Traditionalism

A tricky and often misunderstood school of thought in our contemporary philosophy and society, Traditionalism gives one of my deepest, most cutting and sometimes most troubling critique of our post-modern, spiritually troubled world. Basically, the Traditionalist believes in Perennialism, is somewhat socially conservative, and is against the modern world, materialism and Secular Humanism. Now, a topic this complex, subtle and esoteric was something that I was going to wait to post about, as it requires a lot of citation and quoting. Thankfully, this guy gives a pretty solid introduction.

Thinkers, esotericists, magicians, alchemists, aristocrats, and almost always eccentric, Traditionalist and Perennial thinkers like Frithjof, Guénon, Evola and others form a very serious, solid assault on the perceived empty, material, overly rational and egalitarian soul of the modern world, one they would claim as sick and enfeebled.

Now, I cannot say that I ascribe or give credence to everything in this school of thought. They are all a bit too Monotheist for my liking, and there are numerous questions concerning repressive state behavior, liberty, freedom of the individual and social mobility that would have to be worked out without a resort to violence or a conservative political and social Jacobinism. The potential remarriage of church and state is also troubling, though numerous points presented by various authors speak out against religious morality interfering with the state.

Der Untergang des Abendlandes

I've been slogging through Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West, Oxford University Press 1991, for almost a decade, having picked it up again and again intermittently whenever school work and other activities afforded time. I purchased my copy in Sydney, Australia, of all places, on my way back from the invasion of Iraq, or the opening phases of O.I.F. I flipped through it on the remaining month long boat ride, mind blown by the sweeping scope of history that Spengler worked into clear and connected cycles and phases. Since then, I've made rather slow progress. By the time I left the Marines, I had only read through half of it and without much depth. I was pretty smart then, but I often had nothing to reference Spengler's assertions and connections against, so how could I know if he wasn't just another right wing romantic suffering Nietzsche's depression.

After finishing my degree a few years hence, I decided it was time to conquer the beast and read through it anew. So now, about 7 months on, and I'm just about half way through. This thing is dense, and now armed with deeper perspective, just as much is written between the words as with them. One could mull certain sections of the book, especially Soul-Image and Life Feeling, for a lifetime to ascertain our own true feelings about them. So, I will be discussing this text now and again as the mood strikes. I will also attempt to keep it condensed into brief, food for thought sized posts. This one is already dragging on, and I haven't gotten to anything Spengler actually said.

So while I was reading my morning chapter, I came upon this series of thoughts concerning"Nature Knowledge":

"All Laws formulated in words are derived from experiences, typical of the one-and only the one-Culture."
"Every critical science, like every myth and every religious belief, rests upon an inner certitude.... Any reproach, therefore, leveled by Natural science at Religion is a boomerang. We are presumptuous and no less in supposing that we can ever set up "the Truth" in place of "anthropomorphic" conceptions, for no other conceptions but these exist at all.... The statement that "man created God in his own image," valid for every historical religion, is not less valid for every physical theory, however firm its reputed basis of fact" -Spengler, p.190

Serious business, no? Spengler is a big fan of culturally determined ideals, soul feeling and worldview being the foundation from which all other cultural manifestations spring and are invariably bound to and restricted by. For him, direct cultural extensions from Protestant Christianity and its reformation of man's relation to God, and therefore the state, society and even one's self, and the mechanical views of space, physics and nature that were emerging with Newton's influence on Enlightenment philosophers combined to create the modern attitude towards both the profane and sacred realms. An individualized, liberal in the classic sense and  mechanized view of religion, science, nature and humanity paved the way for Industrialism, Socialism and the situation in 20th century Europe.

While religion, like much of Spengler's argument and subject matter, deals with the subjective, mystical, and the intuitive, science is verifiable and can be expressed in a manner somewhat independent of other forms of cultural expression. Mathematics, which was one of Spengler's specialties, is a universal language that exists and extends beyond other non verbal communications such as art, the image and music. However, it remains purely a human contrivance. Mathematics are systems of numbers, themselves cultural concepts, that are arranged and utilized according to culturally derived standards. Math doesn't exist in the "natural" world, just as gravity doesn't exist there either. Both are human concepts that are applied to the surrounding world in order to explain it, and do nothing more than describe things or actions of things. The same goes with religious feeling, though it often deals with the wholly intangible and is now separated from the mechanics and processes of daily life. Today, we prefer physics, math and science to animism, god's will and spiritualism.

This post is already getting over lengthy, so I'll leave you with this to gnaw on. More Spengler will surely come along, and I'll no doubt be going back to discuss things earlier in text as well. Next post will have some pretty pictures, I promise.

Selection from the stacks

I have a love of books that borders obsession, no doubt fostered by my grandparents tendency to collect them from garage sales and other second hand sources. Mom would read titles such as Conan The Barbarian and Lord of the Rings to my brother and I, and my personal interest in reading blossomed in high school.

Since then I've taken an interest in everything from science fiction and fantasy to metaphysics and history. Academic life also provides its own corpus of reading, often augmenting or expanding on personal interests. My backlog of books to be read always seems to grow faster than I can read them. At least they make me look smart, sitting in stacks or piled on the shelf. 

In our current situation regarding information, that of total and unfettered access, the role of the book in not only transmitting information but maintaining and safeguarding it is often neglected. In the context of the internet and computing, information is readily available and easy to organize, analyze and present to a mass audience. 

Blogs such as this one, and ones that actually matter, serve as tools of discourse, information dissemination and as agents of real world action and change. Anyone with access to the internet has access to, generally speaking, everything recorded through out human history. At no other time has humanity been so keenly aware of itself and our myriad of global, national, regional and local identities. They dynamic character of information and communication in the digital era provides us with many new tools, many of which are hardly fully realized or even fully understood. 

The printed word, on the other hand, is a source of stability and permanence when compared with the fluctuating, dynamic internet. Where as web pages, blogs and text on the web comes, goes, gets edited or rewritten by someone else, the printed word says what it says for as long as the medium lasts. The tactile satisfaction of reading physical media is backed by the security of knowing that the text will always remain the same, easy to reference and revisit. 

So in the interests of sharing knowledge and a good read, not to mention generating content, I'm going to be posting information about what I'm reading, context and history of the text and author and any related information of interest. Stay tuned!

Introductions.

If you are reading this, it likely means that you already know me in some capacity or another. This gives me some leeway with introductions and laying a groundwork of understanding, or at least it may.

This blog is to serve as a clearing house for my personal ideas, conceptualizations, media interests to include music and video, as well as musings on current and bygone events. I predict that the initial offerings may be a bit random and seemingly disparate, but I hope to capture some sort of fluidity and grasp of central themes and concepts as the corpus builds.

Looking forward, I will be posting images and anecdotes about my travels, thoughts and reviews of music I'm currently in favor of, and much more! Stay tuned!