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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   29309 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 4, 2024

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We owe so much of modern way of living to enlightenment ideas.

Yes, and (outside of technology), that's a bad thing.

We owe Western Civilization to its ideas.

Hard disagree. To quote Scott's "How the West Was Won":

I worry that Caplan is eliding the important summoner/demon distinction. This is an easy distinction to miss, since demons often kill their summoners and wear their skin. But in this case, he’s become hopelessly confused without it.

I am pretty sure there was, at one point, such a thing as western civilization. I think it included things like dancing around maypoles and copying Latin manuscripts. At some point Thor might have been involved. That civilization is dead. It summoned an alien entity from beyond the void which devoured its summoner and is proceeding to eat the rest of the world.

"Western Civilization" is Greek philosophy meeting Abrahamic theology. It is what used to be called "Christendom." The "Enlightenment" is what's killing it (I don't think it's quite as dead as Scott believes).

Because when it kills the host then we are back in the middleages with how people are governed

I'm a monarchist, and a supporter of hereditary aristocracy. "Middle ages government with modern technology" is pretty much my entire goal and political project. While most Americans' visions of the future seem shaped by (some subset of) Star Trek (with some going further to Banks' "Culture"), I'm sitting off in the distance with Battletech, 40k, Dune, Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Crest of the Stars, and so on.

Well if we are ignoring the superficial political alignments you are essentially getting that end result. Feodalism is the end goal of todays elite when they travel to Davos for the WEF summit. The the mainstream wokism only purpose is to subjugate the plebs allow the elites to become rentseekers. To discuss the finer points enlightenment has given or not given the modern world is pointless since the "inferential distance" is so big between us.

Well if we are ignoring the superficial political alignments you are essentially getting that end result.

Except that what you call "superficial political alignments" is the survival of what I consider "my people." My problem is that today's elites are both lousy "aristocrats" and, more importantly, hostile to the continued existence of my tribe. Hence, the need for a real aristocracy — a warrior elite, as all real aristocratic classes have been at their start — to kill the pretenders and take power.

(Edit: removed bits that were from wrong thread)

Well the modern aristocracy keeps "their people" on top by suggesting that Asians are "white adjacent" when applying to universities and making BIPOC the benchmark for affirmative admission, miseducates the black youth by saying that math requiring correct answers is racist(so they can't succeed when they get older) and so on. If you look closely by the elites woke policy outcomes and if they don't benefit you are not part of the elite. You'll end up paying rent like the rest. Sure violent uprising could happen but chances that you end up being warrior elite from behind they keyboard are slim.

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