There's a very marked decline in western thoughts, ideas, an optimism that finds it really hard or impossible to exist. What are your thoughts on that? No point in pointing out personal experiences, because as alien to each other we might seem, human beings are the same race distributed on different social levels. Money seems to make people unhappy anyway, decline of cultural points of reference that don't require going back to older and wronger things are more common place than they used to be, so what is your anchor to shapes of things to come? Highly pessimistic, but from a very optimistic point of view, mind. An alternative to the revolution thread, that is interesting enough but prompts more definite answers.

[whorefrost]

I think Britain is in an irreversile state of decline. The question is: what can be done about it? and if something can be done, who the hell is going to do it?

[pantophobia]

culture seems thrive on two things, or at least from my perspective, Art and War

both are constant, unyielding, yet necessary

and i am using both as blanket terms, art can be visual art, music, dance, and often art is inspired by and also perpetually drives new thought, new reason, new science, new questions

the catalyst to it is the state of war and peace, the expansion of territory, imposing new thought by force, the and the sometimes uneasy truce that occurs after a war, it propel to wards or away from peace or war at any time, and it can refer also to sport itself, sport is a war, competition, domination over your opponent, any kind of competition from popularity to cuisine is war

and as unnecessary as it seems, the battle between art and war is indeed crucial to culture's survival, the epic struggle. say 200 years from now, humanity reaches a state of secular unity, no fundamentalist demeaning art as perverseness, no more war, what happens to culture? it grinds to a stand still, and after all that was accomplished, and as happy as everyone can be, someone won't be, and they'll fight back and culture returns to a state of growth

it's an odd thing to look at from that angle, but it's one of the only ways i can answer the question, it's the Flux of Humanity, often content, but often bored and will pick a fight just for the hell of it

Originally Posted by pantophobia

culture seems thrive on two things, or at least from my perspective, Art and War

both are constant, unyielding, yet necessary

and i am using both as blanket terms, art can be visual art, music, dance, and often art is inspired by and also perpetually drives new thought, new reason, new science, new questions

the catalyst to it is the state of war and peace, the expansion of territory, imposing new thought by force, the and the sometimes uneasy truce that occurs after a war, it propel to wards or away from peace or war at any time, and it can refer also to sport itself, sport is a war, competition, domination over your opponent, any kind of competition from popularity to cuisine is war

and as unnecessary as it seems, the battle between art and war is indeed crucial to culture's survival, the epic struggle. say 200 years from now, humanity reaches a state of secular unity, no fundamentalist demeaning art as perverseness, no more war, what happens to culture? it grinds to a stand still, and after all that was accomplished, and as happy as everyone can be, someone won't be, and they'll fight back and culture returns to a state of growth

it's an odd thing to look at from that angle, but it's one of the only ways i can answer the question, it's the Flux of Humanity, often content, but often bored and will pick a fight just for the hell of it

That's all well and cool, but I'm still lost as to why we produce ideas that hardly get put into practice. Some good thoughts and ideas are there for the taking, but I get more and more worried about the reasons that prevent us from doing something about things in general. We are definately the most advanced example of animals that we know of, but yet the most contradictory in terms of looking after ourselves.

Originally Posted by whorefrost

I think Britain is in an irreversile state of decline. The question is: what can be done about it? and if something can be done, who the hell is going to do it?

Cheesy answer, but you can do it etc.

[pantophobia]

i think it has to do with the nature of leadership, and the fear that it would undermine their authority in some way

here in the US, the green movement is getting larger by the day, and even forming alliances between leaders of both the religious community and the scientific community, and it shows much promise with some pastors believing that humanity is causing global warming and not by divine power (certain scripture has been interpreted as humanity are the ones to maintain and preserve the environment for god), but members of the republican party who are in deep with more fundamentalist sects of the Moral Majority and Christian Coalition are trying to rebuke those findings cause by their words it's god's will that the earth is in the state that it is in, and any deviation to that is harmful to their hold on their congregations

the thing is that there is a constant struggle, and the reason that many of those good ideas go unfulfilled is because certain people with power don't want it, so it happens by election or by force, change comes with time, only about 150 years ago, Blacks taken from their homeland by force were still slaves, 50 years ago they hadn't truly gained acceptance as segregation had been forced onto them, now, one of the front runners in the presidential race is a Black Man, says a lot that he can even be considered a potential world leader from where the US has been, the campaign trail will show both sides of love and hate over the next year, and hopefully in 50 years, the last remnants of hatred can be eroded

[Hip Priest]

...the evils which we deplore in our present society are not the inevitable results of any unalterable laws of nature, or any kind of inexorable necessity, but are the fruits of human blindness, wilfulness and selfishness on the widest scale and in the long course of history; and that therefore their alteration demands something more than legislative and external changes, necesary as these may be: it demands a fundamental change of the spirit in which we think about and live our common life...

[!@#$%!]

sorry, no time to seek quotes from books and what i'm looking for is not online.

but here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Man

best found in will to power, which i don't even have with me in this house.

Wikipedia sucks.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by sarramkrop

Wikipedia sucks.

why, i thought you were fond of collective endeavors.

reactionary! and... racist!

[atari 2600]

"The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." - Plato

[MellySingsDoom]

Originally Posted by atari 2600

"The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." - Plato

"Plato couldn't quote his way out of a nutsack." - Eric Cartman

[pbradley]

Sociology isn't my forte but I'll give it a try.

I haven't see anything that would say that western thought is in decline as it is in stagnation. In fact, I'm not even sure how thought can be in decline except at the rate of its production. I'm not so willing to give a Hegelian explanation of Art and War since it appears that we still have a strong abundance of cultural reactionaries (the FCC is probably stronger than ever after the passing of the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act back in 2005) and we're all aware of the war (or war-like production) that we are in currently.

And I don't see how the shifting of political authority or new political alliances are the cause of the cultural malaise.

Instead, I blame post-modernism, or really the notion that we are in the tail end of anything as opposed to the beginning of something new. Many people, even politically, view the world in a post-post-post-modern light that mainfests itself in different ways; like a reluctance to conviction (artistically, this can be seen as the feeling that "everything has already been down" but also has politcal consequences), fleeing from truth all together in sake of belief (more people are becoming religious more than ever), a reliance on the past to describe modern affairs (my experience in the philosophy field has shown me that reliance on self-discovered philosophy is preferred less than referencing older philosophers... this really sucks the conviction out of philosophy and really prevents it from having the power to leak out into society), and a desire to deconstruct over constuction (this mostly seen in art and philosophy).

[evollove]

No has explained HOW Western Culture is in decline. You're all just assuming it is.

And compared to when? The 1400s? 1950s?

Personally, I think the world's just taking a "breather."

Post-Modernism, by the way, is just another phase and is not the absolute end of anything. Something else is lurking around the corner. I have no idea what, but I can't wait to find out.

[atsonicpark]

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to sarramkrop again.

[Florya]

Maybe DEVO had it right all along. Maybe we really are de-evolving. There certainly seems to be more 'law of the jungle' and 'survival of the fittest' behaviour nowadays.

I've always felt that 'culture' is defined by the level of creativity within a society. Not just in art and music, but in everyday life amongst the 'ordinary' people. I also feel that creativity generally springs from hardship - artists (of all persuasions) tend to do their best work whilst or soon after enduring some form of hardship.
The same with society as a whole - relative affluence and comfort breeds complacency, and once complacency takes over creativity seems to atrophy, society starts to crumble and 'culture' feels like it's in decline.

That's when conflicts or recessions happen, when societies have nothing better to do than to accumulate more possessions, money, or lebensraum.

I would therefore expand on pantophobia's premise that culture 'thrives' on Art and War.
I feel that these two are actually pointers to the cyclical nature of a culture/society. An 'artistic' society is one usually at the beginning of the cycle that ends with war or recesion.

What do we do about it? Fucked if I know.
It's human nature - I suggest we just sit it out and hope we survive.

[pbradley]

Originally Posted by evollove

Post-Modernism, by the way, is just another phase and is not the absolute end of anything. Something else is lurking around the corner. I have no idea what, but I can't wait to find out.

Tell that to the average Joe Culture Perpetrator.

Anyway, I think this is the wrong place to do the brain-stimulating thing, seen as it's mainly made of a bunch of bored rich kids with nothing else to do but cataloguing their lastest purchases in terms of music or the last project by Thurston Moore or some boring and wrong notion of music as such. That's all fine and dandy, but don't expect the bile that comes out of some of your mouths to be met with a grin all the time. Yes, you feel alienated, but you have little to complain about, apart from a few misplaced chords which were generally just alright, anyway.

[floatingslowly]

it's always a lot more fun to go down the slide than to climb up it.

weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!