Comment by joules77
3 days ago
That's the typical German/Oswald Spengler cynical view of things with inevitable decline being the conclusion.
You have to look elsewhere for more hope - probably from the Brits (who have great experience with highs and lows) - Toynbee perhaps whose work shows a different cycle - Challenge arises (ecological, military, social) - creative minority responds with new vision/structure - the majority follows - if response fails or becomes rigid - civilization ossifies.
Please explain how "inevitable decline" follows from my view, cause I can't see it. If by "inevitable decline" you mean I think tribalized conflicts are a waste of human potential that are bad, I take it, but I do not think it inevitably leads to decline.
It just does do so now, demonstrably. And again, within a democracy voting people out is your agency and that is Karl Popper and not Oswald Sprengler. You may think you vote people into office, but those can promise everything and do the opposite. So our true power is voting people out of office without pitchforks and torches.
So what happens when a politicians makes you believe waving their party-political-flag is more important than keeping them acountable is that they fuck you over in more brazen ways more often, but you can't ditch them because then the other team would "win".
Throw away the party flag and you stopped decline, thus it is not inevitable.