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Oswald Spengler – an intellectual life

engelsbergideas.com

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Re: Oswald Spengler – an intellectual life

#41

Post by aebtebeten »

082349872349872 wrote: post #37
goodlifeodyssey wrote: post #32

It has been a few years since I read some of Spengler's "Decline of the West". As I recall, he believed that history had a certain determinism to it; it had universal laws like the laws of physics. I don't think it does, and I have a hard time understanding how he could have thought this was true. See https://goodlifeodyssey.com/universal-historical-laws for an essay about this, but basically what one dictator ate fo…

Almost 1'000 pages will take me a while, even skimming. At the outset it reminds me a little of A New Kind of Science but with the events of 1914-1918, and their resultant shattering of empires and morals[1], to lend credence to its "copernican" claims to novelty. Table of Contents I. Introduction II. The Meaning of Numbers III. The Problem of World-History (1) Physiognomic and Systematic IV. The Problem of World-His…

After reading some of his view of physics, with phrases suitable for an art-gallery opening, I'm not spending any more time unless one of you all cares to raise things you think his model got right.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24710096

Kaka ere apapish, kaka ere perepish.

Re: Oswald Spengler – an intellectual life

#42

Post by hh3k0 »

Taikonerd wrote: post #21
hilbertseries wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very different to be anti democratic when Plato and Socrates were alive than in the 20th century.

Yeah -- "democracy" back then meant direct democracy in the agora, right? No modern state does that.

Switzerland comes to mind. Switzerland is not a direct democracy in its entirety but has many direct democracy elements, to such a degree that it is not a representative democracy either.

Re: Oswald Spengler – an intellectual life

#43

Post by natmaka »

082349872349872 wrote: post #39
natmaka wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In USSR it seems to me that "mobs installing an absence or impairment of a procedurally civil and democratic process" is an adequate description. Were Lenin/Stalin/Trotsky et al. oligarchs? Some politicians, in the USSR then in Russia, get rich this way, indeed, but are they the ultra-rich, and do they own a large fraction of the total wealth? I doubt so. Same for China: Mao and his followers weren't rich, and AFAIK…

Are we using different vocabulary? I suspect you are using oligarchy for what I would call plutocracy ? From en.wiki: > "Oligarchy (from Greek ὀλιγαρχία (oligarkhía); from ὀλίγος (olígos) 'few', and ἄρχω (arkho) 'to rule or to command'" which agrees with my head-canon terms of "how large is the selectorate?" - monarchy : "L'état, c'est moi." - oligarchy : to do something, convince the inner circle - democracy : to do…

Isn't plutocracy is a form of oligarchy (the inner circle being rich people)? According to WP ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligarchy ) "Aristotle pioneered the use of the term as meaning rule by the rich, for which another term commonly used today is plutocracy."

As you wrote: > china to say (but do know they have billionaires and hedge funds, à la the Quantum Fund), USSR had its nomenklatura (several of whom went on to literally be called oligarchs in the FSU),

I believed that your thoughts were on this "rule by the rich" track.

Your definitions may not always enable to distinguish oligarchy from democracy, because the "entire electorate", without any other specification, may be an "inner circle". This, indeed, is about "how large is the selectorate?", and "democracy", here (when it comes to distinguish it from "oligarchy"), implies a pure democracy ("universal suffrage" coupled to a "direct democracy").

As no such pure democracy exists nor existed, our debate seems moot. In more than one way delegation, more precisely the "Consent of the governed" concept ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consent_of_the_governed ), may be our central concept.

Moreover one may always argue that a pure democracy isn't sufficient to escape from oligarchy, because I can't see why 'Manufacturing Consent' ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent ) wouldn't work.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy

Re: Oswald Spengler – an intellectual life

#44

Post by gtt »

yowlingcat wrote: post #29
SuoDuanDao wrote: post #11

For all people don't like the conclusions he came to in his own time, he made falsifiable predictions about the future and I'd much rather people debated those than the merits of the man who made them.

I'm a little disappointed by comments I'm seeing here that are basically to the effect of "it's 'troubling' or 'disturbing' to promote the thoughts of such an undemocratic thinker." To your point, I think that not only are his predictions about the future falsifiable, but the structure itself has issues. I don't disagree with the whole notion of the cycle of seasons applied to civilizations. I think that is actually…

>I'm a little disappointed by comments I'm seeing here

Decline of the west

Re: Oswald Spengler – an intellectual life

#45

Post by yowlingcat »

gtt wrote: post #44
yowlingcat wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a little disappointed by comments I'm seeing here that are basically to the effect of "it's 'troubling' or 'disturbing' to promote the thoughts of such an undemocratic thinker." To your point, I think that not only are his predictions about the future falsifiable, but the structure itself has issues. I don't disagree with the whole notion of the cycle of seasons applied to civilizations. I think that is actually…

>I'm a little disappointed by comments I'm seeing here Decline of the west

I really did set myself up for that one, huh?

Re: Oswald Spengler – an intellectual life

#46

Post by 082349872349872 »

natmaka wrote: post #43
082349872349872 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we using different vocabulary? I suspect you are using oligarchy for what I would call plutocracy ? From en.wiki: > "Oligarchy (from Greek ὀλιγαρχία (oligarkhía); from ὀλίγος (olígos) 'few', and ἄρχω (arkho) 'to rule or to command'" which agrees with my head-canon terms of "how large is the selectorate?" - monarchy : "L'état, c'est moi." - oligarchy : to do something, convince the inner circle - democracy : to do…

Isn't plutocracy is a form of oligarchy (the inner circle being rich people)? According to WP ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligarchy ) "Aristotle pioneered the use of the term as meaning rule by the rich, for which another term commonly used today is plutocracy." As you wrote: > china to say (but do know they have billionaires and hedge funds, à la the Quantum Fund), USSR had its nomenklatura (several of whom went…

Thanks! I hadn't been aware of Michels (although I wouldn't be surprised to find out Orwell had been. Wit komante bosmang kom.) and I guess he, like Pound, demonstrates the relative ease of coopting public intellectuals via promising them a pulpit. Looking back on fascism, we tend to focus on its elites, but it appears that at the time it attracted broader support by its promise to disenfranchise[1] the traditional elites[2].

One might hope to break a chain[3] of oligarchic transmission via transparency, democratisation, and restructuring, but Gorbachev's recent experience suggests any current oligarchies would be very wary.

As far as consent manufacturing goes, I'd claim Orwell's crimestop is exactly congruent to the "internalized assumptions, and self-censorship" of Chomsky et.al. (compare Girard's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimetic_theory or https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23847087 or https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23858477 . The FT and Le Monde often betray strikingly different assumptions as to the immediate viability of the EU, for example.)

[1] Compare the "cynical" circumlocution in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24689867 for the english word "revolt". (a geeky circumlocution: du tu tawu, "2 tau" as a verb, assuming that by that time π has been dethroned.)

[2] to what degree is the G7 Barnett's "Old Core" and the E7 his "New Core"?

[3] 1984 is subtler than popular culture gives it credit for. In principle, Oceania is a pure meritocracy, with inner party admission by examination. (I take Goldstein's "in principle" to mean that on the whole selective school students make it to the inner pary while comprehensive school students wind up in the outer.)

PS. Ellul I will have to explore. Mogut fo to pensa ere da belek amash to bang kapawu ong? (better to think of the cosmos yet steer one's own ship)

The most recent papal encyclical https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24684152 seems to echo Ellul in places...

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