Decline of the West???

How should society be organised, if at all?

Moderators: AMod, iMod

popeye1945
Posts: 2130
Joined: Sun Sep 12, 2021 2:12 am

Re: Decline of the West???

Post by popeye1945 »

BRICS!
Maia
Posts: 800
Joined: Thu Aug 25, 2022 8:11 am
Location: UK

Re: Decline of the West???

Post by Maia »

Iwannaplato wrote: Wed Jun 07, 2023 7:11 pm
Maia wrote: Wed Jun 07, 2023 6:22 pm But as for the rest, yes, I mostly agree. Our democratic institutions originated in Germanic folk assemblies and owe little or nothing to Ancient Greek examples, which had long since withered away under Roman rule.
Actually a lot of the ideas in the Enlightenment were influenced by ideas coming out of indigenous 'americans'. And many influential writers mentioned this, but it was dismissed. I mean, how could civilization have been influenced by barbaric pagans. But, in fact, the barbaric indigenous peoples of the americas looked at leadership very differently - you got to be a leader, in many different NA nations through the trust and power given to you by the people and only as long as that lasted. NAs found Europeans extremely weak speakers because they were used to political meetings where all adult members of the tribes could speak and developed skills as speakers. And this can be found in the writings of many Europeans at the time. They agreed with the NAs, they just saw their abilities to speak and individualism and distrust of permanent authority as problematic. But other thinkers, reading these accounts were inspired by these ideas and this spread ideas of nascent democracy and individualism widely through Europe.

A truly wonderful book on this subject is.

https://www.amazon.com/Dawn-Everything- ... 0374157359
I've heard of that idea, in particular, with relation to the Iroquois Confederacy, which is said to have influenced the federal structure of the USA. This might well be the case, as I don't know of any good European precedents for the idea. Possibly the Holy Roman Empire, at a push, but this was a chaotic mess, literally on its last legs at the end of the 18th century.
Maia
Posts: 800
Joined: Thu Aug 25, 2022 8:11 am
Location: UK

Re: Decline of the West???

Post by Maia »

Sculptor wrote: Wed Jun 07, 2023 8:04 pm
Maia wrote: Wed Jun 07, 2023 6:22 pm
Sculptor wrote: Wed Jun 07, 2023 5:28 pm
I think this sub thread is dead.
The idea that "Western civilization" originated with the Greeks is nothing more than a historical meta-narritive. A very modern idea. You could as easily argue that the majority of cultural influences were Jewish, from the Old Testament. And that had a massive negative effect on the pre-christian institutions of assembly
There is not even a continuous thread back to ancient Greece.
There was a complete hiatus, whilst civilization in the West continued without any reference to Greece.
And when the Renaissance happened it, the interest was in Etruscan art, none even realized that the statues of Venus atc, and even come from Greece.
Political institutions of European countries own nothing to Greece, since they emerged from the institutions of the Germanic tribes in France and England, and all too obviously in Germany. Vestiges of early democratic leanings can still be found in Iceland where they still have the Althing. Christianity brought the worst type of Kingship that crushed those early Germanic natural democracies, and the Greek version was only discovered from the Arabs who had preserved the ancient scholarship.
Our culture is still Germanic
Christianity is, itself, a Greek religion in origin. I
No.
Just because it was written down in Greek does not make it Greek. As well as being half Jewish from the Old Testament it has a wide range of influences.

It's cobbled together from a dozen influences, and our version of it is full of Pagan bollocks.

It may well have a Jewish veneer, but every one of its earliest leaders was either Greek or Greek-speaking, and its foundational texts are written in Greek. Palestine had been part of the Hellenistic world for nearly four centuries when Christianity emerged, as one of many mystery cults in the ancient world. Another such mystery cult, that of Mithras, took Persian mythology as its symbolic structure, even though it too was Greek in origin. Similarly, Christianity took Jewish mythology as its foundational structure, but its Pagan Greek origins are obvious. For example, the eating the body and drinking the blood of their slain and risen god-man, even in symbolic form,
You are just contradicting yourself.
would have been the most appalling kind of blasphemy to Jews, yet similar rites crop up in the other mystery cults, too. It may seem odd that a Greek cult would ransack the mythologies of other cultures to use as symbolism, but it's no different to what the Freemasons did in the 18th century and the Wiccans did in the 20th century, and for the same reasons too, to add an air of spurious longevity and exoticism to what they were creating. So there is indeed a continuous thread back to Ancient Greece, provided by the Christian Church itself. But it's not true to say either that Classical heritage was forgotten in Dark Age Western Europe. Scholars such as Bede were fully aware of it.
What was Bede aware of?

But as for the rest, yes, I mostly agree. Our democratic institutions originated in Germanic folk assemblies and owe little or nothing to Ancient Greek examples, which had long since withered away under Roman rule.
Wrong again.
Although there was an imperial authority, which incidentally was centered in Germany in the late empire, there were still local-based power structures that we know very little about since the only stuff written was about the Senate in Rome.
But in England and France vestiges of Rome were swept away and Germanic power relations replaced control from Rome.

It's pointless to say any thing has a single origin. Nothing does.
The imperial authority was based in Constantinople at the time, with a junior partner in Italy. There was a regional authority in Trier, which is probably what you were referring to.

I didn't say that Christianity had a single origin. I said it was put together by Greeks, using Jewish mythology as its symbolic structure but incorporating Pagan elements from Greek mystery cults.
popeye1945
Posts: 2130
Joined: Sun Sep 12, 2021 2:12 am

Re: Decline of the West???

Post by popeye1945 »

Denial is the norm for the decline of empires. America is in decline and is behaving very irrationally, and just perhaps she will take us all down with her.
Post Reply