Beyond Spengler (from the archive)

Oswald Spengler (1880-1936) was brilliant in finding cyclic patterns and similarities between the rise and fall of various civilizations, but I don't admire Spengler's complete rejection of the “Idea of Progress.” I think there can be both cycles and progress, like a winding path up a mountain which sometimes descends before it rises again.  Evolution is the basis for accepting the idea of progress, life has evolved from the simple to the complex, and although modern human advances in saving lives has slowed harsh natural selection, progress in evolution continues.

Spengler speaks of a “mysterious cosmic force” that influences man, but he does not at all tie it to biology. I define the activation within life of material Tirips or the Will, which is tied to biology, and is later shaped by evolution. This is the force that is universal within life and is therefore within distinct civilizations and cultures. Universal evolution does not suggest only one people or one civilization, which could be destroyed by one disease or one disaster. Human evolution has always worked within a variety of people and cultures, each evolving in there own fashion---we would hope that their independence could be protected by a defensive federalism, while cooperating with one another in the overall evolution of human beings, even evolving into new species out into the cosmos, as Raymond Cattell suggested. 

Evolution also answers Spengler's attempt to define the “Prime Symbol” of each distinct civilization, eg. Faustian-Western, Apollinian-Greco-Roman, Magian-Arabian, etc. The real prime symbol is the universal symbol of evolving life, the activation within life of material Tirips to ascending levels of supermaterial Godhood which activates all life forms, even when each culture and civilization is uniquely shaped by evolution in its own environment and by its own genetic traits. Spengler thinks real unity is more cultural than biological, when the reality is the other way around, there is a biological origin behind cultural creations which basically enhances survival and reproduction, and ultimately enhances success in the sacred drive to evolve toward Godhood. As Wilmot Robertson suggested we could continue to counter Spengler's prediction of inevitable fall in solving the age old problem of union in America by forming an ethnopluralism of ethnostates perhaps adapted from our Constitutional separation of powers and states, for all groups, black, white, brown, yellow, or red, and then protect the ethnostates from marauding imperialists, supremacists, global money grubbers, and social justice warriors, with a defensive federalism.

We can pay attention to the signs and cycles of the rise and decline of civilizations, which Spengler was brilliant in finding, such as the deterioration of the roots and traditions of the founders, the fall in birthrates, the rise of dictatorships, etc. but it is the ongoing evolution of  life and in various group selections on the sacred path to Godhood which counters the ominous pessimism of Spengler.