Fooloso4 wrote: ↑December 12th, 2018, 12:42 pm
I am not going to take the bait Dachshund. All of this has been addressed before. You name drop and take statements out of context, always without providing references that will allow us to see the context and the study as a whole. Or perhaps you do not take statements out of context. Perhaps you simply repeat what others who have done that say. This would help explain why you never provide references. When we do the research ourselves and point to what the study actually says and concludes you simply ignore it and cherry pick the findings of some other researcher you think supports your claims.
Dear Philosoph4,
OK, that's fine. Personally, I do not see the need to provide a reference to the mainstream scientific literature for literally every fact one presents in a post on a discussion forum like this. I think, however, that a reference ought be provided to the relevant literature where an entire post is based on a particular scientific claim. I appreciate what you say about feeling you ought not have to personally chase up academic citations where I have not provided them.
Briefly, I can provide a very strong argument to the effect that the primary foundation for what we call Western Civilization was located in what Spengler calls the ""Faustian spirit" of the white-skinned Iron Age Nordic people of Northern Europe. That is, in the germanic tribes ( like the Angles, the Jutes and the Saxons) who inhabited what we call Scandinavia/ Norther Germany) today. If you bring to mind an image of the stereotypical Viking warrior and his general attitudes, world-view,"elan", etc; THIS, according to Spengler, is the kind of spiritual stuff that constitutes the primal locus of the Western ( "Faustian" )Souls.
The Vikings originated in what is now Denmark, Norway and Sweden. They were a brutal, fearless, marauding people, who took to sea to raid other lands. It is extremely important to understand that the legendary violence of the Vikings was deeply rooted in the notion of honour which was a vital concept in pagan Nordic culture. The Vikings saw violence as the chief means to defend honour. For any Norseman, honour was a matter of the utmost importance. The notion: "Death before Dishonour" was an everyday life reality for the Vikings, not just a cheap (and painfully ironic) tattoo on the arm of a blue-collar worker in the 20th century. The Viking Norsemen believed that the time of any individual's death is predetermined - that it is preordained by fate,
but that pretty much nothing else in life is. Thus, the Viking understood there were only two possibilities for his life, namely: success and its attendant fame
or death. This explains the Vikings tremendous restlessness and lust for adventure, their fearlessness, their avid desire to "boldly go where no one had gone before" in search of wealth and riches, fame and glory, to seize their fate in their own hands and carve out their own destinies - cutting down any resistance encountered along the way with battle axe and sword, to impose their will on the world as violently and as often as was deemed necessary. These are the deep core values upon which Western civilization was founded. These values are comprise the essence of Spengler's conception of the "Faustian Spirit/Soul".
To cut to the chase: (1) I think much of the Nordic culture of the Iron Age Germanic tribes was similar, generally speaking, to Viking culture and to a large extent the values of the Norsemen were profoundly shaped by the landscape with which they dwelled; I mean by the unwelcoming physical geography of North Western Europe : its short days, weakish sunlight, many months of bitterly cold temperatures/snow per year. Scandinavia ( Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Jutland, the Baltic Coast of what we now call Germany) were cold ,harsh environment to inhabit during the age of the Vikings and that of the other Iron Age Nordic hunter-gatherer tribes like the Saxons and Jutes. Just to survive took daring, intellect, a strong will, sharp senses, tremendous resilience, great courage, determination etc. I could write a book about this, so I'll leave it there.
(2) The "Founding Fathers" of the West, that is, the original, ancient "Faustian Souls" upon whose values/behaviours/attitudes our Western civilization was built ( Spengler dates the emergence of genuine Western Culture to around 900 AD) were indeed White, fair-skinned men. There was a paper published in
Nature ( Nature, 2014, March 13 , 507/7496, pp 225-228) - which is, as you know, is arguably the most prestigious scientific journal in the world. In this paper we learn that a genetic analysis of 7000 year old human remains from an archaeological site in Sweden strongly suggests that the white skin and blue eyes of the generic North-West European are, historically speaking, a relatively recent development.
My point is this, the cultural achievements chalked up by our Western civilization, in science/technology, in the humanities ( literature, history, philosophy), in the fine arts (sculpture, painting, music), architecture, medicine, in exploration/discovery, in government and politics over the past 1000 odd years are truly astounding; all things considered, Western culture has proven itself to objectively superior of any other major world culture past or present, and Western civilization, in turn, has been the most vital, brilliantly creative, sophisticated and advanced civilization that the world has ever seen. I think it is difficult to deny this (?)
Western culture and civilization have until the mid-20th century been very much driven by the efforts of white-skinned males ( the descendents of the Norsemen I have be speaking about about. But here as Shakespeare would say is "the rub" - from the very beginning of Western civilization, Western societies be they Viking or Anglo-Saxon villages, be they cities like London in the 18th century, Australia in the 19th century, the United States in the 1950s had populations which were always -at the very least - 90% White. When I say White, I mean persons of North Western European (Nordic) descent. Why ? The reason is because over the past 1000 years these White persons have always (generally speaking) preferred not to mix with other non-white ethnic groups. They could easily have done so had they chosen to, but the historical record shows that they simply did not.
In 1965 with the Civil Rights revolution in America, immigration policy was radically reformed. From 1970 onwards there was, in consequence, a dramatic increase in the number of non-White immigrants coming to live in the US from places like Mexico. In fact, as a result of this ongoing influx of non-White immigrants over the past 50 years, by 2042 White Americans will become a minority group in the United States (a fact, BTW, that now requires no reference to the scientific literature, Foolosoph4). With a continually falling White birth rate and an inevitable rise in miscegenation, White-skinned Americans ( again, when I say "White-skinned", I am referencing persons of Nordic descent) will, before long, cease to exist ( biogenetically speaking) in America. If thing continue in the way that they have since the mid - 1960s, Whites in the US will, in short, before too long become brown-skinned people.
If - , or perhaps I should say,
when, - this happens it will be - as they say in the football - "
Good Night Vienna" for Western culture/civilization.
Finis .
For me, that would be an unspeakable tragedy.
Regards
Dachshund