Decline of the West???

[Wizard22]

Some of them are certainly planning to. They are cut off from their mother. They are homeless in the spiritual moral sense, though obviously not in the literal house owning sense. They trash things wherever they go and throw it away. They certainly look down on everyone else whom they consider trash, not wanting to notice they are only partially human.

The few wealthy, elitist types I've encountered, were level-headed and humane. But I live on the West Coast USA. Maybe those types are different where you live?

I do believe there will be some pockets of prosperity in the world to come. But it seems, from the Western standpoint, things have definitely stagnated.

In general I don't see, for example, the Russians or the Chinese having much to offer most people in their countries either.

Personally, I remember eating food and at restaurants in the 90s. Food tasted a lot better back then. I think there's a decline in average food quality.

Soil quality has been going down. And now with the way they are dealing with food supplies and with the prices of foods so high, it will only get worse for those fortunate enough to be able to eat out at sitdown restaurants. The rest will have to start scouring discount supermarkets for deals and going to soup kitchens, bying 50lb bags of rice or potatoes. Oil prices are going to head up, given energy policies and this will raise the prices of everything.

I do see some countertrends. There is wider skeptical of all parties, for example. And the BS comes out into the light much quicker now. It is not effectively stopping the power grabs and shifts, but I do see these as countertrend that might reach tipping points.

But on the surface things are really quite ugly and heading towards uglier.

I don't have much hope for the Old World either. Everybody emigrated away from them, for often good and practical reasons. Eastern Civilizations have been 'stagnant' for thousands of years. I don't think that type of momentum can be 'turned around' so suddenly. But who knows?

The pockets of prosperity may coalesce throughout the West, in areas resistant to these declines of quality of life.

[Maia]

The Romans tried, but everything they did made it worse. I'm thinking of the reforms of Diocletian, for example.

It seems when Civilizations reach their apex, the wealthy, elite, and rich class focus on maintaining their political power and assets rather than looking "forward into the future" for more opportunities and prosperity. People then turn on each-other. Infighting occurs. People divide themselves into sub-cultures and cult followings. Hence the 'Trump' phenomenon in the US.

The optimism of the 1990s America, I certainly miss that feeling. I suppose you're too young to remember or have experienced such.

And not being American, either.

Civilisations go in cycles. They seem to just get tired, and die out.

[Iwannaplato]

The few wealthy, elitist types I've encountered, were level-headed and humane. But I live on the West Coast USA. Maybe those types are different where you live?

I don't know how high up the scale you've met. I've had mixed experiences with wealthy. Some are fine, some not. I saw less generosity in them as a trend but not a rule, and also a trend to dealing hysterically with stuff that middle class and poor people grit their teeth and deal with more practically. Trends.

But I have never encountered the superwealthy. The people who show up at the various international meeting for world players or who don't even bother to do that. People affecting government policy behind the scenes. They may be charming or cold fish interpersonally, I have no idea. But their use of power is atrocious.

I don't have much hope for the Old World either. Everybody emigrated away from them, for often good and practical reasons. Eastern Civilizations have been 'stagnant' for thousands of years. I don't think that type of momentum can be 'turned around' so suddenly. But who knows?

The pockets of prosperity may coalesce throughout the West, in areas resistant to these declines of quality of life.

Well, we can hope that pockets can remain unpoisoned by the trends out there. Both politically unpoisoned (iow disallowed and intervened with) and than poisoned more literally by nanotech, genetic modification and AI. The days of only local contamination are disappearing. Even Cherobyl may seem a rather local affair compared to coming boo boos.

[FlashDangerpants]

If you guys want to do some actual philosophy, you can review this thread and make note of the worldview stories that you are each susceptible to.

I'm seeing the generic nostalgia story (now updated with the 90s as the golden age!) when food just tasted better than it does now.
The "fall of Rome" thing that absolutely always has to happen in these threads
Malthusian bleak futurism of class warfare

Each of those things entails a set of assumptions about the correct ways to make the world intelligible (the stories, narratives or whatever).
The prevalent underlying assumptions that propel this thread includes a pernicious one, the rise and fall of civilisations can be wrapped up in a neat historiographical bundle (Maia should refer back to her history professor to find out if that's likely). What's so very bad about it is that everyone gets to fill in the blanks using whatever assumptions they like best.

For somebody like ImmaneulCan (used as an example of a type, I don't actually gaf what he thinks), the primary explanatory element for the rise of the west lies in religion, because science developed out of relgion to explain the works of God and good old Protestant Work Ethic drives much of the rest. Decline comes via The LEFT who cannot abide religion and thus promote disvirtue against God but absent mindedly destroy their own paradise in the act.

For GrandWizard22 it's kinda gonna about races and jews and God too, but at some much less sohpisticated level because he hasn't read any historians or the bible like IC has, so he's just winging it.

I don't know what IWP proposes for the rise, but I would hazard a guess that it covers the change from feudal societies to mercantile ones and the devlopment of new outward looking elites with expantionist trade desires to challenge the power of large landowners, ultimately wresting it from them by the invention of the modern nation state ... and then the story of the decline proceeds with that class hollowing out the economy until ultimately becoming hegemons and all the mere consumers being reintroduced to serfdom.

My hypothesis is that there are no such neat historiographical bundles. That history, as Popper put it, does not run on rails. You can't simply project from the past to the future as if nothing has changed.

[Maia]

If you guys want to do some actual philosophy, you can review this thread and make note of the worldview stories that you are each susceptible to.

I'm seeing the generic nostalgia story (now updated with the 90s as the golden age!) when food just tasted better than it does now.
The "fall of Rome" thing that absolutely always has to happen in these threads
Malthusian bleak futurism of class warfare

Each of those things entails a set of assumptions about the correct ways to make the world intelligible (the stories, narratives or whatever).
The prevalent underlying assumptions that propel this thread includes a pernicious one, the rise and fall of civilisations can be wrapped up in a neat historiographical bundle (Maia should refer back to her history professor to find out if that's likely). What's so very bad about it is that everyone gets to fill in the blanks using whatever assumptions they like best.

For somebody like ImmaneulCan (used as an example of a type, I don't actually gaf what he thinks), the primary explanatory element for the rise of the west lies in religion, because science developed out of relgion to explain the works of God and good old Protestant Work Ethic drives much of the rest. Decline comes via The LEFT who cannot abide religion and thus promote disvirtue against God but absent mindedly destroy their own paradise in the act.

For GrandWizard22 it's kinda gonna about races and jews and God too, but at some much less sohpisticated level because he hasn't read any historians or the bible like IC has, so he's just winging it.

I don't know what IWP proposes for the rise, but I would hazard a guess that it covers the change from feudal societies to mercantile ones and the devlopment of new outward looking elites with expantionist trade desires to challenge the power of large landowners, ultimately wresting it from them by the invention of the modern nation state ... and then the story of the decline proceeds with that class hollowing out the economy until ultimately becoming hegemons and all the mere consumers being reintroduced to serfdom.

My hypothesis is that there are no such neat historiographical bundles. That history, as Popper put it, does not run on rails. You can't simply project from the past to the future as if nothing has changed.

Whatever the latest trend in academia might be, it's clear that civilisations, and nation-states for that matter, really do act like living organisms in many ways, going through cycles of birth, youth, maturity, old age and death. Though it's always possible, of course, to take the analogy too far. Some seem to do it a lot more quickly than others, and as a general rule, empires have much shorter lifespans than nations. The Roman Empire was actually quite exceptional in its longevity, for we must also include the Byzantine Empire as its continuation in the east, which lasted until 1453. When people talk about its fall, what they're really talking about is its fall in the west, which took place in stages in the fifth century.

A feature of a nation or empire in decline is its inability or unwillingness to actually do anything that might halt it, even though it knows full well what's happening. There is also an increasing political instability, as different factions vie for power, oblivious to the damage they're causing by doing so. Another tendency is to tear down everything that was once held sacred. The Roman Empire in the fourth century, for example, destroyed almost the entire heritage of Classical Civilisation, replacing it with Christianity. Paganism was finally banned by Theodosius in 391, with all its temples and institutions (schools, charitable bodies, etc.) closed, and less than two decades later, Rome itself was sacked by the Visigoths, completely unable to muster the will, or the common feeling of purpose, to defend itself. Even St. Augustine recognised this, along with many others at the time, and wrote an entire treatise trying to explain it away.

The parallels to our own time are very clear, I think.

[Skepdick]

If you guys want to do some actual philosophy, you can review this thread and make note of the worldview stories that you are each susceptible to.

I'm seeing the generic nostalgia story (now updated with the 90s as the golden age!) when food just tasted better than it does now.
The "fall of Rome" thing that absolutely always has to happen in these threads
Malthusian bleak futurism of class warfare

Each of those things entails a set of assumptions about the correct ways to make the world intelligible (the stories, narratives or whatever).
The prevalent underlying assumptions that propel this thread includes a pernicious one, the rise and fall of civilisations can be wrapped up in a neat historiographical bundle (Maia should refer back to her history professor to find out if that's likely). What's so very bad about it is that everyone gets to fill in the blanks using whatever assumptions they like best.

For somebody like ImmaneulCan (used as an example of a type, I don't actually gaf what he thinks), the primary explanatory element for the rise of the west lies in religion, because science developed out of relgion to explain the works of God and good old Protestant Work Ethic drives much of the rest. Decline comes via The LEFT who cannot abide religion and thus promote disvirtue against God but absent mindedly destroy their own paradise in the act.

For GrandWizard22 it's kinda gonna about races and jews and God too, but at some much less sohpisticated level because he hasn't read any historians or the bible like IC has, so he's just winging it.

I don't know what IWP proposes for the rise, but I would hazard a guess that it covers the change from feudal societies to mercantile ones and the devlopment of new outward looking elites with expantionist trade desires to challenge the power of large landowners, ultimately wresting it from them by the invention of the modern nation state ... and then the story of the decline proceeds with that class hollowing out the economy until ultimately becoming hegemons and all the mere consumers being reintroduced to serfdom.

My hypothesis is that there are no such neat historiographical bundles. That history, as Popper put it, does not run on rails. You can't simply project from the past to the future as if nothing has changed.

Whatever the latest trend in academia might be, it's clear that civilisations, and nation-states for that matter, really do act like living organisms in many ways, going through cycles of birth, youth, maturity, old age and death. Though it's always possible, of course, to take the analogy too far. Some seem to do it a lot more quickly than others, and as a general rule, empires have much shorter lifespans than nations. The Roman Empire was actually quite exceptional in its longevity, for we must also include the Byzantine Empire as its continuation in the east, which lasted until 1453. When people talk about its fall, what they're really talking about is its fall in the west, which took place in stages in the fifth century.

A feature of a nation or empire in decline is its inability or unwillingness to actually do anything that might halt it, even though it knows full well what's happening. There is also an increasing political instability, as different factions vie for power, oblivious to the damage they're causing by doing so. Another tendency is to tear down everything that was once held sacred. The Roman Empire in the fourth century, for example, destroyed almost the entire heritage of Classical Civilisation, replacing it with Christianity. Paganism was finally banned by Theodosius in 391, with all its temples and institutions (schools, charitable bodies, etc.) closed, and less than two decades later, Rome itself was sacked by the Visigoths, completely unable to muster the will, or the common feeling of purpose, to defend itself. Even St. Augustine recognised this, along with many others at the time, and wrote an entire treatise trying to explain it away.

The parallels to our own time are very clear, I think.

A nation is born stoic, and dies epicurean. At its cradle (to repeat a thoughtful adage) religion stands, and philosophy accompanies it to the grave. --Will Durant

Accept it. Adapt. Move on

The people with purpose evacuate and relocate but they don't vanish. Just follow them.

[Iwannaplato]

'm seeing the generic nostalgia story (now updated with the 90s as the golden age!)

I don't see a golden age.

I don't know what IWP proposes for the rise, but I would hazard a guess that it covers the change from feudal societies to mercantile ones

If you think I see that as a negative shift, I don't. If you think that was part of my theory of the deeper past, well, sure I see those trends back then, but I am not building from it. If that's a look at the future - given the oligarchical nature of, say, the US now, I like the analogy, but I am not proposing it is as some fix.

and the devlopment of new outward looking elites with expantionist trade desires to challenge the power of large landowners, ultimately wresting it from them by the invention of the modern nation state ... and then the story of the decline proceeds with that class hollowing out the economy until ultimately becoming hegemons and all the mere consumers being reintroduced to serfdom.

Serfs had specific roles. I don't know where this trend goes and as I said I see counter trends.

Where does the here's what I think perxon X is going to argue and what's wrong with it approach come from?

Why not respond to what a person says?

My hypothesis is that there are no such neat historiographical bundles. That history, as Popper put it, does not run on rails. You can't simply project from the past to the future as if nothing has changed.

I agree, so perhaps it's best to just respond to things written.

[FlashDangerpants]

What's your position or opinion on the matter, is the West ascending, stagnant, or declining?

I'd shift my response to the side of those. I'd say that the most important thing is that the utterly buffered class no longer needs nations or workers in the way they did before. So, apart from the nurturing of a culture war as distraction, they are removing the middle class, increasing everyone's bills and state of being surveilled, and destroying all supportive institutions. I get the sense they either they have to move to open dystopia and/or technology now makes this easier and/or this is partly an inevitable unfolding from sicknesses already in place.

Should the West ascend? Automatically, people want their own society/tribe/country/party to ascend, but why? Why is your group better than..."the East" for example? Why should "Westerners" rule-over the globe, the East?

The West and the East are looking more and more like each other in terms of elite rule.

Everything has become globalized/americanized/internationalized. Should people return to Nationalism, small concentrated power in the hands of a few countries, over many others? Are the American-Anglos still in charge, or has another Tribe taken over, taken the reigns? Who "deserves" to be in charge, if not the current "powers that be"?

Nation states were, at one time, as unnatural conglomerations as globalization patterns are. The faster, broader technology got, the more able power players were able to have larger conglomerations for their own benefit. So, ya, in nation states compared with the ultimate nation state of a global government are preferable, but not as the return of noble entities, but as lesser evils.

I wouldn't want to cause further offence by interpreting you in any way for the purposes of presenting a wider hypothesis. But I am interested in the underlying rationale of your tale of woe and gloom here.

Who might this elite "they" be and how did they come to be such a powerful "they", with the power to destroy ' supportinve institutions'. Does all of that follow some potential narrative path or do you see no historical sequence of repeating patterns involved. Some sort of rise and fall pattern perhaps?

If we have talk of "they" moving to "open dystopia" while further down the page the rest of us must dine at soup kitchens or bulk purchase gruel ingredients in 50lb bags, does that not relegate the bulk of the populace to the political status of a modern day serf?

[FlashDangerpants]

If you guys want to do some actual philosophy, you can review this thread and make note of the worldview stories that you are each susceptible to.

I'm seeing the generic nostalgia story (now updated with the 90s as the golden age!) when food just tasted better than it does now.
The "fall of Rome" thing that absolutely always has to happen in these threads
Malthusian bleak futurism of class warfare

Each of those things entails a set of assumptions about the correct ways to make the world intelligible (the stories, narratives or whatever).
The prevalent underlying assumptions that propel this thread includes a pernicious one, the rise and fall of civilisations can be wrapped up in a neat historiographical bundle (Maia should refer back to her history professor to find out if that's likely). What's so very bad about it is that everyone gets to fill in the blanks using whatever assumptions they like best.

Whatever the latest trend in academia might be, it's clear that civilisations, and nation-states for that matter, really do act like living organisms in many ways, going through cycles of birth, youth, maturity, old age and death. Though it's always possible, of course, to take the analogy too far. Some seem to do it a lot more quickly than others, and as a general rule, empires have much shorter lifespans than nations. The Roman Empire was actually quite exceptional in its longevity, for we must also include the Byzantine Empire as its continuation in the east, which lasted until 1453. When people talk about its fall, what they're really talking about is its fall in the west, which took place in stages in the fifth century.

I disagree. What is clear is that as humans we find it useful and comforting to construct a narrative surrounding anything that we happen to want to interpret. But also there are an unlimited variety of such stories available and we have a long observable tendency to pick and choose which story to tell and when for manipulative purposes. It's usually harmless, just a matter of overlooking some data we don't like and promoting some that we do. But it's there and in conversations like the one here about the Decline of the West, it is important to see that meta aspect of what is driving these tales.

This is doubly true when the OP has already done multiple rounds of anti-semitism and insists that black people are inherently violent.

A feature of a nation or empire in decline is its inability or unwillingness to actually do anything that might halt it, even though it knows full well what's happening. There is also an increasing political instability, as different factions vie for power, oblivious to the damage they're causing by doing so. Another tendency is to tear down everything that was once held sacred. The Roman Empire in the fourth century, for example, destroyed almost the entire heritage of Classical Civilisation, replacing it with Christianity. Paganism was finally banned by Theodosius in 391, with all its temples and institutions (schools, charitable bodies, etc.) closed, and less than two decades later, Rome itself was sacked by the Visigoths, completely unable to muster the will, or the common feeling of purpose, to defend itself. Even St. Augustine recognised this, along with many others at the time, and wrote an entire treatise trying to explain it away.

Augustine's City of God is an extreme example of exactly what I am referring to, it's a directional history which presumes a necessary outcome predicated on a historiographical assumption that history can be explained away by a specific conflict. In other words, it takes a simplified narrative, applies it first to the past, and then extrapolates a future.

The description of the Fall of Rome that you present there is ... one of the many takes that's out there. But very likely it's quite convenient for the story you would tell of the future risks for the west? I've seen lots of other explanations for the FoR and they frequently come along with a warning that the same is happening to us.

The parallels to our own time are very clear, I think.

Those parellels were quite probably the point.

[Iwannaplato]

I wouldn't want to cause further offence by interpreting you in any way for the purposes of presenting a wider hypothesis. But I am interested in the underlying rationale of your tale of woe and gloom here.

Thank you. I don't see this as something that I can demonstrate. And as I said I also see countertrends so I am not sure it is a tale of woe and gloom yet.

Who might this elite "they" be and how did they come to be such a powerful "they", with the power to destroy ' supportinve institutions'.

It depends a bit where we are in the world. And I'd have to do more research then I'm will to do right now to remind myself of things I'd find out before. I think one thing that shifted a lot of power was the financialization of corporations in general. I am probably not using the f word correctly, but here's what I mean. Corporations 40 years ago, say, tended to see themselves as product makers. Certainly they invested and made money off investments, but there has been a large shift in the amount of money they make from investment. This aligns them with Wall St. There was also much more freedom given to banks and other financial type institutions. And while this led to the 2008 recession, and was supposedly taken care of, it hasn't been. The same kinds of financial shenanigans are continuing. And the same 'we have to bail them out' situation has not been prevented or undercut. How did these things happen? They happen because, again focusing on the US, corporations and the finance industry are able to unduely affect elections, oversight, legislation and enforcement. I don't think we have a democracy (or a republic) anymore. The only people who can challenge a Wall st. approved choice between candidates (not choice of candidates, that's not on the table) is if some incredibly wealthy supposed outside like Trump comes in. Otherwise we are dealing with what the financial sector, which now includes corporations in a way it didn't decades ago. (I do not view the 80s as a golden age. Apart from it being a decade that started the neo helping these shifts in power take place, I just don't see golden ages). (A related pattern is the shift from corporations focusing on profits to focusing one stockholders/bonuses)

Much of this requires no 10 guys in a room conspiracy. We've got vulnerabilities in the system being attacked by people with pretty common motives.

Part and parcel with this in my being influenced by Chomsky's and the other guy's The Manufacturing of Consent. They made that argument whenever it was, back in 70s, I think, that corporate influence over media affected media's independence from corporations/finance, etc. The talked about the concentration of media control in a not very large number of corporations. Well, the situation since they wrote that book is much much worse. I also see much of this as creating storms in tea cups. Distracting. Though also suppressing information broadly. It can and will appear but at the fringes. Part of the point of their work was that you don't have to censor, just push things to the margins. You don't have to do what, then, the USSR and CCCP were doing.

Does all of that follow some potential narrative path or do you see no historical sequence of repeating patterns involved. Some sort of rise and fall pattern perhaps?

I don't have a cyclic theory of history. I mean, it may work like that. And I kind assume that lots of cycles are happening. That we must follow the Rise and Fall or Rome or something like that, no, I don't work from that kind of hypothesis. I don't rule it out, but I don't feel like I have the tools to apply, criticize or recognize such a thing. I'm not saying others must lack these abilities. I mean, perhaps a smart person, even me, if one invested a lot of time - and Jesus, I think I'd really have to look at economics in a way that both scares me and bores me in advance) - might be able to say this was likely. But I'm not there in any case.

If we have talk of "they" moving to "open dystopia" while further down the page the rest of us must dine at soup kitchens or bulk purchase gruel ingredients in 50lb bags, does that not relegate the bulk of the populace to the political status of a modern day serf?

As bad as serfs had it, they had a role. Of course Stalin, for example, thought he didn't need so many, and he eliminated vast swathes of them. But in general, they had their place and function. I see trends where people may not have the role of serfs. That they will move outside. Will they be the bottom rung, as serfs were, yes. And I say yes, meaning if those trends and not the countertrends win out. I don't see them becoming argicultural laborers. I'm sure you meant it more broadly and metphorically. So, at a metaphorical level, to some degree yes. But actually more expendable.

[Maia]

If you guys want to do some actual philosophy, you can review this thread and make note of the worldview stories that you are each susceptible to.

I'm seeing the generic nostalgia story (now updated with the 90s as the golden age!) when food just tasted better than it does now.
The "fall of Rome" thing that absolutely always has to happen in these threads
Malthusian bleak futurism of class warfare

Each of those things entails a set of assumptions about the correct ways to make the world intelligible (the stories, narratives or whatever).
The prevalent underlying assumptions that propel this thread includes a pernicious one, the rise and fall of civilisations can be wrapped up in a neat historiographical bundle (Maia should refer back to her history professor to find out if that's likely). What's so very bad about it is that everyone gets to fill in the blanks using whatever assumptions they like best.

Whatever the latest trend in academia might be, it's clear that civilisations, and nation-states for that matter, really do act like living organisms in many ways, going through cycles of birth, youth, maturity, old age and death. Though it's always possible, of course, to take the analogy too far. Some seem to do it a lot more quickly than others, and as a general rule, empires have much shorter lifespans than nations. The Roman Empire was actually quite exceptional in its longevity, for we must also include the Byzantine Empire as its continuation in the east, which lasted until 1453. When people talk about its fall, what they're really talking about is its fall in the west, which took place in stages in the fifth century.

I disagree. What is clear is that as humans we find it useful and comforting to construct a narrative surrounding anything that we happen to want to interpret. But also there are an unlimited variety of such stories available and we have a long observable tendency to pick and choose which story to tell and when for manipulative purposes. It's usually harmless, just a matter of overlooking some data we don't like and promoting some that we do. But it's there and in conversations like the one here about the Decline of the West, it is important to see that meta aspect of what is driving these tales.

This is doubly true when the OP has already done multiple rounds of anti-semitism and insists that black people are inherently violent.

A feature of a nation or empire in decline is its inability or unwillingness to actually do anything that might halt it, even though it knows full well what's happening. There is also an increasing political instability, as different factions vie for power, oblivious to the damage they're causing by doing so. Another tendency is to tear down everything that was once held sacred. The Roman Empire in the fourth century, for example, destroyed almost the entire heritage of Classical Civilisation, replacing it with Christianity. Paganism was finally banned by Theodosius in 391, with all its temples and institutions (schools, charitable bodies, etc.) closed, and less than two decades later, Rome itself was sacked by the Visigoths, completely unable to muster the will, or the common feeling of purpose, to defend itself. Even St. Augustine recognised this, along with many others at the time, and wrote an entire treatise trying to explain it away.

Augustine's City of God is an extreme example of exactly what I am referring to, it's a directional history which presumes a necessary outcome predicated on a historiographical assumption that history can be explained away by a specific conflict. In other words, it takes a simplified narrative, applies it first to the past, and then extrapolates a future.

The description of the Fall of Rome that you present there is ... one of the many takes that's out there. But very likely it's quite convenient for the story you would tell of the future risks for the west? I've seen lots of other explanations for the FoR and they frequently come along with a warning that the same is happening to us.

The parallels to our own time are very clear, I think.

Those parellels were quite probably the point.

I believe it was Churchill who said that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. In your scenario, it seems that we can't learn anything at all from history. I disagree, and I think that the more one studies it, the more one realises that human nature never changes.

[FlashDangerpants]

I believe it was Churchill who said that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. In your scenario, it seems that we can't learn anything at all from history. I disagree, and I think that the more one studies it, the more one realises that human nature never changes.

I'm sure Churchill quoted Santayana more than once. One of the mistakes of history would be trying to force it into convenient little narrative McNuggets that suit our purposes, which is a mistake you are making today. Directional histories are useful mainly for propaganda.

[Maia]

I believe it was Churchill who said that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. In your scenario, it seems that we can't learn anything at all from history. I disagree, and I think that the more one studies it, the more one realises that human nature never changes.

I'm sure Churchill quoted Santayana more than once. One of the mistakes of history would be trying to force it into convenient little narrative McNuggets that suit our purposes, which is a mistake you are making today. Directional histories are useful mainly for propaganda.

On the contrary, I think the mistake, as apparently Burke pointed out even before Santayana, is precisely the modern trend to trash any message that the past might have for us. An obvious symptom of the very collapse I was referring to.

[promethean75]

by 'directional narratives' i would surmise that F.D. Pants means something like this.

if you critique economy and point out all the foibles and shortcomings of the free market, you're a lazy communist satanic jew feminist pleb that wants everything for free... and if you champion liberal ideas and freedom of enterprise etc., you're a selfish egotistic misanthropistic wage slave driver that doesn't want anyone to get an abortion or stop carrying guns or learning creationism in school or driving electric cars.

you see that whatever side you're on, you're pushing a historical narrative that condemns the forces-that-be or some period over history that was disasterous in ways x and y and therefore very bad.... not something we'd want to be condemned to repeat, etc.

so anytime somebody says 'learn from history', nine times out of ten they're fixin to point out all the shit they think is bad about period x and y and what they think is responsible for it. enter the narrative.

[promethean75]

Plus consider althuser's concept of over-determination. Let's say u can and do point out that the Holocaust wuz horrible. Okay, but what wuz the cause of the Holocaust? Which part is to blame; the nationalism, the fascism, the corporatism, the pseudo-science, the mythology, the hyper inflation, etc.

Each of these alone could function independently of the others and wouldn't necessarily result in a Holocaust. But when we say that history wuz very bad, we glaze over an enormous range of causes and condemn them all.