Thoughts on "The People"

The idea of "The People," as conceived as a longstanding, aware, self identifying social unit, has been with human society since language first rose to prominence as the dominant tool of human cultural and interpersonal communication. While this subject could, and has, been discussed from an endless multitude of ethical, social, moral, historical, linguistic and cultural standpoints, I wish only to bring up some quotes from my recent reading.

First, Oswald Spengler from Decline of the West:

Concerning "higher and primitive" cultures: 

"In all primitive existence the "it," the Cosmic, is at work with such immediacy of force that all microcosmic utterances...obey only the pressures of the very instant.... But with the type of higher Culture this "it" gives way to a strong and undiffused tendency.Within the primitive Culture, tribes and clans were the only quickened beings....(In higher cultures), the Culture itself is such a being."

Here, the "it" can refer to anything really. The family and society, certain important objects, places or people, and even the cosmos itself. For Spengler, "primitive" culture is hallmarked by a lack of long term, "historical" in his terms, continuity beyond a few generations of related people with their own deities, culture and language. While modern studies raise a number of points of contention here, Spengler's point remains valid when compared with so named "higher" cultures. The institutions, buildings, languages and cultures of Rome, Persia, China and Ethiopia can all still be felt in the modern world, even if they are now ruined, changed or blended with subsequent influences. The deep, multi-layered spirituality of the Hopi, Dani, Sami-Lapps and the Chumash are only remembered because they made contact with historical peoples, who then recorded them as they were found. Before these tribal, clan and perhaps even kingship names were recorded, there exists nothing as far as history can be concerned beyond trash heaps and the remains of material items.

 Concerning "Historical" man: 

"...destiny must lie either in the zoological or in the world-historical field. "Historical" man...is the man of a Culture that is in full march towards self-fulfillment. Before this, after this, outside this, man is historyless."

The idea and concept of cultural fulfillment are a long running theme through out the book, so I will leave the reader to explore that on their own, or perhaps for another entry. I will simply say that, for Spengler, a culture only lives and flourishes so long as it works towards its cultural ultimate expression in ever way possible, and that after this is achieved, it starts to become static and perhaps even die, if over the course of centuries where it still appears to flourish.

And on the "People" themselves: 

"For me, the "people" is a unit of the soul. The great events of history were not really achieved by peoples, they themselves created the peoples. Every act alters the soul of the doer.... People are neither linguistic nor political nor zoological, but spiritual, units. And this leads at once to the futher distinction between peoples before, within and after a culture." 

For Spengler, the souls of some set or group of humanity are altered by the forces of history, landscape and culture that then mold them into a new people, a new entity on the historical stage. Indeed, the idea of history as a force is a major feature of Spengler's thought.

Now let us switch gears from Spengler's wide conservative, continental, far reaching historical, spiritual and metaphysical concepts to that of Walter Lippmann, a far more practical, politically minded American journalist.

Lippmann, writing in The Public Philosophy brings a more political view:

On "the People" as historic or political: "When we speak of popular sovereignty, we must know whether we are talking about The People, as voters, or about The People, as a community of the entire living population, with their predecessors and successors." 

Lippman later goes on to examine how "the men who rise up against freedom" come to be, and how the modern situation of isolation and removal from cultural and historical social sources of identity creates a new type of people, the so called "lonely crowd."

"...the modern man who find in freedom from the constraints of the ancestral order an intolerable loss of guidance and of support. They are the men who rise up against freedom, unable to cope with the insoluble difficulties and unable to endure the denial of communion in public and common truths."

For Lippman, the establishment or renewal of the "Public Philosophy," a subject that is itself beyond the scope of this article, and the means of its transmission, acculturation and permeation of public and private life are the hall marks of "the People" via his political outlook.


So here we have two differing, but not exactly opposed, conceptions of what "the People" means from two very different viewpoints. Lippmann would argue, from his modern, democratic, liberal view, that a people is made, maintained and served by their adherence to a public philosophy that serves to drive social participation, responsibility and consciousness. This is a very active, participatory conception as opposed to Spengler's notion of an identity and form imposed by outside events. For him, the spiritual aspects of the people and the culture determine all other facets, from language to art to science.

While both take diverging stances and approach the problem of the public, culture and "the People" from alternate stances, both., upon further reading, are essentially conservative in their response. The people must be exclusive, defined and limited both socially, historically and spiritually, and there is always a risk of cultural degradation, dissolution and reformation. For Spengler, it is the result of outside influence, divergence from the culture's true spiritual aim, or from an invisible cultural death in the form of civilization, fixed forms and decadence. For Lippmann, on the other hand, it is the weakening of public notion, awareness and action concerning itself, possible only in the liberal democracies of the West, that leads towards social apathy, isolation and then ultimately reactionary backlash in the form of "counter-revolution," Fascism and Totalitarianism.

Thank you for reading, and sorry for the great delay in posting! More pretty pictures and videos to follow.

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.