Is western civilization going to decline

[waechter418]

or collapse ?
In the beginning of the twentieth century Oswald Spengler predicted “The decline of the Occident”.
Hundred years later Oreskes predicted “The collapse of western civilisation”.
Spenglers work was mostly based on the histories of past civilisations, while Oreskes study bases on contemporary environmental, political, social, scientific etc data.
Despite its traditional philosophical approach, the Decline caused for decades quite a bit upheaval, whereas the Collapse gets, despite its terminal vista, barely any reactions. Is it because Hollywood made the collapse familiar, or because of a growing collective awareness that Western civilisation has already past its zenith, and its future is thus greeted with indifference, and even resignation.
Of course, all civilisations do eventually disappear, usually in less than a thousand years. India and China have been around for an exceptional long time, but will most probably disappear with the Western civilisation, since they are subjected to its social, economical, cultural, technological, scientific, etc, globalisation.
But it is not only invasions that make a civilisation disappear, inner corruption and suicide usually play important roles as well. In the Occident latter seems to become dominant, considering the determination with which its citizens attack, rape, plunder & poison the organism – also called Mother Nature, Gaia, Pachamama - which does bear and feed them.
It certainly might be an explanation for the large economical and labour efforts they spend on the production of weaponry which is able to wipe out all mankind.

[Socrates]

Until reading Land, I used to roll my eyes at this idea of occidental decline, but I think there is something to it now.

Capitalism requires an opposition, otherwise it's too nihilistic. In regards to Fisher, watch 'Sapphire and Steel' on YouTube.

[atreestump]

I like the bit about Hollywood, movies can have a huge impact on what we think is real.

There do seem to be 'death throes' occurring, cluster bombs of contraction and condradiction - Accelerationism is a kind of surrender rather than a pathetic fatalism in a way.
[hr]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JX-HfNIN-pc

[waechter418]

A parable:

On our flight to nowhere, we notice that our civilisation vehicle is having serious problems.
We may play blind, deaf & dumb (or accelerists) and crash - or try to land it, with the help of common sense, as smooth as possible.
In both cases the flight of western civilisation will have ended.
But in latter case remains the possibility to investigate the abandoned vehicle, and to salvage parts that might be useful (like koan, internet, antibiotics, blues…) for generations (civilisations) to come.

[atreestump]

I am not against playfully imagining possible decivilized worlds. But for such imaginings to be truly playful and to have experimental potential, they cannot be models worked out from abstracted conceptions of either past or future societies. In fact, in my opinion, it is best to leave the concept of “society” itself behind, and rather think in terms of perpetually changing, interweaving relationships between unique, desiring individuals. That said, we can only play and experiment now, where our desire for the apparently “impossible” meets the reality that surrounds us. If civilization were to be dismantled in our lifetime, we would not confront a world of lush forests and plains and healthy deserts teeming with an abundance of wildlife. We would instead confront a world full of the detritus of civilization — abandoned buildings, tools, scrap, etc., etc.[2] Imaginations that are not chained either to realism or to a primitivist moral ideology could find many ways to use, explore and play with all of this — the possibilities are nearly infinite.

[waechter418]

I am not against playfully imagining possible decivilized worlds. But for such imaginings to be truly playful and to have experimental potential, they cannot be models worked out from abstracted conceptions of either past or future societies. In fact, in my opinion, it is best to leave the concept of “society” itself behind, and rather think in terms of perpetually changing, interweaving relationships between unique, desiring individuals. That said, we can only play and experiment now, where our desire for the apparently “impossible” meets the reality that surrounds us. If civilization were to be dismantled in our lifetime, we would not confront a world of lush forests and plains and healthy deserts teeming with an abundance of wildlife. We would instead confront a world full of the detritus of civilization — abandoned buildings, tools, scrap, etc., etc.[2] Imaginations that are not chained either to realism or to a primitivist moral ideology could find many ways to use, explore and play with all of this — the possibilities are nearly infinite.



YES ! and once more YES !

[atreestump]

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/category/author/wolfi-landstreicher