The following is an excerpt from a paper I have written for a special issue on Oswald Spengler published by the Philosophical Journal of Conflict and Violence (PJCV).
Hello my friend! It is always nice to hear from you.
Interesting question, especially considering your recent trips across these different realms, your are probably best situated to read this specific article whilst you traverse the city-nature dichotomy globally. Well, I would say the current form is a Western phenomenon, but Western cultures expansiveness definitely made this a global phenomenon as we both spoke of last time. Again, it is still Western and modern, because China looks more like Germany than 19th century China. The alternative to this is discussed by Spengler in Man and Technics, it is demonstrated by the vagabond, the hermit, by the hippies of the hippie trail, and the creative few that are sensitive to the unconscious structures of reality, they all escape cities today, and you my friend are at the threshold between the conscious and unconscious structures of our reality. I guess at the end however, we will get more monstrous hypermoder cities, but also more eco-villages, return to countrysides, return to nature, etc.
You touched exactly on what I foremost had in mind when I commented, and I have faith in your reply.
Hopefully after a few years it will be proven that a lot of the recent inconveniences of city life were due to the economic bubble, not purely due to the metaphysics of urban-centric, industrial society.
At least that's the hope of my favorite philosopher of history - that we're simply going through the natural stages of finding a new moral code for industrial society, which like all innovations, is bound to bounce between extremes until times of balance can be reached.
Not only will they proven to be a reflection of the economic bubble, what Spengler had called the age of money, but also reflective of their anti-metaphysical spirit. The mere fact that many are waking up to this is early signs of an upcoming paradigm shift, but that would not have been possible if we had not seen the exact opposite of an organic ethos or spirit. This where dualism as perennial philosophy, whether seen through Far Eastern lenses, Islamic, Zoroastrian, or gnostic, finds relevance to this day. One necessitates the other, yet it is only through negation alone, and not through synthesis of opposites, that we can find truth in my humble opinion. Hegel was on to something, but Spengler was more accurate in his conception of this apparent dualistic clash across history.
" Spengler argued that the greatest thinkers of all cultures resided in towns, if not the periphery of a town."
"The history of all cultures commences with what Spengler calls the “primary classes”: the nobility and the clergy."
Not having read much Spengler, these two quotes from your essay, highlight that he must have been some sort of apologist for a romantic view of the Holy Roman Empire (HRE)? (Of which Köln was the pre-eminent city for a long time and never capital) (I agree a lot with what he says about capitals, those parochial cesspits.)
The identification of nomadism with the city, however, as both rootless ( 'Stadsluft macht frei nach Jahr und Tag' ) is another giveaway to this HRE context. Pesky traders and their wiles, damn those anarchists ruining perfectly good blood and soil types.
Given other peeps structure their arguments with the binary that nomadism and city-life are the opposites that rub life into our limbs, bashing them into the same 'thing' is very strange to me. I feel no true nomad would consider a rural villager any more/less 'hoofless' than their city cousins.
The sensitivity to scale is important here, most of what Spengler might consider rural in Europe from my Australian eyes looks like hobby farming, or lifestyle blocks. And in Australia the settlement pattern is such that the 'country' is an outgrowth of the city (trade with the empire trading system). Which is why we have more terms than Europe for areas besides village-town-city spectrum in the rural-city dichotomy. In Australia, in relation to a folk geographic-eco-taxonomy, we have:— city & small towns (we have no villages in Australia) which become the rural areas by way of hobby farms, then we have 'the bush' which includes the outskirts of cities and towns (also called the urban-bush interface that are talked about as 'more bush that city') as well as all of the countryside that is 'rural' proper. Further out, and which are also included in that term 'the bush', is the 'outback' which includes both wilderness areas and agricultural 'stations' like sheep stations (as opposed to ranches with 'ranges') the size of middling HRE entities, and all of these categories run roughshod over Country, in my case the Murwinna near nipaluna. They go back 15-50K++ years and make Spengler's view on antiquity look positively ingénue.
Spengler is also right, even if his frame is wonky. We have no access to Spengler's 'rural' or 'town' in Australia (life goes on), when we look at suburbia in particular, and the city overcomes the rural into megalopolis and their supply regions, but I would argue the rural, even Spengler's rural idyll, is always part of a city network, much like nomads are always in trade with settled economies. So.…
Spengler romanticises some epoch (possibly in a pure never existing form) of the HRE. This is hilarious.
Is it exclusively a Western/Faustian phenomenon though?
And is there any realistic alternative to this dynamic, given the clear consistent rise in urban population % of total over the centuries?
Hello my friend! It is always nice to hear from you.
Interesting question, especially considering your recent trips across these different realms, your are probably best situated to read this specific article whilst you traverse the city-nature dichotomy globally. Well, I would say the current form is a Western phenomenon, but Western cultures expansiveness definitely made this a global phenomenon as we both spoke of last time. Again, it is still Western and modern, because China looks more like Germany than 19th century China. The alternative to this is discussed by Spengler in Man and Technics, it is demonstrated by the vagabond, the hermit, by the hippies of the hippie trail, and the creative few that are sensitive to the unconscious structures of reality, they all escape cities today, and you my friend are at the threshold between the conscious and unconscious structures of our reality. I guess at the end however, we will get more monstrous hypermoder cities, but also more eco-villages, return to countrysides, return to nature, etc.
Salam alaikum ✌️
You touched exactly on what I foremost had in mind when I commented, and I have faith in your reply.
Hopefully after a few years it will be proven that a lot of the recent inconveniences of city life were due to the economic bubble, not purely due to the metaphysics of urban-centric, industrial society.
At least that's the hope of my favorite philosopher of history - that we're simply going through the natural stages of finding a new moral code for industrial society, which like all innovations, is bound to bounce between extremes until times of balance can be reached.
Wa Alaykum al Salam!
Not only will they proven to be a reflection of the economic bubble, what Spengler had called the age of money, but also reflective of their anti-metaphysical spirit. The mere fact that many are waking up to this is early signs of an upcoming paradigm shift, but that would not have been possible if we had not seen the exact opposite of an organic ethos or spirit. This where dualism as perennial philosophy, whether seen through Far Eastern lenses, Islamic, Zoroastrian, or gnostic, finds relevance to this day. One necessitates the other, yet it is only through negation alone, and not through synthesis of opposites, that we can find truth in my humble opinion. Hegel was on to something, but Spengler was more accurate in his conception of this apparent dualistic clash across history.
" Spengler argued that the greatest thinkers of all cultures resided in towns, if not the periphery of a town."
"The history of all cultures commences with what Spengler calls the “primary classes”: the nobility and the clergy."
Not having read much Spengler, these two quotes from your essay, highlight that he must have been some sort of apologist for a romantic view of the Holy Roman Empire (HRE)? (Of which Köln was the pre-eminent city for a long time and never capital) (I agree a lot with what he says about capitals, those parochial cesspits.)
The identification of nomadism with the city, however, as both rootless ( 'Stadsluft macht frei nach Jahr und Tag' ) is another giveaway to this HRE context. Pesky traders and their wiles, damn those anarchists ruining perfectly good blood and soil types.
Given other peeps structure their arguments with the binary that nomadism and city-life are the opposites that rub life into our limbs, bashing them into the same 'thing' is very strange to me. I feel no true nomad would consider a rural villager any more/less 'hoofless' than their city cousins.
The sensitivity to scale is important here, most of what Spengler might consider rural in Europe from my Australian eyes looks like hobby farming, or lifestyle blocks. And in Australia the settlement pattern is such that the 'country' is an outgrowth of the city (trade with the empire trading system). Which is why we have more terms than Europe for areas besides village-town-city spectrum in the rural-city dichotomy. In Australia, in relation to a folk geographic-eco-taxonomy, we have:— city & small towns (we have no villages in Australia) which become the rural areas by way of hobby farms, then we have 'the bush' which includes the outskirts of cities and towns (also called the urban-bush interface that are talked about as 'more bush that city') as well as all of the countryside that is 'rural' proper. Further out, and which are also included in that term 'the bush', is the 'outback' which includes both wilderness areas and agricultural 'stations' like sheep stations (as opposed to ranches with 'ranges') the size of middling HRE entities, and all of these categories run roughshod over Country, in my case the Murwinna near nipaluna. They go back 15-50K++ years and make Spengler's view on antiquity look positively ingénue.
Spengler is also right, even if his frame is wonky. We have no access to Spengler's 'rural' or 'town' in Australia (life goes on), when we look at suburbia in particular, and the city overcomes the rural into megalopolis and their supply regions, but I would argue the rural, even Spengler's rural idyll, is always part of a city network, much like nomads are always in trade with settled economies. So.…
Spengler romanticises some epoch (possibly in a pure never existing form) of the HRE. This is hilarious.
Thanks for this educative essay.