History Western Civilization, Rome and Cyclical History

[Zyobot]

I have a question.

If he'd lived to 1945 and beyond, what would Spengler have made of the War and the Final Solution? He wasn't overfond of Jews as I understand, but I reckon he wouldn't have approved to put it mildly.

Big question is though, how would he have folded the Second World War into his thesis of cyclical history?

In fact, that makes me wonder what he'd have made of everything after his death, up to 2023 and beyond?

Lots and lots of stuff that's happened since then, though I suppose America's susprise ascendancy and Germany's regression to a "glorified vassal" are the most immediately obvious. 🤷

 

[Zyobot]

Actually, so long as I'm casting China as a self-destructing "Ptolemaic Egypt" here: I'm curious about where North Korea and its tensions with the South would fit into all of this?


Grafting it onto the timetable I already laid out for China, I suppose the DPRK would continue to take marching orders from Beijing, like any good Chinese vassal with just about no one else to turn to — regardless of which regime is in charge. In practice, this means it'll be expected to retake the South in a land war (albeit, with a degree of Chinese assistance similar to last time).

Might be a way for Lil' Kimmy (who'd either be dead or dying of old age by mid-century) to go out in a blaze of glory, too, assuming he's still in charge and on his last legs by then. Even though he wouldn't be doing it on his own terms, forcibly reunifying Korea has long been the DPRK's "national dream" — which he'd get the credit for achieving.


That in mind, I think a Second Korean War a century after the first could be yet another flashpoint, in the event China doesn't invade Taiwan first. Certainly, Best Korea would join the roster of hostile countries the Great Wall Around China would defend against, with the Korean theater being incorporated into the larger "War of Chinese Reunification" in short order. If not, something would have to go totally astray to thaw the rest of the Pacific's relations with the DPRK and render my prediction moot.

 

[Skallagrim]

I have a question.

If he'd lived to 1945 and beyond, what would Spengler have made of the War and the Final Solution? He wasn't overfond of Jews as I understand, but I reckon he wouldn't have approved to put it mildly.

Big question is though, how would he have folded the Second World War into his thesis of cyclical history?

If cancer hadn't killed him, the Nazis would have. He was far too critical of the Nazis to be left alive. Indeed, by the end they were calling him a "white Jew", same as they did with Heisenberg for several years. (Difference being, they needed Heisenberg because he was unquestionably right about physics, whereas Spengler had purely become an irritant to them.)

Spengler's position regarding the Jews was not at all one of animosity, although his typically "large picture" view of history can be twisted into a misrepresentation by malicious critics. Mainly, he calmly explained away the phenomenon of anti-semitism by observing that Jews and Europeans were not the same High Culture, and that they were in different stages of their respective cycles. When such "mis-matches" in "timing" happened, the only peaceful solution was for one group to absorb the other. This didn't happen, because the Jews refused to be absorbed. (Note that Spengler felt that this proved how badass they were.) But the result of that is an inability to co-exist harmoniously. The two cultures can't ever exist on the same wave-length, so to speak.

I think Spengler would have been an ardent proponent of Zionism as an ideal solution, if it had become evidently feasible within his lifetime. Let the Jews have their ancestral soil back, so that their Kultur and their Raum once again correspond 1:1.

In any case: Spengler was always an anti-materialist. To him, the essence of the "race" was not blood, but the soul. (He speaks of it often.) When he references "blood", he almost always means "vitality" or "the warrior spirit", rather than genetics of any kind. "Races are bred through comradeship," he said. In this, he cited the Jews as an example right beside the warrior-aristocracy that had forged Prussia. After all, the Jew "with his immense race-energy and his thousand years of ghetto life" had remained himself through the ages. Had never assimilated and dissolved.

In short, everything Hitler despised about the Jews, Spengler admired.

And he went even further than that. He outright said that these qualities that the Jews possessed were lacking in the ranks of the Nazis! In his Jahre der Entscheidung (1933, same year Hitler came to power), he didn't hide his disgust. He wrote that the idea of biological race purity was purely the obsession of grotesque fools, since "all stocks and species having been mixed for centuries". He cited Rome as an idea that encompassed peoples of countless origins, but gave them a common "race-feeling". (We'd call this culture, but this must be understood: when Spengler writes "race", he almost always means something more like "culture". Romanitas, to him, was the zenith of what "race" could be.)

And then, at the close, he took aim directly at the Nazis: "Those who talk too much about race no longer have it in them. What is needed is not a pure race, but a strong one, which has a nation within it."

In other words: Fuck you, Adolf. You're no Caesar.



Now, as for the broader scope of things, we must remember that Spengler wrote almost all his work prior to th election of FDR, and that he died before World War II even started. All he ever saw of the New Deal was its very beginning, which was very much not a great success.

What Spengler expected was that America would fail, rather in the way that Carthage had failed. He saw Wall Street (as many did in his day, and now) as the epitome of the "rule of money". For this reason, having not seen even the beginnings of America's formation of the "Arsenal of Freedom", he could scarcely imagine America as turning to the "rule of blood". So he saw Germany as destined to take this role. He figured that America would face labour unrest and respond with capitalist-typical repression of strikes and riots, causing all sorts of social disarray. meanwhile, he figured that Germany would go for the "third way" economics (as it did!) and that this would be the prelude to eventual Caesarism (which it wasn't).

To summarise: he thought Germany would be Rome, and America might be its Carthage. (The great nemesis later on, he immediately intuited, could only be in the East. He was probably thinking of Russia.)

By his last years, he'd correctly discerned that far from being an antecedent to Caesarism, Hitler was a fucking clown who would destroy Germany with his nonsense. (Spengler predicted the fall of Hitler's Reich, during the last year of his life, as being set to happen before a decade was up. That was in May 1935. In April 1945, it was all over for Hitler.) This must have been exceedlingly bitter for Spengler, who had so ardently hoped and believed that "Prussianism" was to be the new "Romanitas" of the world.

The fates, they can be cruel.

 

[Zyobot]

If cancer hadn't killed him, the Nazis would have. He was far too critical of the Nazis to be left alive. Indeed, by the end they were calling him a "white Jew", same as they did with Heisenberg for several years. (Difference being, they needed Heisenberg because he was unquestionably right about physics, whereas Spengler had purely become an irritant to them.)

Spengler's position regarding the Jews was not at all one of animosity, although his typically "large picture" view of history can be twisted into a misrepresentation by malicious critics. Mainly, he calmly explained away the phenomenon of anti-semitism by observing that Jews and Europeans were not the same High Culture, and that they were in different stages of their respective cycles. When such "mis-matches" in "timing" happened, the only peaceful solution was for one group to absorb the other. This didn't happen, because the Jews refused to be absorbed. (Note that Spengler felt that this proved how badass they were.) But the reslut of that is an inability to co-exist harmoniously. The two cultures can't ever exist on the same wave-length, so to speak.

I think Spengler would have been an ardent proponent of Zionism as an ideal solution. Let the Jews have their ancentral soil back!

In any case: Spengler was always an anti-materialist. To him, the essence of the "race" was not blood, but the soul. (He speaks of it often.) When he references "blood", he almost always means "vitality" or "the warrior spirit", rather than genetics of any kind. "Races are bred through comradeship," he said. In this, he cited the Jews as an example right beside the warrior-aristocracy that had forged Prussia. After all, the Jew "with his immense race-energy and his thousand years of ghetto life" had remained himself through the ages. Had never assimilated and dissolved.

In short, everything Hitler despised about the Jews, Spengler admired.

And he went even further than that. He outright said that these qualities that the Jews possessed were lacking in the ranks of the Nazis! In his Jahre der Entscheidung (1933, same year Hitler came to power), he didn't hide his disgust. He wrote that the idea of biological race purity was purely the obsession of grotesque fools, "ll stocks and species having been mixed for centuries". He cited Rome as an idea that incompassed peoples of countless origins, but gave them a common "race-feeling". (We'd call this culture, but this must be understood: when Spengler wrires "race", he almost always means something more like "culture". Romanitas, to him, was the zenith of what "race" could be.)

And then, at the close, he took aim directly at the Nazis: "Those who talk too much about race no longer have it in them. What is needed is not a pure race, but a strong one, which has a nation within it."

In other words: Fuck you, Adolf. You're no Caesar.



Now, as for the broader scope of things, we must remember that Spengler wrote almost all his work prior to th election of FDR, and that he died before World War II even started. All he ever saw of the New Deal was its very beginning, which was very much not a great success.

What Spengler expected was that America would fail, rather in the way that Carthage had failed. He saw Wall Street (as many did in his day, and now) as the epitome of the "rule of money". For this reason, having not seen even the beginnings of America's formation of the "Arsenal of Freedom", he could scarcely imagine America as turning to the "rule of blood". So he saw Germany as destined to take this role. He figured that America would face labour unrest and respond with capitalist-typical repression of strikes and riots, causing all sorts of social disarray. meanwhile, he figured that Germany would go for the "third way" economics (as it did!) and that this would be the prelude to eventual Caesarism (which it wasn't).

To summarise: he thought Germany would be Rome, and America might be its Carthage. (The great nemesis later on, he immediately intuited, could only be in the East. He was probably thinking of Russia.)

By his last years, he'd correctly discerned that far from being an antecedent to Caesarism, Hitler was a fucking clown who would destroy Germany with his nonsense. (Spengler predicted the fall of Hitler's Reich, during the last year of his life, as being set to happen before a decade was up. That was in May 1935. In April 1945, it was all over for Hitler.) This must have been exceedlingly bitter for Spengler, who had so ardently hoped and believed that "Prussianism" was to be the new "Romanitas" of the world.

The fates, they can be cruel.

Well…

On that cheery note: How surprised do you think he’d have been to have been proven so very wrong?

Seemed to have a much more “enlightened” understanding of race and culture, for sure. When the Nazis fear and hate your views to the point where they’d have otherwise killed you if cancer hadn’t taken you first, that’s probably a sign you’re doing something right. Besides, kind of an odd parallel between them demonizing Spengler as a “White Jew!” and the Left demonizing conservative minorities as “Multi-ethnic Whiteness!” (as WaPo once did). For as much as they screech about Nazis, they sure love to repurpose Nazi rhetoric and divide-and-conquer tactics.

Anyway, even though I admit it’s kind of “sophomoric” of me to criticize him with the benefit of hindsight on my side: I can only imagine how slack-jawed he’d be at how “Punic America” turned out to be the “Western Rome”, after all, albeit having some of the cultural conceits crudely swapped around in which the US got a vaguely “Carthaginian” mercantile streak this time. (Whereas Japan, of course, stepped into the role of the West’s “Carthage”, albeit being a more austere maritime power devoid of the mercantile streak.) Heck, even without its whole Arsenal of Democracy proving the US could mobilize and outproduce everyone else, the Rome-Carthage parallels between America and Japan would only be reinforced by Hiroshima and Nagasaki. To Spengler, that’d have been one last wake-up call to who the true Heir to Rome is, though he sounds discerning enough to have realized long before then — Pearl Harbor awakening The Sleeping Giant (TM) and all that.


In any case, I’d actually take the ROB scenario where he’s magically informed of everything that’s happened since 1936 and ask what he’d make of your outline, @Skallagrim? (Probably also the additions from everyone else in this thread, too, such as myself, @CastilloVerde, or @Lord Sovereign.) Certainly, it’s been updated to take into account everything that’s happened, and casts the 21st century as the Century of Caesarian (TM) instead. Probably hard for someone who witnessed the Great War, the Depression, and wasn’t far off from the Second World War to imagine how things could get any worse than they were in his time… but if you explained everything to him and what your forecast looks like based on that, Ozzie might just come around to seeing how.

 

[Lord Sovereign]

If cancer hadn't killed him, the Nazis would have. He was far too critical of the Nazis to be left alive. Indeed, by the end they were calling him a "white Jew", same as they did with Heisenberg for several years. (Difference being, they needed Heisenberg because he was unquestionably right about physics, whereas Spengler had purely become an irritant to them.)

Spengler's position regarding the Jews was not at all one of animosity, although his typically "large picture" view of history can be twisted into a misrepresentation by malicious critics. Mainly, he calmly explained away the phenomenon of anti-semitism by observing that Jews and Europeans were not the same High Culture, and that they were in different stages of their respective cycles. When such "mis-matches" in "timing" happened, the only peaceful solution was for one group to absorb the other. This didn't happen, because the Jews refused to be absorbed. (Note that Spengler felt that this proved how badass they were.) But the result of that is an inability to co-exist harmoniously. The two cultures can't ever exist on the same wave-length, so to speak.

I think Spengler would have been an ardent proponent of Zionism as an ideal solution, if it had become evidently feasible within his lifetime. Let the Jews have their ancestral soil back, so that their Kultur and their Raum once again correspond 1:1.

In any case: Spengler was always an anti-materialist. To him, the essence of the "race" was not blood, but the soul. (He speaks of it often.) When he references "blood", he almost always means "vitality" or "the warrior spirit", rather than genetics of any kind. "Races are bred through comradeship," he said. In this, he cited the Jews as an example right beside the warrior-aristocracy that had forged Prussia. After all, the Jew "with his immense race-energy and his thousand years of ghetto life" had remained himself through the ages. Had never assimilated and dissolved.

In short, everything Hitler despised about the Jews, Spengler admired.

And he went even further than that. He outright said that these qualities that the Jews possessed were lacking in the ranks of the Nazis! In his Jahre der Entscheidung (1933, same year Hitler came to power), he didn't hide his disgust. He wrote that the idea of biological race purity was purely the obsession of grotesque fools, since "all stocks and species having been mixed for centuries". He cited Rome as an idea that encompassed peoples of countless origins, but gave them a common "race-feeling". (We'd call this culture, but this must be understood: when Spengler writes "race", he almost always means something more like "culture". Romanitas, to him, was the zenith of what "race" could be.)

And then, at the close, he took aim directly at the Nazis: "Those who talk too much about race no longer have it in them. What is needed is not a pure race, but a strong one, which has a nation within it."

In other words: Fuck you, Adolf. You're no Caesar.

Spengler did say some rather harsh sounding things though about Jews, you have to admit. Calling them a “disintegrating element” doesn’t sound good whatever you say it.

But he rather obviously wasn’t of the same mind as the Nazis, even though (according to Wikipedia, don’t judge me that was the first thing I could find) some of his views ending up helping to form Nazi ideology as I understand it.

Some could perhaps argue one of his prized blunders (one he recognised was a mistake unlike that clown Evola who thought Heinrich Himmler was a stand up guy) is misunderstanding the nature of fascism in believing it to be a precursor to “Caesar.” That might have been his dislike for democracy clouding his judgement on the matter though, so who can say.

As to the use of “race”, he wasn’t alone in that actually! Race and culture were often conflated back in his times. Churchill wrote of “the race” (which gives context to a lot of European attitudes towards native cultures), and it isn’t really until the Nazis break European civilisation that race firmly became tied to inherent traits.

Edit: As an Englishman, I doubt Spengler would have been overfond of me. By the sounds of it he thought England and its Parliament was the worst thing ever and had to be defeated by “Prussian Socialism.”

 

[Zyobot]

Looks like an "interesting" exchange is about to brew here, but commenting on this bit:

Edit: As an Englishman, I doubt Spengler would have been overfond of me. By the sounds of it he thought England and its Parliament was the worst thing ever and had to be defeated by “Prussian Socialism.”

Yeah...

Probably wouldn't have made much of me, either. Apart from the fact I'm American (and of Asian descent, to boot), he might find the assorted "Americanisms" in my outline (which you and @Skallagrim are already familiar with) to be rather "overbearing", even if he can no longer find it in him to dispute Pax Americana now — much less that Pax Germania lies six feet underground, and won't be resurrected by some future "Frederick the Great as Augustus!" any time soon.

Besides that, I'd also wager that apart from how he'd probably dislike modern "Caesarism" every bit as much as the Hitlerian knock-off (the former of which, I envision as a pan-Western, Christian revivalist "Ecumene" that more resembles "Neo-Crusader ISIS"), he'd silently fume at how Prussian Socialism didn't win out.

Instead, the "Caesarist" regime would practice third-positionist "Ecumene Economics", followed by American Capitalism (TM) roaring back to life under August's Commerce League. Not that I think modern capitalism will persist after the ideological wars have ended, but at the same time, I'd say the American "entrepreneurial spirit" pretty much guarantees that if nothing else, the American Empire (TM) will remain highly mercantile and commerce-oriented.


Moreover, I'd also posit lots of Modernist terms will be genericized, rather than completely forgotten. After all, once-specialized terms that held specific meanings in the Hellenstic Age — "cynic", "skeptic" "stoic", "tyrant", and so on — were largely divorced of their ideological connotations and took on much more generic meanings later. Likewise, I imagine that's how it'll go once The Democratic Age (TM) ends, with "capitalism" becoming shorthand for the free market or private-sector activity, while "capitalist" becomes a synonym for merchant or businessman.

(Somewhat hilariously, it also occurred to me that "socialist" could refer to someone who likes to split work or rewards evenly, while "fascist" comes to mean a ramrod or harsh disciplinarian. "Nazi" might denote a really pedantic and nitpicky person, mostly as an outgrowth of the expression "grammar Nazi". Probably stretching it a bit far, but fun to imagine which "ideologically loaded" words today will be genericized and used in a more innocuous, casual ways down the line.)

 

[Skallagrim]

On that cheery note: How surprised do you think he’d have been to have been proven so very wrong?

By the end of his life, not very. But he'd blame it chiefly on the Nazis having screwed up so badly. I'm not sure he'd be ready to recognise how staggering the triumph of the American war machine really was. Of course, the longer he'd hypothetically live, the more evident this would become. And naturally, if we imagine him somehow seeing the rest of history up to the present, he'd recognise the shape of things. (It's hard to miss.)

Seemed to have a much more “enlightened” understanding of race and culture, for sure. When the Nazis fear and hate your views to the point where they’d have otherwise killed you if cancer hadn’t taken you first, that’s probably a sign you’re doing something right. Besides, kind of an odd parallel between them demonizing Spengler as a “White Jew!” and the Left demonizing conservative minorities as “Multi-ethnic Whiteness!” (as WaPo once did). For as much as they screech about Nazis, they sure love to repurpose Nazi rhetoric and divide-and-conquer tactics.

Yes, the obsessive group-think that seeks to put people into fixed categories to be universally absolved or condemned is typical of the twisted excesses of the Modernist totalitarian strain. It has to do with the inherent lack of certainty, because the traditional social order has fallen away. People try to artificially create new forms of certainty and identity. And in some cases, this is inevitably taken to sick extremes.

Spengler did say some rather harsh sounding things though about Jews, you have to admit. Calling them a “disintegrating element” doesn’t sound good whatever you say it.

Within his model, an unassimilated element is by definition one that destabilises its host culture, precisely because they can't find an equilibrium between them. (And of course, he saw them as an exponent of this oriental culture, which to him, was already a calcified remnant of its former self.)

It may sound like a strange comparison (and I don't actually think his view on this was correct), but Spengler's criticism of Jews in Europe was essentially that their culture was already geriatric, and the West was still to reach its heyday.

As an Englishman, I doubt Spengler would have been overfond of me. By the sounds of it he thought England and its Parliament was the worst thing ever and had to be defeated by “Prussian Socialism.”

Quite. Although, of course, he wasn't without nuance. Burke, Pitt, Wellington and Disraeli are mentioned true statesmen. But Spengler despised "degenerate Manchesterism", which he saw identified in both the (in his view) Anglo-American "rule of money" and in its (equally materialiast) antithesis, Marxism. (He saw Marx as an ideologue purely shaped by British capitalism, and Marxism as a dectrine purely crafted in reaction to that capitalism. Hnce Spengler's expression: "Marx belongs to England.")

To be fair though, many Germans of the period had pretty loopy ideas about Britain.

Moreover, I'd also posit lots of Modernist terms will be genericized, rather than completely forgotten. After all, once-specialized terms that held specific meanings in the Hellenstic Age — "cynic", "skeptic" "stoic", "tyrant", and so on — were largely divorced of their ideological connotations and took on much more generic meanings later. Likewise, I imagine that's how it'll go once The Democratic Age (TM) ends, with "capitalism" becoming shorthand for the free market or private-sector activity, while "capitalist" becomes a synonym for merchant or businessman.

(Somewhat hilariously, it also occurred to me that "socialist" could refer to someone who likes to split work or rewards evenly, while "fascist" comes to mean a ramrod or harsh disciplinarian. "Nazi" might denote a really pedantic and nitpicky person, mostly as an outgrowth of the expression "grammar Nazi". Probably stretching it a bit far, but fun to imagine which "ideologically loaded" words today will be genericized and used in a more innocuous, casual ways down the line.)

This is the kind of "cultural evolution" that greatly interests me. I expect that you're quite right, and that we'll see many of these development. Some too weird to now imagine, I'd say!

 

[Zyobot]

Couple more thoughts germinating in my brain for later, but tackling the "pressing" stuff now:

This is the kind of "cultural evolution" that greatly interests me. I expect that you're quite right, and that we'll see many of these development. Some too weird to now imagine, I'd say!

Seconded!

By the end of his life, not very. But he'd blame it chiefly on the Nazis having screwed up so badly. I'm not sure he'd be ready to recognise how staggering the triumph of the American war machine really was. Of course, the longer he'd hypothetically live, the more evident this would become. And naturally, if we imagine him somehow seeing the rest of history up to the present, he'd recognise the shape of things. (It's hard to miss.)

Quite. Although, of course, he wasn't without nuance. Burke, Pitt, Wellington and Disraeli are mentioned true statesmen. But Spengler despised "degenerate Manchesterism", which he saw identified in both the (in his view) Anglo-American "rule of money" and in its (equally materialiast) antithesis, Marxism. (He saw Marx as an ideologue purely shaped by British capitalism, and Marxism as a dectrine purely crafted in reaction to that capitalism. Hnce Spengler's expression: "Marx belongs to England.")

To be fair though, many Germans of the period had pretty loopy ideas about Britain.

More seriously, while some ROB scenario in which he spectates everything from the afterlife would tell him where things are headed (and less than 10 years after he passed, no less!), I doubt he'd be happy that the Reign of Mammon (TM) ultimately out-muscled Prussian Discipline (TM) via American hegemony.

Unfortunately for him, he'd be forced to acknowledge it, anyway, so I suspect that if Spengler were scrolling through this very thread and reading up on @Skallagrim's outline (as well as my and @CastilloVerde's additions), odds are he'd bemoan that and would bitterly mourn Germany's fate as that of a "Glorified American vassal alongside the rest of Europe!" every so often.

(And again, it hardly needs restating The American Empire — most especially, my version — would be precisely the kind of mercantile, vaguely "Punic" hegemon Spengler would despise.)


Speaking of which... gotta' wonder what he'd have made of the Cold War, too? In addition to being fought between the two "materialist extremes" that were the antithesis of one another, it'd also add insult to injury that Germany was split between the "Greedy Anglo-American" and "Dirty Soviet" world-orders he so despised — much less how his desired "third-positionist" economics are reflexively demonized as "Nazi/Fascist talking points!" throughout the Western World nowadays. Boy, oh boy, what an abysmal TL the OTL future must be in Spengler's eyes!

 

[Lord Sovereign]

Within his model, an unassimilated element is by definition one that destabilises its host culture, precisely because they can't find an equilibrium between them. (And of course, he saw them as an exponent of this oriental culture, which to him, was already a calcified remnant of its former self.)

It may sound like a strange comparison (and I don't actually think his view on this was correct), but Spengler's criticism of Jews in Europe was essentially that their culture was already geriatric, and the West was still to reach its heyday.

I mean that’s nice and all, but it’s still a touch dehumanising isn’t it? You can see how this sort of semi-careless rhetoric ended up bleeding into the nucleus of the National Socialist movement (also, by the way, Spengler had some odd ideas as to what “socialism” meant).

Quite. Although, of course, he wasn't without nuance. Burke, Pitt, Wellington and Disraeli are mentioned true statesmen. But Spengler despised "degenerate Manchesterism", which he saw identified in both the (in his view) Anglo-American "rule of money" and in its (equally materialiast) antithesis, Marxism. (He saw Marx as an ideologue purely shaped by British capitalism, and Marxism as a dectrine purely crafted in reaction to that capitalism. Hnce Spengler's expression: "Marx belongs to England.")

To be fair though, many Germans of the period had pretty loopy ideas about Britain.

It’s vaguely entertaining how much he hated Britain and its Parliament, when our Parliament is essentially the child of traditional Germanic governance in the form of “the Thing.” And capitalism, ultimately, is just a posh name for an advanced form of bartering that has been around a long time indeed. And Marx’s philosophy is so comically German it hurts: from Hegelian dialectics to the autistic obsession with following things through to their logical conclusion.

Other commenters and pundits have said that perhaps Spengler was a tad “butt hurt” over Germany losing the First World War and had a few axes to grind as a result. For all the interesting things Spengler has said, I do partially agree with them.

 

[Blasterbot]

@Skallagrim

how do you think that AI generated images and video will influence things. It will make it easier to rile up the mob. both for the elites and the populists. for good or ill it is already being deployed. Trump using it to make jokes and satire. DeSantis to try and supplement a political attack. I worry what will happen when falsification gets to the point where people can't distinguish the fake from reality. when narratives can be fed to the masses biases. there is going to be blood shed over this stuff and that scares me.

 

[Skallagrim]

@Skallagrim

how do you think that AI generated images and video will influence things. It will make it easier to rile up the mob. both for the elites and the populists. for good or ill it is already being deployed. Trump using it to make jokes and satire. DeSantis to try and supplement a political attack. I worry what will happen when falsification gets to the point where people can't distinguish the fake from reality. when narratives can be fed to the masses biases. there is going to be blood shed over this stuff and that scares me.

Right now, it's pretty easy for a computer to tell whether something is real or artificial. Supposing that this "arms race" is won by the creators' side, and you get truly "perfect" fake videos etc. -- well, what of it? There'll be a bit of a confusing period, but after that, everything defaults to the new norm: all recordings are assumed to be false. Video and audio will no longer be accepted as evidence in court, because there's just no way to tell whether they're real. If "incriminating" recordings of any person surface, the standard response will be that they're just fakes, and since there will be so many fakes, this will be a credible claim.

Functionally, we return to the pre-recording era, in which "hard evidence" simply doesn't exist.

 

[Cherico]

Right now, it's pretty easy for a computer to tell whether something is real or artificial. Supposing that this "arms race" is won by the creators' side, and you get truly "perfect" fake videos etc. -- well, what of it? There'll be a bit of a confusing period, but after that, everything defaults to the new norm: all recordings are assumed to be false. Video and audio will no longer be accepted as evidence in court, because there's just no way to tell whether they're real. If "incriminating" recordings of any person surface, the standard response will be that they're just fakes, and since there will be so many fakes, this will be a credible claim.

Functionally, we return to the pre-recording era, in which "hard evidence" simply doesn't exist.

so right back where we started from.

Some how I'm not surprised, my money is that biological warfare also brings back the era of plagues killing large amounts of people.

 

[LordDemiurge]

it's pretty easy for a computer to tell whether something is real or artificia

Given the rate of progress in the field, I can't say it will remain that way for long.

we return to the pre-recording era, in which "hard evidence" simply doesn't exist.

At this point I'm beginning to think that in the future, a Ministry of Truth/Information will simply just become a staple part of government. Because its obvious modern governments are simply not prepared for the digital age.

How exactly it would turn out I'd have no idea. Maybe we'll have a Photography Guild that tightly controls the means of producing media in several contexts.

IE only hard storage mediums get accepted from certified cameras are allowed as evidence. Including some advanced method of watermarking and encryption.

 

[Skallagrim]

so right back where we started from.

At this point I'm beginning to think that in the future, a Ministry of Truth/Information will simply just become a staple part of government. Because its obvious modern governments are simply not prepared for the digital age.

I think a totalitarian "solution" is impossible to manage. Rather, it's indeed "back to the way things were". For millennia -- before photo, video and audio recordings -- humanity existed without hard evidence. "Truth" depended on trust; on the reliability of witnesses.

This is not entirely a bad thing, although it is certainly different from the current norm.

Some how I'm not surprised, my money is that biological warfare also brings back the era of plagues killing large amounts of people.

We won't need biological warfare for that (although I don't rule that out at all); the existence of unprecedented population sizes, unprecedented concentrations of urbanisation, and unprecedented global interconnectivity all ensure that diseases mutate faster and spread faster. It's only a matter of time until you get one that isn't just a flu on steroids.

All systems are self-stabilising.

 

[KilroywasNOTHere]

I think a totalitarian "solution" is impossible to manage. Rather, it's indeed "back to the way things were". For millennia -- before photo, video and audio recordings -- humanity existed without hard evidence. "Truth" depended on trust; on the reliability of witnesses.

Isn't that modern day twitter cancel culture though with the politically favored being the most trusted?

 

[Skallagrim]

Isn't that modern day twitter cancel culture though with the politically favored being the most trusted?

The key difference, I think, is that there won't be the implicit assumption that certain opinions automatically correspond to factual reality. The norm of "hard evidence", after all, is the historical exception. Humanity was never used to that, but it rapidly became the norm. In the words of an infamous website: "pics or it didn't happen".

For more of history, there were no "pics". You had to decide for yourself whether somethin happened. For most, this was a question of belief, but for the cognitive elite, this was a training set: a constant challenge to parse information. In a way, superior information technology encouraged intellectual laziness.

Cancel culture is partially the product of this. It applies to value judgements, but in the context of a society where "facts" are readily available. Where people have, to a significant degree, lost the mental faculty to (by necessity!) parse and judge every piece of information to determine whether it's legitimate. The result is schizophrenic: lazy minds attaching "certainty" to fact-free opinions with religious zeal.

Why are they so fanatic and dogmatic? Precisely because the "modern" order is beginning to collapse. they cling to imaginary ultra-certainty in the face of mounting uncertainty.

Once modernity is gone, this chaotic state of flux is also gone. So rather than cancel culture and such hysteria as the norm, we return to the pre-modern standard. As you probably know, the larger share of history was in truth much less of a hysterical group-think kind of affair than the fedora-morons tend to assume. If you want a pre-modern example of "cancel culture", look a the witch-hunting craze. When did that happen? During the period of chaos and uncertainty that also produced the Reformation. That's not a coincidence.

We'll never be free of this "cancel culture" impulse, but it won't be the historical norm. The fact that it's the norm now only proves that the present state of affairs is a historical aberration.

 

[LordDemiurge]

During the period of chaos and uncertainty that also produced the Reformation.

Do Jewish progroms fit with model as well?

I've read once that they tend to correspond to hard times and crises that Jewish communities tended to be isolated from.

 

[Cherico]

Do Jewish progroms fit with model as well?

I've read once that they tend to correspond to hard times and crises that Jewish communities tended to be isolated from.

Were a middle man minority so yeah it does, same thing happens to other middlemen minorities. When shit goes back establishments look for scapegoats when things go to hell the most visable minority gets scapegoated and the powers that be allow it to save themselves and their power.

My money is that the next round wont hit us, because the trans community is very visable, very loud and just doesn't have the skillset needed to survive as a minority when the next serious economic disaster hits their going to be the ones offered up to the mob.

 

[KilroywasNOTHere]

The key difference, I think, is that there won't be the implicit assumption that certain opinions automatically correspond to factual reality. The norm of "hard evidence", after all, is the historical exception. Humanity was never used to that, but it rapidly became the norm. In the words of an infamous website: "pics or it didn't happen".

For more of history, there were no "pics". You had to decide for yourself whether somethin happened. For most, this was a question of belief, but for the cognitive elite, this was a training set: a constant challenge to parse information. In a way, superior information technology encouraged intellectual laziness.

Cancel culture is partially the product of this. It applies to value judgements, but in the context of a society where "facts" are readily available. Where people have, to a significant degree, lost the mental faculty to (by necessity!) parse and judge every piece of information to determine whether it's legitimate. The result is schizophrenic: lazy minds attaching "certainty" to fact-free opinions with religious zeal.

Why are they so fanatic and dogmatic? Precisely because the "modern" order is beginning to collapse. they cling to imaginary ultra-certainty in the face of mounting uncertainty.

Once modernity is gone, this chaotic state of flux is also gone. So rather than cancel culture and such hysteria as the norm, we return to the pre-modern standard. As you probably know, the larger share of history was in truth much less of a hysterical group-think kind of affair than the fedora-morons tend to assume. If you want a pre-modern example of "cancel culture", look a the witch-hunting craze. When did that happen? During the period of chaos and uncertainty that also produced the Reformation. That's not a coincidence.

We'll never be free of this "cancel culture" impulse, but it won't be the historical norm. The fact that it's the norm now only proves that the present state of affairs is a historical aberration.

Ok, pretend I'm an idiot and explain this using 5 dollar words instead of 20. I think I understood about 70-80% of what you're getting at but your talking to me like I'm a fellow scholar with a doctorate in English when the reality is I got a B+ in my regular English courses.

 

[Skallagrim]

Do Jewish progroms fit with model as well?

I've read once that they tend to correspond to hard times and crises that Jewish communities tended to be isolated from.

Were a middle man minority so yeah it does, same thing happens to other middlemen minorities. When shit goes back establishments look for scapegoats when things go to hell the most visable minority gets scapegoated and the powers that be allow it to save themselves and their power.

Situations of chaos and uncertainty foster all sorts of hysteria and conspiracy thinking. This isn't even entirely unjustified, because in many cases, the elite -- feeling the heat themselves -- will try to screw over the masses. The problem is that you get very excessive manifestations of this kind of thing. (Who in his right mind believes that Jacob the deli owner is part of an evil cabal that wants to rule the world?)

Yet any unassimilated minority is always, by design, something of an "outsider". And in crises, in-group/out-group thinking becomes the dominant mode. (Which, to be clear, is completely natural, and indeed a function of evolution itself.) If it is also a minority who cultural ethic tends towards hard work in often profitable sectors, then envy becomes involved as well.

The other side of the coin is that such a minority that refuses assimilation can -- by design -- never be fully rooted within its host society. This tends to encourage the members of this group to support cosmopolitanism in said society, because that produces attitudes beneficial to the group (e.g. increased toleration). Additionally, it will lead to the society being more open to cultural mixing, which makes the group in question "NOT the only 'Other Guy' in the room".

Which explains why you see a lot of left-wing/progressive Jews in the West, while Israel (where these incentives are absent) tends far further right-wing/conservative. You also see that the "regular, common guy" Jews will more often tend right-wing, while there's a separate cosmopolitan elite that's completely inter-mingled with the gentile cosmopolitan elite. (They share the same goals.)

You can easily see how these factors conspire (no pun intended) to keep anti-semitism alive.

My money is that the next round wont hit us, because the trans community is very visable, very loud and just doesn't have the skillset needed to survive as a minority when the next serious economic disaster hits their going to be the ones offered up to the mob.

I'm less optimistic, although things can go in many directions. You already have people within the MAGA movement talking about, ah... "Jewish space lasers", so that tells us something. Meanwhile, the aforementioned cosmopolitan elite within the Jewish community has indeed hitched its wagon to that of the establishment.

The best thing sensible Jews can do, I think, is the best thing sensible gays can do: make it clear that they're not with those lunatics. The culture war is about ideas and values, more than anything else. Our enemy wants it to be about race and class and such things. There are elements within the populist opposition that think along those lines as well. The same thinking that divides society along those lines, however, is the thinking that can make one believe that Jacob the Deli owner is part of some evil cabal..

(Which means, yes, that the progressive elite -- Gentile and Jewish -- is in fact contributing to the likelihood of new pogroms in the future.)

Right now, the MAGA movement is primarily a faction catering to white Americans. I believe, as you know, that when the current iteration of the 'spoils system' runs out of spoils to distribute, the disaffected working class regardless of ethnicity will flock to the populists. At this point, if one seeks to avoid anti-semitic swerves, it is essential that all regular guys -- essentially, Americans who just happen to be Jews -- side with the populist movement.

The progressive elite will call them race-traitors who side with the (supposed) anti-semites, but this nonsense must be ignored. The fact is: when that hour comes, those who side with the populists will see their side triumph three decades later. Those who side with the establishment will be rounded up and dealt with after such time.

As such, the question of anti-semitism later in this century can -- to a great degree -- be settled by Jewish patriots.



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Ok, pretend I'm an idiot and explain this using 5 dollar words instead of 20. I think I understood about 70-80% of what you're getting at but your talking to me like I'm a fellow scholar with a doctorate in English when the reality is I got a B+ in my regular English courses.

Okay, here goes:

1) Your question is, basically, "if there is no hard evidence -- such as videos that can be trusted -- and what we believe relies on which testimony we trust, won't that lead to something like the 'twitter hive mind' and its tendencies towards cancel culture?" -- at least, that's how I understand what you said.

2) My anwer is that for almost all of human history, no photos, videos and audio recordings existed. Yet this kind of hysteria-prone group-think was NOT the norm.

3) Periods of such hysteria and group-think DID exist, but such reactions are linked to times of chaos and uncertainty.

4) Generally speaking, for almost all of history, people with responsibility had to think hard about all "facts" they heard, because acting on bullshit opinions would have bad consequences. So in a world where you HAVE to rely on witness testimony for nearly everything, you also HAVE to be good at judging which testominy is legit. People who are bad at this tended to suffer for it!

5) Thanks to photos, videos and audio recordings, we got used to having the facts displayed before our eyes. It was no longer needed to critically examine every source. We got lazy.

6) The evidence-based paradigm is falling apart now. Supposed "hard evidence" can be faked! We're back to the "you have to judge what story you trust" kind of world. But, and this is the key, we LOST our ability to properly judge that! We got lazy! Modern tech pampered us!

7) The current wave of social hysteria ("cancel culture") is in part CAUSED by the above point. People are used to getting hard facts, but cancel culture is all about subjective interpretation. Because most people are too mentally lazy/weak to interpret what is true, they instead just go with the herd and treat the (supposed) majority opinion as a fact. Which means that anyone opposed to "THE MESSAGE" is automatically AN EVIL LIAR.

8) Once the current period of chaos is over, we'll be back in the old situation. New generations will re-learn the critical thinking skills, and we'll treat information the way our ancestors did. "I trust this man, because he's only said true things in the past. I don't trust that man, because I've known him to lie three times this month." Basically, we'll get much better at drawing our own conclusions. (Which is now an almost-extinct skill!)

9) For these reasons, my answer to your question is that something like cancel culture will NOT become the norm, just as it wasn't the norm in the past.

10) But I add that just as there have been periods of social hysteria in the past, there will also be periods like that in the future. Obviously.