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Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West was written 100 years ago and the theory says - Countries/Civilizations are like Organisms - born - grow - age - die. He s

Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West was written 100 years ago and the theory says - Countries/Civilizations are like Organisms - born - grow - age - die. He shows the life cycle of an empire. People are so individually different in values/ambitions/knowledge/skill/personality etc etc they start thinking about their own needs and run in different directions. Sooner or later what holds the group together is nothing. Philosopher Charles Taylor calls it the immanent frame but they don't teach Philosophy these days. Things that last are Religion (shared stories that hold people together). Religions have learnt long ago (the hard way) keeping very different types of people together for the long term, involves making them focus on something much larger than themselves. So we still have the Vatican or Islam or Judaism or Hinduism etc that have lasted longer the Nations. Nations come and go.

SilverElfin 1y ago
Interesting to think about the longevity of religion as an organism. Which of those is the longest-living organism, and what makes it last? Is there some aspect of the traits of people that you listed (values/ambitions/knowledge/etc) that you could use to describe countries or civilizations or religions to analyze them more deeply?
- joules77 1y ago
  Philosophers have been thinking about this for a long time. Why does the Vatican survive collapse of empires, nations, world wars, plagues, internal schisms, the enlightenment, reformation, revolutions etc etc? And they have identified so many pieces. Ask ChatGPT. Ask it to talk about what Charles Taylor, Wendy Brown, Arnold Toynbee, Lynn Margulis say about longevity. Its not about optimization and efficiency. Because the system has to survive unpredictability. More complex. More unpredictable. Something Engineers/Technologists are trained to avoid. Which is why they are all quite lost when it comes to transforming social/political systems. Priests (doesn't matter which Faith) and Politicians are trained to deal with it. Not sweep it under the carpet and pretend to be clever. The bill shows up sooner or later.

SilverElfin 1y ago

Interesting to think about the longevity of religion as an organism. Which of those is the longest-living organism, and what makes it last? Is there some aspect of the traits of people that you listed (values/ambitions/knowledge/etc) that you could use to describe countries or civilizations or religions to analyze them more deeply?

joules77 1y ago
Philosophers have been thinking about this for a long time. Why does the Vatican survive collapse of empires, nations, world wars, plagues, internal schisms, the enlightenment, reformation, revolutions etc etc? And they have identified so many pieces. Ask ChatGPT. Ask it to talk about what Charles Taylor, Wendy Brown, Arnold Toynbee, Lynn Margulis say about longevity. Its not about optimization and efficiency. Because the system has to survive unpredictability. More complex. More unpredictable. Something Engineers/Technologists are trained to avoid. Which is why they are all quite lost when it comes to transforming social/political systems. Priests (doesn't matter which Faith) and Politicians are trained to deal with it. Not sweep it under the carpet and pretend to be clever. The bill shows up sooner or later.