Here goes a TL;DR
Apart from PERHAPS the first paragraph, it is not meant to be seen as an attack on anything you may or may not believe in, since I have no clear idea of your opinions.
Quote from: Fluid Fetish on June 16, 2016, 01:39:08 AM
QuoteAnd while I'm all for romanticizing Roman and otherwise pre-Christian culture, Christianity did reduce the tendency of Westerners to rape, beat and generally butcher virtual armies of slaves and subordinates.
Um, what? Seriously? Come on now...
I was referring to the Roman games, mine slavery, gladiator games and so on. This was all very cool, but it also meant a bizarre cult of violence and humiliation that I frankly can't really defend. Even though it doesn't really correspond to any personal emotional needs, I think that to deny the massive beneficial effects of Christianity on Western culture is... Well, childish. And I did it myself for a decade, which is why I'm an asshole about it rather than make a cogent argument. I'm not sure where you're coming from with your "seriously", though. If it's about how Christian Whitey enslaved the world and are the worst people ever, I'm not even having the conversation. I am not interested in discussing how the White Monsters came to ruin loving, peaceful and harmonic societies using racism and penicillin. It is a view that requires a view of history so selective that it's not really a view of history at all. Virtually, nay literally, everything the "postcolonial" philosophers of the Left believe in is solely a product of Western culture, and completely unimaginable in any other cultural context. The whole idea of collective self-criticism is almost absent from any other historic civilization or culture - a generalization which is pretty much accurate even if you scratch "historic".
If it's about how Rome was actually great, it's a bit more interesting (and also something I partly agree with, despite what I said above).
As for your second post I just have a few remarks on the issue of the impending doom of the global system:
Things are almost certainly not going to fall apart in some refreshing reboot of the world. Consumer capitalism and liberal "democracy" are extremely sturdy systems, which can survive a lot. People sometimes forget that there are places in South America and Africa, where things are now shittier than they are likely to become in Western Europe and the US even after quite serious disasters. Usually, people don't even care to replace their local incompetent leaders, let alone the political system in place (until a major geopolitical player or two begins fomenting the "revolution", of course, but we've seen where that lands us with the "Arab Spring"). If this is to go away, it will have to be removed by people who want it gone.
However, most alternatives today seem unrealistic or even undesirable. Under capitalism, I can at least opt out of most stupid shit (albeit with massive work), and get a decent payoff from rather limited labour. If Bernie 2.0. and the Equal Solidarity Squat takes over, that would probably not be the case. I think lines of thinking similar to this make most people feel that liberal capitalism is the second best thing, right after their ideal, which means that most people stick with it. Some, like most of the Left, even embrace it with gusto, spending their time "fighting outdated ideas" by supporting censorship of "enemies" they have in common with the system, while also defending and supporting the Federal government of the US, the European Union, the UN and basically any bastions of the present power hierarchy they can find (though "really" they'd like an egalitarian fucktopia where everyone just smokes weed and is, like, an individual, dude). Either way, most people will opt to keep things as they are simply because they dislike all radical options except their own. Which ain't about to be realized.
Granted, places like Hungary are making some pretty massive shifts "to the Right", while places like Spain and Greece are moving "to the Left" through Podemos and Syriza, but they are all WELL within the confines of what can be accepted (albeit grudgingly) by the present global system. None have the first clue about how to tackle, for example, the all encompassing consumerist slavery which is one of the most bizarre and unpleasant features of this system. In a way, it is impressive: it used to be that you actually needed poverty, to get people to produce and hence keep the economy moving. Now poverty is a useless remnant as a motivator, used only in backward nations, and a bug more than a feature. People who live materially fulfilled lives, are still completely awash in anxiety and addiction to keep adding shit to their pile of shit. Which keeps them obedient, since really there is no serious alternative which could be expected to keep yielding all this stuff. It's pretty absurd, but these are chains that are extremely difficult to break.
The poor world has even less of an interest in abandoning global liberalism, which becomes glaringly obvious once one stops reading Naomi Klein and actually looks at some numbers. In large swathes of the globe, the "free market" and sort-of democratic structures still produce
vastly improved living conditions (the most obvious being the shift away from the constant threat of starvation) for massive amounts of people. Over a billion people have left poverty and benefited from the post-Cold War liberal order in the past ten or twenty years, and many if not most of them now completely share the average Westerner's interests in mobile phones and phony causes. This is very much likely to continue, unless it is halted by population explosion (as may happen in Africa), or some kind of global war (which is extremely unlikely, even though it is very popular to pretend otherwise to keep us on our toes). The fact that the West is losing some of its influence may have radical consequences in time, for instance countries which can rely on China for their trade are even less likely to give a flying fuck about Western ideas about "LGBT rights" or "human rights" at all than they were as US client states. However, if "we" can sell them enough Coke and show them enough gripping Hollywood dramas, then it's perfectly possible that enough of them will imitate the consumerist lifestyle, reach middle class status, and keep the dregs in order. I think you exaggerate the level of "class warfare" involved in all of this. It might be that the bizarre combination of Leftist utopians and neoliberal psychopaths that make up the Western establishment may create some absolute disaster in Western Europe and the US, which may then transform the global system in some fashion. The former's love of immigration for "humanitarian reasons" in tandem with the latter's love for the same due to its potential to undermine unions, dump salaries and procure brown people to do their dishes for them has created a mighty fine mess in the past twenty years or so, and perhaps these geniuses have other awesome ideas on how to make society more free, equal and brotherly. All in all, however, I think people will take virtually anything as long as they are kept reasonably safe, and unreasonably addicted to their stuff.
If it is not clear, these are not words of triumphant gloating, but rather depressed resignation. I agree fully that
QuoteThe ideals that came out of the Enlightenment and from the French Revolution are [..] are a joke.
But they aren't failing.
