Your favorite Spengler
http://spengler.atimes.net/viewtopic.php?t=6124
Mr. Perfect wrote:I'm interested in getting a thread going on your favorite Spengler essay.
For me, it is a slam dunk. I think we've all had the experience of having some thoughts we've never really sat down to work out, and then you read someone else who has put the whole thing better than you ever could have. For me, as far as Spengler is concerned, this was;
The Fraud of Primitive Authenticity
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/HG04Aa02.html
My whole life I've found myself getting irritated at upper middle, to upper class folks running to the far reaches of the globe talking about the inner peace they found in some hut somewhere, but for some reason they come back home to make money. If you found something that valuable, wouldn't you stay? What kind of game are you playing with yourself? Anyway, thanks Spengler for the article I've passed along more than any of your others.
I found this essay to be thought provoking evoking even though I didn't agree with it, and still don't. It did motivate me to spend some time doing more research.
From what I understand, a forum crash renders retrieval of the discussion of that essay impossible, however some aftershocks were still being felt two years later:
Shivering in Chicago ...
http://spengler.atimes.net/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=8752
foot soldier wrote:I don't agree with your assessments with my experience living in such traditional societies. Every aberration or abnornamilty in a person's behavior which have veered of the societies orbit is brought back to it's rightful place by social forces like shame, violence etc.
There may be no book to refer to like Koran or Bible but no individualism is tolerated. Ask the homosexuals how they are treated in such societies. A man who does not marry by 30 is viewd as an aberation. Society take the view then - that there must be something wrong with the man, may be he is some physical problems. The man's siblings are shunned and may not be able to marry at all. Everyone is tied to the social fabric. Every unwritten law is made such as to preserve or increase their tribal or sub tribal standings. They are more corrupt too because everyman tries to get the maximum for his family,friends,tribe... from the others.
I think you have a very utopian view of traditional societies.
But looking at the long term good versus bad, I still prefer traditional societies. There is more order in personal life compared to free Modern societies.
Apollonius wrote:Actually, it's the 'traditional' Christians here who have a very un-nuanced view of culture and history. I don't romanticize traditional cultures, but neither do I make false claims or inappropriate analogies about them.
Take Spengler's assertion that all primitive societies were more violent than our modern ones, something he continues to imply or directly assert, as in his agreement with Nicholas Wade's apparent endorsement of the idea (see, 'The Fraud of Primitive Authenticity'). Spengler obviously read this book in haste because Wade himself is more circumspect about human violence than Spengler. In any case, the assertion is flat-out wrong. Some primitive societies were very violent, others less so.
For example, there are a few primitive societies, usually those at the most basic survivalist hunter-gatherer stage of development, in which warfare was completely absent and even murder was almost unheard of. The Ojibwa of the central sub-arctic in Canada were such a society. Physical violence of any kind towards others was avoided at all costs.
Next, to your example of life patterns and expectations in primitive society. Even the most primitive societies had people who were different. One very common phenomenon was for those with homosexual tendencies to become shamans. Their polymorphic sexuality was thought to give them special insight into spiritual matters. The priestcraft of more sophisticated religions, especially Christianity, which obsesses so negatively about everything sexual, have always regarded homosexuals with disdain and contempt borne, I think, at least in large part, of competition. There are quite a few societies in which homosexuality is not only tolerated, but encouraged, sometimes even enforced.
This blanket statement that all traditional societies were more rigid than anything we have today simply doesn't stand under even minimal scrutiny. Some primitive societies were very authoritarian; others were incredibly lax. Technological developments have given us options but removed many freedoms as well.
Spengler wrote:Apollonius,
Your comment is very poor informed. Did you read Wade? He thinks that humans may be evolving to become less violent; a fortiori he thinks primitive society is MORE violent.
Apollonius wrote:I've got the book in front of me at this very moment.
Yes, he suggests that humans are evolving to become less violent (nothing to do with Christianiy per se, since he sees this trend in many places and also considers rapid evolution a distinct possibility -- so that, for example, Swedes and Danes, once fierce predators, have recently (no, not after the Vikings, more recently, after the eighteenth century) become peaceable).
If you read through the text very carefully, you'll find that he contradicts himself regarding human violence. In general, he wants to believe that humans are becoming less violent (I'd like to believe it too), but even his own examples don't always bear this out. If you review the anthropological literature (which I realize you have about as much respect for as I have for the Bible), you'll find lots of diversity of opinion on this matter and many of the specific examples that Wade draws upon (the Yanomomo, the New Guinea highlanders) are not only unrepresentative of primitive peoples in general, but written up in the anthropological press in different ways, depending on who is analysing the evidence.