Linear history is how the modern West views history. It's the view of the Bible and also most Western Progressives and atheists. While the cyclical view is in Chinese and Indian traditions. It is also popular among people interested in cliodynamics. Oswald Spengler believed in the cyclical view of history, in which each civilization is like a mega organism with a thousand-year life span.
Modern progressives and the Western Enlightenment rejected the cyclical view of history, believing that they have transcended all the "savages" of the past. Modern progressivism is a descendent of Calvinism.
I find it ironic that many Western Buddhists are also Unitarian Universalists, while Buddhism is all about turning the dharma wheel and reincarnation, while to be an universalist, you have to reject cycles in favor of linear progress. There is no progress when civilizations-as-mega-organisms die and reincarnate in millennium long cycles.
I am not white, and I do not respect whites who feel "white guilt". I see "white guilt" and the progressive view of history as just the newest flavor of Western imperialism. It is the view of arrogant and naive people who do not understand the wisdom of thousands of years of history. These who call themselves progressives and love to push democracy onto other peoples as if they got it all figured out and know what's best for everyone. In the US, if a white man is anti-democracy, he would be branded as "alt right" or even fascist. In China, being anti-democracy is just the mainstream view. It's the the view of the common man who is pushing back against Western imperialist ideas.
| Correct | Deviant | |
|---|---|---|
| One Ruler | Kingship | Tyranny |
| Few Rulers | Aristocracy | Oligarchy |
| Many Rulers | Polity | Democracy |
From https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-politics/
Actually, the political view of Aristotle is similar to the view of Confucius. European pagan religions, including the Norse and Greek religions, were similar to Hinduism, Taoism, and Shintoism. All of them were polytheistic and respected the cycles of nature. And since there were so many gods, nobody cared if you didn't take religion literally or if you didn't bother to worship a particular god. I think Nietzsche was right in The Antichrist. The combination of Christianity with democracy created the progressivism we know today and it leads to nihilism.
There is no second coming of Christ. There is no communist utopia. There is no libertarian utopia. We simply die and return to the earth as part of the ecological cycle. Then a new civilization will rise out of our corpse and grow into a tree that takes on completely different governmental forms, and it too will eventually grow old, degenerate, and die, and the cycle continues until humans become extinct. The Buddha teaches that everything is impermanent and attachment = dissatisfaction.
Nietzsche perceived the moral framework of Christian civilization to be oppressive:
- Reproduction derided as sinful
- Death valued over life.
This is the virtues of pro-abortion progressives. Progressivism and Western Atheism are just extremist Christianity, while Nietzsche's view is almost the same as Zen and Vajrayana Buddhism. Heraclitus and the Stoics expressed similar understandings over 2000 years ago. Yet such understanding and authentically lived lives are rare in our modern day. So it's no surprise that most Hindus and many on Western "far right", including Steve Bannon and Richard Spencer, believe that we live in the Kali Yuga, the age of decline. These who are now deemed the most "racist" are perhaps the ones who are most knowledgeable and respectful of other cultures. They choose to learn what's useful from other cultures to help the survival of the white race rather than ignorantly pushing the imperialist ideals of progressivism and democracy onto other far wiser ancient cultures. From my perspective as a non-Western naturalized American citizen, I believe that the "white nationalists" are just jealous that Whites lost their history, so they are crafting revisionist history from the mythologies of other races to give whites a new mythology of greatness. Meanwhile, progressives and communists seek to wipe away all history and just promote the modern White way of life, letting it destroy not just the Whites, but also the rest of humanity.
This is one of my all time favorite podcasts. Great cultures die out not because they were defeated in battle, but because they gave in to the temptations of comfort. The US army was incapable of defeating the Native Americans. The US government bribed them with alcohol and pacified their warrior spirits. The modern progressives are no different from the US government that caged Native Americans into reservations. They create safe spaces for everyone, which means domesticating and whitewashing everyone. Like the Spanish conquistadors, progressives wish to see themselves as the heroes who saved the souls of the "savages". They failed to consider that the "savages" are perhaps more civilized than themselves in other ways. The Aztecs had bigger cities than the Europeans and they took daily baths, unlike the conquistadors who would go for months without washing. Yet they also did human sacrifices. Were they primitive or advanced? Which culture made more "progress"?
Hunter gatherer tribes in South America have had sophisticated psychedelic ceremonies for thousands of years, yet LSD wasn't discovered until the last century in the West. These "primitive" people have had thousands of years of experience in exploring 10-dimensional mind-space. But we don't see their technological progress. Progressivism is a naive way of viewing history, by these who live sheltered lives. When you examine the vast differences among different cultures, it becomes apparent that it's impossible to promote an universal standard for measuring progress and virtues, and that progressivism is the most ignorantly arrogant type of Western-centrism.
What an astounding reply, thank you.
It's a little strange though as you seem to have contradicted your original assertion that Civ is not Western-centric. I believe you have in fact supplemented more arguments against that point. But I guess that's not the most interesting thing on the table.
A lot of what you're saying here is what I was attempting to allude to, such as the role of the "savage" in progressivist linear history, and the stupidity of "white guilt", and wondering about how an anti-Civilization perspective would view the implicit lessons of the game of the same name.
Elsewhere, I still come up again against the fatalistic idea of "why bother", now in the richer context of Civilization era length cycles of life, death and rebirth you spoke about. While I agree that utopia is by definition a mirage, aiming for better is not a waste of time.
So back to the game Civ, you say that "it's impossible to promote an universal standard for measuring progress and virtues" but that's exactly what the game tries to do. As I said before, I'm mainly wondering how this is picked up by players, if at all.
It's good that you also challenge this. I really didn't get this from your Civ-as-management-training post and I'm glad you've been commenting on these. I'd really like to see more from you from the more philosophical perspective on games, I intend to dive in there a bit more too.
I'll watch that video, thanks for the recommendation.
An important work to read is Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler.
For a game to function, it needs to have clear winning and losing conditions. So in that sense, there is a universal set of metrics to determine who wins. However, I don't necessarily see that as promoting universalism. I see that as a necessity for the game to function. You can go for many different types of victories: domination, cultural, science, diplomacy... and even more in other 4x games: expansion, wonder, etc. Different cultures pursue different "win conditions"... but of course there aren't clearly defined win conditions in real life and there is no hivemind overlord in charge of the goals of any culture.
Civ is more open and less Eurocentric than Europa Universalis or Crusader Kings. In Europa Universalis, if you don't Westernize by the 1700s, you will lag behind in tech and lose wars... but that's also the reality of how history actually played out. You can still play as the Mayans and Aztecs and invade Europe, but it's more realistic and less feasible than in Civ.
Do you listen to Dan Carlin's Hardcore History or Daniele Bolelli's History on Fire?
That Civ is not as eurocentric / western bias, etc. as Europa Universalis or Crusader Kinds does not mean that it is not also centric in that way. I consider that point shown at this point.
I haven't listened to Hardcore History yet, it's on my "must watch" list. The other I haven't heard of.
One small point which I don't want to make too much of: a game functions on rules, but it need not have clear winning or losing conditions in order to be a game. A good example of this is the original SimCity, which was just a sandbox. "Winning" is the continued survival of your city, which has parallels to real life, in that there is no defined way to win, you are winning as long as you continue drawing breath. Civ of course is very different.