Wednesday 15 August 2018

William Wildblood's "untergang des abendlandes"

William Wildblood has posted a strong essay at Albion Awakening called Sunset in the West (i.e. Albionically echoing the Spengler title "Untergang des abendlandes")

Here are some excerpts:

...There is something in me that says we can't just turn our backs on the world. We have to continue, however fruitlessly it may seem, to point out its many and deep flaws. For if even one person is sustained and encouraged by that, it is worthwhile. If people who know the truth don't speak out against its destruction, how can those who are struggling against the corruptions of the modern world ever find support? We may be shouting into the blast of a mighty gale but to remain silent in the face of such a desecration of what is sacred and true is almost an act of complicity...

The rebellion against nature is one of the signs of a decadent civilisation. How does this manifest in our present age? Firstly, in the toppling of traditional hierarchies, those based on the natural order. Now these hierarchies can certainly be abused and become tyrannical but that does not alter the fact that they are based in reality. A thing cannot be defined by its corruption. So they might need to be reformed but they should not be overturned...

Western civilisation is currently pursuing its own destruction whether through mass immigration and below replacement fertility or through relativising its cultural achievements, easily the greatest of any civilisation ever, or through allowing lower standards to prevail in the name of fairness, diversity and equality. Boundaries, which protect as much as they exclude, are being smashed in the name of a spurious unity with the inevitable consequence of a vulgarisation of taste and culture. These are clear signs of a society that has lost its confidence and become tired of its own existence. 

Most critically of all, it is mindlessly allowing the destruction, both from within and outside, of Christianity which is its primary inspiration and the basic glue that holds it all together.

So this is a call to repentance, both individual and collective. We have to turn away from ourselves and back to God or we are lost...

In these days when the world is burning we have to detach ourselves from the always transient lower worlds of change and decay, and focus our hearts and minds in the higher world of eternal goodness and truth.

We may not like being alive at a time of such spiritual decline but we wouldn't be here unless we were meant to be. It is quite possible that we asked or were, at least, willing to be born in these times so we should learn the lessons that they provide.

Sometimes it's easier to turn to God in a world that turns away from him.

Read the whole thing at Albion Awakening...

6 comments:

William Wildblood said...

I had to look up what that means! I've heard of the book, of course, but never read it.

Bruce Charlton said...

@William I have read it - well, a fair bit of it (it is very long) and in English translation, of course.

https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2014/10/a-few-notes-on-oswald-spenglers-decline.html

William Wildblood said...

Would you still agree with what you wrote about the book in that earlier post? It makes sense to me. The First World War is often regarded as the end of the West in many ways and, though these things don't happen all at once, it does seem clear that was a defining event. Certainly since then our technological achievements and democratic reforms (whether these are ultimately good or not is a different question) have masked our cultural and spiritual decline.

I don't like turning into the typical old man who complains about the present but then I've thought like this for most of my life, though things are clearer now as the downward trend becomes ever more apparent.

One point that strikes as interesting is that women embody the times in a way that men don't. Are you saying that women reflect the times in a kind of reactive rather than active sense? I don't think a properly integrated, spiritually aware woman would but then most aren't that any more than most men are.

Bruce Charlton said...

@William - It seems to have some interesting insights - although I don't remember writing it!

Chiu ChunLing said...

Women are always and everywhere the carriers of Zeitgeist even though they are almost never the innovators of it. That's simply because inculcating children with the fundamental social assumptions (including their initial language) is as much a function of motherhood as bearing them in the womb or nursing them.

Of course, the converse is also true. It is easier to get an overt description of a given Zeitgeist from a man than from a woman of that culture simply because the man is more aware of it as a thing separate from the fundamental cognitive process. Also, women are constantly and unconsciously adjusting their cultural assumptions to match with the socially dominant people around them, so the very fact of being in a position of being forced to answer questions about their worldview posed by someone who doesn't share it would cause a degree of breakdown in what they really believe even if they were fully conscious of it. By the time you get them to acknowledge that they should tell you what they believe, and think about it enough to put it into words, they usually don't believe it anymore and will tell you something else.

Luther Burgsvik said...

If you are short on time then Spenglers 'Hour of Decision' might be a viable alternative. It is approx 120 pages long and could be considers an abridged version of 'decline'.