The Ukraine conflict epitomizes the technocratic decline foreseen by Oswald Spengler, with Moscow embracing historical destiny while the machine-driven West crumbles under its own hubris
One thought struck me "...external actors and Russians’s adaptations to their actions that were repetitive to a degree that lends powerful credence to the idea that history to some extent in circular."
There is an occult idea that, rather than a circle, which implies a closed endlessly repeating loop, events can more usefully be thought of as a spiral wherein tensions pull against each other, providing impetus to a progressive equation - like a calculus which describes essentially the same constructs but with different, evolving outcomes on each successive iteration. For some reason, I suspect Mandelbrotian geometry is likely more apt, just based on my tiny understanding of fractals, but I couldn't possible expound on that idea.
A spiral is interesting. My linear plane is time while the circle is events, so the circle continues to climb the plane. I came up with that conception back in 1998 when taking Historiography in college. The repetition of European wars is one major informer as are China’s dynastic cycles.
My first reaction to your comment was a flash of J.B. Bury's "The Idea of Progress" (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4557) since it reflects the transition from the Idea of Cycles to linear progress. The Idea of multiple cycles is in the history of social thought somewhere, but my recollection from over half a century ago is sketchy.
This is really well put: “The machines would overtake the soul, and the West would become incapable of organic thought. This is why they cannot understand Russia–-not because they lack intelligence, but because their intelligence has been reduced to an algorithmic process, stripped of cultural depth.”
Yes, well the BIS, World Bank, IMF, the FED, and private banks have been the apparatus of control and from them the subsidiaries of NGOs, think tanks, etc created the networks of "bots" who populate the technocracy/bureaucracy, the political strata, media, and education. They're shocked that the control mechanisms have failed to restrain Russia and China and the move towards BRICS with multipolarity. It simply was viewed as an impossibility within their "globalist" paradigm. As to Trump, he's repeating his first term mistakes, c'mon, bombing Yemen, doing the same thing but expecting a different result - like bombing Syria. The west will fail because its words and actions are not congruent. Well, it's more Baldrick, I have a cunning plan.
Thanks for this excellent post, and thank you in general for your tireless work here and on MoA to give us an insight into Russian thinking.
I would question one thing from von Hoffmeister's Spenglerian analysis: "Strategy":
The West has no strategy towards Russia. Clausewitz said that if you haven't got a realistic political strategy that can be accomplished by military means, then *don't* start a war.
Despite Rand Corp's 2019 paper about undermining Russia, which Brian Berletic endlessly quotes, breaking apart Russia and balkanising it is a wishful fantasy. Same with military victory over Russia? Has anybody managed that in 1000 years? Let alone the maybe 10K troops Europe could put in the field. Germany unleashed the largest army in history in WW2 and failed.
For example, if Putin was overthrown, it is far more likely that a nationalistic, hard-line government would come into power, and might well do much more aggressive actions that the incredibly cautious Putin has eschewed.
The West truly lives in a fantasy world. It's utterly depressing to live here as the infrastructure decays and hear pols promising another r800 billion for war.
Containment was the only strategy, then the short-lived First Strike idea that was replaced by MAD. Note the Soviet then Russian strategy has always been to trade space for time. That mostly ceased in 2022, but Russia didn’t fully mobilize. Aside from the Ukronazis, Putin’s well aware Russia’s foe is the West, and Russia has defeated its proxy, although the job isn’t 100% complete. Putin’s vision for Russia is to secure its Western borders and work toward developing its vast undeveloped spaces that in a way recreates the Russian Empire from a POV of Geopolitical Power but without the hegemonic drive of the previous Russian Empire. Although, it certainly wants its near abroad to be allied, integrated and prosperous. The key for Russia and China is to dominate Eurasia without dominating it—Win-Win Harmony is the goal. Until the Western Empire admits its declining instead of denying that fact, it won’t attempt to devise a strategy to manage that decline as it still seeks a hegemony it can no longer attain or sustain. That’s the main reason why Trump is no solution.
<<Donald Trump’s emissaries meet with Russian officials, not because they believe in peace but because the old America-–his America-–has sensed the shift. A world order of raw power is replacing the West’s dream of digital hegemony, and Russia, China, and a thousand-year-old history stand against it. Spengler saw it coming: The machines would overtake the soul, and the West would become incapable of organic thought. This is why they cannot understand Russia–-not because they lack intelligence, but because their intelligence has been reduced to an algorithmic process, stripped of cultural depth. The West is thinking in the way that a machine thinks, and Russia, still a creature of history, is thinking like an empire.≥≥’
JUST A READER HERE BUT I think Larouche might be right about this war.
The Roman Empire still exists.
Boots-on-Ground Theater Conceals Raging Impotence of Toothless Euro-
bySIMPLICIUS
<<We’re starting to glimpse the contours of the European deep state plan to stop Russia from taking over Ukraine. Macron and Starmer are now desperate to push through the ‘boots-on-ground’ initiative in a deliberately obfuscating way. They are haranguing about it like it’s something meant to occur only at such time that an agreement on the conflict’s full cessation is reached. But in reality, it increasingly looks like they mean to jam through the troops at the earliest opportune moment, in order to ‘checkmate’ Russia from being able to advance any further.>>
The German historical philosopher Oswald Spengler (1880-1936), in ‘Man and Technics’ (1931), wrote of the Faustian civilization’s ultimate downfall, where technology, once an extension of organic culture, becomes an iron cage, trapping its creators in a world they no longer understand.
We are reliving the post WW-1 intellectual history of the West. The film series, Terminator illustrates the Hollywood version of this. Fritz Lang's Metropolis still applies, the man vs machine theme being revived.
Post WW-II, America the Beautiful is tarnished, post WW-II Europe wants to revisit its destruction of that era, intellectually, militarily and economically, surrendering to non-Western forces.
As I have told you for years, never rule out Wall Street. DJT, to me, is one of their instruments, directly or indirectly, opposing the CIA, which asserted itself as an autonomous force. I cannot see any of those forces at work, fighting it out.
There are portions of this hypothesis I see as correct, but again there’re flaws. I’ve yet to read the longer piece at his substack, although I did read the first several paragraphs. Spengler died before he could experience the next round of war and its politics, so one wonders what he’d say after all that, particularly about atomic bombs.
Thanks for this.
One thought struck me "...external actors and Russians’s adaptations to their actions that were repetitive to a degree that lends powerful credence to the idea that history to some extent in circular."
There is an occult idea that, rather than a circle, which implies a closed endlessly repeating loop, events can more usefully be thought of as a spiral wherein tensions pull against each other, providing impetus to a progressive equation - like a calculus which describes essentially the same constructs but with different, evolving outcomes on each successive iteration. For some reason, I suspect Mandelbrotian geometry is likely more apt, just based on my tiny understanding of fractals, but I couldn't possible expound on that idea.
A spiral is interesting. My linear plane is time while the circle is events, so the circle continues to climb the plane. I came up with that conception back in 1998 when taking Historiography in college. The repetition of European wars is one major informer as are China’s dynastic cycles.
My first reaction to your comment was a flash of J.B. Bury's "The Idea of Progress" (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4557) since it reflects the transition from the Idea of Cycles to linear progress. The Idea of multiple cycles is in the history of social thought somewhere, but my recollection from over half a century ago is sketchy.
'Debates with Historians' by Pieter Geyl, might have been on your reading list.
I need to offload my English language Dutch history collection since I am now 80. Any ideas of where to donate?
Inquire at your nearby university libraries. Or maybe there’s a Dutch-American Society.
This is really well put: “The machines would overtake the soul, and the West would become incapable of organic thought. This is why they cannot understand Russia–-not because they lack intelligence, but because their intelligence has been reduced to an algorithmic process, stripped of cultural depth.”
Yes, well the BIS, World Bank, IMF, the FED, and private banks have been the apparatus of control and from them the subsidiaries of NGOs, think tanks, etc created the networks of "bots" who populate the technocracy/bureaucracy, the political strata, media, and education. They're shocked that the control mechanisms have failed to restrain Russia and China and the move towards BRICS with multipolarity. It simply was viewed as an impossibility within their "globalist" paradigm. As to Trump, he's repeating his first term mistakes, c'mon, bombing Yemen, doing the same thing but expecting a different result - like bombing Syria. The west will fail because its words and actions are not congruent. Well, it's more Baldrick, I have a cunning plan.
Thanks for this excellent post, and thank you in general for your tireless work here and on MoA to give us an insight into Russian thinking.
I would question one thing from von Hoffmeister's Spenglerian analysis: "Strategy":
The West has no strategy towards Russia. Clausewitz said that if you haven't got a realistic political strategy that can be accomplished by military means, then *don't* start a war.
Despite Rand Corp's 2019 paper about undermining Russia, which Brian Berletic endlessly quotes, breaking apart Russia and balkanising it is a wishful fantasy. Same with military victory over Russia? Has anybody managed that in 1000 years? Let alone the maybe 10K troops Europe could put in the field. Germany unleashed the largest army in history in WW2 and failed.
For example, if Putin was overthrown, it is far more likely that a nationalistic, hard-line government would come into power, and might well do much more aggressive actions that the incredibly cautious Putin has eschewed.
The West truly lives in a fantasy world. It's utterly depressing to live here as the infrastructure decays and hear pols promising another r800 billion for war.
Containment was the only strategy, then the short-lived First Strike idea that was replaced by MAD. Note the Soviet then Russian strategy has always been to trade space for time. That mostly ceased in 2022, but Russia didn’t fully mobilize. Aside from the Ukronazis, Putin’s well aware Russia’s foe is the West, and Russia has defeated its proxy, although the job isn’t 100% complete. Putin’s vision for Russia is to secure its Western borders and work toward developing its vast undeveloped spaces that in a way recreates the Russian Empire from a POV of Geopolitical Power but without the hegemonic drive of the previous Russian Empire. Although, it certainly wants its near abroad to be allied, integrated and prosperous. The key for Russia and China is to dominate Eurasia without dominating it—Win-Win Harmony is the goal. Until the Western Empire admits its declining instead of denying that fact, it won’t attempt to devise a strategy to manage that decline as it still seeks a hegemony it can no longer attain or sustain. That’s the main reason why Trump is no solution.
LEGALLY BLIND, THUS CAPS
<<Donald Trump’s emissaries meet with Russian officials, not because they believe in peace but because the old America-–his America-–has sensed the shift. A world order of raw power is replacing the West’s dream of digital hegemony, and Russia, China, and a thousand-year-old history stand against it. Spengler saw it coming: The machines would overtake the soul, and the West would become incapable of organic thought. This is why they cannot understand Russia–-not because they lack intelligence, but because their intelligence has been reduced to an algorithmic process, stripped of cultural depth. The West is thinking in the way that a machine thinks, and Russia, still a creature of history, is thinking like an empire.≥≥’
JUST A READER HERE BUT I think Larouche might be right about this war.
The Roman Empire still exists.
Boots-on-Ground Theater Conceals Raging Impotence of Toothless Euro-
bySIMPLICIUS
<<We’re starting to glimpse the contours of the European deep state plan to stop Russia from taking over Ukraine. Macron and Starmer are now desperate to push through the ‘boots-on-ground’ initiative in a deliberately obfuscating way. They are haranguing about it like it’s something meant to occur only at such time that an agreement on the conflict’s full cessation is reached. But in reality, it increasingly looks like they mean to jam through the troops at the earliest opportune moment, in order to ‘checkmate’ Russia from being able to advance any further.>>
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Big Tech has always been about Mind Control since Norbert Wiener.
He brings a new relevance to Spengler and stimulates a discussion .
Thanks for this.
Will read the Substack rather than Spengler.
Hubris. What they created became their God they bowed down to subjugate all they saw.
Nice to see a distinction given to us who feel the pulse of being alive in a living world still puzzling the finest minds.
Tank you, Karl.
The German historical philosopher Oswald Spengler (1880-1936), in ‘Man and Technics’ (1931), wrote of the Faustian civilization’s ultimate downfall, where technology, once an extension of organic culture, becomes an iron cage, trapping its creators in a world they no longer understand.
We are reliving the post WW-1 intellectual history of the West. The film series, Terminator illustrates the Hollywood version of this. Fritz Lang's Metropolis still applies, the man vs machine theme being revived.
Post WW-II, America the Beautiful is tarnished, post WW-II Europe wants to revisit its destruction of that era, intellectually, militarily and economically, surrendering to non-Western forces.
As I have told you for years, never rule out Wall Street. DJT, to me, is one of their instruments, directly or indirectly, opposing the CIA, which asserted itself as an autonomous force. I cannot see any of those forces at work, fighting it out.
There are portions of this hypothesis I see as correct, but again there’re flaws. I’ve yet to read the longer piece at his substack, although I did read the first several paragraphs. Spengler died before he could experience the next round of war and its politics, so one wonders what he’d say after all that, particularly about atomic bombs.