RadixJournal - Modernism—What Is It Good For？

00:00:00.000 where do i start all right so this is i'll get my fundamental i'll let you you know discuss your

00:00:28.200 own argument but i guess i'll get a little bit of my fundamental argument out of the way is that

00:00:34.580 is the term you've chosen modernism um and you know in the world of kind of like strauss and so

00:00:42.860 on there's an ancient and modern divide uh but that is something that goes back much earlier and

00:00:49.140 and in fact like we we are living in a modern world post-christ even you could say i mean that

00:00:55.060 it's kind of a much bigger divide or certainly over the past 500 years but also there is a

00:01:01.460 modernism is a term that is used pretty precisely in you know art history or literary criticism of

00:01:10.700 you know picasso mondrian very kind of elite um you know uh descending duchamp's descending the

00:01:18.740 staircase being the ultimate modern kind of thing it's a it's really precisely used um

00:01:24.680 in into describing yeah modern art and but i feel like you're using modernism as just a kind of

00:01:32.880 catch-all for everything you don't like and as opposed to kind of seeing even those you know

00:01:39.780 because remember a lot modernism predated world war one and after world war one there was almost

00:01:45.160 what kind of weird kind of primitivism or traditionalism kind of sneaking in even picasso i

00:01:49.740 mean it's it's it's it's a very it's a big bit of an ambiguous thing um but even even that kind

00:01:57.400 of modernism had a lot of different varieties and it was kind of pointing in different directions i

00:02:02.940 mean the history of fascism is not understandable outside of futurism and um you know which was a

00:02:11.440 modern art movement it was it was valuing you know the the uh the motorcycle italy yeah yeah italy

00:02:18.840 italian fascism not not exactly national socialism although i i wouldn't um disconnect them either

00:02:25.560 um so yeah and you can see that even even in the architecture that was built and was not built this

00:02:36.620 um kind of combination of classicism and which was also occurring in the united states all of the schools

00:02:44.700 and courthouses um so on i went to my where my father went to high school in mississippi and it

00:02:53.560 was just yeah full-on albert speer building but anyway anyway um so i i feel like just claiming that

00:03:04.220 i i agree there is a modernist movement and you could look back at nietzsche as hugely important like

00:03:10.060 no question uh but it it moves in a lot of different directions and i i feel like what i what i'm seeing

00:03:17.680 from a lot of what you're doing you're kind of like claiming that it just moved to all this shit that you

00:03:22.800 don't like right now and that i don't like either and but i think just kind of using the term modernism is

00:03:30.020 is problematic uh and but also maybe we need to kind of look at modernism with you know and not

00:03:39.980 just demonize it and kind of understand different ways that it was going and also understand the

00:03:44.360 kind of crisis that it was responding to and not just seeing him as kind of spiteful mutants

00:03:49.260 that's that's more or less my kind of pushback but i'll let i'll let you go on this okay when we're

00:03:57.580 talking about modernism all right let's let's get one thing out of the way well the term you know

00:04:03.580 modern has all kinds of different meanings when we would say when historians would normally talk about

00:04:09.380 the modern era they would talk about you know the time from 1492 when columbus discovered the new

00:04:17.520 world all the way down to the present and typically historians would divide the modern era and she

00:04:23.700 was called the early modern era which would be 1492 to the french revolution and the modern era being

00:04:29.700 from the french revolution down to you know today and of course you know when people talk about

00:04:36.060 modernization that can have other kinds of different meanings like you know technological progress or

00:04:44.200 we're modernizing agriculture and and i want to emphasize that that's not at all like what we're

00:04:52.420 talking about here when we're talking about modernism we're talking about specifically a movement in the

00:04:59.100 arts and european culture in the late 19th early 20th century and we're talking about the transition from

00:05:10.160 modernism say what modernism is is an aesthetic it's a sensibility it's not an ideology it is not

00:05:18.220 liberalism it's like it's like romanticism right just whereas the romantics could spin off

00:05:24.800 in all kinds of different directions like right victor hugo or carlisle for example so modernism

00:05:33.300 towards nationalism in many ways right right modernism is an aesthetic sensibility and it's

00:05:40.420 compatible with all kinds of different ideologies it's compatible with progressive liberalism like

00:05:45.900 we see in randolph-born it's compatible with fascism like we see in mussolini's italy it's compatible with

00:05:53.820 is i think the last thing i wrote about it with t.s elliot's high anglican conservatism and

00:06:01.380 well the reason this all came about how i got started on the subject is i i can't remember

00:06:10.040 what brought it about but i reread eric p kaufman's book the rise and fall of anglo america and i had

00:06:17.400 read this book when i was in college it first came out in 2004 it was it was a big influence in it and

00:06:23.960 i've always wanted to like go back and reread that book because i remember i remember you know he in the

00:06:29.240 book emphasized when he's talking about like specifically the repudiation of ethnicity now

00:06:36.660 this is this is not we're not talking about racial equality we're not talking about um you know the

00:06:42.860 extension of civil rights political rights which liberals have been doing for over a century we're

00:06:48.840 talking about why did anglo americans start to repudiate their own ethnicity and think of

00:06:55.780 themselves as deracinated cosmopolitan individualists now that's a separate question

00:07:01.840 like i said it's a separate question from racial equality when did that happen and why did it happen

00:07:06.720 and according to kaufman it one of the main reasons that happened is it had to do when the arrival of

00:07:16.060 modernism talking about the movement in the arts in the united states in the 1910s specifically

00:07:22.760 a group called the young intellectuals who are these rebels against mainstream progressivism

00:07:31.000 in the 1910s and what they did is they combined um they were you know located in greenwich village

00:07:38.460 which was this artsy bohemian neighborhood where there's all all the different you know

00:07:45.760 influences from europe was coming in at the time and they combined this aesthetic movement

00:07:52.400 with radical anarchist and socialist politics and they're the ones who started this it started

00:08:02.640 this rebellion against you know their own their own ethnic group and what kaufman gets into the book

00:08:10.260 and he like describes it over the course of like a century is the development of the new york

00:08:15.840 and how i mean we agree that elites control culture but new york in the 1920s 1910s 1920s 1930s

00:08:27.140 was becoming the cultural capital of america and within new york greenwich village is like ground zero

00:08:34.360 of this and it's from these modernist influences that young anglo-americans start to repudiate

00:08:43.740 your own ethnicity so that's what got me interested in the subject well that's a curious argument

00:08:48.240 i don't really you know hear many people bring up modernism in the arts as a cause

00:08:53.340 of our racial and cultural decline but kaufman argues in the book that what modernism did is it created a

00:09:00.200 new kind of individualism in the united states whereas before we had in the 19th century we had

00:09:06.160 utilitarian individualism which is mainly political and economic um there's a transition

00:09:12.120 to expressive individualism which is more of a it's more about self-expression more about living

00:09:18.600 a lifestyle and how once people develop this mindset um how would i put this ethnicity religion

00:09:28.440 and all these things speak tradition came to be seen as you know constricting it's holding you back

00:09:35.480 from expressing your true self and finding yourself and all this bullshit so anyway talking about

00:09:43.880 modernism and this goes back the tail end of it goes back to um france in the 1850s and 1860s where

00:09:52.620 it's we're um you're starting to have this rebellion or this transition from romanticism uh with charles

00:10:00.840 baudelaire being one uh fia fall gautier who is who would be another uh edouard manet was a pioneer of

00:10:11.400 this and what what begins and what begins in france around the middle of the 19th century is a movement in the

00:10:19.780 arts and it's it takes the the the middle the respectable middle class as like being the enemy

00:10:29.200 right how would i put this so the the respectable bourgeoisie is patriotic religious and artists start

00:10:38.140 to rebel against that and like kind of like develop this this tendency to what we need to do in the arts is

00:10:46.920 to um violate you know the norms of middle class culture so like you know explicit sexuality

00:10:57.120 and things like that were brought into the um the mainstream of art and there was this huge rejection

00:11:04.660 of tradition and this this is like anyway so so what i'm arguing here is that in the late 19th century

00:11:11.040 early 20th century there was this huge cultural revolution right and this is like underappreciated

00:11:16.900 in in painting for example you got um the embrace of primitivism uh the rejection of perspective the

00:11:26.260 rejection of representation in art art becomes inward looking right it's focused on the artist

00:11:34.620 and the emotions and the emotions and the world view of the artist it's not about uh teaching a moral lesson

00:11:41.240 to the public or representing nature or representing god or uh serving the community

00:11:48.040 and then of course you have in poetry the development of different verses

00:11:53.080 in architecture the rejection of ornament um what else what else were i was doing well i don't think it's

00:12:01.540 underappreciated and i that this this is a bit tangential but i i think it's actually uh helpful

00:12:07.820 for this discussion but you know there are very few periods that particularly ones that are this short

00:12:15.180 that have museums dedicated to them i mean the modern moma the modern museum of art there are there's a

00:12:22.920 modern museum in dallas texas i know because i grew up there there's a modernist museum uh in most uh big

00:12:30.100 cities and uh in some ways it's been museumified uh where now the uh bourgeoisie can go gaze upon you

00:12:38.780 know the the crisis of 100 years ago uh but it's basically something that is is taking a kind of

00:12:45.200 generational or a few generations but a three year a 30 year period and kind of everything is in that

00:12:53.900 wake and and i think to a large degree post-modern art is kind of like

00:13:00.100 it's stodgy it doesn't know where to go at this point they've they've they've tried all the tricks

00:13:05.720 in the book and they're just kind of doing i mean the most radical thing would be to be

00:13:10.620 representational as uh as richter and german who kind of germany who's a kind of elite artist that

00:13:18.040 was actually going back to representation uh but i yeah i mean i i don't think it's underappreciated

00:13:25.000 but i mean this is at least what i would say for it and and i'll give keep the floor after this but

00:13:32.060 i i do think that there was a tremendous crisis that preceded modernism and that modernism was

00:13:40.620 to a degree a kind of response to that you know it was an intellectual crisis it was a crisis of faith

00:13:47.420 that had been brewing for a long time well over 100 years and and it and it was kind of like a

00:13:54.540 overabundance in a way i mean the the amount of just advancements technological inventions and

00:14:01.000 advancements and and agriculture advancements that where it's almost like you had to you know our cup

00:14:07.080 flow with over and we've got to keep pushing the envelope or something um but i i think that a lot of a lot

00:14:14.320 of modernism was responding to this crisis and kind of trying to find ways out of it and so you have

00:14:20.680 all these contradictory forms in it you have the kind of embrace of mechanical diamondism and almost

00:14:26.460 like post-humanism you have an embrace of primitivism um to to another in another kind of mood

00:14:32.580 of of trying to bring to trying to get back to things like the cycle of life and birth and death and

00:14:40.000 and and and and and sexuality um which is kind of traditionalist in its way and it was anti-bourgeois

00:14:48.540 i'll definitely grant you that but i i think it's i guess what i'm saying as is my form of pushback it's

00:14:54.960 kind of like it was a response to a crisis that had already taken place and that there are actually

00:15:01.280 aspects of that modernism you know for for every communist intellectual you can find people like

00:15:08.480 clempt that i think we would have very ambivalent you know uh perspectives on maybe even you know

00:15:16.640 adoring perspectives on um that it did give birth to uh there is a right modernism and you know in both

00:15:26.020 senses of that term and it's something that we kind of can't get away from that there that it's i don't

00:15:32.900 want to sound too much like adorno here saying that you can't write pretty music after auschwitz but

00:15:37.760 i think he was actually getting at something like we we can't go back to dodgy bourgeois morality and

00:15:46.100 just have a nice bunch of pictures we've got to kind of confront the crisis and in that way we are

00:15:53.240 going to rub some people the wrong way um what do you think about that um i'm interested

00:16:03.480 if length's where i'm going okay i've okay uh well let me let me let me respond to that well what

00:16:10.440 modernism is specifically is if you had to describe it would be a series of like liberations right

00:16:17.480 in painting like i said you know liberation from representing um i mean this was like throwing

00:16:24.700 like centuries of tradition in the trash like perspective and painting um depicting um

00:16:31.400 representing the world um and then of course which itself threw centuries of tradition in its

00:16:39.420 in its path i mean i wouldn't say that but anyway i would say that i mean medieval painting

00:16:45.880 is not about perspective it it is about it is a kind of cartoon and i don't i don't say that to

00:16:51.540 but i mean we're talking we're talking about going back we're doing we're not going back to like the

00:16:56.000 around the time that itself i know the renaissance was itself a kind of modernist ideology that was

00:17:03.360 pushing forward there was a highly you know confrontational and and and upsetting to the masses i

00:17:10.080 mean there was you know leonardo da vinci wrote backwards and left hand the sun does not move in one

00:17:15.720 of his you know one thing in one of his notebooks he was like confronting these things that were

00:17:21.120 actually kind of like world shattering right all the way down you could say that all the way down

00:17:26.140 until like the early 20th century that um religion and traditional morality were overwhelming and like

00:17:34.500 determined you know how people fought went about their lives how they acted how they interacted with

00:17:39.820 others and then like around the time like when modernism comes through um you get this idea that

00:17:46.240 you know expressing yourself and aesthetics is above morality and above religion and well that is like

00:17:56.320 a radically like a new thing like you can just completely disregard traditional morality and

00:18:03.100 hmm you throw it and what happens is that religion in the 20th century becomes a lifestyle preference

00:18:09.900 uh morality becomes a lifestyle preference and what is fundamental is you know being yourself expressing

00:18:17.980 um expressing expressing your identity or expressing your um how would i put this your true self or some

00:18:27.160 shit like this and what retreats in this is what retreats in this is people's relations to other people

00:18:35.020 right they become detached from um say the ethnic group from their religion from traditional morals

00:18:42.320 and it's really funny like if you think of what morality is today morality would be like this code of isms

00:18:50.120 and phobias right what is morality it's not being a racist or a sexist or a xenophobe or a transphobe

00:18:57.060 or all this shit that was like if you go back a century ago did not exist or was not associated

00:19:03.260 with morality the content of morality was hollowed out and was replaced by all these other things

00:19:11.440 which don't really need to do that now because we live in a religious like conformist world

00:19:20.060 in which um you know whatever you want to call it liberalism i'll kind of kind of like your

00:19:26.800 uh term modernism is a bit over generalized mine will be too so it's fair liberalism is where we live

00:19:33.720 just this we almost need to like express ourselves and be like anti-system and anti-morality

00:19:44.560 in the sense and right now this is almost kind of what we need and well i mean you know and so we

00:19:51.780 need to call upon that and even even in terms of because again modernism was an ambiguous phenomenon

00:19:57.580 and you know i think it's you know i think you were um uh kind of like uh demeaning one of

00:20:04.520 picasa's work about uh prostitutes and you know the in primitive um you know art and so on but

00:20:12.260 maybe we too need to get in touch with a kind of raw sexuality in this almost hyper puritan world

00:20:21.300 of you know everything needs to be about consent and every you can be whatever gender and you can

00:20:27.920 perform all these bizarre sex acts but it's but it's all has these rules and maybe actually we need

00:20:34.760 to get in touch with like raw sexuality about sex death and life and rebirth and maybe that's actually

00:20:42.540 what we need no no i would say that the liberation like the liberation of sexuality the liberation of

00:20:50.080 of women the throwing traditional morality in the garbage um not just that traditional identities too

00:20:58.020 right so suppose we were good we were to go back a century ago or a little over a century ago to

00:21:03.280 around the year 1900 morality met things like truth and justice fortitude and all these things like

00:21:13.140 you know bravery or courage or that's what traditional morality was right and it was not just that but it

00:21:20.060 was it was about obligations to other people you had a duty to your to your family for example or i mean

00:21:26.980 there was there was strict but what i would say is that through all the 19th century you had a strong

00:21:33.520 dominant moral consensus you had a strong protestant this country is an overwhelmingly protestant country

00:21:42.300 and like what happened around happened around the period 1900 1930 was that kind of like lost

00:21:52.640 lost traction it like it had a it was a catastrophe and so like we still got like like this is the

00:22:00.840 reason i was attracted to nisha in the first place right is i hated the suffocating the suffocating

00:22:07.020 moralism of political correctness right right but then when you then once you dig into it right

00:22:12.640 once you dig into anti-racism you dig into political correctness you realize that the form of moralism is

00:22:19.180 there right we're still a very moralizing culture but the content of it has completely changed right

00:22:26.420 like so um like if if richard you were to go if you decided that you were going to what you wanted

00:22:34.800 to do with your life is that you wanted to explore your true self and become like a

00:22:38.600 transsexual who had like 500 different like partners and cover yourself in tattoos all that would

00:22:47.220 be praiseworthy all that would be yes queen he's redeemed himself at last so so what modernism is

00:22:55.880 what here's the problem with modernism is that it's focused completely on the self and inwardness

00:23:02.480 and self-exploration and self-realism it's all about the self and once it becomes you can look at it in

00:23:08.860 modern art right when you see people like um you know the skies are green or purple or whatever

00:23:16.460 that's like it's art has become subjective it's become from the perspective of the artist the art is

00:23:23.300 about the artist in a way whereas before the artist was like the art wasn't about the artist

00:23:31.020 it was about depicting but you know this modernism also gave birth to all of these forms of collectivism

00:23:39.120 and socialism on a national or or even international scale and in a kind of new man within that context

00:23:48.020 and i would remind you that the sky was gold in evil painting and that you know i don't know i mean

00:23:57.780 it isn't it's not just you're they're not just being i mean look some art sucks sure but you know

00:24:05.380 the best of it they're they're not simply being chaotic or idiosyncratic or they're not they're

00:24:11.620 not just pooping on canvas and saying it's hard or whatever they are genuinely trying to get at

00:24:18.160 something and try to give give you a different experience and perspective on the world it could

00:24:24.380 kind of create a truth in art that isn't the truth that we have right now but again it's it's kind of

00:24:30.780 like i i i agree with a lot of the critique the critics you have but isn't there actually isn't

00:24:38.240 that kind of what we're doing and isn't don't we actually kind of need that right now in order to

00:24:44.340 break down the current dominant moral system okay the way okay what i would say is that we live in

00:24:51.100 like in a very radically different time from what it was in niches time right in niches time like um

00:24:58.200 how would i put this oh i would i would definitely say so first of all like religion in niches time

00:25:06.140 was overwhelmingly dominant in the way it's not today christianity was undergoing a massive crisis

00:25:12.700 that he responded to it was not you don't don't be one of these twitter posters that post images of

00:25:21.780 like neuschwanstein castle and be like return to tradition i mean that that created by ludwig the

00:25:28.120 second that itself was a kind of disneyland park he was like larping on a large scale i mean i love

00:25:34.240 it in a way but it was ridiculous they were going to a massive crisis oh yeah i totally agree in fact

00:25:41.320 i wrote it i wrote a post about that and i was like well the background the intellectual background

00:25:44.980 to all this is mainly darwinism right and of course you know when darwin had like an earth what we're

00:25:51.820 saying here is that darwin had like an earth-shattering impact on you know high intellectual

00:25:57.680 life in the european intelligentsia from that point forward right so what like people you're right that

00:26:05.560 like in niches time people were wrestling with the crisis this was something new people were trying to

00:26:11.440 make sense of it but what i'm saying is that like the difference between say the 1870s and 1880s

00:26:19.060 whereas this was the beginning of the crisis like now like we're well well we're like the distance

00:26:26.060 from like texas to florida like in terms of like time has traveled here like especially in europe

00:26:33.240 christianity has collapsed it's gone um traditional morality has like the has receded like i mean i forgot

00:26:44.460 who who the poet was who was who said at the time he said like you know they saw the the great tide of

00:26:50.420 like religion receding and and so that's the that's the story of the 20th century like that is the main

00:26:56.380 thing that happened is that religion which was in morality which used to be so utterly dominant

00:27:02.020 receded and like the vague outlines the vague outlines remained right so like in the united and the same is

00:27:10.520 true of the united states although everything that happened in america has happened a bit later and a

00:27:16.400 bit more delayed than has happened in europe but it's fundamentally the same thing in that like there's

00:27:21.000 been like even in the united states there's been a huge retreat from christianity christianity has

00:27:26.700 where it used to be the where protestantism used to be this is what's so different from our times

00:27:31.640 protestantism a hundred years ago used to be the dominant mainstream culture right it was just

00:27:37.660 overwhelmingly dominant it filled the content of our culture and now that has like completely

00:27:43.700 receded um from a hundred the time of a hundred years ago and what's what's what's happened is that

00:27:51.140 like as as religion is retracted as traditional morality is retracted it's been and aesthetic values

00:27:58.380 i would argue has kind of like replaced that is that um people have you know kind of created

00:28:04.860 creating creating these new this new morality right so like this the whole more the thing that made

00:28:10.740 me and probably you attracted to nisha in the first place is this it is moralism right but it is a

00:28:18.720 completely 20th century kind of moralism like where morality is is not being a racist it's being a

00:28:25.180 cosmopolitan who rejects your own people and values i guess foreigners um or it's about being a post

00:28:32.940 sexism or nativism or xenophobia or all the isms and phobias all this shit it's it's what i'm saying

00:28:40.140 is is that like there was just this it's like a cultural bomb went off and all this crap is kind

00:28:47.600 of like you know come in like in the wake in the wake of it and so yes we need to get absolutely

00:28:53.580 absolutely i totally agree with you that we need to critique that and we need we need to get rid of

00:28:59.740 that but like what i'm saying is that and this is kind of think where we part ways is that what was

00:29:05.920 what was not the problem in nishi's time is our problem by that i mean like our elite like despises

00:29:14.520 the masses right oppresses us oppresses me and you i mean if like i said if you were like a

00:29:20.940 if you if you if you decided that what you wanted to do with your life was to be a

00:29:25.940 a two-spirit transsexual you would have been fine in life you you would have you would have been able

00:29:30.780 to succeed and go places that you know that the roads are blocked to us today um i think i kind

00:29:38.740 of what is going to get us out of that okay can i try to get another one oh god i'm really sorry but

00:29:46.360 yeah so like but go to preferences go to do apple uh comma or all all command would you agree that

00:29:56.440 like if you had to describe the normal person would you describe the normal person as self-absorbed

00:30:01.700 kind of like detached from strangely detached from other people and just immersed in themselves

00:30:08.260 that's how i would describe yeah i think that's a fair description yes um yeah i mean that's

00:30:14.700 so that's the problem the normie doesn't have an ethnic identity or really a traditional sense

00:30:20.080 of morality and if they're religious it's in a way that would have just been strange i don't want to

00:30:26.160 project sjw's under the entire population i mean you know you you plenty of sjw's are moralists but

00:30:36.560 like they are the content the content of their morality is completely different from what it like

00:30:41.920 like if what i'm saying is if you went back 100 years ago and like okay people said okay what

00:30:46.580 what what morality is is is doing your duty to your family or being honest or being hardworking or

00:30:55.040 being courageous that kind of morality is great it's like it's a it's a fucking terrible thing but it

00:31:01.340 lost it's a it's a fucking yeah it's a fucking terrible thing that it lost right because it is left

00:31:07.360 i agree it's tragic today but we need we need to radically critique the current the current dominant

00:31:18.100 morality and well i think in that in that and but we don't want to just say it was better 50 years

00:31:24.680 ago which is kind of the uh oh you're you sound very good now okay oh yeah i think like this

00:31:36.280 definition might help so i think this is kind of what you're getting at richard is like the difference

00:31:41.680 like if you want to differentiate modernism from modernity i think the best way to understand it is

00:31:47.020 modernism is the intellectual trend that like forces the contradictions of modernity um like it's a kind

00:31:55.160 of revelation of crisis uh you know like a lot of the things like you know enlightenment values

00:32:01.240 capitalist economics uh you know scientific notions of truth from the scientific revolution that

00:32:09.260 there was a kind of unhappy marriage between them and uh an older christian moralism and

00:32:15.140 modernism is kind of just the the revealing of of that crisis and kind of pushing it to its logical

00:32:22.100 conclusion and that's why you end up with uh i'd say what's most characteristic of like modernism as

00:32:27.460 like a metaphysic is like hermeneutic suspicion like you know like you have in in the works of

00:32:32.800 fiction like ulysses or kafka and then you get that in philosophy you know you end up with the

00:32:37.200 the turn towards language and like the sort of positivist turn and death of metaphysics so

00:32:43.000 um so like you could say i mean from hunter's perspective like yeah modernism

00:32:48.520 like it obviously was uh i agree with him in terms of the negatives the negative effects it had but

00:32:54.220 i think what you're getting at is that you know the fact that modernism the fact that someone like

00:32:59.500 nietzsche was able to reveal this crisis or or fast forward this crisis shows that it was already

00:33:04.680 latent and so you kind of have to you kind of have to tear down the edifice before you can rebuild with

00:33:10.980 something that isn't prone to this kind of crisis like the fact that it was possible for modernism to

00:33:15.740 happen shows that there was a crisis there in the first place exactly no i i think we're seeing

00:33:23.960 the same things yeah go ahead i mean you could say you could say that any sense okay okay we we we've

00:33:30.280 all like talked about ideology to death we've done we've we've talked about liberalism inside out but

00:33:35.800 the sense of sensibility of course you know changes over the centuries you had in the 18th century you

00:33:40.920 had neo neoclassicism then the 19th century the dominant sensibility was romanticism and romanticism and

00:33:48.780 you got to think like how that how romanticism affected people in the real world it oriented them

00:33:54.460 you know towards other people around them like so like

00:33:58.220 and that that's it with that sensibility like just colored pockets and and of course you know

00:34:13.700 sensibilities change over some over centuries and what i'm saying is that modernism is the sensibility

00:34:19.700 of became the sensibility of the 20th century now modernism not liberalism liberalism is egalitarian

00:34:27.380 modernism is elitist it's cosmopolitan it's it's based on alienation and one one of the key modern values

00:34:36.260 is that it's transgressive and that it's constantly wanting to tear things tear things down so that the

00:34:44.580 new can be embraced it's focused um it's heavily focused on the self and its interior states so if you

00:34:53.380 want to define modernism you would say like what modernism is is first of all like a love of novelty

00:35:00.660 and transgression and secondly it's about like self-exploration and self-realization is what i

00:35:09.460 would say and now that can be expressed okay when people have like a sensibility that can be attached

00:35:15.140 to their politics their religious beliefs so they can come out like a like all kinds of different ways

00:35:20.020 we already talked about like yes yes um in italy uh the futurists were embraced by you know

00:35:27.220 mussolini's italy whereas in the soviet union uh modernism was repressed right and the same thing

00:35:34.180 was true of hitler's germany hitler hitler hated uh modernist art and and famously you know condemned

00:35:42.020 it as degenerate art and a lot of the modernists yeah i mean he i mean there was the repression of

00:35:52.260 degenerate art this it was condemning like expressivism and and impressionism and so a lot of

00:35:58.580 the modernists you know who were in europe fled to the united states of course the frankfurt school

00:36:05.220 being a classic example of this of this of this migration of modernists during you know the second

00:36:11.620 world war period to new york where the new york avant-garde had already established itself

00:36:16.500 in um the 1910s so um where i'm going with this is that like um of course you know hitler was defeated

00:36:27.380 and and the nazis were crushed and germany was divided between the soviets in the west and of

00:36:33.700 course you know from from that point forward um especially the united states embraced the modernist

00:36:40.980 of avant-garde and kind of like contrasted it with you know the soviet aesthetic which was socialist

00:36:47.460 realism you know socialist realism and and all the eastern bloc was the mandated form of form of art

00:36:55.220 so america kind of like assailed assailed um the soviets by promoting expressive individualism

00:37:03.220 expressive freedom uh expressivist modern art um you know like you know the american was you know

00:37:11.380 i guess the rolling stones dance around in blue jeans or something or mcdonald's and you know

00:37:17.940 the message was that you know that the eastern bloc is missing out on all this

00:37:23.620 all all this you know wonderful cultural freedom of the west this was a weapon that was used against

00:37:30.340 the soviets for a long time and that's that's that's really one of the the context of the cold war

00:37:35.700 and world war ii is one of the reasons why these people who came to united states were embraced

00:37:41.860 by the american establishment at the time so we have to say all that well uh i don't i don't

00:37:48.740 totally disagree with the the history you just put forward um but i would push back on on two ways first

00:37:57.060 off the the modernism i i think you're you're definitely overstating the like return to

00:38:03.940 tradition of the soviet union although i i appreciate the fact that it's a oh it's not

00:38:08.020 it's not a return it wasn't a return it wasn't a return of tradition it's that they had like their

00:38:13.300 authentic they had the official soviet style which was so it was definitely a like we're going for

00:38:18.820 socialist realism while uh the cia in the united states was supporting abstract expressionism yeah i mean

00:38:24.660 that that is a really interesting irony um i i do think that you can't understand fascism writ large

00:38:33.620 um outside of modernism and all that we're talking about that that was a maybe not sufficient but

00:38:40.580 definitely necessary component to it all um and i would push back a little and again i'm not i'm i'm

00:38:48.020 kind of pushing back i i don't i don't i don't want to just like reject defense straight your general

00:38:56.260 narrative but i i would just kind of push back in a in a way that it's almost like we have to have these

00:39:01.860 contradictions within ourselves if we're going to go forward and overturn the current current moral

00:39:08.340 system which is not um traditional you know bourgeois christian morality it is something else and

00:39:14.900 is something even more puritanical but you know someone in the chat um put forward a funny meme

00:39:21.220 that has an image of disneyland and it says return to tradition and it's kind of right in a way i mean

00:39:29.700 the the disneyland castle is based on ludwig ii uh you know neuschwanstein and and and others the the

00:39:39.380 kimsey castle and lots of other things that he created and it's a it's a kind of copy of a copy

00:39:45.380 in this in this funny way because ludwig himself um you know and i i have my i i kind of like ludwig

00:39:52.420 ii and in a kind of funny way i i think he was a a romantic eccentric who was kind of uh fighting

00:39:58.500 the modern age in his own you know you know ultimately benign but kind of hilarious way um but

00:40:05.940 it's this idea that if if the only way that traditionalism could be reasserted in the modern

00:40:14.260 world is through something like disneyland even las vegas where you when you go there you know sin

00:40:21.380 city the height of the dionysian debauchery uh you have this gesturing towards kind of fake versions of

00:40:29.140 an aristocratic traditionalist past so you can visit paris of the uh you know 19th century uh

00:40:35.700 you can visit caesar's palace uh you can visit all this kind of baroque you know uh facade like

00:40:42.740 architecture but we all know that it's fake and that it is it's as fake as the fake you know uh

00:40:49.220 paintings of the sky that you see when you're walking through the shopping mall it's a kind of

00:40:54.180 false tradition that is reasserted and it's and it's materialized and capitalized in the sense

00:41:00.100 that it's something you consume uh and and it in it it it encourages consumption on its almost like

00:41:06.740 most degenerate level which is just gambling you know throwing money on the table and seeing if you

00:41:12.100 come up uh with riches or if you lose it all uh and so the the reviving the traditional morality

00:41:21.540 that that that that should be admired to its own degree um is going to could only be done in a kind

00:41:28.580 of disneyland fashion it could only be done in this this fake way that exists within capitalist

00:41:34.740 superstructures and if we want to actually overturn the current moral system which i do and you do too

00:41:44.580 that we we're going to have to kind of take in a lot of these modernist tendencies within ourselves

00:41:52.020 and kind of ride them out and emphasize them to a degree and so it's it is kind of contradictory that

00:41:59.940 we're radical traditionalist or the alt-right which is a kind of contradictory term uh or or other you

00:42:06.340 know a radical conservative conservative revolutionaries that was a a very much a kind of alt-right like

00:42:12.020 phenomenon uh between the wars in germany that we're going to have to kind of take in some of these

00:42:17.620 tensions and contradictions within ourselves in order to overturn the current order and and create

00:42:23.380 a new one and so i i think this i what i guess maybe my ultimate critique of of yours is that you seem to

00:42:31.940 be kind of retreating into a conservatism of it was better long ago and then then these bad people

00:42:41.620 came along and screwed it all up and you know and i i know what you're saying is more deeper and

00:42:48.100 complicated than that but you you kind of get my point that the only way out is through well you know

00:42:54.500 yeah you're right you're right and in my view of it is i mean way i've thought about it is that you

00:43:00.740 know these ideologies these sensibilities they kind of like play themselves out over the course of

00:43:07.460 a century and then you know um i mean let me look at how like for example how romanticism ended

00:43:14.100 and you know creating the huge you know nation states unified germany unified italy and putting

00:43:19.780 nations on a course to the world wars that was that was the disaster that um the that crisis the crisis

00:43:30.740 of the world wars was the disaster that discredited nationalism that discredited racialism that

00:43:37.300 discredited eugenics anti-semitism and so forth and like cleared cleared the path for the triumph of

00:43:45.860 modernism modernism did not just discredit eugenics i mean if we want to go there i mean it's

00:43:51.140 no no no no no we're saying no we're saying we're saying that the crisis of the world wars is right

00:43:58.580 well if you if you look if you say the 19th century was dominated by romantic values and also christian

00:44:06.260 moralists would hate eugenics more than any liberal post-modernists let's also remember that i mean

00:44:13.940 if that's the claim you're making no what i'm saying is what i'm saying is that the 19th century was

00:44:19.380 dominated by a romantic sensibility and the effect of romanticism in the arts for example the way that

00:44:27.620 affected uh the people was that you know it led to the unification it led to this ideal that we need

00:44:33.780 unified ethno states right and then of course and then of course by you know exaggerating the

00:44:40.180 differences between the ethnic differences and stuff between nations and saying you know there's

00:44:45.140 absolutely irreconcilable differences between say the germans and the french or the germans and the

00:44:50.580 english that kind of like paved the way to the world wars and like that was like don't we need to

00:44:57.620 overcome that what i'm saying isn't there something to be said for cosmopolitanism

00:45:04.820 well here's something i'm saying so um isn't there something to be said for cosmopolitanism from our

00:45:12.020 perspective not just yeah well i mean don't we don't we want to kind of over we don't want to go back to

00:45:19.540 we don't want to go back to romanticism because that led to you know the great disaster of the world wars

00:45:27.380 but then again the like but like but the problem is is that like the reaction to the world wars it

00:45:31.780 went to exactly the opposite extreme and what when what i'm saying is that when modernism became the

00:45:38.100 dominant sensibility in the west especially after world war ii when the united states was dominant

00:45:44.900 over western europe um which you had is like a just a dismantling of nations right a dismantling

00:45:54.580 of traditional morality um the crumbling of religion the loss of solidarity and cohesion within

00:46:03.860 nations the promotion of all these minorities from from within so what i'm saying here is is just as

00:46:10.820 romanticism if you look at the long term and how romanticism led to like you know the creation of

00:46:17.460 ethnostates and the order of europe and how that ended in the great crisis of the world wars similarly

00:46:24.820 modernism by becoming the dominant sensibility of the 20th century is leading us into

00:46:29.220 the next crisis which which is not not between not between nations but within nations as nations like

00:46:37.540 absolutely lose cohesion and like like the great divide in our times is not between nations

00:46:44.100 it's between elites and the masses and between uh the masses and all these minorities and like the

00:46:51.700 you know the united states has like the americans have nothing in common anymore whereas if you go back

00:46:57.140 like to say around 1900 it's it's absolutely amazing right like we had an ethnic identity we had like a

00:47:03.700 religious identity we had 50 years before that we uh we're at each other's throats basically common

00:47:09.700 basically common morality but but i agree with you what is the effect of you know what is the effect of

00:47:15.700 modern okay what is the effect of modernism in the arts on the masses and especially on the elites

00:47:21.460 right and what the effect of it was is that like elites repudiated their own ethnicity

00:47:26.980 and became hostile to the masses yeah and i i i don't like totally disagree with that what you

00:47:35.300 just said when did the quote the quote okay the question is how to call how did the elites

00:47:39.620 become cosmopolitan and reject their own ethnic identities because that is that is the character

00:47:44.900 the elites were cosmopolitan for a long time maybe forever let's let's remember that i wouldn't say

00:47:51.380 that they spoke the same language they were literally related i mean if in terms of the ruling families

00:48:01.060 i think yeah what i'm saying is that i don't want to take it off track but uh i think like the i don't

00:48:09.140 know the interesting question in this for me is like i mean from the perspective of like a racialist

00:48:15.860 like is nietzscheanism a good vehicle with which you challenge like neoliberal cosmopolitanism i'm not

00:48:24.500 sure it is because i i mean like neoliberalism as a project kind of is like faustian it is you

00:48:30.740 know our elites kind of are nietzschean in their orientation this just happens that you know we're

00:48:35.700 getting we're on the other side of it getting picked over but i mean like the idea that i mean the

00:48:40.820 idea that i know we need to go through yeah i agree with you we need to go through modernism but at the end of

00:48:45.060 the day if your answer to it is more modernism i mean for like i had a conversation with uh joel

00:48:51.460 davis today and i just like remarked it's funny like a lot of the critiques he's making of liberalism

00:48:56.100 are kind of traditionalist critiques so i mean i kind of like have this perspective of going through

00:49:02.660 modernism but it does kind of bring you back to a more sort of traditionalist outlook but i mean i just

00:49:09.700 you could jump in here but i kind of struggled to see how nietzscheanism is like a fundamental

00:49:15.460 challenge to the moralism of the current elite um a big question i'm not i'm not sure where i would

00:49:26.100 start i mean to to associate nietzsche with like the current moral system i mean is is is i mean i i kind of

00:49:36.420 okay i can grant you that the current elite and they're like i don't know just the neo i mean it

00:49:44.740 depends on what we're describing here but like the current elite and they're just like power hungry

00:49:48.900 grabbing for world domination yeah okay you can kind of say that that's nietzschean on some level

00:49:54.900 and um i mean you know nietzsche talked about this you know this massification of the population is going

00:50:01.780 to create tyrants as well i mean it's going to there's going to be that singular person or entity

00:50:07.860 that kind of rules them all as the mass becomes much more conformist and dumbed down and so on so i

00:50:13.940 mean i i if that's what you're saying is kind of nietzschean you know okay i guess the elite is nietzschean

00:50:21.940 in that very strict sense uh but in terms of you know confronting this crisis or or building one

00:50:32.180 that is greater that is a going to be a greater platform for human flourishing and greatness writ

00:50:39.220 large i mean i don't i i think the elites are are not in any way shape or form nietzschean um they i mean

00:50:49.940 we're not pressing towards uh some you know new napoleon or something i think we're pressing

00:50:58.260 towards the last man and a kind of bureaucratic administration over a bunch of idiots at a

00:51:05.460 shopping mall uh in which modernism has has kind of become i mean there's like a modernism to walmart i

00:51:14.420 mean there there's a there's a way in which the kind of like aesthetic a certain kind of certain

00:51:20.180 flavor of modernism that aesthetic conformity and and uh geometric you know get moving away from

00:51:27.060 from representation almost towards a kind of semitic like geometric you know functional but but still

00:51:33.540 decorative architecture form of modernism we have we're kind of we're kind of moving to like

00:51:39.300 like neoliberal like neo-feudalism and like the you know and on the mass level we're heading to like

00:51:46.340 the the last man but at the same time we have an elite that have like the elite have like separated

00:51:51.540 themselves from that they have achieved like incredible level of you know innovation and material

00:51:56.900 comfort but it's like what what's what's lacking is that there's no sense of uh of virtue of of duty to

00:52:04.180 the collective among our elite but but right yeah i mean nietzsche would want a decisive elitist who

00:52:11.780 would i mean he would want a decisive elitist that would do something and take responsibility for the

00:52:17.460 decision i mean i think what one thing that's kind of fascinating about our elites is that the billionaire

00:52:24.580 class feels that it has they do feel a certain sense of duty like they they feel like they have to

00:52:30.340 donate to all these global funds and and and whatever but they don't want to rule on some way

00:52:37.700 they they want to act behind the scenes and operate through governments and uh and so on they want to

00:52:44.180 donate money or be a global humanitarian uh but they also don't want to fundamentally take responsibility

00:52:51.540 i mean ruling means take risk taking responsibility for actions and being the one that maybe gets his head

00:52:58.100 chuck off chopped off and they are brilliant at avoiding that which is understandable in some

00:53:04.980 degree but i think more than that they that's not how they operate i mean we we see i would not blame

00:53:11.380 nietzsche for the just vast hordes of wealth that are being acquired in the kind of post-industrial age

00:53:18.500 uh but there you know you can kind of look at them from a nietzschean lens in the sense of like

00:53:24.660 they they want to acquire all this lucre um they want to be they either want to be invisible or they

00:53:30.980 want to be you know fed it as as benign humanitarians uh but the one thing they don't want to do is

00:53:38.020 actually rule and take responsibility for a better world they they are an irresponsible elite in that

00:53:44.100 sense of the word well i mean who's more niche than trump who's more niche than trump i mean

00:53:54.740 yeah i could kind of go with that on some level i would disagree on some other levels but yeah i can

00:53:58.740 yeah yeah go ahead in terms of in terms of nishi and modernism okay like well nishi of course

00:54:07.780 cast a huge shadow like on every everyone that followed him just like

00:54:11.460 like darwin did just like right floyd did just like bergson did just like especially

00:54:17.940 hg wells did yeah hg wells you know was had read nishi and so had you know all the people i'm studying

00:54:26.660 like nishi was one of their one of their favorites right right right randolph born floyd dell sherwood

00:54:33.300 anderson emma goldman george bernard george bernard shaw yeah have you ever read man and superman

00:54:38.900 that's everyone every thing is every picasso picasso apparently like loved um love nisha and like

00:54:49.940 saw his art as nishian right because it was breaking it was breaking with all these rules

00:54:56.180 and you know the embrace of primitivism primitivism for example in picasso's art well like the part the

00:55:05.460 problem the problem like you you read you read nishi and like his what he's dealing with is not our

00:55:11.220 problem and by that well i said the whole focus of his philosophy in my take is like the the what's the

00:55:19.460 the the elites are held back by you know the slave morality of the masses and christianity and the

00:55:27.060 elites are being held back from being from self-realization from being creators and through

00:55:33.700 their great work you know being the bridge to the to the ubermich but but our elites kind of like embrace

00:55:41.220 this philosophy they're all focused on their own self-realization and as this is this idea has trickled

00:55:48.820 down to the masses it has led to this world of detached self-absorbed individualists completely

00:55:57.540 focused in on their own lives and like you can see the great turning in modern art individualism really

00:56:02.500 the problem with society i mean i expressive expressive individualism there but they're just i mean as you

00:56:08.820 would agree they're there they we have some of the most conformist people ever i mean i i we have a kind

00:56:16.580 of like uh this is actually a o wilson but but dutton evokes it we we are living in a kind of i think

00:56:22.580 it's called eusocial that that is unlike other mammals we're almost closer to insects like we we

00:56:29.620 we have this like hyper we have a hive mind it just like hyper rules based moralism of conformity and i mean

00:56:39.940 when you look at your average americans are you really struck by their just rampant individualism

00:56:46.420 i mean they're um seem to live in a mass society in which we are all americans americans have always

00:56:54.580 been you there americans have always been individualists but like i'm saying like the individualism the

00:56:59.460 the rugged individualism of the frontier is completely different from like the decadent aesthetic

00:57:05.140 individualism that we have today you're just picking up on cliches the the the rugged individuals

00:57:11.300 on the frontier the the frontier was a absolute like darwinian test like no question you had to be

00:57:19.140 a badass to live on the frontier and so in the wild west we want to use that term uh but that did not

00:57:27.140 promote individualism promoted the opposite if you were a lone guy and you were anything other than a

00:57:33.620 criminal uh you were gonna die i mean you know the you survived frontier through religion

00:57:43.540 cooperation um conformity in a certain sense um yeah it's just a certain kind of individualism it's

00:57:51.700 like intensely extremely intensely religious it's focused on self-reliance it reinforces tradition

00:58:00.100 it reinforces like we're not we're not talking we're not we're not talking about like decadent

00:58:05.140 esthetes and dandies that that's not the kind of individualism that was encouraged by the frontier

00:58:10.580 that's the kind of the kind of individual the kind of individualism i'm talking about is nurtured by urban

00:58:16.180 life right not not the conditions of the frontier it's it's it's expressivist it's aesthetic it's not like

00:58:25.060 it's not mainly economic it's not political but where is it going with this um do we have those

00:58:30.260 people like if you go to new york city are you just struck by the fact that like t.s elliot is on your

00:58:36.340 right and uh picasso's on your left it's it's almost like that very good woody allen movie where um the

00:58:43.540 guy from um the modern age kind of travels back to the um uh to the turn of the century paris and then

00:58:49.700 goes to the belle epoch and and all this like are you struck by the fact that you just walk into a

00:58:54.100 coffee shop and salvador dali is sitting there or are you struck by the fact that you have a bunch of

00:58:59.780 like surrounded by morons i mean like is individualism really the issue right now

00:59:07.220 is that the way that you would critique contemporary american society i don't okay how would you how would

00:59:12.980 you help but how individualist in a sense that a person is say completely detailed like the average

00:59:18.420 white person in america is completely detached from their ethnicity they're completely did that

00:59:23.700 detached from any sense of racial consciousness they if they have families um their family

00:59:30.740 structure is usually a huge percentage of americans their family structure is is screwed up they're

00:59:36.500 isolated they um but i would blame the suburbs for so much of that to be brutally frank and not nietzsche

00:59:45.780 i mean the fact that community has been destroyed and that there's not a i mean this is something

00:59:51.620 that i've never i don't know what quite's happening in ireland but um and i think every you know each

00:59:56.820 problem is kind of each country is having problems in their own way but um when you go to a lot of

01:00:02.340 american towns you know is there even a center to this community is a real question like is there a place

01:00:08.740 where everyone goes to kind of talk and and so on no it seems like we are um isolated in our own homes

01:00:16.580 and that people are are having greater community through the internet as as we're doing here just

01:00:21.780 what was okay well it's like i said like nishi's focus was on the self-realization of the elites and

01:00:29.620 like his philosophy is not so much about like okay what how should like the average person or the masses live

01:00:36.020 his focus was entirely like on this small group of you know the higher men and who he wanted to

01:00:43.140 inspire to i guess go to greater heights or whatever but like but like a lot of people a lot of elites in

01:00:52.100 the especially you know literary elites in the 20th century kind of digested this message and like it

01:00:58.980 made them alienated from their own people like what they took away from the issue was elitism and being

01:01:05.460 alienated completely alienated um from their own people and like that's still with us today and that's

01:01:11.620 a a major problem that the elites don't identify um with the masses or or you know to use that as

01:01:19.620 an issue we describe them as like the herd animals the slaves um when we have an elite that's completely

01:01:26.420 self-absorbed and focused on itself in its own world and it's completely trashed like traditional

01:01:33.780 religion and morality like in the garbage can like what what kind of society is that

01:01:39.540 yeah i mean like richard do you not would you not acknowledge at least that like

01:01:44.740 your concern for white people as a group is is fundamentally not niching like it is coming from a

01:01:50.660 sense of virtue or duty it is i mean there's there's some kind of transcendent good there that

01:01:55.540 you're ultimately appealing to i mean as as i mean well we're almost a mundane good that you're

01:02:02.900 appealing to that i mean a a mundane good in the sense of um you know this is us and i i like the

01:02:11.620 people that i'm surrounded by and i and i want to support them i mean i think it's almost i'm not

01:02:16.900 sure it's it's i wouldn't quite describe it as transcendent i mean i think the the things that i do

01:02:22.500 or that i say that um kind of get into people's skin is almost like this you know we need to be

01:02:28.100 pushing forward into the few we are the bridge the you've ever mentioned the ethnostate is this grand

01:02:32.500 empire that those are the kinds of things where i become you know edgy and you know alienated and so

01:02:37.940 on but i would say that a lot of my concerns actually are more mundane in the sense of like

01:02:43.060 are we going to be able to um support help and support very the kind of decent people that i want to

01:02:49.700 live around you know it's real real mundane and basic yeah but that's fundamentally i mean that's

01:02:57.620 not that's not a nietzschean intuition like that is right it's bound up with virtue if you're gonna

01:03:02.740 write philosophy i mean okay okay racialism is ultimately like a barrier to the to the overcoming of

01:03:10.020 the of the of the ubermensch um i would say um every every man in ubermensch yeah that's that's kind of

01:03:21.780 the nietzscheanism that's been embraced but yeah i mean i i think that i certainly think that kind of

01:03:30.180 petty ethnic nationalism can be a um a barrier to um this kind of overcoming of the crisis uh that

01:03:42.100 that nietzsche was pointing to and he he that that is littered throughout his writings is this kind of

01:03:48.020 weird thing you know when you hear that nietzsche was a nazi or whatever what you know whatever kind

01:03:53.060 of you know slander you you will sometimes hear i mean you you find all of these attacks and critiques

01:03:59.780 of of german nationalism as as kind of petty and and this embrace of empire and napoleon and rome

01:04:08.020 and so on and i i i would say that i mean our if western civil you know western civilization if we if we do

01:04:16.260 have an impulse and a a drive that is higher than ourselves that is higher than just protecting our

01:04:23.620 own community which is a totally normal natural desire um it is to do something in this world to

01:04:32.260 create values in this world that are higher and greater than ourselves and that we have this charge

01:04:37.780 and in some ways other people don't um so if you're going to write philosophy it seems like you

01:04:43.140 would write about that and not you know just like let's support our community we've got some

01:04:50.980 foreigners coming in or something i mean you know there has to be a transcendent inspiring message to

01:04:56.740 this um other than you know like mere nationalism and mere nationalism gets you into this point where

01:05:05.780 you are supporting the status quo which is the cancer uh you know we we need to keep out all these

01:05:12.340 immigrants so that we can you know maintain the american way of life as it is right now and

01:05:18.260 and we we need to understand that the american way of life as it is right now is the problem

01:05:23.220 that is the that is the thing that we're trying to overcome

01:05:28.180 well the well i mean i've allowed a critique of nietzsche that like the the uberman would be uh

01:05:36.180 how was it he described it it'd be an olympian figure not an not an uh not an apollonian figure but

01:05:42.740 he was kind of getting at this that like the that nietzsche is constantly sort of implicitly

01:05:47.620 appealing to kind of you know to something transcendent that he's that he's uh that he's

01:05:53.220 putting like eminent values up against but and i'd say i mean i'd say you do that as well you're kind

01:05:58.020 of like implicit in a lot of what you're saying it's like a more traditionalist understanding of

01:06:03.860 virtue but it's still kind of uh you know it's still an appeal to something more than

01:06:09.380 you know eminent sort of individualism and overcoming um so it's it's still kind of pointing

01:06:14.980 that what we need to get back to is a more like comprehensive sort of traditional worldview rather

01:06:19.780 than accelerating into modernism okay i agree i sometimes we're playing with so many different

01:06:26.820 terms that yeah we can kind of get you know it's like you change a term here and it changes one there

01:06:34.580 and and so on yeah i i think that i i would say this i think that we absolutely need a transcendent

01:06:43.060 impulse within our movement and that a mere nationalism foreigners suck uh immigrants

01:06:51.380 do crime you know that is not gonna cut it and that we actually need a a a bigger impulse towards

01:07:01.620 the movement absolutely what i would say um is one of the reasons like that nationalism like is having

01:07:10.740 such a hard hard time is that you know that identity that sense of ethnic identity has been

01:07:17.380 deconstructed and eroded um all the traditional all the traditional morality that you know we would

01:07:23.940 used to associate with that identity has been deconstructed and eroded as well the typical american

01:07:31.460 right is a completely self-absorbed person who i mean like if they might they might they don't have

01:07:40.340 it they don't they don't think of themselves as like in terms of like in relation to others like

01:07:44.260 in relations to a culture or an ethnic group they're not collectivists they're not or a race or or like

01:07:50.660 say to their ancestors or their or their descendants they're not used to that way of thinking they're kind

01:07:55.140 of like absorbed in themselves it's how they don't have they don't have they don't have like that

01:08:02.820 identity right so when people like go out there and say we need to be nationalists like all the precursors

01:08:08.260 of that have been and we get trump nationalism which is almost literally dishwasher nationalism

01:08:17.140 i mean if you actually look at some of these yeah some of these uh speeches that he'll give where

01:08:22.020 everyone's you know oh he's comparing them to hitler or something he's literally talking about how

01:08:26.580 dishwashers were better 10 years ago and we need to we're bringing it back folks like you know

01:08:32.420 the new you know and like showers are like hotter and wetter now or something like it's it's bizarre

01:08:40.420 um but it is not but that's the kind of almost nationalism that you would get with the current

01:08:46.580 american populace i mean it's like that speaks to them um you know make dishwashers low efficiency again

01:08:53.780 i mean it's like that's the kind of thing that kind of immediately speaks to the last man of our current

01:08:59.220 age and we we need to speak to something else we're gonna like other people are gonna do better

01:09:06.500 at this than we ever could if that's what we're going for is just like brutal populism um but but

01:09:13.780 also you know our our movement has to be idealistic and transcendent and recognizing a current crisis and

01:09:21.140 seeking to overturn a current morality and and pushing for something that might even seem outlandish

01:09:27.860 um you know in in terms of our future orientation because the current crisis is good i mean the

01:09:35.860 thing is maybe brad would agree with me on this but what i what i'd say is like if you're i don't know

01:09:42.580 if you if you want to fundamentally challenge the modern world i mean if you're only if your vision is

01:09:48.740 only different in aesthetics really and you're not fundamentally challenging like the the precepts that

01:09:54.340 this whole world view is based on then it's not it's not a fundamental challenge and i think i am

01:09:59.940 obviously i mean if the elites perceive me as challenging their fundamental precepts i'll get

01:10:06.340 you know i'll say that at least aesthetically but i mean in terms of aesthetically come on

01:10:12.900 i i mean you know if we're still if we're still relativists if we're still moral nihilists

01:10:18.580 if we're still you know if we're if we're still operating in this kind of uh um epistemological

01:10:25.220 we are relativists i mean we are well should we be well but relativism is i i meant like ideally

01:10:34.740 speaking i mean look relativism much like modernism much like liberalism it can have so many different

01:10:40.420 definitions that i you know if we want to go there we would have to unpack quite a bit but i mean

01:10:47.060 i mean relativism in the way that i'm describing it now um is basically that we are speaking from

01:10:54.500 a perspective we come from somewhere that my morality and my values emanate from a long line that is rooted

01:11:06.180 in something to be a relativist as opposed to a liberal um who believes that there are there is

01:11:14.020 one value system for all mankind that actually is challenging them the notion that we would speak

01:11:20.660 for our ancestors from our relative perspective perspective on this earth actually is fundamentally

01:11:27.700 challenging the current elite i mean you could argue that liberalism itself is kind of founded on

01:11:33.300 on relativism like there's a it's not i mean if you if you're in strong sound like a conservative

01:11:39.780 saying this stuff it's just wrong it's not i'd say the whole i mean i'd include conservatism as well

01:11:45.860 the whole modernist in like the straussian way of saying modernist approach to politics is like you

01:11:52.260 know once you lose the the confidence in ethical and moral norms that like liberalism is kind of fills

01:11:58.740 this vacuum where you just have to stay it as this like sort of legal arbiter um and you know morality is

01:12:05.380 something that is is kind of left for the the private round then but i mean i think i think tyler

01:12:10.500 said in the chat that um obviously said that you have to challenge nietzsche on the metaphysical

01:12:14.660 level but i mean this is like this is my kind of my point is like all of the presumptions that kind

01:12:19.780 of underlied nietzsche's worldview that were of that time in terms of like darwinism and the scientific

01:12:26.180 revolution and um capitalism and everything else i if you're not fundamentally challenging them you're not really

01:12:33.780 fundamentally you're only challenging it on the aesthetic level and that you know you're going to

01:12:38.020 lead then that aesthetically um you know there's another way you'd like the world to be but it's

01:12:43.380 not a fundamental challenge to that whole worldview okay i i think i already gave my rejoinder to that but

01:12:52.020 i i would just say that this is one thing and i'm gonna actually have to go pretty soon so i might

01:12:58.260 have to hand off the because i'm we're doing um uh we're doing alpon sliding this afternoon so this

01:13:04.660 very neat oh great process of yes uh on the mountain top yes i'm taking my yeah i do yeah you sliding

01:13:14.900 down that yeah we could go metaphors on this one yeah looking out over the herd the christian slaves

01:13:20.740 looking out laughing out over the the herd animals and they're pathetic and they're pathetic as they

01:13:27.940 drive to like mcdonald's or something um but we we we have but we gotta forget they're still our people

01:13:36.420 and we got an obligation to we got an obligation to them to but we've got to make that that's that's

01:13:42.020 fun you know what that is that is uh you know like from my the more i thought about it like i'm like

01:13:48.100 why do i have like these values where does this come from right why am i interested in white people

01:13:55.060 in the first place why um do i have a sense of obligation to other people in my community it comes

01:14:01.140 from my traditional southern culture that's where it that's the origin of it's not and it's not in

01:14:06.100 let's be honest it's not in anything i read in niche ever it's from from my cultural background but um

01:14:13.140 yeah so we we got to i'm sitting here in a rural area and have all these archaic values

01:14:19.140 about uh white identity and our obligations to other people that you know have kind of been lost

01:14:26.420 the 20th century sad but um where we go where were you going we're talking about your well i would okay

01:14:33.380 i would say this and i'll i'll let other people talk um because first off i need to go in the next 15

01:14:38.820 minutes let's say um but i would just say this i i do think i'll just add this and hopefully this is

01:14:44.500 food for thought i do think that we still are in a way living in a long crisis that that actually is

01:14:52.100 fairly similar it's it's obvious different in obvious ways from you know where nicho is writing

01:14:57.940 but i i do think that there is kind of a long crisis that is being played out over maybe the quarter of a

01:15:05.700 millennium um that has resulted in a crisis of faith that the death of god if you want to put it that

01:15:13.220 way um that has resulted in um deaths of millions of people in world wars and and also a kind of last

01:15:21.620 man ism that we're seeing um today you know in the west particularly in the united states and that

01:15:28.260 we're we're kind of in a very similar crisis and and that a lot of these modernist or you know

01:15:34.660 nietzscheans if you want to say they actually can speak to where we are um if you you know uh

01:15:40.500 read properly uh so i would just add that in for a little food for thought but i i think this has

01:15:46.420 been a good discussion and i'll let other people talk um so if you guys want to jump in or if keith

01:15:53.540 wants to continue down his incorrect line of thinking i guess i won't stop

01:15:58.260 oh keith you there yeah plato is the answer richard i don't know how you want to accept that

01:16:07.380 more platonism is the answer you know the answer to the death of god is the is the rebirth of god

01:16:13.300 is the only thing that's going to solve it that's the death of the death of god but look let me jump in

01:16:21.140 here for a sec because i i think richard is right on one point and keith and brad are right on another and

01:16:26.660 i would follow richard saying that nietzsche's perspective perspective is on the fact that you're

01:16:31.460 coming from a certain place in history when you make these claims is actually correct but right

01:16:37.860 here's the problem with nietzsche is that what he does is he makes this fundamental claim and then he

01:16:44.340 prescribes a certain psychology of sorts about power about will to power and he reads this back into

01:16:51.140 his genealogical method of history and so he looks back at history and goes okay we have these

01:16:56.660 games of domination and power that are played based on people's psychological states the priest

01:17:02.180 has the sickness of weakness and resentment so he props up this kind of morality in other words

01:17:08.100 this is the birth of social science is this idea of secular reason where you diagnose metaphysically

01:17:14.900 a certain philosophy of history and then you say okay we've overcome metaphysics but then he just

01:17:19.620 puts up another one in its place right and so this is why because you guys are saying why is

01:17:25.060 nietzsche influencing a lot of leftists even though they might be misinterpreting it well the reason

01:17:28.980 that that's the case is because he presents a history uh sorry a philosophy of history where

01:17:34.420 all these social systems are a result of power okay so you you go forward to people like foucault

01:17:40.340 and people say okay well foucault is very friendly to neoliberalism he didn't have a good critique

01:17:44.740 so you gotta ask yourself why is that it's because he inherits nietzsche's genealogical method and then he

01:17:50.260 reads the system of power without any notions of virtue or cooperation or an ontology that's not

01:17:56.660 an ontology of violence so foucault's answer to neoliberalism is basically look neoliberalism is

01:18:02.900 here to stay and what we're going to do to resist the market excesses is to do the nietzschean technologies

01:18:08.820 of the self to create yourself aesthetically as an elite and this is why foucault doesn't have a good

01:18:15.140 critique of neoliberalism is because what we should do with nietzsche is actually agree with him and

01:18:20.420 his genealogical critique but put it back on the secular notion of history and that's the idea

01:18:26.980 that this certain ontology that the liberal elite is inhabiting and that we all tacitly accept i mean

01:18:32.580 even in the deep the decent right right people are very closet thomas hobbes fans even without

01:18:38.100 noticing it and i think to make that critique is we can go with nietzsche and say okay he's right about

01:18:44.260 these things but we have to turn it on him and see where he went wrong and why he's influenced a

01:18:48.900 lot of things that we hate and i think he does so because he props up a metaphysics that actually

01:18:54.260 assumes a lot of the same problems he's trying to overcome exactly i think we need to go i mean i think

01:19:06.340 i think we should eventually just need to go back to scholasticism

01:19:08.980 um what would i say with this uh yeah i mean you look at an issue and you look at his philosophy

01:19:16.180 when when i what i was going to say with this when i started out i was like heavily influenced by

01:19:22.820 nisha and i still am to this day like i like to i like to read about how things like evolved throughout

01:19:28.420 history well whereas you know nishi did his genealogy you know from his time back we got to look from our

01:19:34.180 time back to nisha and how his how who his ideas influenced and you know and what effect they had

01:19:42.260 and like one of the things i was surprised the whole reason that you know i've started talking about

01:19:48.580 nisha is that you know in the in greenwich village in the 1910s when these people were creating

01:19:56.180 the young intellectuals were creating modern modern liberalism he was like one of their top influences

01:20:01.940 like randolph born for example wrote uh what what the name of the name of one of his essays was

01:20:07.860 literally what uh twilight of the idols or something like that and like uh emma goldman the anarchist was

01:20:14.980 a a huge fan of of nisha he influenced all these all these leftists and you know and i think what they

01:20:23.060 took away from him is that well the reason they loved him so much is because you know he's saying like

01:20:27.460 oh traditional morality is is garbage it's you know nothing but power relations it's traditional

01:20:34.100 religion huh that's the slave morality of the masses right what we really need is an elite and

01:20:41.380 we need an elite to to to realize to realize themselves or to you know stands above the masses and

01:20:50.260 and anyway go ahead i was just going to quickly say that's why social science is the way it is because

01:20:56.340 you get these studies saying okay the white person who loves his own kin and wants to maintain these

01:21:01.460 ethnic bonds is just doing so as an expression of power against an out group right and so what they

01:21:07.620 do is they take that kind of nichan psychologizing element that was birthed into the foundation of

01:21:13.300 social science and the secular assumptions that go into it and then they pathologize it

01:21:19.140 right and they pathologize these notions of virtue that we're discussing that people should have

01:21:24.020 an only sense of kinship and they do it because they pick up on these kinds of assumptions right

01:21:54.020 as that that people shouldHow to situate them why mine though they pick up people are essential

01:21:59.060 because they also got the energy to keepChat in to their decisions and either want to

01:22:16.260 We'll be right back.

01:22:46.260 We'll be right back.

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01:24:16.260 We'll be right back.

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01:25:16.260 We'll be right back.

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RadixJournal - September 24, 2020

Modernism—What Is It Good For？

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