I like this. Keep writing please! I don't get to talk about Spengler enough.
One quibble (if I've understood you correctly): I'm not sure that Caesarism is just a nihilistic attitude of post-idealism power politics. That may be the true reality underneath it, but it is driven by a continuing idealism amongst people, who see the bureaucratic obstructionism of The Blob and think 'we just need a single, dynamic, strong leader to cut through all this nonsense and then we could resolve all our problems'.
Cummings got Boris Johnson to drive that forklift truck through a pile of boxes marked 'Get Brexit Done' as a way of tapping into this vibe. Trump is obviously also the same thing. "If Stalin only knew" etc. It's an attitude of 'shurely it can be simpler than this, shurely there's an easy solution, someone just needs to take charge and we'll get this place back on track in no time'. At least at the beginning.
Really it's a reversion to an earlier state, like a water-stressed tree consolidating its energy in the central trunk and letting the most-recently grown branches die. Previously there was a king as a central, human focus for the power-flows of the state. Then things complexified and the centre became virtualised - 'the republic', or in the UK's case 'the crown' (rather than the monarch themselves). And now that people no longer trust in that invisible centre made out of ideals, they need a human figure to occupy the space again to reassure them that there is still a centre around which the possibility of the society being 'in form' can organise itself.
That history cannot go backwards, that the central figure will not be able to keep the society in form or revive the ideals that structured it, only becomes apparent later.
The allure of Caesarism is certainly that it breaks through the bullshit, and an ugly reckoning will come for managerialism. But the reversion is simply a continuation of the decay of society from the end of the Late period. The peak of tension was for us in the 1700s. Since then, it has been steadily released. We try to preserve it with ideology and systems, but these are intellectual projections of an instinct we've lost and we are going to learn this the hard way this century. Caesarism is the beginning of the return back to the pre-cultural way of life. Family politics, barbarian rule, calcified identities, rights belonging only to the powerful. If we're lucky, we might live to see some grand restoration of the West, but it will be like Augustus and wont last forever.
In the 1700s politics was still largely a family affair. At the top, the royal family and the upper nobility. At the county level, the gentry. At the city level, the wealthiest burgers. At the village level, the land-owning peasants. Most of these families were interested in preserving or improving their status over the generations.
Breaking the managerial mould, should restore the same type of politics as in the 1700s. While the Christian religion is dead and the form is lost, I believe that Caesarist politics will be better for the population at large since the Caesars are interested in strong power bases whereas the managerial class is interested in interfering in and deviating every social process.
We, remaining Catholics, have a prophecy that a Grand Monarch shall rise and restore the faith and rule with common sense for the good of the people. He will be contemporary with a Saintly Pope. I am fascinated by the correspondence of this prophecy with the coming age of Caesarism. However the prophecy also states that the reign of the Grand Monarch will be short and spiritual misery shall resume afterwards, until the arrival of the Antechrist. Quite coherent with ambitious Caesars fighting for power without regard to good deeds.
Yes the fact we are only at the Caesar stage frankly sucks. At this point I'm ready to go conquering with a barbarian warband; Im feeling more Beowulf than Cicero. Give me an ancestor cult, a monster to fight and a glorious death rather than the beige, rehashed boredom of the second religiousness and the personal power politics of the late periods, with a fucking awful spoonful dose of superfine intellectual Brahmanism to suffer under (no surprise the old fellaheens of India and China are now streaming in to our countries).
I like this. Keep writing please! I don't get to talk about Spengler enough.
One quibble (if I've understood you correctly): I'm not sure that Caesarism is just a nihilistic attitude of post-idealism power politics. That may be the true reality underneath it, but it is driven by a continuing idealism amongst people, who see the bureaucratic obstructionism of The Blob and think 'we just need a single, dynamic, strong leader to cut through all this nonsense and then we could resolve all our problems'.
Cummings got Boris Johnson to drive that forklift truck through a pile of boxes marked 'Get Brexit Done' as a way of tapping into this vibe. Trump is obviously also the same thing. "If Stalin only knew" etc. It's an attitude of 'shurely it can be simpler than this, shurely there's an easy solution, someone just needs to take charge and we'll get this place back on track in no time'. At least at the beginning.
Really it's a reversion to an earlier state, like a water-stressed tree consolidating its energy in the central trunk and letting the most-recently grown branches die. Previously there was a king as a central, human focus for the power-flows of the state. Then things complexified and the centre became virtualised - 'the republic', or in the UK's case 'the crown' (rather than the monarch themselves). And now that people no longer trust in that invisible centre made out of ideals, they need a human figure to occupy the space again to reassure them that there is still a centre around which the possibility of the society being 'in form' can organise itself.
That history cannot go backwards, that the central figure will not be able to keep the society in form or revive the ideals that structured it, only becomes apparent later.
The allure of Caesarism is certainly that it breaks through the bullshit, and an ugly reckoning will come for managerialism. But the reversion is simply a continuation of the decay of society from the end of the Late period. The peak of tension was for us in the 1700s. Since then, it has been steadily released. We try to preserve it with ideology and systems, but these are intellectual projections of an instinct we've lost and we are going to learn this the hard way this century. Caesarism is the beginning of the return back to the pre-cultural way of life. Family politics, barbarian rule, calcified identities, rights belonging only to the powerful. If we're lucky, we might live to see some grand restoration of the West, but it will be like Augustus and wont last forever.
In the 1700s politics was still largely a family affair. At the top, the royal family and the upper nobility. At the county level, the gentry. At the city level, the wealthiest burgers. At the village level, the land-owning peasants. Most of these families were interested in preserving or improving their status over the generations.
Breaking the managerial mould, should restore the same type of politics as in the 1700s. While the Christian religion is dead and the form is lost, I believe that Caesarist politics will be better for the population at large since the Caesars are interested in strong power bases whereas the managerial class is interested in interfering in and deviating every social process.
We, remaining Catholics, have a prophecy that a Grand Monarch shall rise and restore the faith and rule with common sense for the good of the people. He will be contemporary with a Saintly Pope. I am fascinated by the correspondence of this prophecy with the coming age of Caesarism. However the prophecy also states that the reign of the Grand Monarch will be short and spiritual misery shall resume afterwards, until the arrival of the Antechrist. Quite coherent with ambitious Caesars fighting for power without regard to good deeds.
https://substack.com/@stevenberger/note/c-211587570?r=1nm0v2&utm_source=notes-share-action&utm_medium=web
Yes the fact we are only at the Caesar stage frankly sucks. At this point I'm ready to go conquering with a barbarian warband; Im feeling more Beowulf than Cicero. Give me an ancestor cult, a monster to fight and a glorious death rather than the beige, rehashed boredom of the second religiousness and the personal power politics of the late periods, with a fucking awful spoonful dose of superfine intellectual Brahmanism to suffer under (no surprise the old fellaheens of India and China are now streaming in to our countries).
Ah well a few more incarnations to go.
Can you even pull up your own body weight, Mr. Barbarian?
With one finger.
Wonderfully written! The road to glory, the road to the stars, begins in Wilderness! Civilization is a death trap! Time to return to Forest!
Have you read Spengler's Future? It proposed Western Caesar being born circa 2027.
You've just brought it to my attention. I've put it on my buy list!
Great read.