NationStates Jolt Archive

Well, at the beginning of the 20th century, a book was published, bearing the name of this thread's topic. Considering that this is a text-based online game, I expect people here to be interlectuals, so you might have heard of it, or even read it yourself. The content is rather hard to gather up in a short forum post, but for those of you who are not aware of what it is about, there is a summary found on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_the_West), including an assessment of the reliability of his predictions about the future of the western world (made in 1918 - 1923!), the accuracy of which sends chills up and down my spine. Well, as for me, I am pretty convinced that he correctly foresaw the future, though he lacks accruacy when dealing with the past - a fact not dealt with on wikipedia - for example when he claims that humanity had come into existence from nothingness some thousand years ago, that Neanderthals were identical to present-day humans, and that the animals that stand out the most in terms of intelligence are all predators (which is not true - take for example the intelligence of gorillas or parrots). Now, if anything, the question that comes to my mind - and drives me rather mad - is WHY? Why was he right? How could he have known all that stuff in advance? Is he some kind of supernatural being? Is he a biblical prophet, or what? This is really my question - he makes such exact predictions on the future of the economy, of the political system, etc, that I really can't do much but wonder just HOW somebody would have foreseen a state of affairs that would be classed as "Corporate Police State" in NS terms, back in a time when the Kaiser was still around.

(Of course, feel free to tell me that his predictions are inaccurate - I would be infinitely happy to see him disproved.)

HTTP.com? Linky needs to be fixed

done. Now get ahead and get pessimitic on our future.

He's writing from a knowledge of history that has largely been antiquated by more modern understandings of history. His conclusions all stem from a progressive view of history as well, so this too needs to be jettisoned.

Ayn Rand will save us!

Perhaps it's simply because things have a habit of repeating themselves, even if the particulars change. Even so, it hardly matters; one civilization's decline is always predicated by the rise of a new one. Unlike in years past, we are so interconnected that the rise of a new civilization can affect the entirety of the globe rather than be isolated while areas sink in to decay.

I blame Ron Paul.

He's writing from a knowledge of history that has largely been antiquated by more modern understandings of history. His conclusions all stem from a progressive view of history as well, so this too needs to be jettisoned.

No - his view is that history is cyclical, a cycle that repeats for a given people at a given time and location (say "the Egyptians", the "Romans", the "Arabs" etc), with an identical cycle, the segments of which are identical to each people's development.

Out-dated, by being a child of the post-First World War. Ideas which really cannot be applied to the modern era, however much wishful thinking goes on.

Why do you hate paragraphs?

Bah. Senseless rantings.
Spengler asserts that democracy is simply the political weapon of money, and the media is the means through which money operates a democratic political system. The thorough penetration of money's power throughout a society is yet another marker of the shift from Culture to Civilization.
Democracy and plutocracy are equivalent in Spengler's argument.
The principles of equality, natural rights, universal suffrage, and freedom of the press are all disguises for class war (the bourgeois against the aristocracy). Freedom, to Spengler, is a negative concept, simply entailing the repudiation of any tradition.
*sigh*
A great contest will develop between money and the only power capable of facing it – Blood. This is also a battle between Money and Law.
This has ALWAYS been happening. It's mankind's nature, and what will always go on, and what HAS always went on. Only fools and severely deluded people would claim that wars over money, paid for by blood have just recently begun need to study their history a little more thoroughly.
Spengler prophesised that a new culture would arise in Russia, and that it would be the salvation of the world. He said it would include a third great issue of Christianity, based on the Gospel of St John. (the first issue being the Magian, surviving to some degree in the Orthodox Church, the second issue being the Faustian , which later split into two main branches, Catholic and Reformed Christianity) . He talks about Joachim of Fiore, who himself prophesised three great Ages of men. The first , the age of the Father, being a time where men had to be terrified into being moral by awe of the Fathers terrible power. The second , the age of the Son , being a characterised by an emphasis on forgiveness. The third, the age of the Holy Ghost, being a time of universal love.
*snicker, chortle* The rest I leave to the good critics of NSG.

Why do you hate paragraphs?
Heh

:D

No - his view is that history is cyclical, a cycle that repeats for a given people at a given time and location (say "the Egyptians", the "Romans", the "Arabs" etc), with an identical cycle, the segments of which are identical to each people's development.

Anytime you imply a direction to history, you have a progressive view of history.

I would also like to point out that though Spengler loves to talk about the dynamics of the class struggle between bourgeoisie and aristocracy, there is a another Marxist term totally absent from his discussion. :p

Ayn Rand will save us!

No, as if we were any good we'd have saved ourselves.

His description of the Faustian civilization is where the populace constantly strives for the unattainable

this is where I stopped reading

this is where I stopped reading

Get off ur high horse. :p

We iz gonna hire da A-Team!

The West will rise again!

The West will fall because we have lazy bums who can accept welfare checks for looking poor.

The East will rise because if you don't work you don't eat.

Africa will eventually rise once liberals take over the East and Africa is the only place left to abuse...

The West will fall because we have lazy bums who can accept welfare checks for looking poor.

The East will rise because if you don't work you don't eat.

Africa will eventually rise once liberals take over the East and Africa is the only place left to abuse...

*sigh* let's go over this...

The West will fall because we have lazy bums who can accept welfare checks for looking poor.
There's people who genuinely need those checks. i may not like to admit it, but Welfare really does help people. There are people who simply are incapable of working. It isn't always laziness.

If that wasn't your point, and you're talking about the people who take advantage of welfare, that's everywhere. Human nature, the only difference is that in other countries other then the ones with welfare systems, is that they get it from other people instead of the government.

And it's not something that will destroy the West. NEXT!

The East will rise because if you don't work you don't eat.
Really? Have anything to back this up, like an unemployment rate that corresponds with the death rate?

Africa will eventually rise once liberals take over the East and Africa is the only place left to abuse...
http://www.afunnystuff.com/forumpics/notagain.jpg

The West will fall because we have lazy bums who can accept welfare checks for looking poor.

The East will rise because if you don't work you don't eat.

I recall them saying that about Japan. If I recall correctly, the Japanese miracle has turned in to a twenty-year period of general economic stagnation.

I recall them saying that about Japan. If I recall correctly, the Japanese miracle has turned in to a twenty-year period of general economic stagnation.

Thats because Japan fell to Liberals and created an impressive welfare system. Its currently having budget problems because of there inability to pay pensions to retired workers.

This thus follows the basic economic formula of the world
Poor Nation+Low wages=Manufacturing Boom
Manufacturing Boom=Economic Growth
Economic Growth=Middle class=Demand for Welfare
Demand for Welfare=Budget problems=Economic stagnation

Its quite simple really...

Thats because Japan fell to Liberals and created an impressive welfare system. Its currently having budget problems because of there inability to pay pensions to retired workers.

This thus follows the basic economic formula of the world
Poor Nation+Low wages=Manufacturing Boom
Manufacturing Boom=Economic Growth
Economic Growth=Middle class=Demand for Welfare
Demand for Welfare=Budget problems=Economic stagnation

Its quite simple really...

Actually, Japan has next to know welfare system. If you're unemployed, you're basically on your own.

At any rate, your view is completely flawed. Correlation =/= causation, and many of these welfare systems existed for long before the economy began to stagnate. These economies slowed down because they reached appoint where they utilized all available inputs. Economic growth has to come along with scientific progress increasing productivity.

Uhmmmm, this may derail this discussion, but what Spengler referred to in his work wasn't really an economic decline, but a cultural one. This may be hard to grasp, but he said that any culture will face the death of its creativity. This must not necessarily mean an economic breakdown, but the end of development. For example, China had the highest level of technology for much of the known history, but, according to Spengler, its creativity had died in "the history-less up and down of the Imperial Age", meaning that there was no more progress in its technology or its culture. That means, the west may be still there fore thousands of years, like China, but we will be stuck with a dictatorship government and there will be no social or technological progress - at some point in the next 100 years or so maybe, a new car will be developed, or a new pc, and that will be the last achievement and we will be stuck with it for thousands of years - meaning that just like the ancient Egyptians, Indians, Chinese and Byzantines did not loose their achievements, they lost their ability to contribute anything new to culture or technology, while still being an economic and military power. The death of a civilization comes much later - he says that Rome, which, as a "culture" died with the end of the Roman Republic, died as a "civilization" with the Fall of Rome. The Islamic world died as a culture in the Ottoman Empire, but died as a civilization still exists today. The Egyptians died as a culture with the New Kingdom.

(Generally, I don't quite agree with him - though I do acknowledge that at some point a culture exhausts its creativity, I think it only means that progress becomes very slow, not abandoned altogether. For example, the Byzantines invented greek fire, while being only a remnant of the dead Roman civiliziation. China produced new technologies during all of history. And moreover, I think history to be spiraling upward. For example, in Britain, you find the first engineered roads of mankind, dating to about the same time as the Mesopotamian city-states. You find megalithic constructions, and the famed Newgrange complex, 500 years before the pyramids of Egypt. Then, it becomes silent, until, starting in the 18th century, Britain again rises as a major power. The same is for the Arab world. After ancient Egypt and Sumer, there is a period where the area is conquered by Persians, Greeks and later Romans. With the advent of Islam, the area recovers and becomes once more a center of culture and technology, before falling in stagnation and being colonized by European powers, etc)