Finally through the preface to Revolt Against the Modern World and into the introduction, and… damn, I hate this. So much bad argument.
“Though modern men have come to perceive the West’s bleak future only recently, there are causes that have been active for centuries that have contributed to spiritual and material degeneration. These causes have not only taken away from most people the possibility of revolt and the return to normalcy and health, but most of all, they have taken away the ability to understand what true normalcy and health really mean.”
*facepalm* Reminds me of Scott Alexander’s review of After Virtue:
virtue ethics just takes another sip of wine from its table in the corner and says “Your decadent individualist mind has no idea how disappointed Aristotle would be in you for even asking that. Did you evenconsider just being a virtuous city-state in which everyone is a great-minded soul acting for the good of the polis? I didn’t think so.”
Essentially, I get the feeling Evola is telling anyone who disagrees with him, “you’re so sick you don’t know how sick you are, and so you should let me tell you what you need.”
“Some people "react”; others “protest.” How could it be otherwise considering the hopeless features of contemporary society, morality, politics, and culture? And yet these are only “reactions” and not actions, or positive movements, that originate from the inner dimension and testify to the possession of a foundation, a principle, or a center.
This looks like a central thesis. I await a definition or empirical test for determining whether a center is possessed. If I feel like my society has a center, but it’s not a center Evola agrees with, which of us is right?
“In the West, too many adaptations and "reactions” have taken place. Experience has shown that nothing that truly matters can be achieved in this way. What is really needed is not to toss back and forth in a bed of agony, but to awaken and get up.“
Yet more repetition of the theme, that society is so screwed up we cannot possibly fix ourselves.
”…it is necessary to leave the deceptive and magical “circle” and be able to conceive something else, to acquire new eyes and new ears in order to perceive things that have become invisible and mute with the passing of time.“
Again, I want to figure out exactly what the empirical method is to determine these things that are invisible to "ordinary” people. My impatience with the monarchial mystics stems from this idea that there’s factors that are invisible to everyone but the “initiated” - which means that their conclusions cannot be challenged.
What I like about competitive control theory is that it contains predictions about societies and conflicts. The state that provides stability and predictability to its people, that enables them to meet their needs, will “win” the contest of competitive control and will continue to exist. A state that doesn’t do that, that makes its people angry or afraid or uncertain about their future, will be replaced by a state that does a better job. And though David Kilcullen doesn’t provide empirical tests, I can picture some that would lend themselves to his theory: opinion polls asking whether people feel like their society is predictable, rating their experiences with starting small businesses, etc.
Footnote: “I say among "modern men” since the idea of a downfall and a progressive abandonment of a higher type of existence, as well as the knowledge of even tougher times in the future for the human races, were well known to traditional antiquity.“
I WANT A CITATION DAMMIT.
Yes, yes, we’re so doomed, nothing can be done, and the best anyone can hope for is to survive the modern world. This is a very convenient stance that Evola takes several times in the foreword - if the world is doomed, he doesn’t have to suggest any kind of solution.
”…no idea is as absurd as the idea of progress, which together with its corollary notion of the superiority of modern civilization, has created its own “positive” alibis by falsifying history, by insinuating harmful myths in people’s minds, and by proclaiming itself sovereign at the crossroads of the plebeian ideology from which it originated.“
Ugh. "Never mind that I can’t find an actual citation or ground my theories in evidence, the modern world has FALSIFIED HISTORY and DESTROYED THE EVIDENCE! CONSPIRACY!” An argument I’d expect to hear from a creationist, not a guiding light of Reaction.
Then Evola makes the argument that civilizations come from something like a Platonic Form, that somewhere out beyond the mortal plane, are hovering the Forms of the Traditional utopia and modern civilization.
I can’t stand this.
