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Post by glamhoth on Jan 9, 2017 16:09:03 GMT -5
I don't know about God speaking directly to man, it seems like a christian concept. First of all, it presupposes a "God" with capital "G". Pagan gods are not entities withdrawn from reality, who descend from heaven and communicate with man through human language, like the god of the jews. They are symbols that represent what is eternal in nature and man, whatever they have to say you can grasp through intuition, it doesn't require words, and even less a holy book full of words. Mircea Eliade was a historian of religion, he wrote about countless subjects. I'm not very familiar with his work, but what I was able to read seemed very insightful.
The psychological framework was very different, yes, but that doesn't mean there's no going back. Mankind has been around for hundreds of thousands of years, most of Europe still lived in a "state of nature" until a few centuries ago. Modernity is a fairly recent phenomenon, and it's destined to go away, because modern life is unsustainable. Whatever it did to man, it can be undone. And it will. Not all can be saved, but not all is lost...
That's the problem with Tolkien, he was also a defeatist. He gave up life in Middle-Earth, he didn't care for it. Like his elves, all he wanted was to take a ship to Valinor and leave it all behind for the promise of an after-life. As a christian, he failed to understand that eternity does not lie in a dot at the end of the line, but permeates all the dots of the circle. Eternity is right here, right now.
There's nowhere else to go, every step ahead only leads you closer to the source. The archetypes, the mythic symbols, they don't go away, we're always led back to them. That's why we're ultimately drawn to fantasy and mythology and the same old symbols and narratives that are around since the dawn of time. There's nowhere else to go...
The "spiritual revolution that is all-encompassing" will come when we (re)acquire consciousness of all that, and relearn the primordial language of the mythic symbols and the secrets it keeps. Philosophy is the key to this revolution --not modern academic philosophy, but philosophy in its primordial sense. The early Greek philosophers were the sorcerers of their era, we're the sorcerers of ours. Most people won't be capable of breaking the chains, their minds are already lost, turned to dust. We're looking for those who are still spiritually and intellectually sound enough to be able to follow.
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Post by thekeeper on Jan 10, 2017 13:32:55 GMT -5
The psychological framework was very different, yes, but that doesn't mean there's no going back. Mankind has been around for hundreds of thousands of years, most of Europe still lived in a "state of nature" until a few centuries ago. Modernity is a fairly recent phenomenon, and it's destined to go away, because modern life is unsustainable. Whatever it did to man, it can be undone. And it will. Not all can be saved, but not all is lost... That's the problem with Tolkien, he was also a defeatist. He gave up life in Middle-Earth, he didn't care for it. Like his elves, all he wanted was to take a ship to Valinor and leave it all behind for the promise of an after-life. As a christian, he failed to understand that eternity does not lie in a dot at the end of the line, but permeates all the dots of the circle. Eternity is right here, right now. There's nowhere else to go, every step ahead only leads you closer to the source. The archetypes, the mythic symbols, they don't go away, we're always led back to them. That's why we're ultimately drawn to fantasy and mythology and the same old symbols and narratives that are around since the dawn of time. There's nowhere else to go... I feel quite the opposite. 'Going back' is more or less impossible in terms of tradition and any kind ancient hyperreal transcendental spiritualism (daresay Traditionalism); the acceleration and exponential growth of technology (and thus capital) will perpetuate itself infinitely, with less need for tradition. The negatives of 'modernity' are more or less symptomatic of the inability to acclimate, and there's a weird dichotomy of remedies which are often political, but the nature of techno-capital acceleration is fairly cold to the metaphysical simplicity of primordial spirituality, so the trajectory is post-political. There's a bit of room for the esoteric, but it requires a symbiosis with modernity. The primordial spirituality of the ancient Pagan religions is more along the lines of hyperreality, the blurring of reality with mythos, which is ultimately unsustainable, considering. This was even apparent in ancient Christianity as early Gnostics were deemed heretical since they had a more symbolic interpretation of the life of Christ, and according to Nag Hammadi and apocrypha, this was more his original point. Westernization overtook Paganism, supplanting Catholicism; even in the East, westernization began it's mutations. Spiritual mutation is pretty interesting, but now it's politically mirrored and often boring. Tolkien's 'black pill' was escapist, maybe even fatalist, but it's a common take on post-modernism and apocalypse: "screw it, I'm sailing away". I'm not a trad guy by any means, but this is essentially what Evola spoke of in Ride the Tiger in terms of Kali Yuga and fatalist modernity (but he was kind of being a baby). Collapse is quite possible and likely, but backstepping is impossible. Collapse propels even further, resetting to whatever is efficient while still buckled into tech advancement. Collapse is more orbital, slinging around in an oval with increases and decreases in speed as it narrows and widens. Reversion is unstable, as are band-aids. Nature still reigns void of romance, nature as in 'cold survival' (eventually post-eco). Fissures are pretty noticeable, as we've witnessed in the past few years. Insert whatever joke about Lovecraftian techno-capital lesbian vampire future here. I suppose my interest in fantasy is probably more voyeuristic than it is escapist, interested in the concepts than needing it more myself. DS is very important to the artists, including myself, which is apparent in it's isolated lonely nature. DS is quite reminiscent of what you say about 'nowhere else to go', it's a familiar struggle. I like that DS does not attempt to remedy outside of itself, acting more as the expression of dark ancient impossibility. I especially appreciate it's melding of the medieval and fantastical with archaic electronics (I usually like the lo-fi stuff more), apt constrast. DS is rife with the genuine.
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Post by andrewwerdna on Jan 12, 2017 9:32:17 GMT -5
Great post, Keeper. Speaking on dungeon synth/Tolkien being defeatist, "screw it, I'm sailing away," to my mind that's the whole idea, without which I'm not sure it could work. The statement at the beginning of the Reisene Til Grotter Og Ødemarker video I think says a lot.
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Post by cjb93 on Jan 12, 2017 15:22:52 GMT -5
One advantage of the pure escapism prevalent in present-day dungeon synth is that the absence of your ideology of choice also means you don't have to deal with the people you hate. At least not in their capacity as political/ideological enemies. There may be no white nationalist dungeon synth (especially not with Winter Solace on sabbatical), but there is also no green feminist socialist dungeon synth. Maybe you can't find a song calling for resistance against "Drumpf" or bands feeling the Bern, but there will also be no God-Emperor Trump tributes mocking the snow-flakes. The specific nature of the escapism probably makes it crypto-Right, though, at least in a broad, diffuse sense. After all, dungeon synth is centered around individual(ist) male creativity, and the worlds into which it offers portals are usually very much traditional/mythical in structure and values - medieval, pagan or fantasy. Furthermore I think it's a safe bet that the number of non-white minorities in the ranks of dungeon synths artists and fans is substantially lower than that in WW2 Wehrmacht. Which is fine, I'm just rambling here, and I'm also well aware that fantasy escapism is a trait very popular among a huge array of more Left wing oriented dudes and gals as well. I would add that the idea that transcendent divinity is a Christian notion, and opposed to some symbolical idea of deity where gods "represent" natural phenomena or psychological states is an idea that really lacks all foundation, at least historically. In science, as well as in various religious traditions.
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Post by glamhoth on Jan 13, 2017 8:18:58 GMT -5
I feel quite the opposite. 'Going back' is more or less impossible in terms of tradition and any kind ancient hyperreal transcendental spiritualism (daresay Traditionalism); the acceleration and exponential growth of technology (and thus capital) will perpetuate itself infinitely, with less need for tradition. The negatives of 'modernity' are more or less symptomatic of the inability to acclimate, and there's a weird dichotomy of remedies which are often political, but the nature of techno-capital acceleration is fairly cold to the metaphysical simplicity of primordial spirituality, so the trajectory is post-political. There's a bit of room for the esoteric, but it requires a symbiosis with modernity. The primordial spirituality of the ancient Pagan religions is more along the lines of hyperreality, the blurring of reality with mythos, which is ultimately unsustainable, considering. This was even apparent in ancient Christianity as early Gnostics were deemed heretical since they had a more symbolic interpretation of the life of Christ, and according to Nag Hammadi and apocrypha, this was more his original point. Westernization overtook Paganism, supplanting Catholicism; even in the East, westernization began it's mutations. Spiritual mutation is pretty interesting, but now it's politically mirrored and often boring. Tolkien's 'black pill' was escapist, maybe even fatalist, but it's a common take on post-modernism and apocalypse: "screw it, I'm sailing away". I'm not a trad guy by any means, but this is essentially what Evola spoke of in Ride the Tiger in terms of Kali Yuga and fatalist modernity (but he was kind of being a baby). Collapse is quite possible and likely, but backstepping is impossible. Collapse propels even further, resetting to whatever is efficient while still buckled into tech advancement. Collapse is more orbital, slinging around in an oval with increases and decreases in speed as it narrows and widens. Reversion is unstable, as are band-aids. Nature still reigns void of romance, nature as in 'cold survival' (eventually post-eco). Fissures are pretty noticeable, as we've witnessed in the past few years. Insert whatever joke about Lovecraftian techno-capital lesbian vampire future here. I suppose my interest in fantasy is probably more voyeuristic than it is escapist, interested in the concepts than needing it more myself. DS is very important to the artists, including myself, which is apparent in it's isolated lonely nature. DS is quite reminiscent of what you say about 'nowhere else to go', it's a familiar struggle. I like that DS does not attempt to remedy outside of itself, acting more as the expression of dark ancient impossibility. I especially appreciate it's melding of the medieval and fantastical with archaic electronics (I usually like the lo-fi stuff more), apt constrast. DS is rife with the genuine. "Techno-capital acceleration" is only viable for a short period of time, you can only go as fast. Resources are not endless, you can‘t accelerate infinitely without infinite fuel to burn. The collapse is inevitable. When the fuel is over it will be like a plane crash, you can attempt an emergency landing, but it won't be smooth. You think too much in linear terms. There's no "reversion", no "going back", and no room ahead to be "propelled even further". Such notions are exclusively modern. Primordial spirituality is not at all a "blurring of reality with mythos". Again, that's a modern perspective -- a modern concept of reality and a modern concept of mythos. You might as well say that modern (absence of) spirituality is a blurring of reality with an artificial linear perspective. Primordial spirituality is something close to science, but the knowledge is expressed in a more intuitive, primordial language. The language of the the „spirit“ you may say. Christianity imposed god as an intangible outer reality. Modern science, as the heir of this perspective, takes reality for the reality in flux exclusively. That’s why it‘s an endless process, it will never produce any definitive answers. The myth, on the other hand, allows us to touch what lies beyond the flux. Mythic narratives are like doorways to the eternal. They are "transcendental". That's why we are hopelessly attracted to it, no amount of "techno-capital acceleration" can divert us from it. It can be Tolkien’s syncretic mythopoeia or even an extremely dumbed down hollywood version of it, such as Star Wars. People are attracted to it like moths to the flame, even if they can’t tell why, they are stuck in a mode of being that reduces all symbolic content to non-reality. And so they are happy to look through the keyhole, and they believe that’s the sole purpose for the gate to be there. They can’t find the keys because they aren’t even looking...
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Post by kuraldgalain on Jan 13, 2017 9:59:42 GMT -5
One advantage of the pure escapism prevalent in present-day dungeon synth is that the absence of your ideology of choice also means you don't have to deal with the people you hate. At least not in their capacity as political/ideological enemies. There may be no white nationalist dungeon synth (especially not with Winter Solace on sabbatical), but there is also no green feminist socialist dungeon synth. Maybe you can't find a song calling for resistance against "Drumpf" or bands feeling the Bern, but there will also be no God-Emperor Trump tributes mocking the snow-flakes. The specific nature of the escapism probably makes it crypto-Right, though, at least in a broad, diffuse sense. After all, dungeon synth is centered around individual(ist) male creativity, and the worlds into which it offers portals are usually very much traditional/mythical in structure and values - medieval, pagan or fantasy. Furthermore I think it's a safe bet that the number of non-white minorities in the ranks of dungeon synths artists and fans is substantially lower than that in WW2 Wehrmacht. Which is fine, I'm just rambling here, and I'm also well aware that fantasy escapism is a trait very popular among a huge array of more Left wing oriented dudes and gals as well. I would add that the idea that transcendent divinity is a Christian notion, and opposed to some symbolical idea of deity where gods "represent" natural phenomena or psychological states is an idea that really lacks all foundation, at least historically. In science, as well as in various religious traditions. The number of minorities in dungeon synth is higher than you'd think. I'm one myself. There are definitely minorities in the metal scene who have come over to DS, and I think that the people being brought in by metal music are going to be the main source for minority presence in DS. Also keep in mind that one of the most popular bands bringing people from metal into DS is all about Malazan, and Malazan is left-leaning and racially diverse enough to actively repel more right-leaning people. There's definitely the right-leaning aspect of traditional culture, but I think that's at most half as influential as us being a bunch of nerds. The male part is really only because DS sprang out of two extremely male-dominated areas (metal and fantasy), and I don't think that's part of the genre's ideology or political leaning or anything. To be honest, I think DS falls in the political category of N/A. There's not much politics there beyond the residual stuff from black metal IMO, and even that's going away gradually.
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Post by glamhoth on Jan 13, 2017 10:31:05 GMT -5
I will try to clarify what I mean...
If you look at animals in nature, they won't change their ways unless they have to. Each generation follows in the exact same footsteps of the previous, and if the balance is left undisturbed, this goes on and on. Of course, there will be longer and colder winters, climate changes, perhaps droughts, or, if you keep it going long enough, an ice age that will last centuries. The fate of each generation and each individual will be determined by these random disturbances, but if you adjust your perspective and look at the big picture, that's not really important. Individuals and even entire generations are just links in a long chain, that goes so far back (and also ahead) that it touches eternity.
With us humans things were similar, but we modern humans lost sight of the bigger picture. The chain was broken and every link became an end in itself. There's no longer any sense of continuity, there's no longer any sense of awe towards anything that is much older and greater than the disengaged link. The liberalism of our age establishes the individual human being as alpha and omega. Nothing matters besides the ego.
Going back to Tolkien, his perspective can shed some light upon the issue: Our relationship to "reality" is broken, it's unhealthy, sick. As Tolkien noted, we are synthetic men, uprooted. That we can no longer see the relation between the symbolic content (nymphs, dryads etc, what we can "fantasy") and reality, is not that we "evolved" and were able to leave such primitive notions. What happened is that we lost our way, and the way we're heading leads to the abyss, both physical and spiritual.
I don't expect to convince enough people and change the world or anything like that. Even people who care for fantasy and mythology and seek meaning don't seem to get any of that. They just don't care. We are uprooted, and they are ok with that. A change would have to start with planting new seeds. It would take generations, however, for roots to grow deep and strong, and people are too selfish and egocentric to spend any time and energy on something only future generations will be able to benefit from. They will rather tear down all the roots left for their own hedonistic comfort and personal fortune, and leave the future generations with nothing but a bleak wasteland.
Sooner or later, however, the time will come when everything will come crumbling down, and there will be no other option but to start planting seeds. It will be a matter of survival. Hopefully the lesson will be learnt by then. We should educate ourselves and other to ensure that. I'm not sure music can be an effective tool at this point. People are just too attached to the idea of music as mere entertainment, whenever someone tries to expand the concept further they get all uncomfortable and defensive. It's pointless.
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Post by thekeeper on Jan 13, 2017 10:47:11 GMT -5
"Techno-capital acceleration" is only viable for a short period of time, you can only go as fast. Resources are not endless, you can‘t accelerate infinitely without infinite fuel to burn. The collapse is inevitable. When the fuel is over it will be like a plane crash, you can attempt an emergency landing, but it won't be smooth. You think too much in linear terms. There's no "reversion", no "going back", and no room ahead to be "propelled even further". Such notions are exclusively modern. Primordial spirituality is not at all a "blurring of reality with mythos". Again, that's a modern perspective -- a modern concept of reality and a modern concept of mythos. You might as well say that modern (absence of) spirituality is a blurring of reality with an artificial linear perspective. Primordial spirituality is something close to science, but the knowledge is expressed in a more intuitive, primordial language. The language of the the „spirit“ you may say. Christianity imposed god as an intangible outer reality. Modern science, as the heir of this perspective, takes reality for the reality in flux exclusively. That’s why it‘s an endless process, it will never produce any definitive answers. The myth, on the other hand, allows us to touch what lies beyond the flux. Mythic narratives are like doorways to the eternal. They are "transcendental". That's why we are hopelessly attracted to it, no amount of "techno-capital acceleration" can divert us from it. It can be Tolkien’s syncretic mythopoeia or even an extremely dumbed down hollywood version of it, such as Star Wars. People are attracted to it like moths to the flame, even if they can’t tell why, they are stuck in a mode of being that reduces all symbolic content to non-reality. And so they are happy to look through the keyhole, and they believe that’s the sole purpose for the gate to be there. They can’t find the keys because they aren’t even looking... We have the potential to go much faster (I bet neo-China will eventually surpass the US). As technological acceleration builds on itself, it allows more each time the bar is raised. Once AI is reached and is capable of advancing itself, I think humans would be pretty inefficient (efficiency being a tech-virtue). Transhumanism could have a heyday but I don't really see how long that could last. Cyborgian culture will likely be a brief period historically, but I could be wrong, government intervention into this realm will probably be wild until it dissolves (nano-states more likely than ultra-states). You can essentially apply Gaia Theory to capital. There's always a slingback to capital to terms of efficiency. Suppression of capital acceleration results in a fissure and then a burst of built up kinetic energy (neo-China). The bio-imperative of life can be applied to capital, but since this rests on an slope of the uncanny valley, and since a step in it's logical acceleration is singularity (survival imperative aided by technology to the point of artificial humanity), what lies beyond is the stuff of abstract horror. We're only working with what resources we're currently allowed to work with. Even when oil runs out (if we get to the point where it's just gone), we still have a stupendous amount of coal; even then, this is assuming we don't advance energy and continue to refrain for nuclear. Collapse calls for a bolstering and exponentially innovative explosion (technocapital gaia theory initialized). I suppose this is linear in the sense that it keeps building on itself, but I would say spiritual systems in general, not just pure 'primordial spirituality', are much more hyperreal than the nature of capital. I would definitely say that primordial spirituality is a blurring of reality with mythos. Ancient pagan religions with high symbolic myth exist within the realms of themselves. The myth explains reality, the reality explains the myth. Truly 'primordial', pre-interpretation, is the basis of myth, correct? Life itself, esoteric and exoteric, etc. I suppose this is inarguable, and explains the penchant people have for myth since myth is a phenomenon of transcendental explication, and therefore a natural attraction device. But how would myth touch the transcendental if you say Christianity cannot? Wouldn't Christianity be even more transcendental since it has it's focus on both exteriority (transcendental God as all, all is God), combined with mystic interiority (esotericism, monasticism)? I suppose you could say myth touches the transcendental through proxy, myth as a device. Christianity has the problem of the Cloud of Unknowing, a constant striving (Desert Fathers, asceticism) of the transcendence from human limits to the All. which is the whole symbol of the crucifixion. "Death to the World", as the orthodox would say. Christianity has a lot more potential but the hyperreality of it has grown inefficient via Protestantism, and I guess Catholicism, and way back to persecution and suppression of Gnostics. Perhaps we could define this phenomenon as two different types of transcendence? 1.) Transcendental Naturalism - The primordial spirituality invoked through myth, a touching of transcendence through proxy device, but does not escape the boundaries of humanity. 2.) Transcendental Fatalism - The attempt to transcend human boundaries and into pure spirituality though the negation of Naturalism And perhaps a third could be an Eastern take on transcendental fatalism by putting it more into a cyclical expression than a linear one resulting in death as the absolute, with a little more Naturalism too. I think we're in agreement that interest in mythic symbols, stories, figures, archetypes, etc is a timeless anthropic phenomenon since we cannot help but be alive and dealing with 'spirit' (however you wish to define it). Pretty sure we're in disagreement on the trajectory of humanity. Weird/fun article about trajectory. Getting back to DS and Tolkien, I think both flirt with both types of transcendentalism. Tolkien's "Death to the World"-ness is apparent in high fantasy combined with Naturalism mythos, sailing away from Fatalism myth to Naturalism myth. Dungeon Synth kind of takes this into musical territory as an electronic medievalism, frustrated and isolated from the present.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 13, 2017 11:24:49 GMT -5
I'll go a step further and guarantee you that some are still using their music as a method of promoting ideology, be it atavistic, esoteric, satanist etc. It's not as apparent in DS as in BM but it's certainly still here.
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Post by thekeeper on Jan 13, 2017 12:08:21 GMT -5
I will try to clarify what I mean... If you look at animals in nature, they won't change their ways unless they have to. Each generation follows in the exact same footsteps of the previous, and if the balance is left undisturbed, this goes on and on. Of course, there will be longer and colder winters, climate changes, perhaps droughts, or, if you keep it going long enough, an ice age that will last centuries. The fate of each generation and each individual will be determined by these random disturbances, but if you adjust your perspective and look at the big picture, that's not really important. Individuals and even entire generations are just links in a long chain, that goes so far back (and also ahead) that it touches eternity. With us humans things were similar, but we modern humans lost sight of the bigger picture. The chain was broken and every link became an end in itself. There's no longer any sense of continuity, there's no longer any sense of awe towards anything that is much older and greater than the disengaged link. The liberalism of our age establishes the individual human being as alpha and omega. Nothing matters besides the ego. I think this is an overly romantic take on the human timeline. If we're talking psychologically, feeding the ego (feeding the id's desire) is really the only thing that can matter (I'm guessing you might detest Stirnerist Egoism) since it drives us to actually do things. If you're meaning egotism, as in an overwhelming 'self', this is certainly not exclusive to post-modernity or even civilization (though I can see how it would make it easier). If there is no awe towards the older and greater, Lovecraft jokes aside, how does this affect survival and reproduction now? Are we capable of doing without it and are there implications to it other than a reduced notion of tradition? This still seems pretty romantic. Not to sound overly cold and alien, but can we honestly regain this 'way', all things considered? Is there even an inkling of a chance for technology and capital advancement not to be the precedent of human civilization at this point? How far out is this civilizational crash that will reinvigorate the traditionalist root planting spirit, why would it be so trad huggy an not be in the year 3039 and not be like Mad Max and the Matrix combined? I don't think music can do anything that monumental either. It can change some things, open people up to other ideas, but it's certainly not a powerful expression force enough to be a civilization shifting mechanism (I think people confuse the 'power of music' as a force of change in itself when I feel it's more of a symptom of societal shifting, it's expressive after all). There are certainly spirit-infused artists, maybe not genres as a whole, but I think DS is largely genuine in this form of expression (black metal being pretty close but much less so nowadays, not to make a blanket statement on all new bm artists, however). DS isn't popular and still largely an outsider genre. People are drawn to this kind of music for varying reasons, but of course there are reoccurring reasons that we've discussed above. I think DS often takes the negation dynamic of BM and takes away more of the human elements (BM attempts to be quite inhuman but still can't really escape it), leaving more pure 'spirit' or whatever you'd want to call it, combining spirit with the archaic electronics of modernity. I think Forgotten Kingdoms really captures that melancholic spirit vs modern contrast, especially in his demo.
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Post by glamhoth on Jan 13, 2017 16:03:51 GMT -5
"We have the potential to go much faster" Perhaps, but that doesn't change anything. The future of mankind, if there's going to be any future at all, won't be transhumanism, cyborgian kvlture, nano-states, ultra-states or any kind of cyberpunk dystopia. It will be back to the basic, back to a tribal way of life, using herbs as medicine, gathering, hunting, kvltivating the land in a sustainable way. If you played Deus Ex, you know how it ends... "no more infolinks, transmissions of any kind. We'll start again... live in villages..." The collapse may come tomorrow, in a couple of years or decades or even centuries. It makes no difference. If it's not something that can last, it won't be the future. "Ancient pagan religions with high symbolic myth exist within the realm of themselves." No, they didn't. And if they did, you can say the same about scientific-rational secularism or anything else, that it exists within the realms of itself. "The myth explains reality, the reality explains the myth." Yes, but not reality in modern sense. The idea that myths served the exact same purpose of logical-rational explanations, and that they were needed because people in earlier times weren't "developed" enough to be able to formulate logical-rational explanations, is pure nonsense. The idea that we can ground the entirety of reality through reason and logic alone is also nonsense. We still need symbols and narratives for reality to be intelligible in the same way our ancestors needed a hundred thousands years ago and earlier. Those narratives just happen to be presented in scientific-rationalistic guise, such as the "universal history" of the Enlightenment or the romantic "national history". The modern perspective is not only one-sided and broken, but also clueless. As I said before, what you take for reality is not reality, it's fragments of reality scrambled like puzzle pieces, in a way that makes it impossible to figure out what the bigger picture is all about. "But how would myth touch the transcendental if you say Christianity cannot?" Christianity turned the myth into dogma. Once you break the circle and bring the myth to a linear perspective, taking it for historical truth, it becomes meaningless. Acceptance of something meaningless can be only based on faith, belief, dogma. And only idiots can find any "transcendence" in blindly accepting an arbitrary truth. The judeo-christian god is unlike any other god. Jewish spirituality is entirely based on resisting assimilation. There's nothing else. Every human group that was conquered or enslaved throughout history ended up assimilated, except the jews. Their god was a bully who ordered the assassination of anyone who didn't submit. The highest jewish festival is a celebration of the assassination of Hellenistic jews who adopted Greek gods. Christianity is a product of the Hellenistic age, but it shares the same aberrative foundation as Judaism. The judeo-christian god has absolutely NOTHING to do with the platonic eidos of good, or the aristotelian god, or the gods of the stoics.
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Post by glamhoth on Jan 13, 2017 18:35:22 GMT -5
I think this is an overly romantic take on the human timeline. If we're talking psychologically, feeding the ego (feeding the id's desire) is really the only thing that can matter (I'm guessing you might detest Stirnerist Egoism) since it drives us to actually do things. If you're meaning egotism, as in an overwhelming 'self', this is certainly not exclusive to post-modernity or even civilization (though I can see how it would make it easier). If there is no awe towards the older and greater, Lovecraft jokes aside, how does this affect survival and reproduction now? Are we capable of doing without it and are there implications to it other than a reduced notion of tradition? Man didn't know the ego until quite recently. For most of the time it has been around there was no life outside the community, the family, the tribe, the archaic polis. Pagan spirituality is based on the idea of immortality, but not immortality of the ego. What lives on is the honor, and to be honorable you have to serve the interests of the community, not of the ego. In the Ionian colonies, with the commerce flourishing, a very liberal atmosphere made it possible for the individual to affirm himself as ego, but in Lacedaemonia, where a more primordial Dorian ethos was preserved, people weren't allowed to experience reality as ego until very late -- until the end of the 5th century BC they knew no private life, the individual belonged entirely to the community, there's was nothing beyond the life of the polis. So it would be a no, feeding the ego is definitively NOT the only thing that can matter. And it wasn't even something people pursued for hundreds of thousands of years, it started only a couple of millennia ago. Reproduction and survival was not something people sought individually, it was always a collective effort. Immortality depended on the continued existence of the community. You have to have someone to honor you when you're dead, the same way you honored those who lived before you. That's the circle of life, and it goes on eternally. We will either regain this 'way' or perish. I can't tell when the crash is coming and how it will be exactly. A post-apocalyptic mad max scenario is quite realistic. Matrix is too far-fetched. Even if the current "progression" lasts long enough, I don't think things are gonna change so radically, with spaceships and all that nonsense. I think people are too entrenched with conceptions and perspectives that serve their egos -- it's all about their art, their music, their projects, themselves. In an age in which every individual is an artist, this has a devastating effect upon art. I gave up having a musical project because I could no longer stand being part of that. Art was better when it was anonymous, like archaic poetry, a collective creation, the manifestation of a supra-individual spirit and not of an individual ego. Individual egos can channel supra-individual forces and produce great works of art, but what are the chances of something like that happening at this point, with all the ego-masturbation? and even if it happens, there are so many projects and bands, nobody would understand or care, so what's the point?
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Post by thekeeper on Jan 13, 2017 18:39:18 GMT -5
"We have the potential to go much faster" Perhaps, but that doesn't change anything. The future of mankind, if there's going to be any future at all, won't be transhumanism, cyborgian kvlture, nano-states, ultra-states or any kind of cyberpunk dystopia. It will be back to the basic, back to a tribal way of life, using herbs as medicine, gathering, hunting, kvltivating the land in a sustainable way. If you played Deus Ex, you know how it ends... "no more infolinks, transmissions of any kind. We'll start again... live in villages..." The collapse may come tomorrow, in a couple of years or decades or even centuries. It makes no difference. If it can't last, it won't be the future. Why would it not be starkly technological? I don't think it will be cyberpunk necessarily, but maybe cybergothic Technology creates the means for itself to last, meaning natural resources could (probably will) eventually not matter as artificial resources are developed can be used. Considering we still have thousands of years of energy resources and are learning to create artificial ones, and just harness more types of energy in general, I don't see how it won't last long enough to reach singularity. There's also space travel if you want to get even further out, and not only for materials (energy source) but for colonization; if not colonizing another planet, at least creating artificial ones. We're still only at the beginning of the exponential skyrocket in tech advancement. But honestly, the timeline of when a collapse would happen is vitally important, but it's also important to define the type collapse. Political collapse is easy and much more likely to happen sooner. Speed of environmental collapse has to outweigh the speed of technological remedy. Where might we be as a species 100 years from now? Are we really going to be living in tribal villages? Biosingularity (and maybe evolutionary psychology if things get really different) is an important factor, but one that's diffikvlt to forecast since the technology rate of growth is so exponentially fast. What I mean by 'exist within realms of themselves' is their specificity. Each mythos is specific to the reality one system exists in, environmentally and kvlturally. For example, Native American spirituality and mythology is highly specific to each tribe, as all indigenous spiritualities are. This spirituality, call it Paganism if you want, is entirely melded with life itself, perhaps a 'meta-hyppereality'. I didn't mean to make it sound like Pagans make silly myths to explain things they don't understand kind of thing, I realize the meta-cognition of the symbolism. However, I feel this is also quite a romantic notion of paganism, a little too perfect. I'm sure there are pre-Christian religions who thought specific gods or other things, reasons that something is the way it is, were 'really real', no? Surely not everyone had such a perfect recognition of mythic or divine contextual narrative purpose. That's a pretty apt description of current popular historical narrative re: the Enlightenment, it's quite a religious and mythic phenomenon. I'm going to assume you're saying 'what you take for reality' to refer to the general person in the abstract, and not myself specifically, as I don't hold those viewpoints as stated. I would say this is Westernization in particular that creates a linear form (an arrow), not just Christianity, a result of civilizational growth and mutation. Jewish god sounds pretty tough, like Daedric tough.
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Post by thekeeper on Jan 13, 2017 19:09:40 GMT -5
I think this is an overly romantic take on the human timeline. If we're talking psychologically, feeding the ego (feeding the id's desire) is really the only thing that can matter (I'm guessing you might detest Stirnerist Egoism) since it drives us to actually do things. If you're meaning egotism, as in an overwhelming 'self', this is certainly not exclusive to post-modernity or even civilization (though I can see how it would make it easier). If there is no awe towards the older and greater, Lovecraft jokes aside, how does this affect survival and reproduction now? Are we capable of doing without it and are there implications to it other than a reduced notion of tradition? Man didn't know the ego until quite recently. For most of the time it has been around there was no life outside the community, the family, the tribe, the archaic polis. Pagan spirituality is based on the idea of immortality, but not immortality of the ego. What lives on is the honor, and to be honorable you have to serve the interests of the community, not of the ego. In the Ionian colonies, with the commerce flourishing, a very liberal atmosphere made it possible for the individual to affirm himself as ego, but in Lacedaemonia, where a more primordial Dorian ethos was preserved, people weren't allowed to experience reality as ego until very late -- until the end of the 5th century BC they knew no private life, the individual belonged entirely to the community, there's was nothing beyond the life of the polis. So it would be a no, feeding the ego is definitively NOT the only thing that can matter. And it wasn't even something people pursued for hundreds of thousands of years, it started only a couple of millennia ago. Reproduction and survival was not something people sought individually, it was always a collective effort. Immortality depended on the continued existence of the community. You have to have someone to honor you when you're dead, the same way you honored those who lived before you. That's the circle of life, and it goes on eternally. What you described is the same thing as feeding the ego, just with a middleman. Wanting to serve the community for honor is satisfying your cultural identity and your desire to maintain it so you can flourish and live well in your society. You're describing the use of the super-ego, which culturally navigates you into the satisfaction of the ego and therefore the id. Even something altruistic such as serving the community satisfies the ego because that's what you want for yourself as influenced by the super-ego (and it helps you function in society, benefiting yourself). Individualism rises where it can, such as the cultures you've described. Interestingly, different levels of inbreeding can affect this kind of individualism and altruism. Cultures with more inbreeding, more tribal cultures with more inbreeding, have their altruism more focused inward into the family structure since the tribal family is the most important for their survival. Altruism posed outside is less important because outsiders are relied on less, individualism doesn't work as well. Cultures with less inbreeding have their altruism projected more outside of their immediate community since their cultures are much larger, allowing more individualism. I'll have to find the literature on this, but it's called 'clannishness'. Altruism is literally a tool, helping others in order to help ourselves. (I come at this neutrally btw, not saying clannish cultures are weird)
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Post by kuraldgalain on Jan 13, 2017 20:35:00 GMT -5
By the way, do we seriously have a word filter that changes c u l t into cult? That's hilarious and amazing.
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