It seems to me that Edward Gibbon’s magisterial treatise on Rome really did provide a functional analytical paradigm with which we can best hope to discern the underlying causation behind the events that ultimately facilitated the demise of the empire. Gibbon’s thesis was that it wasn’t so much the moral decay or decadence of Rome that undermined its capacity to maintain empire through the subjugation of other nations but rather what he construed as the pacifistic influence as modulated by the dogmatic preachments of Christianity and its overt repudiation of the martial virtues which proceeded from the pagan beliefs. Constantine did more to ensure the eventual demise of Rome than did Romulus Augustus or anyone else who ascended to the purple in the last two centuries of Roman imperial hegemony in the Mediterranean.
To try and functionally relate all of this to contemporary western society is exceedingly difficult since the analogies tend to break down once you get into the actual minutia of culture and the intersecting influences of religion, economics, systemic social forces or cultural values. These impediments notwithstanding, I would submit to you that materialism and hedonism are to the contemporary west what Christianity was to ancient Rome. Pursuit of pleasure for its own sake can be conceptualized in a manner indistinguishable from most religious doctrines since they both tend to make certain philosophical presuppositions regarding the purpose of life and the objectives which one ought to pursue in furtherance of consummating that purpose. Likewise, hedonic gratification and materialistic acquisitiveness can be all encompassing in a way similar to the psychological effect that fundamentalist religious convictions have on the most fanatical of adherents. The more you pursue the analogy though, the more it seems to me to be subject to the law of diminishing returns as I’m discovering now that I try and maximize its pedagogical utility function.
Your elucidation of the historical epochs and their corresponding value paradigms seems to me to be perfectly conceived, though I tend to cleave more steadfastly to the edifice of a Marxist historical critique since, after all, his was one which emphasized exploitation of the meek, powerless, disenfranchised and those who would have otherwise found themselves similarly situated to our current predicament vis-à-vis western culture. The point of demarcation for me was post-industrialism which ushered in an era of modernity that eschewed the archaic virtues of old, relegating them to functional obsolescence. Q.E.D., economic prosperity and the means by which to cunningly exploit a free-market system supplanted and usurped the values previously ascribed to the noblesse oblige which consisted in chivalric honor, martial vigor, courage in the face of terror, charity and a willingness to embrace a more stoical existence guided by the precepts of Christian virtue. The decadence of western capitalism has been able to so completely emasculate the vestigial trappings of this antecedent culture precisely because it not only is permissive of the sort of licentiousness that you allude to above but is highly conducive to it.
The lessons of Orwell are entirely relevant to this discussion and his capacity to presciently anticipate all three of the totalitarianisms (Nazism, Fascism and Communism) of the 20th Century makes a circumspect study of his theses a precondition to any well-conceived renunciation of popular cultural leitmotif, be it merely theoretical or practical/actual as instrumentalized through revolution. I don’t subscribe to the assertion that humanism can or will prevail since ultimately Communism is the paradigmatic manifestation of the sort of idealism that inspired Rousseau to conceive of his egalitarian utopia that was predicated on the suppositions which any humanist takes as axiomatic. I know that’s rather reductionist and perhaps disingenuous to some of the more practical manifestations of Marxist theory in reality, but as it was conceived in the abstract it relied upon the innate benevolence of mankind and a spirit of collective responsibility which seem to me to be fundamentally inimical to our own nature and instinctual predilections as they have arisen through a hundred thousand years of evolutionary precedent and adaptive necessity. I tried humanism as a personal philosophy for some time but I couldn’t reconcile it with human nature and after some considered reflection, I embraced a more cynical outlook and one which has been heavily modulated by the teachings of Hobbes, Nietzsche and Machiavelli as well as a careful study of human history.
My apologies for the elaborate response but your own comments were so thoughtfully conceived that I felt it would be disingenuous to say anything less that what I have attempted to convey herein.
Thank you for this interesting turn.
I.
A thought: Constantinian Cuck-stianity seems to be the other side of the same coin.
Moral depravity.
Constantine permitted the continuation and growth of brothels, violent insurrectionist Berbers, schismatics . . . even caved in to try and placate them, making it easier for prostitutes to dispose of illegitimate children, offering hard cash to Donatists to stop demolishing buildings and killing people .. both smelled the weakness and used it all the more.
II.
I purposely co-locate the above two examples, further to your interesting point on the weird death-drive convergence of hedonism and fundamentalism. There is a high one gets from wine, orgasms, confrontation, edgelording, etc. Cynically, brain-chemical hacks best left for lab rats.
That dissipated economy is running out of sources of adrenaline, with its actors too busy looking inward to pay attention to barbarians at the gate -- maybe there's a hook there for what's going on here and now.
III.
We want meaning. Always have. It can be found in forms of connection and intimacy, liberation from alienation, and other things. But all in all we search for meaning and a meaningful life.
IV.
I understand I keep returning to questions of spirit, morals, and humanism -- maybe they are not mutually exclusive to your structuralist analysis -- maybe they can work together, not in synthesis, but in dialectics.
V.
Potential launch points:
Orwell (as discussed), Sartre (the human project, man projected forward in freedom from his present alienation), Eagleton (let's get specific about who needs to go--the open-collared warehouse owner on the shop floor, or the reinsurer of the carrier for the bank that owns the place?)...
VI.
To Praxis:
The problem of lookism is structurally an economic one. It is fundamentally broken.
What we tell ourselves about our human nature is bullshit. We are not machines or insects or cavemen or the men of 15 years ago. We change all the time. The hand-wavy "Darwin bruh" stuff is cheesy 80s i-banker banter. It's not a way to think or live.
But hell, if people want Darwin, let's go Darwin. Survival of the fittest ideas and analysis.
Or as Trotsky put it, "permanent revolution."
VII.
Is any of this bluepill or lifefuel? No. It is just recognizing that every aspect of modern life, thought, and discussion of new ideas is run through with degeneracy and weakness. The blackest ever blackpill--being able to identify more and more hidden thoughts of weakness and dishonesty--to root out whatever is really cucked, whining, and simping in myself. For example, no, there is no need for a man to get his rocks off at regular intervals -- the science and anthropology is extremely clear that most of the history of the human race has never had that. Meaningful intimacy, not susceptible to metricsmaxxing, might have been sought once, in more innocent days . . . where was it to be found? Probably not in porn, escortceling and other cargo cult imitations of love. The brothels always stank of Constantinian weakness and compromise. Burn them.
Still wanting for the same thing as before--just getting clearer that it is somewhere else--and coming to terms with the assurance that that it cannot be found in intimacy, for the simple reason that intimacy will never come. That's over. We want meaning.
VIII.
I doubt the path of pushing the present depravities to the edge so that someone else gets sick of it and has the revolution. Rather, to make whole, be whole. Feminism was a revolution that inter alia worked on attacking and changing victimizers in order to solve the victims' problems. Probably suitable that a really revolutionary response is, by contrast, to solve problems like a man does, to work on the victim himself, and only him, nobody else. What of soyciety can really be changed? Rome is over. Time for a POV more Gothic.
Dies war das erste kindliche Gedanken-Experiment.... Das Erfinden ist kein Werk des logischen Denkens, wenn auch das Endprodukt an die logische Gestalt gebunden ist.
