"But the culture wars continue, and then as now the camps are well defined. On one side, the ‘woke’ tribe - that curious agglomeration of international capital and elite progressive opinion posing as an uprising from below - works to invert the culture as it crusades against everything that the place has ever been or stood for. In response, the ‘based’ tribe rises up to ‘defend the West’, but can never seem to agree on what it is defending. What is this ‘West’, after all? Is it an ethnic homeland, a religion, a set of principles, a particular economic or social model, or some other way of seeing or being? Nobody seems to agree.
"Surveying the ongoing demolition of the pillars of my culture, I am sometimes, in my worst moods, tempted to join the defenders of the West in their work. But when I have calmed down, I remember that those pillars are mostly rotten anyway, and that those attacking them, repulsive as they can sometimes be, are not entirely wrong either. Something has gone wrong with this ‘West’, and those who highlight its past crimes are getting at something that maybe even they can’t quite put their finger on.
"Like essayists trying to get to the heart of the matter, or poets scrabbling to take down dictation, it can sometimes feel as if all the discontents in our ongoing breakdown, wherever they think they stand, are motivated by the same sense of loss or confusion that Machine modernity has created as it has ripped us all away from our moorings. The right-populists who rebel against the bugs and the pod, and the left-green Extinction Rebels who stop the traffic because they want to stop the Machine, are routinely presented as opposites, but they look to me like manifestations of the same frustration. The progressives who rail against ‘whiteness’ and the traditionalists who refuse to be imprisoned in a fifteen minute city are taking a weirdly consonant stand against the same thing: a rationalised, profiteering, inhuman future that they feel is closing in on them without any means of escape.
"So if you ask me to help ‘defend the West’ now, I will reply that, though this place is my home and the home of my ancestors, I can’t avoid the reality that this ‘West’ birthed the Machine, and is building that inhuman future. Something in our way of seeing contained a seed that unmade the world. I have been examining this seed now for two years. Do I want it to grow? No. I want to uproot it. I want to say that this ‘West’ is not a thing to be ‘conserved’: not now. It is a thing to be superseded. It is an albatross around our necks. It obstructs our vision. It weighs us down.
"Sometimes, you have to know when to let go.
"‘The West’ has become an idol; some kind of static image of a past that maybe once was but is now inhabited by a new force: the Machine. ‘The West’ today thinks in numbers and words, but can’t write poetry to save its life. ‘The West’ is the kingdom of Mammon. ‘The West’ eats the world, and eats itself, that it may continue to ‘grow’. ‘The West’ knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. ‘The West’ is exhausted and empty.
"Maybe, then, just maybe, we need to let ‘the West’ die.
"Let it die so that we can live.
"Maybe we need to let this concept fall away. To let it crumble so that we can see what lies beneath. Stop all the ‘fighting’ to preserve something nobody can even define, something which has long lost its heart and soul. Stop clinging to the side of the sinking hull as the band plays on. We struck the iceberg long ago; it must be time, at last, to stop clinging to the shifting metal. To let go and begin swimming, out towards the place where the light plays on the water. Just out there. Do you see? Beyond; just beyond. There is something waiting out there, but you have to strike out to reach it. You have to let go."
IDK. ISTM you could try to figure out what that "seed" was and still preserve the valuable parts without it. Isn't that what has happened during other ages of decline?
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branchandroot
Re: What to do next?
Date: 2023-06-16 02:58 am (UTC)"But the culture wars continue, and then as now the camps are well defined. On one side, the ‘woke’ tribe - that curious agglomeration of international capital and elite progressive opinion posing as an uprising from below - works to invert the culture as it crusades against everything that the place has ever been or stood for. In response, the ‘based’ tribe rises up to ‘defend the West’, but can never seem to agree on what it is defending. What is this ‘West’, after all? Is it an ethnic homeland, a religion, a set of principles, a particular economic or social model, or some other way of seeing or being? Nobody seems to agree.
"Surveying the ongoing demolition of the pillars of my culture, I am sometimes, in my worst moods, tempted to join the defenders of the West in their work. But when I have calmed down, I remember that those pillars are mostly rotten anyway, and that those attacking them, repulsive as they can sometimes be, are not entirely wrong either. Something has gone wrong with this ‘West’, and those who highlight its past crimes are getting at something that maybe even they can’t quite put their finger on.
"Like essayists trying to get to the heart of the matter, or poets scrabbling to take down dictation, it can sometimes feel as if all the discontents in our ongoing breakdown, wherever they think they stand, are motivated by the same sense of loss or confusion that Machine modernity has created as it has ripped us all away from our moorings. The right-populists who rebel against the bugs and the pod, and the left-green Extinction Rebels who stop the traffic because they want to stop the Machine, are routinely presented as opposites, but they look to me like manifestations of the same frustration. The progressives who rail against ‘whiteness’ and the traditionalists who refuse to be imprisoned in a fifteen minute city are taking a weirdly consonant stand against the same thing: a rationalised, profiteering, inhuman future that they feel is closing in on them without any means of escape.
"So if you ask me to help ‘defend the West’ now, I will reply that, though this place is my home and the home of my ancestors, I can’t avoid the reality that this ‘West’ birthed the Machine, and is building that inhuman future. Something in our way of seeing contained a seed that unmade the world. I have been examining this seed now for two years. Do I want it to grow? No. I want to uproot it. I want to say that this ‘West’ is not a thing to be ‘conserved’: not now. It is a thing to be superseded. It is an albatross around our necks. It obstructs our vision. It weighs us down.
"Sometimes, you have to know when to let go.
"‘The West’ has become an idol; some kind of static image of a past that maybe once was but is now inhabited by a new force: the Machine. ‘The West’ today thinks in numbers and words, but can’t write poetry to save its life. ‘The West’ is the kingdom of Mammon. ‘The West’ eats the world, and eats itself, that it may continue to ‘grow’. ‘The West’ knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. ‘The West’ is exhausted and empty.
"Maybe, then, just maybe, we need to let ‘the West’ die.
"Let it die so that we can live.
"Maybe we need to let this concept fall away. To let it crumble so that we can see what lies beneath. Stop all the ‘fighting’ to preserve something nobody can even define, something which has long lost its heart and soul. Stop clinging to the side of the sinking hull as the band plays on. We struck the iceberg long ago; it must be time, at last, to stop clinging to the shifting metal. To let go and begin swimming, out towards the place where the light plays on the water. Just out there. Do you see? Beyond; just beyond. There is something waiting out there, but you have to strike out to reach it. You have to let go."
IDK. ISTM you could try to figure out what that "seed" was and still preserve the valuable parts without it. Isn't that what has happened during other ages of decline?