Oswald Spengler – The Burning Platform

Guest Post by The Zman

Social cycle theory argues that stages of civilization and history generally repeat themselves in cycles. The most famous explanation of this is Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West, where he compared human civilization to an organism. There is the birth phase where society comes into being. An adult phase where is fully formed and reaches its potential and then the decline of old age and eventually death. Another way of stating it is that human civilization has seasons, spring through winter.

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This way of thinking about the West has been popular with various right-wing movements ever since, as it generally fits the more realistic worldview of the Right. The Left, in contrast, has always embraced the idea that human civilization evolves toward some idealized point of existence. Progressives chose their label, because they are not only in favor of progress, but they believe it is inevitable. They are on the right side of history, because unlike their enemies, they are not standing in the way of progress.

Continue reading “Beyond Archeofuturism”

Submitted by Hardscrabble Farmer

I stumbled upon Spengler during a period of deep introspection. The simple truths he was able to uncover in his 1918 publication The Decline of the West helped me to understand the meat-history of human cultures and how not to take everything personally. In a nutshell he pre-established the basis for 4th Turning theory and the concept of seasonality in human social orders. Today I stumbled across a very insightful piece that helps to break it down for the common man.

Via Return of Kings

How A German Historian Predicted The Decline Of Western Civilization 100 Years Ago

Is Western Civilization in Decline? I think nearly everyone in the manosphere would agree that it is.

There is a lot of discussion these days about America and the other nations comprising Western Civilization being in decline, and there is certainly a lot of evidence to support this claim. Whether it be dying populations among the Caucasian races that created the civilization, unchecked immigration rapidly replacing native populations in Europe and the United States, evidence that America is currently and has been behaving as an imperialistic empire but is now slowly losing its power around the world, a culture that seems to completely disregard the importance of family, the building block of civilization, or a loss of religiousness and sense of purpose, signs that something is wrong are everywhere.

You may be surprised to learn that many of the things that have been happening to Western Civilization were written down in a predictive model of history written by German historian and philosopher Oswald Spengler nearly 100 years ago.

Oswald Spengler, Prophet of Western Decline

That said, Spengler has his critics, as do many misunderstood geniuses. Right or wrong, most of the attacks on his civilization model are made by those who cannot see the forest for the trees. Because of this, his genius work has largely gone unrecognized in modern times. As with many truths, “… in every culture and society there are facts which tend to be suppressed collectively, because of the social and psychological costs of not doing so,” as stated by researcher Peter Dale Scott. A lot of people seem to be turned off by a predictive model of history since the psychological cost of admitting that humans are subject to the same cycles in nature as other animals is quite high.

Whether you agree with his ideas or not, they’re intellectually fascinating, and worth a look. This article only scratches the surface of Spengler’s epic civilization model.