal interest. What the lower classes invariably lack to one degree or another, however, is the art of judging the means to the end they sincerely wish to achieve. What a lengthy period of study and variety of ideas are necessary to form an exact idea of the character of a single man! The greatest geniuses fail at this, yet the multitude is supposed to succeed! The people never have enough time or resources to devote to the effort. They must always judge hastily and seize on whatever is most visible. That is why charlatans of every stripe are so clever at pleasing them, while more often than not their true friends fail.
What democracy lacks, moreover, is not always the capacity to choose men of merit but the desire and taste to do so."

[Anonymous No.18164049]

"We must not blind ourselves to the fact that democratic institutions develop the sentiment of envy in the human heart to a very high degree. This is not so much because such institutions give everyone the means to equal everyone else as because those means continually prove unavailing to those who employ them. Democratic institutions awaken and flatter the passion for equality without ever being able to satisfy it to the full. No sooner does full equality seem within the people’s reach than it flies from their grasp, and its flight, as Pascal said, is eternal. The people passionately seek a good that is all the more precious because it is close enough to be familiar yet far enough away that it cannot be savored. The chance of success spurs them on; the uncertainty of success vexes them. They struggle, they tire, they grow bitter. Anything that is beyond them in any quarter then seems an obstacle to their desires, and no form of superiority is so legitimate that the sight of it is not wearisome to their eyes."

[Anonymous No.18164083]

>>18163610
>Deleuze
Retard

[Anonymous No.18164164]

>>18163619
Based. What is this from?

[Anonymous No.18164254]

>>18163726
>Tocqueville was a defeatist who resigned to accept the mediocrity.
What a terrible post.

[Anonymous No.18164599]

>>18157042
That's not what he said.

[Anonymous No.18165023]

More like Cucqueville

[Anonymous No.18165060]

>>18165023
btfo

[Anonymous No.18165355]

>>18165023
Cringe

[Anonymous No.18165400]

>>18165023
Based

[Anonymous No.18165442]

>>18165060
>>18165355
>>18165400
sneed

[Anonymous No.18165810]

>>18157049

[Anonymous No.18165829]

>>18165810
>cave painting
Grug need more Loomba

[Anonymous No.18165863]

>>18163791
>Stop reading
Very based. Instead of bullying non-readers we should be encouraging bad readers to just stop.

[Anonymous No.18166880]

>>18157120
>the only real democracy is the dictatorship of the proletariat

[Anonymous No.18167104]

On the Greeks

"WHAT used to be called “the people” in the most democratic republics of Antiquity bears little resemblance to what we refer to by that name. In Athens all citizens took part in public affairs, but only 20,000 out of a population of more than 350,000 were citizens. All the rest were slaves, who carried out most of the functions today assigned to the people and even the middle classes.

Thus Athens, with its universal suffrage, was only an aristocratic republic in which all nobles enjoyed an equal right to government.
The struggle between the patricians and plebeians of Rome should be seen in the same light, as an intestine quarrel between elder and younger branches of a single family. All in effect valued aristocracy and partook of its spirit.
Bear in mind, too, that books were rare and expensive throughout Antiquity, and it was very difficult to reproduce and distribute them. Owing to these circumstances, literary tastes and habits were concentrated in a small number of men, so that something like a small literary aristocracy developed within the elite of a larger political aristocracy. In keeping with this, there is no indication that the Greeks and Romans ever treated literature as an industry.

These peoples were not just aristocracies; they also constituted highly disciplined and very free nations, so that they inevitably imparted to their literary productions the particular defects and special qualities characteristic of literature in aristocratic centuries.

[Anonymous No.18167122]

>>18167104
Indeed, a glance at texts left us by Antiquity is enough to reveal that although ancient writers sometimes lacked variety and imagination in their choice of subjects and boldness, energy, and generality in their thought, they always demonstrated admirable mastery of technique and care in rendering details. Nothing in their work seems hasty or accidental. Everything is written for connoisseurs, and the search for ideal beauty is always apparent. No literature brings out the qualities that writers in democracies naturally lack better than that of the Ancients. Hence there is no literature more appropriate for study in democratic centuries. Such study is more apt than any other to combat the literary defects inherent in such ages; as for their natural qualities, these will spring up on their own, so there is no need to teach people how to acquire them.

One point needs to be clearly understood.
A study may be useful to a people’s literature yet not appropriate to its social and political needs.
To insist on teaching only belles-lettres in a society where everyone was habitually driven to increase or maintain his wealth by the most vigorous of means would be to produce very polite and very dangerous citizens. On account of their social and political state they would daily experience needs that their education never taught them how to satisfy, and they would therefore invoke the Greeks and Romans to sow trouble in the state rather than cause it to bear fruit through their industry.

It is obvious that in democratic societies individual interest as well as the security of the state requires that the education of the majority be scientific, commercial, and industrial rather than literary."

[Anonymous No.18167579]

>>18162908
Spanish niggers talk shit but I bet you won't vocaroo yourself saying "toothpaste".

[Anonymous No.18167606]

>>18163240
>Whoever did not live in the eighteenth century before the Revolution does not know the sweetness of life and cannot imagine what happiness there can be in life. It is the century that forged all victorious weapons against this elusive adversary called boredom. Love, Poetry, Music, Theater, Painting, Architecture, Courtyard, Lounges, Parks and Gardens, Gastronomy, Letters, Arts, Sciences, all contributed to the satisfaction of physical, intellectual and even moral appetites, to the refinement of all voluptuousness, all elegance and all pleasures. The existence was so full that if the seventeenth century was the Great Century of glories, the eighteenth was that of indigestion.
t. Maurice de Talleyrand

[Anonymous No.18167714]

>>18164031
>How easy or hard it is for people to live without working therefore sets a necessary limit to their intellectual progress
Thats rite wagies

[Anonymous No.18167804]

>>18163240
Amazing book.

[Anonymous No.18167903]

>>18167579
easier for me to say toothpaste, than you saying zapato

[Anonymous No.18168412]

>>18167606
What book by him? Seriously I need more of this.
Also any more books like the one you mentioned? That talk about the Ancién in a good manner?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z7ch5TsQpo&t=95s

[Anonymous No.18168485]

>>18168412
The Ruin of Kasch is one of the best books of the last century, and kind of revolves around his life (as well as modernity as a whole). If you like elaborate psuedo-mystical /lit/ shitposts you'd probably like it.

[Anonymous No.18168608]

>>18168485
Looks very interesting, thank you very much.
But is this the book that >>18167606 was quoting?

[Anonymous No.18168651]

>>18168608
Forget it I just found it. It's from "Memoirs of the Prince de Talleyrand"
https://archive.org/details/cu31924100553852

[Anonymous No.18168746]

>>18158732
iran hates pakistan, turkey is still nato. they should just stick with the russkies desu

[Anonymous No.18168832]

>>18168608
Yes and no. The book contains many quotations from Talleyrand but reads his life through a more mystical and conservative lens. If you want to go straight to the source then you should read his memoirs or letters.

[Anonymous No.18168860]

>>18168832
Thank you anon, truly! You've given me alot of material to read; really appreciate it.
Any more books about the Ancién Régime?

[Anonymous No.18168944]

>>18168860
You should read Casanova's memoirs. Its used as a primary source by most researches, and it captures the joi-de-virve of that period moreso than any other book I've read.

Henry Kissinger's "a world restored" captures the Swan Song of that time as Metternich manages to patch together a balance of power that keeps the regime going in the rest of Europe for another 100 years or so. Its a bit dry but if you like political intrigue you'll love it and occasionally Kissinger will forget himself and lapse into some beautifully poetic moments.

I think that Tocqueville wrote a book about the ancient regime, I haven't read it but maybe it would be worth reading. His book 'Recollections' about the French Revolution is great though, and it portrays the futility and senselessness of the revolution very well. He also cuts a quite swashbuckling figure as he runs from one riot to another with a pistol in his pocket ready to blast away any would be revolutionary that tries to jump him.

Berry Lindon of course is a great movie if you like the period and have a couple hours to waste.

Finally, and if you're the type who only cares about European history this will have no interest to you, "Myths and Legends of Hawaii" is a fantastic and tragically underrated book. It was written by the last king of Hawaii, and chronicles about a thousand years of warfare, religious innovations, chivalric romances, and prophecies before cumulating about halfway through the book in the rise of King Kamehameha who unifies the Islands, fulfills some ancient prophecy, and who's wife abolishes religious rites and throws an entire Island nation into modernity and nihilism with a single thrust. Personally I'm convinced that the passage from the ancient regime to modernity was a global event, not one localized in Europe. If nothing else its worth reading so you can get the Hawaiian account of the Book of Genesis, which is one of the most mind-blowing chapters I've ever read in any book.

[Anonymous No.18169057]

>>18168944
this one?

https://www.amazon.com/Legends-Myths-Hawaii-folk-lore-strange-ebook/dp/B07CNXZFQJ

[Anonymous No.18169080]

>>18169057
Yes. It's written in a high gothic style and is quite beautiful, despite the name suggesting some kind of tourist trap guidebook. David Kalakalaua is himself a very interesting character, he travelled the world as a youth and tried very hard to nationalize the kingdom of Hawaii and make it a world power. For almost a century Hawaii was the greatest country in the Pacific, but then the Yankees staged a coup and turned it into a tourist trap and feudal estate for Dole fruit company.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kal%C4%81kaua
If you like stories of the ancient regime, ie great kings and queens and lots of romance and feats of bravery, then you'll enjoy the history of Hawaii.

[Anonymous No.18169101]

>>18168944
Again, I cannot thank you enough.
I'll without a doubt check out Casanova and Kissinger.
I already had Metternich and Tocqueville (though not the book you recommended); I think these will go well with de Maistre, Burke and Carlyle.
And although I have a preference for European history, the Hawaiian book has spiked my interest.
If you haven't had enough of them I'll say it again - thank you.

[Anonymous No.18169232]

>>18169101
No problem. Its an interesting period so I'm glad there are other people on /lit/ who share an interest.

Don't pass over The Ruin of Kasch just because its a modern book. Its one of the most insightful books I've ever read, a kind of long meditation on the french revolution and the transfer from the pre-modern world to the modern one. If you enjoy the metaphysical aspects of Tocqueville or Junger you'll gain a lot from it. The author, Roberto Calasso, takes the question of legitimacy that Kissinger raises and then completely deterritorializes it from politics and shows how the French revolution represents a kind of theological shift from one state of being-in-the-world to another. I posted some quotes from the book concerning Talleyrand's observations in America here:
>>/lit/thread/S17352651#p17359785

[Anonymous No.18169801]

>>18155397
>muh boomer, zoomer, coomer, bloomer
SHUT THE FUCK UP, YOU RETARDED SCHIZO
STOP POSTING HERE

[Anonymous No.18169849]

>>18161605
You're right. It's like how children always end up needing to make the same stupid mistakes their fathers/grandfathers made, only on the scale of nations.

[Anonymous No.18170853]

>>18164012
haha based and insightful.

[Anonymous No.18171167]

>>18157042
>literally said this
word show me the quote where he LITERALLY says this

[Anonymous No.18171174]

>>18157090
it started in the 60s because then the state began sponsoring the mass production of retarded black children.

[Anonymous No.18171200]

>>18155397
No, twitter is dumb because it has character limit. It was literally design to be dumb shitposting platform that accidently became political.

When given freedom, men will simply trend towards pursuing the cheapest dopamine possible.

[Anonymous No.18171313]

>>18163878
Hopefully when I do I’ll be as big a bore as you

[Anonymous No.18171785]

>>18171200
Read the thread.

[Anonymous No.18172626]

>>18168485
Picked this up a couple of months back and have to admit it kinda lost me 2/3 through, but now I think I'll resume.
>like elaborate psuedo-mystical /lit/ shitposts
that's oddly fitting. Probably what threw me off a bit.
Have you read any other works of his? Would be exciting to have a decent contemporary author worth reading.

>>18168944
>Casanova's memoirs.
Those are great; have read it up to book eight so far, and it's just a fascinating story through and through.

[Anonymous No.18173360]

Bump

[Anonymous No.18173434]

>>18162618
Lone Star is only sold in Texas...the Lone Star State

[Anonymous No.18174028]

>>18157120
based

[Anonymous No.18174313]

>>18172626
I've read quite a few of his books. His most famous is the Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, but it's extremely dense and nearly unreadable. IF you're interested in Greek mythology OR shamanism then his book The Celestial Hunter explores the shamanistic roots of Greek myth and presents a theory of divine rape (reversing the normal hunter-hunted relationship between man and nature) creating an age of heroes from which the different Greek city states traced their ancestors. KA is a very accessible re-telling of different Indian myths, presenting both the basic legends and more esoteric interpretations by way of analogies and cross-referencing different stories. I've applied his theory of tapas presented in KA to my own meditation with interesting results. The Unnamable Present is presented as a sort of sequel to the Ruin of Kasch but it was a lot more forgettable I thought.
The real hidden gem of all his writings is probably Art of the Publisher, because he drops the constant jumping between analogies and writes in a personal and conversational style about his own life and business. It's got a lot of cool anecdotes about life in the European literary world and also some interesting perspectives of book design. Calasso is the physical embodiment of the /lit/ lifestyle so its worthwhile for that alone.

[Anonymous No.18174537]

>>18167122
Very based. /lit/ needs this advice.

[Anonymous No.18175293]

bump

[Anonymous No.18175396]

>>18162656
Democracy in America

[Anonymous No.18176071]

>>18162618
It's just a bad joke. A Schmitt quote related to the concept of time in True Detective.

[Anonymous No.18176774]

Where do I start?

[Anonymous No.18176889]

>>18161550
>listen to an aristocrat
>or this incel
Tough choice.

[Anonymous No.18177564]

B

[Anonymous No.18177589]

>>18176889
>ha ha incel
Shut it woman.

[Anonymous No.18177708]

>>18177589
Try getting off the internet for five minutes chud.