Spenglerian Optimism: The Space Race, 20th Century Pop Culture, and the Rise of the American Civilization

In this specific contribution to the Spenglerian Optimism series Elliot “Aspen” Smith explores the possibility of a new high culture emerging from the Southwestern American region — the Aridoamerican plane. The concept of an Aridoamerican plane is truly a magical one that will certainly baffle you once you comprehend it, and realize that we have been unknowingly exposed to it for quite some time now. As Aspen and I always say, once you see the Aridoamerican plane, and realize it as a culture in its own right, you cannot unsee it! Hence, I thought it would be fitting to share a contribution where Aspen explores the Aridoamerican spirit expressing itself through the artistic forms of another culture, namely, the Western-European-American culture. Finally, it is fascinating how many of the most creative forms of Spenglerian Optimism are currently emerging from the American world. The tendency, and ability, to construct new Spenglerian futures seem to proliferate at the frontiers of World-History, as seen in the last contribution to the series where I briefly explored one of the most powerful examples of Spenglerian Optimism, namely, the notion of a future Aenean civilization by the

Tree of Woe

. The series will continue to present further futures with a Spenglerian touch, if you are interested in contributing a piece, or know someone that would, please do not hesitate to reach out on direct messages, or my Twitter account (Link is in bio).

Follow Aspen on substack, and subscribe to his page “Aridoamerica and its People”, for more content on Aridoamerica!

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Introduction: Spengler’s Russia

The middle of the 20th Century and the Cold War was a romanticization of the triumph of technology and utopianism. However, some have argued that there isn’t a whole lot utopian or scientific about these works. It’s commonly credited that many aspects of the Soviet Union’s science fiction were at least partially based on more ancient Russian traditions. While this much is certainly true, a lot of focus isn’t placed on America. The assumption that NATO was “The West”, and America, as a subcontinent, was part of this “West”, had led to a negligence of a critical look into its unique cultural expressions during this time. When viewing America might have much more interesting aspects. When acknowledging these flawed geographic and cultural presumptions, other more interesting aspects are revealed. Due to its presence and focus on the Southwestern Deserts, another primordial spirit influences much of America’s fiction. As will be made abundantly clear further on; many of these works seem to indicate that underneath all the mid-20th century optimism and technology veneer; what we see in American Science fiction during the Space Race is the retellings of how the Anglos colonized the Southwest and the echoes of what I argue is an entirely new civilization forming. In many ways, as America was pressured with the Soviets to reach the stars during the Space Race, much as people have argued that the Russian identity came into fruition; so too did the true American one.

In The Decline of the West, the legendary Oswald Spengler lays out an apocalyptic and melancholic tone about the future of the West. Spengler’s main thesis is based on the study of other civilizations that have come and gone. Each of these civilizations (High Cultures as he calls them, with Civilization being the moribund decline. However English speakers refer to High Cultures as civilizations as well, unlike the Germans.) was motivated by a prime symbol, based on internal and ecological assumptions of that society. Spengler argued that Western civilization, which he calls Faustian, was guided by the concept of Infinite Space, or man’s reach towards heaven. He argued this could be seen in the Gothic Cathedrals which were some of the tallest structures in the world when they were built. Under this Faustian logic, it would come as no surprise that this was a civilization that looked to the stars. If you see many of the rocket ships that came out of the 20th century, many have the same upward thrust as the much earlier Gothic Cathedrals.

Fig. 1: Criticism of Notre Dame Proposals - Sebastian Errazuriz 2019

Note: While a critique of Notre Dame Proposals, this artwork spectacularly describes Spengler’s thoughts on the Faustian West as an upward and onward looking people. The towering pointing thrust of the rocket and the Gothic Cathedral are very much products of the same people with the same worldview.

However, following the World Wars, Europe was flanked on two sides by two foreign powers. To the east, you had the Russians who Spengler argued were actually under the cultural distortion of Europe and were a separate civilization, which he argues by the fact communism morphed into an anti-European/American ideology despite being pioneered by Western Intellects for Western society. Spengler described the Russians and other Slavic peoples as being guided by an Infinite Horizontal Plane which had originated from the connection many Slavic peoples had to the steppe. Through the Cold War and the Space Race, much of Soviet pop culture and fiction was based on this eternal steppe, including how the Russians wanted to reach the stars. Much of the Soviet media was influenced by Cosmism. On the other side, you had the Americans. The Americans of Spengler’s time were easily a part of the Faustian West and probably the most extreme of them in its base assumptions (i.e. Progress, Capitalism, Aggressive Conquest), unlike Russia which Spengler saw as a distinct emergent civilization with Communism as its rebellion. This has been argued many times over and is a guiding principle of explaining why the Russo-Ukraine war has erupted; especially among Vladimir Putin’s justification to invade as well as Alexander Dugin’s Eurasianism.

America’s Hidden Culture

However, America in my opinion is much more interesting. We live a century after Spengler and the America in this paper will be argued, and though tiny ruptures of his time, over the Cold War it’ll become very clear that America, though firmly Western and European east of the Mississippi River, is too likely highly influenced by an emergent new civilization. Although seemingly obscure at a shallow glance, it has hidden itself in our pop culture and many facets of American culture as it is exported through its nexus point in Los Angeles, many of which came into fruition after Spengler had passed to have noticed the general trajectory. Outside of and partially including the major metropolitan zones of much of the American Southwest and Northern Mexico, the people not only live in a vastly different ecology from their country’s capitals; but are very ethnically and culturally different from them as well. This trend isn’t just present in the people and ecology, one of Spengler’s main arguments was the having a unique form of architecture which we have seen in the Adobe and its many offshoots, or arguably how incredibly spread out and empty this part of America is compared to European Countries. The area also has a unique demographic character with Anglos and Hispanics being a plurality and Indigenous people a prominent minority.

Fig. 2: Erosion No. 2 Mother Earth Laid Bare - Alexander Hogue 1936

Note: Alexander Hogue was a prominent Southwestern Painter and this commentary on the dust bowl presents Americans with the idea that the means of cultivating America are very different from the older assumptions we dealt with, which caused the crisis of the Dust Bowl.

The famous postmodern philosopher Jean Baudrillard sensed much the same. In his book America, although likely distorted by the then presentism of 80’s America made the argument present throughout the book that America was the most itself instead of influenced by foreign culture (i.e. Europe) in the Southwestern Deserts and believed it to be a society which constantly floated around the Vanishing Point. In the 1910’s a patroness by the name of Mabel Dodge Luhan also sensed it, in fact arguing on multiple occasions that Western/Anglo Civilization would be saved by the merger of it and an integration of indigenous traditions due to a deracination by mechanization. Luhan would go on to start an art colony and create the Southwest as a center of intellectual talent and founded the Taos Art Colony. She would influence some incredibly famous artists such as Georgia O'Keeffe. She would at one point host Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World who very conspicuously put the Southwest as the “Human Reservation” or the last place on the earth that had not been touched by the mechanization of humanity. Luhan is credited with causing many seismic shifts in Western Art and philosophy well into the post-war period.

However, unlike Mabel Dodge Luhan, I do not think this culture is Western or Faustian. In the background of my academic career, I have found that America and Mexico much like Russia are harboring a new emergent high culture/civilization. One that, much like Spengler’s depiction of the Russians, is still in a primordial phase. It can be found in many of the Southwest’s unique cultural quirks, the highly esoteric tone of the Chicano movement, the many bizarre (by our standards) religious and cultural movements in the Southwest, most relevantly to our paper much of America’s Cold War-era and Space Race science fiction and with how America cultivated its identity during the Space Race. I call this new forming civilization Aridoamerica and it encompasses the General American Desert West and Northern Mexico.

Much as how Europe formed from Latin, Germanic, Celtic, and Christian elements in a synthesis; here we see a synthesis of American, Spanish, Mesoamerican, and local Indigenous influences, and this broad cultural sphere includes large swathes of various peoples from the Puebloans, Nuevomexicanos, and the Mormons. This side of America is legitimately very foreign and alien to the rest of the world and large swathes of the world see it no other way. When Europeans look to America, they often have a particular distaste with many of the European-like aspects. While this may confuse Americans, when one looks at what they consider “American,” a lot of it is mainly Texas, California, and the Southwest. This is the land of the deserts which bizarrely have some of the highest biodiversity outside a rainforest ecosystem on the planet. This is America’s mystical land of the frontier, the land of the endless desert sky; the land where the Jaguar can encounter an elk.

The Story of Settlement

Fig. 3: Dark They Were, and Golden Eyed - Ray Bradburry 1949 (Artist Unknown)

Note: This painting for the short story was done to show the Martian Settlement that Americans were forced to evacuate in order to avoid the nuclear war being waged on Earth. Also very suspiciously looks like Santa Fe and Albuquerque down to the clouds.

We see this play out largely during the Space Race in our expression of science fiction which was in many ways an extension of this new culture’s expression. In 1949 there was a short story called Dark They Were, and Golden Eyed by Ray Bradbury (Author of Fahrenheit 451) which was about Americans fleeing to Mars after nuclear armageddon on a mission from the US Government. Ray, although born in Illinois, frequented between it and the Southwestern Borderlands. Tucson to be specific and eventually, he moved to Los Angeles. It follows a suburban 50s family in their new Martian home. Over the story, these Americans had been feeding on the flora they brought to terraform Mars. Over the story, there’s at first a horror of the family watching their food and friends distort into something else starting with their objects, then themselves. Some people assumed it was normal and always a part of them. Some panicked and tried to escape it. Our protagonists, the 50’s White nuclear family turned into golden-eyed people with very dark skin. By the end of the story and after the war had ended on Earth, an American expedition to Mars showed an abandoned settlement. What had happened was that those original Martian colonists had disappeared into the Martian land and were nothing else but martians.

Fig. 4: Villages Set (Indian, Anglo, Spanish) - William Lumpkins 1934

Note: Lumpkins demonstrates the construction of local villages. You have the very Gothic and Georgian styled central Anglo village, however the Spanish village on the right has a lot of commonalities with the Indian village on the left.

As Spengler argues on the concept of race; “A Race has roots. Race and landscape belong together. Where a plant takes root, there it dies also.” later on in the paragraph he adds to this by stating “A race does not migrate. Men migrate, and their successive generations are born in ever-changing landscapes; but the landscape exercises a secret force upon the plant nature in them, and eventually, the race expression is completely transformed by the extinction of the old and the appearance of the new one.” We saw this play out in an earlier people, the Nuevomexicanos, a Mexican adjacent people who have lived in the Southwest since the late 1500s many of whom have direct familial lineage to the conquistadors who settled the area centuries ago.

They are by some estimates the most genetically European New World Hispanic peoples competing with the Argentines and Uruguayans. However, despite this and historical frictions; you would not believe this by viewing their culture, architecture, and how they speak of themselves. Instead what you find is a people that are culturally indigenized who carve religious icons similar to how the Puebloans carve Kachina dolls and build in adobe with methods taught to them by the Puebloans. Many identify as Spanish but as mixed Spanish/Indian, not just due to historical frictions with the then condescending Anglos but also the fact that New Mexico is the older Mexico, and was named as such far before Mexico became a country. Much as Bradbury’s story played out, they became Dark Skinned and Golden Eyed and disappeared into the immediate land.

Fig. 5: Enterprise Dam, Washington County, Utah c. 1910

Note: Large scale infrastructure projects like this were common across large swathes of the American West from 1865-1980’s

The very theme of terraforming and building planetary colonies also has direct parallels to how white settlers encountered this area. America during the course of the space race dreamed of colonizing the stars and expressed that much through its medium of science fiction. However, unlike the Eastern United States which was full of the same type of farmland as Europe, here the deserts were like entering an alien planet; one which required entirely new methods of cultivation. The Mormons for example utilized a central planning structure to divide farmers as loyal members of the church with many of the communities in Utah being essentially planned self-sufficient communities. This in many ways resembles the idea of having colonies on the moon or Mars. Centralized projects, mainly standing alone and isolated while having to be incredibly self-sufficient.

When Anglos ran into the established Hispanic communities in New Mexico, they found many Spanish Ranchers and Puebloans which had more communitarian aspects to water management. As Maria Lane Argues in Fluid Geographies: Water, Science, and Settler Colonialism in New Mexico, her general thesis was that there was a considerable clash between the centralized Technocratic Management of water done by the Anglos and the more decentralized communitarian one done by the Nuevomexicanos and Puebloans. The Anglos also came across very foreign structures in the form of the Pueblos which were mud and horizontal, with the Taos coming most to mind. Many of these Pueblos have a very organic look to them and have to be maintained as such due to Grandpa’s Handaxe effect. Compared to the Western buildings of Europe and the Eastern United States, this was effectively like stepping onto another planet.

Our Indigenized Cold War Pop Culture

We also see this in a much more famous science fiction series; Star Wars. Star Wars bears very little resemblance to many of the European folk tales and is in many ways a direct retelling of general Southwestern Mythology. We first see this in Luke Skywalker who fundamentally is a rural man living in a clay and mud house in the middle of a vast expansive desert, one which he sits in the center of in many frames. Many aspects of Star Wars resemble a general Southwestern mythology. Another great example comes from Princess Leia. Her hair is treated as a distinct pop culture icon, but it is a hairstyle called the Squash Blossom which was endemic among many of the Puebloan communities of the Southwest such as the Hopi. It was also worn during the Mexican Revolution by many women freedom fighters.

Fig. 6: Princess Leia and a Hopi Woman

The Puebloan similarities don’t stop here, Chewbacca is very likely a retelling of the Bear Spirit in Dine (Navajo) mythology. In the Dine Tradition, Bears are seen as spiritual guides who represent strength and self-knowledge. The Hopi, a Puebloan people view the Bear Kachina as associated with Strength, Courage, Wisdom, and Healing the sick. If any of these sound familiar, you wouldn’t be hard-pressed. Chewbacca not only physically resembles a bear standing upright but is often seen behind Han Solo, acting as a very courageous sidekick to him. Chewbacca is very clearly a spiritual guide for him and towers over Han in height, giving him an almost spiritual-like presence. Although Star Wars initially seems like a retelling of WWII, deep down, many aspects of it resemble Southwestern Mythology. In the greatest sense of irony to Chewbacca being a Bear Kachina, some have used Chewbacca to heal themselves.

Fig. 7: Han Solo with Chewbacca and a Bear Kachina Doll

I am not the only one who has taken notice of this. There is a considerable interest among many of the Southwest Natives and Star Wars and other aspects of modern pop culture, as well as a particular insistence on merging their older traditions with it. A group of people translated Star Wars into the Dine Language and many people from these indigenous communities have taken a particular passionate interest in Star Wars. This in recent times has led to an artistic movement among many called Indigenous Futurism that often approaches Sci-Fi from a much more Amerindian perspective. Whether knowingly or unknowingly, it’s likely that deep down they gravitate towards these because deep down they know it’s their ancient spiritually imprinted cultural mythos. Added to that is a story of resistance from an overwhelmingly large foe, and the plot of the movie at the surface does seem like a retelling of WWII. However, it bears the story of the Southwestern Natives. Star Wars is thus an Indo-Hispano story. Its elements have portions of local Native traditions as well as important political events in the history of the place such as the Mexican Revolution.

Fig. 8: Hopi R2 with Child - Duane Koyawena & Joe Mastroianni 2019

Note: If one uses the Spenglerian methodology, this version of R2D2 is in fact the more spiritually authentic version, and is less distorted by a pseudomorphosis.

David Annan in Movie Fantastic: Beyond the Dream Machine argues a very similar viewpoint largely regarding the Indigenous influences on our perception of space aliens. His argument was built upon in Vincent Di Fate's Where do Little Green Men Come From? A speculative look at the origins of a Pop Culture Icon, where he argued that the idea of a space alien is also in fact Indigenous. Annan utilizes a Mesoamerican stone mask to solidify this point and our idea of the gray aliens' stone mask. The same in many ways could be argued for Little Green Men and the Mesoamerican Jade Masks. However, I would add to this even further. In the Hopi tradition, there is a group of people called the Ant People. In the early worlds of Hopi myth, the Ant people were a pale, short statured, and industrious race of people who helped the Hopi during a time of crisis. They have been shown either with horns or with big bulbous heads. In the myth, they fed the Hopi and taught them how to live as well as about the stars and the world. When their early world fell apart, the Ant People guided the Hopi underground where they survived the destruction. To add to this, the reason the Hopi believe ants to have thin waists is because they sacrificed their corn to the Hopi in an ultimate act of compassion, causing their wastes to be thin. When one sees the space men, they are thin, are industrious, and have bulbous heads. Unsurprisingly, due to these similarities, many modern adherents of the New Age Movement made connections that the Ant People and these little bulbous-headed aliens are the same thing. However, I argue the inverse. Our Gray Aliens are retellings of the Ant People, not the other way around. It makes sense why there is such an obsession of UFOs and Aliens in the Southwest, with certain cults dedicated to worshipping them.

Fig. 9: Gray Alien and Ant People Petroglyph

Remember Spengler’s quote on how Race and Land go hand and hand. We may believe that we shape the land, but in truth, it’s the land that shapes us. Even though Star Wars and many of these depictions of space aliens were created by White People, “Westerners”; by America’s movies being created in Los Angeles, a city firmly placed in Aridoamerica with distinct cultural ties to Mexico and the Local Indigenous peoples has thus been much more Mexican and Native in its cultural influence. As America competed with the Soviets to conquer space, it became less European and more itself.

The Influences on the Space Race

Another aspect of this colonization comes from our contingencies to live in outer space. Take Nader Khalili’s architecture for example. In 1984, He developed the Earthbag building technique for NASA as a means of what mankind would live like on the moon and Mars. In totally unsurprising fashion, a later more refined design of earthbag building was called Superadobe which he had based upon his homeland in Iran. However, his design of earthbag buildings has become popular with the American Southwesterners living off the grid. This came at the tail end of the space race. The idea of us colonizing the stars was a downstream effect of us wanting to beat the Soviets, and leading into the 80s we saw much more experimentation of actual human habitation on other planets.

Fig. 10: Superadobe House

We would see another example of this post-space race interplanetary habitation emerge just a few years later with the construction of Biosphere 2. It was built to experiment how people would live on other planets. This simulation was built in the Sonoran Desert just outside of Tucson and was created as an experiment to simulate the life processes on earth to show our life among the stars and create a self contained oasis in the desert. It also was created as the downstream result of anxiety about a potential nuclear war with Russia and wanting to keep humanity safe in case the world was converted into a nuclear wasteland. Ironically, with the usages of water in many of Arizona and Nevada’s Metropolis’ it can be argued that there many separate Biosphere 2s.

Fig. 11: Biosphere 2

Note: Tucson and Biosphere 2 are the same experiment.

Many of these cities act as oasis bastions often pulling water up from the ground and are surrounded by large amounts of space. We constructed Biosphere 2 the same way we constructed Tucson. Many of these “Space Colony” cities that dot the Southwest likely aren’t sustainable. However, it remains that we built these Southwestern mega cities the same way we fantasize about building colonies on the moon. The Eastern United States administers the general southwest; our speculative interstellar galactic empires run their colonies; as large mostly isolated peripherals that stick out like sore thumbs in their general landscape which it takes great infrastructural effort to reach. Due to how ecologically different it and its colonizer are; it seems highly plausible at some point in the undetermined future that you will see a schism between these two America’s. From the American settlement of a foreign land to the very exotic nature of the pre-existing peoples within it in comparison to where the settlers had come from. If America’s main pop culture apparatus had remained on the East Coast, the fiction that was made during this time would likely have resembled much more like Europe due to the mutual transatlantic connection. However, Los Angeles being firmly placed in the Southwest, which one of its earliest intellectuals Charles Lummis deemed and wanted to cultivate as “A Santa Fe on the Pacific.” America’s science fiction and aspects of Modernity is not as a glimpse of the supposed glorious future among the stars but rather a subtle retelling of how the Anglos colonized the Southwest, and how underneath the surface was a monumental sized undercurrent of Mexican and Indigenous culture.

Fig. 12: Taos Pueblo and Speculative Martian Colony

Note: America fantasized of colonizing planets in order to compete with the Soviets. However, much of our story does not interlink with the older Faustian pursuit of the stars. America may have led “The West” but the Cold War and the Space Race pressured America into becoming more like the future emergent Aridoamerican Civilization.

Conclusion

These influences have worked to change the local Anglos into something completely unrecognizable from where they came from much as Dark They Were, and Golden Eyed foretold. Some fought and are fighting against these Mexican and Native influences, others have completely embraced them with some even assuming this is how it always was. It's likely that the endpoint of Anglos of the American West is much the same and much the same that happened to the Nuevomexicanos, a people so utterly touched by the desert and cacti they disappear into it. The myth of the American Cowboy is a halfway point to this.

Many of us growing up often assumed and were conditioned to believe that America was just a shallow extension of Western Europe. The America of the Cold War thought of itself as much and it being the leader of the “Western Alliance.” While this is certainly true east of the Mississippi, the cultural shifts West of the Mississippi following the 30s and deep into the Cold War era indicate that what formed out West, and which was shown to us through our media and our fiction, not only isn’t European but is evidence of something new entirely, something very alien and never before seen to the rest of the world. A people and a culture who in reality have as much in common with the Aztecs and Puebloans as they do with Europe/Spengler’s Faustian West.

Fig. 13: The Sonoran Desert and 70’s Science Fiction Painting

This is a society that in many ways sits between all of these cultures in a synthesis much like what birthed the Western Latin, Germanic, Celtic, and Christian identity itself. Much as how Russian Mythology silently returned to prominence in its Soviet Period under the veneer of science fiction and window dressing of Faustian Man’s pursuit of the stars (Which in many ways the Soviets were trying to bookend); much the same happened in America where our science fiction has very little of us reaching the stars but are various retellings of the story of the Southwest both in the form of the story of colonization as well as the local cultures present within it. Our idealistic pursuit of the stars merely brought this identity closer to fruition.

In conclusion, while many have argued that the Soviet Union’s Science Fiction has come from many of the older Russian traditions; the same is just as if not more definitely closer to being true for America. Many aspects of our pop culture in Cold War era science fiction are retellings of what I consider a future emergent Aridoamerican Civilization currently in an embryonic stage of its development. As America raced with the Soviets to reach the stars, it was not fulfilling the European ethos. Much like Russia, America was defining itself through an increasingly hispanic and indigenized lens. From stories from the perspectives of the Indigenous peoples as well as how we supposedly will colonize the stars, these are all retellings of how the Anglos colonized the Southwest rather than future speculations; they tell the true American History. In some cases, such as Bradbury’s work, it may be a prediction of our future and what happened to the European settler peoples as they disappeared into the desert much like what happened to the Nuevomexicanos from their older Spanish history. The science fiction of the 20th Century was not the West vs. East, it was two new emergent specifically post-European civilizations with partial European cultural ancestry closing the book on that history for good and utilizing the Space Race to further solidify what it meant to be themselves.

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