ToKers:
A hundred years ago, Oswald Spengler published the first volume of his
"Decline of the West" (in German, subtitled "Form and Actuality") and,
in many ways, we've all been writing replies to him since (including
hereabouts of late) . . . <g>
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.amazon.com_Decline-2DWest-2DActuality-2DPerspectives-2DWorld-2DHistory_dp_B0016511PQ&d=DwIBaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=dQjvVyd66RVv9lnuLMl_ICT6rs_lZWF01AxlpdAYsrw&s=qSvmHi-t8kzIdo8ZyajoqEjj0xur0obamaQFRopF9JI&e=
Arnold Toynbee picked up the ball on behalf of the West (in
particular, the British Empire) and spent his life writing his
multi-volume "A Study of History." He was followed by Carroll Quigley
(mentor to Bill Clinton at Georgetown, who wrote "Tragedy and Hope"
&c) and Sam Huntington (with whom my partner at the Center studied at
Harvard.) Henry Kissinger even wrote his undergraduate thesis at
Harvard on Spengler and T. Adorno, father of Social Psychology, wrote
an important essay on the topic (scans available to anyone who is
interested.)
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.amazon.com_Clash-2DCivilizations-2DRemaking-2DWorld-2DOrder_dp_1451628978&d=DwIBaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=dQjvVyd66RVv9lnuLMl_ICT6rs_lZWF01AxlpdAYsrw&s=iaQ9RLjjBol5T_HiAZB98AAUEeoSb3ISr8eZDpiwrRs&e=
What they all recognized, however, is that the West isn't the only
game-in-town. In particular, Spengler thought that Russia would
overtake Europe and that, ultimately, China would overtake them all.
My partner spends half his life in Beijing (and I'll likely be heading
there in a few weeks to speak at the World Congress of Philosophy.)
For the Chinese, Teilhard's "omega point" and Kevin's "technium" would
make no sense -- since they have a fundamentally different
understanding of history.
Teilhard was a "renegade" Jesuit priest. His "heresy" is an old one
that the Catholic Church has been dealing with for a long time. Just
take a look at Joachim de Fiore, if you need a 12th-century refresher.
Eric Voegelin called it "immanentizing the Eschaton" in his Walgreen
lecture, "The New Science of Politics" (which then led to Marshall
McLuhan striking up a correspondence with him on the topic of
*gnosticism*). Teilhard was in a hurry-to-get-outta-here, a trait
that he shared with many who took LSD -- which is uniquely a drug of
psychic death-an-rebirth (for which I am the "alternate" historian.)
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.amazon.com_New-2DScience-2DPolitics-2DIntroduction-2DFoundation_dp_0226861147&d=DwIBaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=dQjvVyd66RVv9lnuLMl_ICT6rs_lZWF01AxlpdAYsrw&s=Nl1qC4m6KxvqfPAv50NVY-b7wmt8_eTLiYoJDyfSojc&e=
Kevin Kelly is a protege of Stewart Brand, the organizer of the "Trips
Festivals" where the Grateful Dead played and which Tom Wolfe (who
"discovered" Marshall McLuhan in the mid-1960s) described as "The
Electric Kool-Aid Acid Tests." Lots of LSD was involved. Lots of
psychic "decline and re-birth." Reminding us that LSD is the
*quintessential* Western drug -- tracing its origins back to the
Eleusinian Mysteries (c. 700BC-400AD), around which Athenian culture
was organized. Yes, that's the "subtext" to everything in Plato, for
instance (but not Aristotle.)
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.amazon.com_Road-2DEleusis-2DUnveiling-2DSecret-2DMysteries_dp_1556437528&d=DwIBaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=dQjvVyd66RVv9lnuLMl_ICT6rs_lZWF01AxlpdAYsrw&s=c123YQcXkcX1-An6vS6dzxKU2WEm5f_ATGuEGTwOKS4&e=
Brand -- about whom a friend of mine, John Markoff (ex-New York
Times), is now writing the "offical" biography -- brought Kevin in to
edit the "Co-Evolution Quarterly" and later "Wired" magazine (for
which I tried to provide early financing.) Kevin is a "born-again"
Christian who is keen for the 2nd Coming (along with Teilhard) -- who
has detailed his views in a fascinating "comic book" titled "The
Silver Cord" (in which humans turn into angels to "fight the devil.")
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.amazon.com_Silver-2DCord-2DKevin-2DKelly_dp_1940689015&d=DwIBaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=dQjvVyd66RVv9lnuLMl_ICT6rs_lZWF01AxlpdAYsrw&s=5daPt7Alh8EfcRsG8t2c-C_MdfbIoIeCt2pA5_Imcew&e=
This "linear" view of history -- culminating in the "end of history"
and its replacement with "truth" (aka Jesus Christ) -- became the
Protestant goal with the invention of the Printing Press. As a
*paradigm*, PRINT (or what McLuhan called the "Gutenberg Galaxy") was
incredibly "linear." One letter-after-another on the page.
Mechanically reproduced. Copy after copy. Onward-and-upward.
Marching to the *promised* land (just like the Book of Revelation,
which is behind both Teilhard's and Kevin's fantastic stories, told us
it would) . . . !!
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.amazon.com_Gutenberg-2DGalaxy-2DMarshall-2DMcLuhan_dp_144261269X&d=DwIBaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=dQjvVyd66RVv9lnuLMl_ICT6rs_lZWF01AxlpdAYsrw&s=ONoLLFnLtaG5oyuQD5jwszhWpAAb7Nh-9lMKFSPOTiY&e=
This "linearity" is, some might suggest, the result of an
over-development of the brain's *left* hemisphere. While much of the
popular material about left/right is overblown (or just wrong), Ian
McGilchrist has put what is actually known together in his 20-year
effort, "The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making
of the Western World." In it he summarized the difference between the
two hemispheres as "linear" (left) and "circular" (right) and how (but
not why) the "left" dominates in the West.
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.amazon.com_Master-2DHis-2DEmissary-2DDivided-2DWestern_dp_0300188374&d=DwIBaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=dQjvVyd66RVv9lnuLMl_ICT6rs_lZWF01AxlpdAYsrw&s=MhkTRL-tLu0DD6Ic6yGOmlVkk-tnK1HVRMb3wPUO4gg&e=
If the West is "linear" (resulting in "omega points" &c), then the
East is "circular." We believe that this is largely a result of the
different *writing* systems used in the East and West.
Ideo/pictographs are "pictures" and learning to use them to
communicate is likely a "right-brain" task -- begun at early
childhood. On the other hand, the Alphabet (invented by my ancestors
in Phoenecian to conduct trade across the Mediterranean) is only
phoentics, with no meaning attached to any of the symbols. As a
result, the East has a "circular" understanding of history, whereas
the West thinks in terms of "end points."
Teilhard de Chardin and Kevin Kelly are both "eschatologists." They
point to the "end of history" because that's what their left-brains
tell them to do, as a result of the culture in which they live, as a
result of the communications technologies that formed that culture.
But eschatology makes no sense in "right-brained" China.
Instead, the Chinese think of themselves as riding a 720-year
"roller-coaster." Taking their 60-year annual cycle and multiplying
it by 12, they get the Chinese "grand cycle" of roughly 700 years and
they are convinced that they will reach the next "peak" in the
22nd-century. Going backwards, they believe that the previous peaks
were in the Ming (roughly 1500AD), T'ang (roughly 800) and Han
(roughly 100) dynasties (and some would go back to C'hu, roughly 600BC
and beyond to Shang &c.) One way to get a glimpse of all this would
be to study Joseph Needham's multi-volume "Science and Civilization in
China" (with particular interest in his focus on the role of Daoism in
Chinese history.)
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.amazon.com_Science-2DCivilisation-2DChina-2DIntroductory-2DOrientations_dp_052105799X&d=DwIBaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=dQjvVyd66RVv9lnuLMl_ICT6rs_lZWF01AxlpdAYsrw&s=OqadsucKkkOaN7FJqfbkrgiZMaN5Ydu4GSZrkDNVJzs&e=
As a result of all this, any cultural/psychological "Theory of
Everything" must account for the differences between East and West --
while dealing with underlying technologies that have generated these
differences. As it turns out, all "cultures" are *not* the same (yes,
there are also many others.) Hypothesizing an "omega point" is fine
if you are a Westerner under the influence of Christian "revelation"
but that's *not* the way most people on earth think nowadays. Yes,
the "eschaton" is an answer to Spengler's questions (which, as you
recall, were first posed by F. Nietzsche, who was supposed to become a
Lutheran minister) but not everyone thinks those are the most
important questions for us to answer today . . . !!
Mark
P.S. As best we can tell, the only "elite" who did not take LSD in the
1960s were the Chinese. The Russians did it. The Japanese did it.
But not the Chinese. In fact, it appears that the "Great Wall of
China" was built to keep central-Asian "shamanic" culture -- based on
taking hallucinogenic mushrooms -- out of China and some believe that
the Chinese hostility to India is also based on the Indian use of
hallucinogens in their "holy books." Instead of wanting to "die" so
that you can be "reborn" (into a transformed world), Chinese *alchemy*
was dedicated to "elixirs of immortality" which would allow them to
stay alive from one cyclical peak to another.
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__en.wikipedia.org_wiki_Shamanism&d=DwIBaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=dQjvVyd66RVv9lnuLMl_ICT6rs_lZWF01AxlpdAYsrw&s=7DH7v09kkrNaePvx5IE1I-a8dXg6bkKGOPEovB4dsnY&e=
P.P.S. The Russians supplied most of the world's LSD from c. 1965-75,
fueling the "counter-culture" in what they thought of as "chemical
warfare" against the "West" in the Cold War. The goal was to
"disorient" Western youth and, in the process, strengthen the Soviet
Union. Initially, pharmaceutical LSD was manufactured under KGB
supervision at Spofa in Prague and then they transitioned to supplying
the ergotamine precursor for the "underground" labs. Teilhard was
very popular among the "hippies" and I think that I bought my first
copy of "The Phenomenon of Man" c. 1967 -- the same year I drove
non-stop to Haight Ashbury for the "Summer of Love," where I saw Jim
Morrison sing his iconic "This is the End (the West is the best.)"
Btw, "blue bus" is a metaphor for Czech LSD, since Spofa put it in a
ampule where the liquid was colored blue.
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.youtube.com_watch-3Fv-3DJSUIQgEVDM4&d=DwIBaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=dQjvVyd66RVv9lnuLMl_ICT6rs_lZWF01AxlpdAYsrw&s=nj7XX2WD1VRo3ZVCxB4hz4xG2picaGAwBcZPdKc7MVQ&e=
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