Hey WIAH. In the past you mentioned planning on making a video about anxiety (the emotions that push civilization). I've made a couple of videos about anxiety that serve as addendums to statements you've made. My videos are "Why Isn't Self-Defense a Human Right? Why Does the Media Support Gun control? - AmericaBad" and "An Addendum to WhatIfAltHist's A Study of Decadence: Why do people become Tankies?". The former is about how the urban west is driven by anxiety, while the latter is the decadent political class, the collapse of trust in society and the rise of political polarisation and totalitarianism.
This is the argument colonial slave owners used to justify the view that Africans and nomads are lesser than human, when the latter two actually chose to prioritize cynic-hedonic cultures over techno-progressive ones.
"The duality of of the autistic masculine and the hysteric feminine." You hit the nail on the head with that one! I've never heard anyone describe modern civilisation so accuratley.
what if all this didnt descrive shit well he is quoting gnosticism... congratulations 6you can be a vapid tool just like this statist clown is with one simple 3 hour video on gnosticism and western esotericism.
Clergy at least were right, if not overly cruel and feudalistic. HR are overly cruel, feudalistic (more like feud - alistic amirite) and are wrong about absolutely everything to the point they live in a dream world that they are likely old enough to be aware of and to hate more than anything but themselves.
@@Pdstor well, Clergy weren't always right, but what the principles / commandments / doctrine they were to adhere to is perfect. They can be held to the doctrine. As opposed to CURRENT THING(tm)
Yup. I have to watch this twice or thrice to understand and soak in fully. And I am an engineer who watches 24/48hr long videos for certain projects in a stretch. Yet, the amount of ideas and the things I want to write down are way too many. Never in my life have I been more...in a state of trance than this video. So many 'oh damn, this makes sense', it really really...explains so many things that I always pondered about. Amazing work. Never stop. God bless.
Yeah, the self-awareness in his tone was great. Like, "Everything is gonna' suck for *everyone* ...which means that we'll be together. Aww... isn't that, like, nice or whatever?" A droll end to a video that made an earnest attempt to be realistic and honest. I'll say this for him: he's not slave to optimism.
When visiting my family in Switzerland, I spent most of my time with them at their place, which was all beautiful, heavy wood architecture hundreds of years old, with all the buildings nearby made of that same style. Yet, when we went into the center of the town to the grocery store, we were shocked to find a square, bare, concrete block with no windows. Easy to forget the shifts we have made with globalization and the like.
Because that is when you guys created a lot of cultural output that has relevancy to this day. Minoan and mycenean Greece are fascinating, they have however almost 0 connection to today. Later Greece was conquered by the Romans and they get the credit for everything in that period (despite Greeks being still very prominent within the empire). The byzantines created a whole new cultural sphere, but orthodox culture is almost universally seen as inferior to classical. And since the late middle ages the wider region Greece is in was somewhat irrelevant except for the Ottoman politics and that one event in Bosnia in 1914. Today Greece is a peripheral state of Europe.
My family is from California but I grew up in the heart of Cajun country in the region called Acadiana. In terms of California, my family is very aware of its cultural and heritage being very German and Celtic. My mother’s maiden name is Zentmyer, and that side of the family is very proud of its German roots. We still practice the more Germanic inheritance system where the oldest son gets most of if not all the inheritance and family heirlooms. That’s why it was such a massive and huge deal when my great grandfather gave me his first naval saber instead of my grandfather. Due to the fact that my grandfather had no sons, and the firstborn son of my great uncle being very “modern,” I, as the traditional and heritage aware great grandson have gotten heirlooms I otherwise shouldn’t have. On my father’s side, my grandfather plans on giving all the important family heirlooms to my dad and mom as the firstborn and most appreciative of the family history. My great Grandfathers service weapons will go to my dad with the M1 Garand and captured Arisaka rifle already being passed down. The rifle has a chrysanthemum etching still on it which is a big deal. Watching this video helped crystallize why I’ve seen in my family. In both sides the first born are still traditional and and we are aware of our heritage and family history to the point we almost venerate it. While my cousins aunts and uncles are all very contemporary and modernist, not being as aware or even caring about our history or traditions.
@@LarryWater I’m reminded of that very often. I knew all my great grandparents and still have a couple alive. All my grandparents are alive and we have pretty good recollection of where our family came from.
My family immigrated from England in 1638-39. My great, great grandfather was an Illinois Calvary sergeant in the civil war and his service pistol has passed grandfather to grandson twice down to me. Since I became a father at 45, I will need some good fortune for the tradition to continue; but my son is becoming a good candidate as well.
I get what you mean about world cities. I grew up right outside of DC and have always been completely used to everyone else being immigrants from literally everywhere but the US (name a country, 80% chance I've known people from there at some point). I'm a Freshman in college now and the students at my college are mostly from rural areas of the state and it's a huge culture shock, despite how technically we're both from Virginia. I have more in common with the immigrants from other parts of the world than with the people from the same state as me. However, the fact that it's people from all over the world, not people from NYC, London, and Dubai, makes me doubt that it's so much that these cities are just islands of a different culture as opposed to places where this different culture, which does exist everywhere, is concentrated.
It might be a selection pressure, people move from the hinterland to a world city and the ones who acculturate easily are the ones who continue to globe trot long enough to meet you.
As a British person, I consider myself as a western and I don't condemn my ancestors. I think we did the best we could as humans, I am ashamed of our modern state though.
5:27 Part 1 What is modern civilization? 15:40 Part 2 The origins of modernity 39:28 Part 3 The logic of modernity 50:34 Part 4 The secret religion 1:06:31 Part 5 The end of modernity
I have a completely different understanding. I think the historical narrative is incorrect. The great buildings as from prior higher civilizations which have been repurposed by the institutions that have gained power for their own purposes.
I fell into a similar Gnostic trap with Jung. I became infatuated with his work, leaving Christianity as I knew it. I found it so fascinating, especially the way that he would speak about things. It wasn’t until a year after Jungian analysis that I encountered the true, Gnostic element of his work: the introduction of Satan into the Godhead (turning the trinity into the “quaternary”), which he saw as a necessary step in the evolution of our understanding of Christianity. He has a similar theme in “Answer to Job”, where he speculates that God will incarnate his “evil” side as the Anti-Christ in this new age. I immediately realized I had gone amiss, and was a practicing Gnostic. I’m still dealing with the repercussions to this day. I had always known God was absolutely good, and hearing this shattered my world. I’ve since returned to Christianity, although I find it a massive struggle after being imbued with Jungian psychology for so many years. Of course, there is some truth in Jung (projection, shadow, etc.), but the “path of individuation” is never ending and essentially a new-age, Neo-Pagan Gnosticism. Jung interestingly had visions of himself being the “crucified Christ”, and his “soul”, personified as Philemon, urged him to be the prophet of a new religion. I did not know this either, and all his work has become dubious at best. I think Freud was right when he criticized Jung’s archetypal psychology as a “return to animism”, which Jung most likely would have enjoyed. Christianity is so special because salvation comes first and foremost, and that we need to step away from evil, not “integrate it”. Once you accept Christ, you watch Him change who you are as a person through the Holy Spirit. He is the “spring of salvation”, a spring that heals from the inside out once a sip is taken in. Christ is He who stretches out the ouroboros and crushes its head. Perhaps the ouroboros is better understand as a symbol of our perpetual folly, engagement with sin, and it’s repetitive nature throughout civilization, until Christ returns as King and ends the story once and for all, only to begin a new one full of beauty and grace, devoid of sin. The ouroboros is a serpent, after all. Wisdom is better than all knowledge. The Gnostics mistake the former for the latter.
Thank you for this comment, I had no idea. My exposure to Jung is mostly from Jordan Peterson, but I don't watch him much anymore, just like Rudyard actually, because there is an offness that comes from their fundamental beliefs not being true. Acknowledging God or the usefulness of Christianity is not enough, and it shows how hungry and desperate we are for voices that aren't atheistic materialist postmodernists, but that doesn't mean alternative voices will in the end lead us to better places if they don't believe in Jesus Christ.
@@Gerwulf97 Glad the comment helped! And I will say that Rudyard has said many times he himself is Christian and religious, unlike Jung or Peterson. He doesn't only say it's useful, but that he is actually a Christian, which is something worth considering. I find Rudyard's perspectives very illuminating and helpful to understand the world, especially considering he is Gen Z like myself, and he is talking about very real and serious things I think older generations do not get. And, regarding Peterson, the Bible tells us to judge an individual based off of their fruits. While Peterson doesn't explicitly call himself a Christian (unlike his daughter and wife, who are both practicing Catholics), the fruit of his work has led many to become true Christians, and those who listen who don't become Christian definitely come away with more respect and admiration of the truth of a Judeo-Christian worldview - something pretty much all mainstream academics neglect. Jung, on the other hand, has undoubtedly contributed something meaningful to the discussion, but he took a few drastic missteps that I think cause misery. The concept of projection, introversion and extroversion, the shadow, and others are his brainchildren (although projection has been known through religious terms since Christ - analogous to the verses "do not comment on the speck in another mans eye when there is a plank in your own" as well as "judge others lest you judge yourselves"). Jung's problem was his hubris, the root of all sin. He had a messiah complex, evident in his fantasies. He had one vision that comes to mind, where a figure he called Philemon told him that he was the prophet of a new religion. He denied he was, but I think unconsciously he wanted it. His downfall was that he claimed he was an empirical scientist, which was certainly true in the beginning of his career, but as he got older, it seemed his hubris got the best of him, and with his two "greatest works", according to him, 'Aeon" and 'Answer to Job', he completed the process of forming his 'new religion', an Abrahamic, Neo-Pagan religion in which the 'Self" is to be realized intrinsically in a narcissistic manner as opposed to extrinsically in the figure of Christ, leading one to call upon metaphysical, living 'archetypes' as opposed to recognizing archetypes as symbolic representations of one's emotions, to put it simply. Everything in the Bible that refers to worshipping false idols is important because when we worship false idols we are not worshipping other gods and goddesses, but ourselves and our emotions, which consist of archetypal motifs (remember that Lucifer wanted to be like God and worshipped himself). In order to 'deal with the realm of the archetypes', which isn't really a realm but our emotions in a sense, we need Christ, or else we drown and worship false idols, or worse. This is a similar realization that C.S. Lewis came to after a deep conversation with J.R.R. Tolkien. This is why fairytales are incredibly complex and useful, because we can recognize their 'unrealness' as being fake or fairy like, i.e. there is no such thing as a 'big bad wolf', but also recognize their realness in the psychological sense and how they can help one deal with coming of age, how to overcome one's "dragons", and other emotional motifs, while still worshipping the True God of Christ, as most fairytales are archetypal stories nestled in a Judeo-Christian worldview. In effect, it's practical to look at most mythological narratives as fairytales, which can be useful when determining psychological truths. Christianity cannot be viewed as merely mythological (although there is obviously metaphor, such as the creation myth, and Christ Himself speaks in parables), as it is perhaps the only religion which can be traced to a single individual who actually lived, breathed, died on the cross, and ressurected (the later being evident by the ardent and almost insane dedication of early Christians and their persistence on spreading the gospel and their willingness for martyrdom, which would only be possible if somebody saw someone who ressurected). In effect, it is the "archetype made flesh", as put by Bishop Barron (a play on the "word was made flesh").
It seems to me that your decision to reject gnosticsm and Jungian psychology was made out of an emotional response not wisdom. You read something that you’ve been raised to disbelieve and so you disbelieve.
@@Sage1Million No, this is untrue and something I’ve considered. Gnosticism is inherently flawed and the antithesis of the profundity of the Christian message. I have not rejected Jungian psychology, I have taken my insights and will continue to do so. The issue with Jung is that the very Bible that he uses in order to postulate the evil within God clearly states that “God is Good, and God is light - there is no darkness in Him”. Jung intentionally ignores this, much to the dismay of Victor White, one of Jung’s closest friends (Jung referred to White as his “White Raven”). White wrote a very good rebuttal of Answer to Job which I found useful, and maybe you will as well. Gnosticism has many problems. The first is that it flips Christ’s message on its head. Gnostics believe that in order to be saved they must find “inner knowledge” and transcend a world of evil. Christ’s original message is that nobody can be saved through their own works, but through Christ alone and his sacrifice. We are all damned, and there’s nothing you can do about it. This is why Christ had to come down and be resurrected, because there is quite literally nothing we can do. Christ is the spring of salvation, the Holy Grail. It’s seemingly simple and not nearly as flamboyant or extravagant as the golden chalice. It’s only once someone takes a sip, as in recognize Christ, are they able to be saved. Once taken, Christ works through an individual and changes them throughout. Salvation comes first. Gnostics and Jungian psychology believe in individuation, a process of achieving psychic wholeness by integrating shadow elements and the archetypes, with the Anima being the most difficult archetype for men to integrate which usually comes later in life. There is no denying archetypal elements, but whether they are living metaphysical archetypes or rather the personification of archetypal emotions is another story, but I digress. Individuation does not really exist. It’s Sisyphus’ boulder. One can never fully achieve psychic wholeness if it even exists. And individual simply grows and changes and has life experiences. Certainly there are unconscious elements festering beneath, but whether we are a cork on an ocean is something that hasn’t been proven. Additionally, gnostics believe that the snake in the Garden was good, and that the bite from the apple was necessary and not an evil step. This is also incorrect for many reasons, but nevertheless it always comes down to the devil’s worst and most sinful attribute: pride. The desire to be God is the main flaw with Gnosticism and Jungian psychology. “The Self” is worshipped instead of God, with “The Self” being the central archetype and often seen as God, or perhaps a King. Consequently, Jungian psychology holds that each individual is a manifestation of “The Self”, aka “God”, and that we are each individual incarnations of God. This is a great and tragic blunder that doesn’t make much sense. The Pride of Satan is also clearly seen in Jung’s work. Again, Lucifer wanted to be God, which is why he fell from heaven and continues to cause chaos (metaphorically or literally - I’m unsure). I find it odd how Jung comes to the decision to break apart the trinity by force and insert Satan into the Godhead… that literally sounds like a ploy of the devil, as does the eventual incarnation of evil God in the form of the anti-Christ. Answer to Job is Biblical fanfiction, and Aion has its own issues. Jung’s work on Alchemy is much more favorable to me, as it is impossible to ignore the alchemical nature of symbols in dreams (as my sister, who knows nothing about gnosticism, had an ouroborus in her dream), but nevertheless none of it is necessary for salvation. Jung, in effect, is still incredibly useful, and his insights continue to shape my perspective as they have in the past. However, it’s best to take his psychological considerations more than his meta-physical postulations. And surely emotions were evolved in my decision to turn back to Christianity, but more so because I felt as if I had been duped and I cast Christ aside and thought I could do it all alone. My entire life I have always known (not believed) that God is good, even throughout my complete adoration for Jungianism and the esoteric. I was not raised to believe that God was good because I’ve always had God and could see His hand in my life and I have never felt as if He had abandonded me. I know many who were raised to believe that God was good and they do not believe so now - most actually. But lastly, I also considered this. Jung loved to be romantic about his view of life, and how he “lived in his own deepest hell” and famously “no tree can reach heaven unless his roots reach down to hell”. I always thought that so clever and wise, but now I find it, honestly, foolish. Is that anyway to live your life, in hell? I looked to those who had the most genuine joy in life and a passion for life itself: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and others. When it comes down to it, I want to be joyful in my life. At the end of the day, you judge a tree by its fruits, and I began seeing that the fruits of Jungianism and Gnosticism were rotten. And to you, the one who considers himself a sage: perhaps reconsider gnosticism and Jungian psychology. Being a Christian doesn’t mean being straight edge or not analyzing dreams and such: quite the contrary indeed. But it means surrendering and letting go of this incessant desire to integrate and to become whole. You cannot do it. It cannot be done. Last critique of Jungian psychology and modern day gnosticism is that it practically ignores Theology, which is, in part, psychological but also metaphysical. Theology is the birthplace of every other branch of scientific thought and has been evolving for thousands of years - from Augustine to Aquinas and beyond. Jung often said the “theologians don’t understand him” (specifically after White’s rebuttal), but I think that he neglected to understand the theologians, and that they have been working on the conception of the trinity. Am I of the disposition to accept all positions of the Church? No, quite the contrary, and I find demoninations to be of too much importance in my estimation. However, it is important that a follower of Christ has community. Another thing that is selfish and narcissistic about Jungianism and Gnosticism is its overbearing individualism, suffering alone, and that only the individual can find salvation after a long and arduous process. Most Jungians I meet are quite selfish, which is probably why I felt inclined towards it. Christ, the eternal Tao, is the one who slays and flattens the Ouroboros; He is the alpha and the omega - the author of light. In Christ there is no darkness.
architecture is highly dependent on the building-science technology and techniques of how its components come together. Cost also plays a huge factor to the features and forms that a building features. Its technology driving the aesthetics. Modern materials of steel, glass, concrete, aluminum, waterproof membranes, modern HVAC systems, Lighting systems, electrical systems, plumbing systems - have yielded the modern industrialially constructed "international modern style of contemporary architecture" it simply is the cheapest and most efficient way to create useable, climate controled, interior space for the purposes of work, live, production etc. Anything outisde this minimalist modern mold is essentially relegated as "ornimentation" and usually requires specialized craftsman in order to add frilly decoration or ornamentation (which was much more prevelant in previous centuries) - ornamentation was more common because of 3 factors: 1. the building owners were relatively rich and they demanded it. 2. the constructors such as veryday construction workers of previous eras were highly under payed and thus having lots of craftsman to create decorative ornamentation was somewhat affordable. 3. there was a much greater importance in a buildings 'stately presence' than today. in modern day, buildings are more often regarded simply as machines which facilitate a specific mechanical function (the human inhabitants being part of this machine) the machine was either a machine for living, or a machine for creating money, or delivering a service, or production or manufacturing of goods etc etc.
I'm thinking, didn't medieval construction create efficient brick houses to contain millions of migrant workers during Industrialization? Those kept you safe from the weather, met all the requirements of housing. But then people realized they were not addressing newly discovered needs, health and safety. And no more slums were built, buildings became designed differently, with more windows and sunlight and ventilation. And now people are building these "efficient" modern buildings, they're not addressing a newly discovered need, so in the future maybe buildings will cost more with more ornamentation in order to address that need
I think we should also consider the psychological impact that the physical environment has on a person, and so design buildings as not just machines that serve mechanical functions but also serve the function of improving people's well being through beauty.
@@plasmabat718 this is often our daily struggle as architects, we always often seek to push our clients to allow for more aesthetics, more comfort, more design appeal and amenities for project inhabitants, be they workers or residents... of course our clients are always slave to their purses, and it is always easier for them to say no to proposed design features. we push and push all we can though, as architects we must ever remain champions for increased built environmental quality.
It’s kind of crazy how much your videos have changed my worldview. Before, I was just you run of the mill republican, I’d vote red for anyone, but (it’s kind of hard to explain) your videos changed my views of reality in some fundamental way, and I stopped believing in the illusions I was surrounded by. I think it was your neutrality, up to that point I had been so used to everything being biased towards one group or another. Then again, watching your videos may just make me feel smart about myself lol.
This video validates a lot of what I've been thinking and feeling for the past decade or so: we're losing a lot of things we need, like family, religion, art, beauty, and nation. All we really have are material comforts and various things to distract us. But I'm ultimately thankful. Thanks to the videos on this channel, we've been given a chance to change course, if not society, then at least our own lives. And even though it feels like we've been cursed, things are not so different. Life has always been challenging, and can feel hopeless. Our ancestors managed to find a way, and I believe we can too.
Yes, some will rise from the ashes, but make no mistake, our "opposition" has no delusions that he will win in the end, he just wishes to inflict as much destruction and pain upon humanity as possible.
Well, they say you have to lose something to understand its value..... and it's not like most people even seem to care very much anymore. They WILL, when it is too late.
@@Mcfunfacediversity. Modernity and progressive viewpoints aren’t an evil enemy. Just a side you refuse to understand without innate negative bias. The modern world has faults but we are in large part comparison with the past. Moving into the right direction
Wars have never been more destructive, society has never been more stratified, there have never been more slaves than there are today. The myths of progress they taught me in school are a thin veneer over an ugly and barbaric era.
The first thing I saw in France was an African taking a shit in the street, a group of Muslims trying to close a factory that makes natural soap from pork fat and a prostitute servicing a client while he is trying to find a blood vessel. France is the post-modernist dystopia.
Wow. I have to watch this again. You’re right. It’s blown my mind. I’m an agent of post modernity by trade, I’m socially engineering a companies culture, mind set, view of the world, to make the machine move faster, consistently, and maximise profit. I’m destroying the previous company society and culture by reengineering the entire structure, breaking long established traditions and ways of being, eliminating exceptions, and disguising it all under the cloud of progress. I’m driving concepts of individualism, Development of the self, picking winners and losers using questionable scientific and behavioural science data amassed since world war 2, creating management decisions based on autistic data. And what’s really made me sit up and pay attention is that I’m really, really good at it. I’m the penultimate outcome of the elites post war GenZ. No values, no religion, fully believe in and practice the deindustrialisation model you presented, I see everyone as equal, don’t recognise difference in culture, religion etc, because my entire world view is a socially engineered construct (like the matrix) and underneath it all there’s nothing. No family, no history, no religion nothingness. So I find myself asking, am I happy, and more importantly do I even know what happiness is. Shit this is deep….. I wonder what the Kardashians are up to these days 😉
A certain enormous number of weeks ago today, someone gave you the opportunity to not get what you necessarily earn or deserve, to change your ways and hopefully repair the damage you did. It was hard. You'll have to figure out for yourself, are you ready to try?
@@mobilityproject3485 so interesting. I went to work for impoverished first peoples tribes for nearly 3 years. Quit the corporates, worked ‘not for profit’ making a difference. I tried, but ended up going into another sector, again. Does that count?
you changed my behavior yesterday... Fridays is the day I have the house to myself, going to work at home etc... decided to go work at the mall instead in case I had an opportunity to talk to people and decrease loneliness in Mays Landing, NJ. Bumped into that group of special needs people that are at the mall a lot, who asked me to play guitar for them, and we took over the food court with a little folk concert. Just wanted you to know all your talking can have a benefit to society, keep it up! Do the talky-talk.
I have been hearing these ideas piecemeal from different people for the past two years. This is the first time I’ve heard them all coherently tied together into a single line of thought. It is as if the highlights of my own intellectual interests have culminated into a single video. You need to expand out this script into a book to get it out to the main stream.
It's crazy that despite these styles being universally considered the best by almost everyone across all sections of society, we still refuse to go back to building that way, for some reason
Thank you❤ Whatifalthist, so much😊❤ your earlier videos helped me to understand the world as someone with Asperger's Syndrome at least a little bit. People on Reddit say you're skewed😅 and I don't listen to them. I believe in you as my Teacher❤
Consumerists be like: We will make a new utopia around young people consuming and screwing with strangers. Then young people will never want to fight again. Reality be like: Large scale child abuse/neglect leads to inefficiency and stagnation. Overconsumption times inefficiency equals ecological collapse.
As a 30 year old I am humbled to have learned so much from someone much younger than me. I personally feel like the world has changed noticeably since about 2010. Kind of a frog in boiling water feel. We all know things are changing for the worse. We all know something bad is on the horizon. Yet we all just keep on doing are normal thing like nothing has changed. This channel does a great job of slapping the reality into the warming frogs that is the modern youth.
Occupy happened in 2010 as a reaction to the last big crash. Scared the shit out of the ruling class. they've been trying to make sure nothing like that ever happens again ever since despite another even bigger crash coming on the horizon
I’m a 63-yr old conservative and this is wicked smart. I seek out diverse viewpoints and it’s really encouraging to hear a young person who can think independently
Another point I'd like to make, is that the hard Sciences are becoming less and less hard. And being more and more driven by whatever political, ideological & economic pressures are being pushed on it.
They always were. Look at what they did to Galileo. When nuclear physics started progressing, what did people in power financed to harness these discoveries? The atomic bomb, as it was the most politically "useful" at the time. Even the muslim golden age petered out because the scientists and discovery got increasingly paranoid of having their activities branded as incompatible with islam.
@@seraphinduvolzairo5938Societies that ignore or politicize the hard sciences will always be outcompeted by those who value them for what they are, tools for the advancement of society. The Muslim caliphates or the city states of Italy would be ruling the world right now if they properly utilized those tools, but they didn’t. The only reason why the atom bomb was built was because it was feared that the Germans were racing down their own nuclear program and would win the war, but we got there first due to our valuing the field of science that would lead to it instead of viewing it as “Jew science” that was to be disregarded.
@@seraphinduvolzairo5938 yea i dont think people really understand science dindamentally is just learning about something to manipulate said thing to your desire.
The Gnostics didn't believe human beings are gods, but rather fragments of God, and that sin is derived from seeing oneself as God. The Demiurge is not necessarily a satanic figure, but rather a confused emanation who believes himself to be God when he is only a fragment, and evil in the world is because the Demiurge is incapable of perfect creation, yet keeps trying because he is unaware of his true origins.
yea the gnostic ideal is to strive towards self spirituality and asceticism so that your soul escapes the demiurge upon death. this is opposed to the abrahamic belief systems.
As a father of three small children and spending nearly all my time trying to make ends meet (I listen to you while doing the dishes), it's so easy to become self-absorbed into this microcosm that is our family. All this you've said reminds me that we might get hit hard by things way beyond our control and understanding. But yes, what amazingly interesting times we live in!
This is an exceptional video. I feel like I now understand why I feel so empty sometimes, and the direction that society is moving toward. I never thought that not only technological progress was not the way to go but rather the idea of progress is a somewhat foreign concept throughout human history
I'm at work RN, and saw that this had been uploaded. I have great anticipation now to watch this video when I get home. Saying this about another channel is impossible. Really goes to show how great your content is.
Kid, you are awesome! I'm in my early 40s, as are my friends, and we all love your videos. These are highly illuminating, and it gives me hope there are young guys like you out there! Keep these videos coming. Outstanding!
I'm 35 and could not agree more it gives me hope that they ARE paying attention .thank god... gen alpha is going to need leaders like you ahead of them if they are to even stand a chance.
35 and I've been sharing all of his videos with my younger cousins who are old enough/developed enough to understand. I also technically force my 2 year old to listen to them in my car while driving home XD
I'm currently a teenager, and he's been a big source of inspiration for me. In particular, this video has been a huge help recently since I've given this topic more thought.
Can't overstate how much I appreciate this video. Great work! I'll be watching it again and taking notes like im back in collage. So many great insights
One time i told my friend of 4 years after my girlfriend and i broke up “yeah im not a fan of hookup culture. I kinda want a more traditional life with a few kids” and she responded with a disgusted face and said “wow thats a yikes”. First of all, my idea of a “traditional life” at the time was simply having more than one kid, which is fucked up, and second of all, that idea was so traditional that my friend of multiple years was willing to react that negatively to me wanting that life. As if i was insane and fringe for wanting kids at all. An old boss of mine also showed up to work one day and announced to all of us employees that she was writing a book about how only 1 in 10 people should be having kids, because for 90% of people its too much of a sacrifice, and even though her son was in the other room, because he also worked there, she said that had she known how hard motherhood was, she’d never have done it. This is modernity and it sucks.
So if you can so easily have people accept the idea of a childless playboy lifestyle why is it so hard to get people to accept the lifestyle of carefree leisure and chilling out? I insist that we came to Southeast Asia to get away from Western problems, professionalism, the rat race. We left behind our professional careers because we want peace of mind. And all these expats in China, Shanghai, Beijing, look at me with disgust. They say we must act professional, work hard, essentially endure the same problems and discomfort as in the West, in order to get paid a lot. And I say, paid a lot? That's not why people quit their $60k engineering jobs and come teach English for $10k a year. Sure these days some people make six figures, but it's just weird, everybody insists that suffering and being paid a lot is right, and my idea of chilling out, nurturing your body mind and soul, is cringe. Now that people think being Hugh Heffner is the proper lifestyle, how do you get people to change to think being the Big Lebowski is the right lifestyle? I'm tired of being criticized so I want to use their own paradigm shifts to show people that I'm right.
@@jameswilkerson4412 i agree thats a lot, but thats another reason why ive become more traditional since then. In a traditional anglo-american family, the grandparents are close and help out, and both parents dont have outside wage-slave jobs so at least one parent is normally around anyway.
Hey man, i hadn't realized that you lived in Texas. Not sure how long you've been here but welcome friend. I have really appreciated your videos for a while now. Great research and topics all around. Glad to finally have something that's genuinely intellectual. Good content is hard to find, keep up the good work.
See, I brag about being to Malta, because everyone's been to France, and I've been to Italy and Spain, too, but no one I know even know what or where Malta is. Heck, most cruise ships can't get in there, and only one U.S. warship (not a carrier) is allowed per deployment. So even out of our carrier group, there were only about 200 of us that got to go.
Sounds weird to me. I have been there, but have not mentioned it to anyone in about 20 years. It was good, too, I didn't have to get a whiff of Paris once. Most people want to hear about the Orient, or the Muddle East for some damn reason. Europe is pretty common these days.
"Chaos is a ladder." a useful line from Little Finger I will never forget. There will be those who want to use the chaos to climb higher, or just get onto the ladder in the first place. I think the best approach is to learn from the ancients and build a society (and it doesn't need to be the whole world, it can be your home, your down, your city, what ever scale you can effect directly or indirectly, but meaningfully) where we live not just for ourselves but for those who will come after us. You don't have to view this as "deathist" after all, if you are still around in ten or twenty years and you did your best to make you world a better place not in some abstract progressive way but in a practical sense you can point to the physical things you did to help those who will be around then.
Its embarrassing how many Americans don’t know the fact that Spanish is a European language, deriving from Latin just like Italian, French, Romanian, Portuguese
that ending was both horrifying and hilarious! I always end up taking your videos very seriously, regardless of whether i agree with your standpoint or not. this one i found myself agreeing with more than any others before. and its true that while we are all cursed together, we can still be there for each other when the time matters.
I love this channel because Rudyard is so earnest. It is great to hear someone passionate about these topics who isn't overly cynical or trying to seem hip. I like the conversational style
I would say his lack of cynicism/pessimism/nihilism, to such a degree that it comes off as if he is actively eschewing it, is one of his bigger failings to me, despite my enjoyment and acknowledgement of his content. It comes off as if he knows in his heart that there is some degree of validity to those philosophical frameworks, at least as a response to certain situational conditions depending on the individual, but won't allow any affirmation for such things because even acknowledging a hint of it is the crack in the armor that eventually undoes the entirety of one's more positively inclined worldview no matter how strongly grounded they adhere to it, and thus he vehemently avoids it at all cost and denounces it at every opportunity, implied or otherwise. In the end, that is ultimately his right to do so, even if I fundamentally disagree with almost every aspect of his approach and overall framework to how he tackles these topics.
The older I get - not that I'm old, the realisation that letting the modern elite of society, academia and such, who are the most removed from society, take full rein is a mistake. We're continually eroding cultural anchor points in which to fall back on, and currently steered by those who, are arguably, social misfits with no true sense of identity, culture and/or firm attachment to the greater populace, hence their desire of divisive identity politics. People with a foreign cultural background who attach themselves to these modern elites are essentially grifters hoping to be spared, but are speeding up their demise, they'll be leveraged, disposed of and reviled.
At 1:13:29 I believe what you're referring to in physics is either "observations", wave function collapse, or virtual particle creation in quantum mechanics. I had written up a response to what observations mean in physics before realizing it could've been something else you're thinking about. Here's that explanation though. I can provide additional summaries for the other concepts if requested. When a physicist says a particle changed from being observed, they are not saying it is because some conscious entity is watching it. An observation in quantum mechanics is an interaction between particles - little bundles of energy. When you bump one particle into another, you gain some information about the target particle at the time of the interaction between the particles (this is the observation in a lab setting), but thereafter the particle likely will have had some properties changed (like its angular momentum) because it interacted with something in its environment. Despite what it's called, an "observer" of any kind is not necessary for it to take place. Observation really is an awful name for it - it's very misleading. But that's minor. This is a very well made video, and it touched on a surprising amount of what I've been thinking about recently, despite coming from a very different perspective. I'm one of the atheists in the audience, and also one of those lib-lefties, for use of the same scaling. We desperately need the wisdom of history. This is really good stuff - I can't wait to watch more!
24:25 "Getting to Denmark" is impossible. Denmark is Denmark because it's never changed. The ethnic group which lives there is the continuation of a small civilization that just barely survived the Bronze Age Collapse. It is a civilization that has been in continuous existence (and never ruled by a foreign power) since before the invention of writing. This is why its people are so content. Meanwhile, Modern society has moved in the opposite direction, with America, the child of the European civilization that was conquered the *most* times (England), leading the charge towards "anti-Denmark". It may be the case that the two paths converge on the other end, but getting there will not look anything like imitating the society which is essentially our reflection.
Denmark was not always such a great place to live. Quality of life greatly improved thanks to modernity. But yeah modernity bad muhuhu evil vegan liberals and feminism
@@517342 And now America has conquered England too. I think anti-Denmark may actually be Athens - a city on a hill whose citizens pursued high-minded ideals and lived in luxury, while all menial labor was performed by slaves. Ironically, the technologies and ideological systems we've developed are more than capable of yielding the benefits of slave labor, if we'd stop acting like we're their slaves.
I recently went to a village in Alaska it was remote there was very little technology with access to internet and it was freezing but what i found there was is religion family and community with not so much need to constantly work coming from a more modern part of America I thought I was gonna be miserable and bored in reality I was happy and miss that place now.
I grew up in the small villages in Alaska. No internet, no tv, no computer. The best memories from my childhood are going to church with friends in the morning, then playing in the woods with them after.
If there was ever a time to create good artwork, writing, and culture, the time is now. It can be as simple as drawing a picture of Tifa Lockhart from FF7 (to exemplify beauty), or an armored crusader on horseback (to exemplify religion, and masculinity). I recently watched a John Doyle video where he described how, if you were to create a mural in Portland, Oregon, a depiction of a content mother and her infant child would be defaced faster than an image of Ronald Reagen with an Uzi and American flag. I found his assessment spot on.
I would be willing to wager a few bucks that if both of those murals were put up, AND the mother was a woman of color, that they would not be vandalized in that order.
Society is hypersexualized as is, you can portray beauty without someone wearing as blatantly sexual an outfit as Tifa or most modern pop culture women. The fact in general that female beauty in the modern world is so linked to wearing skimpy outfits is a sign that both religion and respect for sexual purity is gone. Ironically, the modern world is a world in which women are only valued for sex. Jeanne d'Arc or even Aerith if you wanted to keep it pop culture would've been much better examples.
The comment about globalized societies having more in common with each other than with their fellow countrymen is spot on. I live in Buenos Aires, a large city that's very exposed to globalization and some people here have more in common culturally, aside from the language, with a Londoner, a Parisian or a New Yorker than with someone from a province of the Argentine interior, or hell, even someone from the suburbs of our city.
Yep. I live in Finland. And the culture in Helsinki/Espoo/Vantaa (Which are merging) is almost completely different than in the rest of the country. All the way down to the core values of the residents. They are distinctly more "americanized", politically left wing and conformist. When someone like me goes to work in the capital city region its a real culture shock.
Ever since I first heard about postmodern gnosticism and its relationship with queer/intersectional/etc... theories, all the motivations of the people spouting it and the actions they take have made perfect sense to me. Ironically, it's like having my own gnostic revelation of the underlying mechanics of the world today. Because of that, I sometimes worry that I'm suffering a delusion similar to the modern gnostics as some kind of meta-gnostic.
Isn't it odd that in every religion there are people who have to substantiate their beliefs with material proof? It's ironic that today it is the Gnostics, because there is a way of looking at the story of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil in seeing that eating of this fruit makes us discontent and obsess over the imperfections of our current situations. Therefore leading to being cast out of Eden. You'd think a Gnostic would be content in his gnosis that he will leave the wicked world after death without worrying about being cast back down in reincarnation. Why cling to earthly power if you don't believe that it could ever be good?
@@mst5g826 I think the anxiety felt by the gnostics that causes them to double down and cling to earthly power is explained by the two groups that seem to compose them. Either they are the few actual elites that must hold power as more people attempt to poke holes in their social order or they are failed elites who must twist their minds into knots justifying that they are better than the plebs because they know the special words and thoughts of critical theory. Still, both those groups, but especially the latter, can best be summarized as the crying midwit wojak trying to claim 2+2=5
Honestly there's a lot of things I find fascinating and interesting about gnostic doctrines/teachings for which I believe there's definitely some solid points to learn from, but the idea of completely abandoning the world and that one shouldn't seek to help improve it or others' situation is just asinine to me.
That description of European & American suburbs makes me appreciate London suburbs, a ⅓ of all houses in the UK's capital were built with a 1930s architectural style with coloured bricks & differnet perportions. Each house is different from the next in someway from the shade of bricks to the size of windows, no house is the same. I wish we could bring this to more places Love the video, it has given me a lot to think about like every video you upload
I was brought up in one of those 1920s/30s London suburban houses. Though not identical each house is in fact built to one of only a handful of patterns, but distributed so they don’t appear next door to each other. Throw in a slightly different design of bay window or facia tile colour and you have what looks like randomness.
@@sirrathersplendid4825 Whatever the case, that's far better than American houses. They build them in the exact same style not only in the same neighborhood, but all across the country. Same for the chain restaurants and stores we go to most frequently. Honestly sometimes it's easy to forget where exactly you are because everything looks so similar. Thankfully America has a very varied geography and climate, at least you can tell what part of the country you are in by the color of the grass or the landscape around you (kind of anyway). Thankfully I grew up in Chicago which has some of the best best architecture in the country, so I didn't have to live in a cookie-cutter suburban subdivision.
@@WorldWide2017 - Those 1920s/30s UK designs were much better than today’s. Most of the stuff built since the 1960s is pretty blocky, sterile and uninspiring - probably no better than in the USA.
I visited an art museum recently where the art portrayed Western art by century from 16th to 20th. You could see the slow transition of artists who found inspiration in nature and the real world, to artists who were more interested in their own delusions and ideology. The 19th century was the last in which any meaningful art was produced. The 20th century exhibit wasn't art, but a deconstruction by those who thought they knew better.
I think this is why Warhammer 40,000 is becoming increasingly popular. Its depiction of the nature of humanity - and how it deals with fundamental existential beliefs and pressures - is one of the most realistic I've ever seen in fiction.
About that intro, America did kinda conquer the world. WW2 was America's w*r of conquest, and NATO and the EU and all our other international organizations were our Empire's major institutions. The only reason why it didn't look like an Empire on a map is because we allowed all our conquests to believe they were independent, even though we've really been pulling the strings this entire time. We even went as far as rigging elections and staging interventions in lands that tried to leave our Empire. And our tax law applies to the entire globe and the other nations can't do a damn thing about it. While we may not look like an Empire, we most certainly are one.
Conquer is a military term, and implies America used kinetic force to occupy and rule most of the world against their will. You could kinda make an argument we do that with foreign bases, but that's not a true occupation of an unwilling nation. Afghanistan was an occupation of an unwilling nation. US military bases in Germany are not an occupation force. America is definitely an empire, but to call America a conqueror severely downplays how terrible an actual conquest is. If you want to know how horrible an actual conquest is, look at the many wars between the Americans and natives, or Japan's expansion in ww2, or Russia's 'special military operation.' Strong-arming favorable trade deals from a position of military and financial superiority, immoral as it may be, is not conquest. Sending agents to carefully manipulate a government to do what is best for you, even if that is regime change, is not conquest. Marching across a border, killing people, overthrowing a government, and administering the territory yourself is conquest.
I studied under an Archaeologist who wrote a series of books, like Greek Stones Speak, Roman Stones Speak, etc. It was all the study of building styles so that you could recognize the civilization and the era of buildings. I was fascinated with Architecture since I was a child, and I had a lot of questions about those things long before I took the course. The Mudflood series of videos reminds me of that comparative study of architecture, and it raised a lot of those old questions I had when I was a kid. I almost want to take up the study of archaeological architecture again. I bet there are a lot more details to be discovered in these buildings across the world, that you don't get from photos. What about the measures and proportions found in disparate buildings? What do they have in common, and how do they differ? It reminds me too of something I read once about the Parthenon, that it was built on top of what were supposedly Byzantine era foundations.
Paul Mckentrick. I looked him up on Wikipedia. I didn't know he taught George H. W. Bush. He called us students "nabobs". I liked my oldest professors the best.
This is exactly the content I have been looking for a long time: A comprehensive look at modernity and how it came to be. Thank you! I truly enjoy the topics you look into. The only critique I have is that your videos are not 8 hours long 😅
I love the Content .. keep it up .. from Scranton originally lol joined the military and traveled the world !!! love how you have realized the lack of perspective that many Americans' have!
I think that if you can travel, it’s important to have that experience at least once or twice a. I’m lucky my parents took me to Italy when I was 16. I’ve done a number of trips since. But on that first one… I learned a lot about the world as well as about where I am from.
ive listened to almost every episode youve created, but this one might as well be the most important and impressive one so far. certain parts of it were very surprising and correspond well with reality and were as such immensely pleasant to ponder, not to mention that your conclusions are, as always, comprehensive!!! amazing job!!!
Only on this channel do I pause think about what was just said, or what is shown on screen so much. Thank you what if AltHist for providing such incredible and enlightening content!
Modernity has another curious characteristic that I think has massive psychological implications and we haven't figured out how to deal with yet, and that is the disappearance of the frontier. Expansion and exploration into the unknown (or being expanded upon) is such a hugely important part of our history, and that is essentially over forever now that we have Google maps. Contributing to the vanishing of uncertainty and perhaps the vanishing of wonder are all our various sciences, from weather science and plate tectonics to risk assessment and germ theory, many of our traditional intellectual frontiers are vanishing as we get ever better at knowing what tomorrow will bring. But I'm afraid this might be like exploring a very big room, and it's a cool room with lots of cool stuff, but at some point we more or less simultaneously realize that we've seen everything there is to see, we're trapped in here, and there's a bunch of other people coming to the same realization in the room too. Oh shit, now what?
I'd add that frontier gave more room for bs and sophistry. Its like when you start a project and still have many hours in your budget vs when you're working off the clock to land the project to a functional state before close.
A bit like when the Romans finally defeated Carthage in around 150 BC. They ran out of global powers to fight with, turned inwards and had 100 years of instability while the republic collapsed. Then Caesar came along.
This is something I think about a lot. In the past, scientific discoveries were grounded in reality and had practical applications in the real world. Think the discovery of electricity, or the development of materials allowing us to build better tools. But as science advances more and more, the scientific frontier gets more and more abstracted, until you get to today, where the only things left to discover are incredibly niche, hyper-specialised contrivances that the average person can't even comprehend. It takes a lifetime of study to understand that there even *is* a problem that needs solving, before you can even *start* developing a solution. Why would the average person have any interest in science, or have any emotional investment in expanding our scientific frontier, in this situation?
"If you're the only person who is right, and everyone else is completely wrong -- you're crazy." Not going to lie, that's my new favorite quote of all time. You should honestly put that on a t-shirt.
here additional quotes similar to this "a time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, 'You are mad; you are not like us.'" - St. Anthony of the Great
‘Progressive action’ and ‘struggle’ were common phrases from the national socialists, fascists and Marxists. The idea of the world being in perpetual change. A constant revolution if you will. Just something I’ve noticed.
‘Action’ and ‘struggle’ were common themes amongst the fascists, national socialists and Marxists. The idea of the world being in perpetual change. A constant revolution if you will. Just something I’ve noticed.
It's impressive just how well modernity coaxes people to be docile and support modernity despite the fact most people can't stand modernity. As an example, the other day I was listening to this song called "the traveling people" (link listed below), it's an Irish song written in the 1950s painting an idyllic picture of life as an Irish Traveller (essentially gypsy). The song goes into detail saying how you and your family can park your trailer in the woods, "for a week or two for time was not your master" among other things. I've listened to this song many times but for some reason this week I listened to it and it dawned on me just how rebellious being a gypsy is to the system. I doubt traveller's paid taxes, they used the land as they pleased, and were masters of their own schedule. I cannot say the same for myself or literally anyone else I know. I am aware that traveller's and gypsies are universally hated in Ireland in Europe primarily because they don't assimilate and also tend to steal from others. Anyway this had me thinking of how nice it would be to live like that with my wife and newborn. But then I started thinking of how will I earn money, how will I eat, I can't just park my car somewhere without people asking me what I'm doing because all the land is privately owned, I don't have the skills or knowledge to live like that. These thoughts made me realize that through technology and our total dependence on the system maintaining so many basic things like water, food etc. It is extremely difficult to check out of the system without serious risk of death because even though we are great at things such as coding, operating a car, etc. We are no longer taught basic skills our grandparents had like growing your own food, digging a well, etc. m.ruclips.net/video/o0-WtdJpkcs/видео.html&pp=ygUaZnJlZWJvcm4gbWFuIHRociBkdWJsaW5lcnM%3D
You could say that the things you listed out are society's tools to ensure you buy in as much as possible. "How will I earn money" is right away buy-in. Money is integration into the system to gain access to its resources. Even if you had all the skills you needed, you would end up needing to participate in some aspect like buying land.
The traveller is not really independent though, they likely need the farmer and the sawmill and the blacksmith. We have always needed to be part of a group, it's just how that group is comprised and interacts.
God Bless you! I have always had a deep infatuation with the Tower of Babel and have felt for years that we have built it today. Everyone feels the incoming trials in their bones but we aren’t sure when the pen will drop. Try to take joy in that we will live through interesting times. It will be the most horrific beast to face, but we will endure it together!
Hi Rudyard, I just want to say I love your videos so much, and have loved the development of your channel over the last 5 years. I still miss the odd alt history video but your new ones are amazing and thought provoking, and have really opened my eyes. I do notice though sometimes I find the last sections a bit difficult to follow, I often watch while I code so it may be my focus, or just that they are massively complex ideas but i think they could be flow a bit better. PS, Love from NZ
Lived in north Orange County my whole life, basically a giant suburb of Los Angeles proper. I never really thought about it but yeah that’s definitely true- Los Angeles ironically is a city built almost entirely by American Capitalism, with little influence of old Europe- despite first being settled by New Spanish ranchers. It gets a lot of criticism, but I think that’s the point- to have a place so far west as to take the current civilization to the extreme, almost to make its own unique culture.
There is nothing structurally wrong with Los Angeles. Single family homes, 3 bay garages and wide roads are all virtues of American society. The problem with Los Angles is the cultural degradation of the area that started around the 60s with the hippies and the 70s with all the illegal immigrants and only worsened from there.
California was a red state solidly.. before Ronald Regan allowed immigrants from Mexico to vote there.. blue ever since. Based upon people who are not American citizens.
true i live in the same place but there clearly a defining line between the culture of LA and the culture of OC even if north OC is geographically identical.
Map at 27:52 incorrectly places west africans (and Adamawa-Ubangi) and as bantu, also places sahelian areas inhabited by west africans incorrectly as the sahara desert.
As far as I know, there was a lot of war enthusiasm before WWI, people expected it to be as glorious as the stories of previous wars. After the war, pacifists and modernists argued that the reason it was so horrible was modern technology paired with this pre-modern mindset. The solution would be to get rid of the mindset, because getting rid of the technology would be impossible and not desirable.
I love your videos. A weakness, perhaps, are the complicated slides with a chart or maybe a list of words. Some of them could take a good ten minutes to examine or explain, but you just click through it to a picture of cows or something.
14:45 - the recent protests against the 'Far Right Extremists' in Germany (the AfD in particular) are quite telling for your statement. Most the of the AfD platform boils down to "Let Germans be Germans.' They acknowledge the 20th century wasn't the greatest for the Germans, but they do have plenty of culture, history, and identity. They are asking questions about their culture, their identity, and the actions their government are taking to attempt to dilute it.
Strongly disagree. You can engage in all kinds of german culture without supporting the AfD. Go to a traditional festival. Read traditional literature. this is highly regarded in Germany. But most people have a very strong hate against the AfD and their mindset.
@@ElekuYea, but only the AfD wants to preserve these traditions and the german ethnicity. The other parties want to import more migrants to further boost the economy at the expense of safety, social cohesion and the german culture.
I'd love to see more recognition to the bronze age. A lot of historical philosophy tends to ignore the bronze age (mostly not being aware there was a bronze age). What if we were to consider the rise and fall of the bronze age and the inevitable fate of the first cities of man in these philosophies (I think it was the umayyad caliphate who said Babylon was an "excellent source of bricks"). The only exception being China who basically start in the bronze age with the semi-mythical Xia dynasty and end in the CCP.
@@bennyv4444 yeah but we knew about jack shit about the societies outside of legend. By the time the Classical Era rolls around, all people know about the Bronze Age is "there were people there who did things." Most of the discourse around the "Heroic Age" was as the name suggests, legendary, for the better part of about 2 and a half thousand years. It's not until guys like Heinrich Schliemann, Howard Carter, and Arthur Evans Hughes start digging and recording their findings that we really get to know Bronze Age cultures and peoples. And that's also not an indicator of nelgect, since before the tech of the 19th century, all we had of them were their ruins and later (500 plus years later) written recordings of earlier oral tales that had changed from the original events. But yes, we should absolutely include Bronze Age Civilizations in our new historical philosophies. Though based on Whatifalthist's video on them, as well as my own research, I'd imagine them to follow basically the same pattern of Rise, Golden Age, Decadence, Fall, Destruction to most likely barbarians of some sort, rinse and repeat.
@@nmkasprkasprowicz4615 We still know pretty much nothing about them, most of what is stated as fact about them is wild speculation. The part that the ancients knew was that there was a rise, a golden age, and a fall, and out of those ashes their civilization rose. That’s the most important part, and other than a few fun facts that we are quite confident about and one or two very informative tablets (along with many that are not informative at all), that’s all we know for sure too.
~26:00~ the Hellenistic period can represent antiquated modernity. A version of modernity that is finding itself & missing the two thousand years of accumulated knowledge between the two time periods. "Rational thinking was seen as ungentlemanly." Id agree that Athens had a weird obsession with "rhetoric" or the art of influence and debate, philosophers of the period paved the way for rational thought and what would be come the framework for scientific thought. Aristotle, in all his flaws, is still viewed as the first true scientist. The immediate and timeless influence the rational thinkers of that era have had on our species is collective consciousness is palpable. Mathematics, perhaps the most core branch of science, was not a foreign concept to the people of this era either. Eratosthenes, Archimedes, and Euclid all contributed an enormous amount to our understanding and perception of the universe in which we live. Ultimately, the blending of philosophies had by the Greek (Athenians primarily) bled into the eras dominated by Rome. Stoicism is fundamentally a blend of several philosophies had by Athenians, namely Zeno, Citium and Epicurus to an extent. Stoicism was a respected philosophy in the early Roman Empire (AD). Stoicism is effectively rational thought nearly broken down to its axioms. So, an accumulation of knowledge & compounding perspective was beginning to be take its place as a core human principal at this point. I think at the end of the day, humans are subject to the their innate desire to create meaning. This has taken many forms over the past couple millennia. Ultimately, progress is a meaning we've created. It's interesting to consider the perspective that the idea of constant progress is largely a new cultural undertone. I may be so influenced by this ideal that I confuse it as a fundamental aspect of being human or even fundamental to being a creature of the universe. I'd go as far as to say progress is the natural output the physical laws of the universe or even further--of an organism + time. It's interesting to note that progress is not the norm for civilization but rather a sporadic theme of which civilization experiences time to time. However, I still don't agree wholly with this concept. Positive progress may ebb and flow // wax and wane throughout history. There may be periods in which society wholly regress as a result of natural disaster, widespread extreme conservatism, or simply strange philosophy. But one thing we can say for certain is humanity has positively progressed in a fundamental sense up to this point in history through gradual, linear, or exponential advancement in theory, technology, and ultimately collective understanding. This is not to say humanity won't experience future periods of regression, but it's impossible to say that regression or stagnation is the norm. Humanity is a creature of the universe that must evolve & adapt over long periods of time. Humanity has the unique ability to experience a parallel evolution of collective thought and understanding through its ability to accumulate and compound knowledge over time and generations. Idk where I'm going with this. I hate getting caught up on these mini essays on a shitty mobile UI.
Oh my… You, sir, have a great channel! I’ve been watching your videos for the last week or so. Many-many thought-provoking things I’ve heard. This particular video is mind-blowing. Thank you for teaching me!
Hey whatifalthist, I’m writing an alternate history book. It’s a political thriller set between 1995-2012. Let me know if you’d be interested in it, it changes geopolitics quite a bit to have a WWIII scenario between the US and UK.
@@rthompson7182 so the book takes a secret meeting that took place in 1995 in NYC and changes history to have a drastically different outcome. At the Carlyle hotel, Princess Diana was in the city and met in private with JFK Jr. Nothing apparently happened, but my book uses this as a divergence point to where they develop a secret love for each other and eventually marry. After surviving a plane crash in 1999, the two of them decide to not waste any more of their lives and a focus on influencing the world to be better takes hold. He runs for senate against Hillary Clinton in the democratic primaries and wins. He’s the senator from NY when 9/11 occurs, and Diana is there a few blocks from ground zero as she watches the towers fall. The two become rescue workers in the rubble and heroes. John is the most popular politician in the country. He loses his popularity when he successfully prevents US troops from entering into Iraq, which now becomes a UK led war. This will have blowback as the 7/7 attacks in 2005 take out the Queen, and Charles becomes the sovereign with an increase in monarchical power. When the war’s truth comes out, John returns to popularity and runs for president in 2008 (replacing Obama) and succeeds as a Democrat with supermajorities in both houses. However, his first goal is unity, and thus he ensures republicans will be a part of the governance he envisions. Meanwhile Diana is the First Lady and this infuriates Charles. The rest of the book is basically a more competent democratic administration. Until the crisis in July of 2012 (basically John Jr’s version of the Cuban missile crisis). A parallel between himself and his father takes hold quite a bit. And the notation that he and Diana are like a royal couple are presented.
I think it's important though to remember there can be a sweet spot where there can still be cities and towns that don't destroy each other economically. Cities can be beautiful, like Tokyo. Cities can be places that incorporate tradition and modernist order. There can be cultural coherence in them, and I think that's something still worth fighting for. Cities don't need to be fragmented mazes of safe pockets and dangerous hoods. Cities don't need to be littered, or consisting of only giant buildings instead of corridors and narrower buildings that create variety. Strip malls and parking lots don't need to exist to the current extent. Vision with some humility I think is important going forward.
Im more rhan 40yo and 8ve lived more rhan 100 ordinary lives. Originally from europe with residency all over middle east, africa and south america. Just wanna say thank you. Your videos resonate with me more than you can imagine. Keep up the good work. World needs you. Thank you
In Michael Malice's book, The White Pill, he actually talked about how both The Soviets and America both had the secret policy that they weren't going to launch anything in retaliation. So, neither was willing to kill the other in reality.
That sounds like nonsense though, because the soviets almost did launch nuclear weapons in retaliation to what was a false teport. Luckily identified by the commander. But they were absolutely willing to do it.
That would defeat the whole point of mutually assured destruction, and without that it’s hard to believe the East and West never went to war. Why wouldn’t either side have destroyed the other, their own greatest threat, if they knew there were no repercussions? Why would the side that was annihilated in atomic fire not retaliate? They’d have nothing to lose
@whatifalthist You should investigate second century Assyria and Arbela. Iamblichus for the most extant literature of their worldview. I believe modernism and its Christian roots came from there. Also, the fun idea that a FOURTH Assyrian civilization existed in the shadows of Rome and Parthia until Byzantine and Sassanid religious absolutism destroyed it. Julian the Apostate was a BIG fan of the intellectual progress Assyria was making. Essentially, I'd compare Assyrian "Neo-Platonism" (bad label for it, but that's how it's categorized) to the Scottish Common Sense school. The Scottish Enlightenment. It was all about categorizing ideas, phenomena, etc. and then taking them as received and working with the relationships between them. Anti-rationalist, pro-empirical, anti-idealist, pro-tradition.
Go to www.galaxylamps.co/whatif and use code WHATIF to get your Galaxy Projector 2.0 with 15% off!
Evil Frenchie
Hey WIAH. In the past you mentioned planning on making a video about anxiety (the emotions that push civilization).
I've made a couple of videos about anxiety that serve as addendums to statements you've made. My videos are "Why Isn't Self-Defense a Human Right? Why Does the Media Support Gun control? - AmericaBad" and "An Addendum to WhatIfAltHist's A Study of Decadence: Why do people become Tankies?".
The former is about how the urban west is driven by anxiety, while the latter is the decadent political class, the collapse of trust in society and the rise of political polarisation and totalitarianism.
-Even when sin does assist in the construction of every society, modern society is the beloved child of the capital sins.
Im good
When will you become a Orthodox 👌☦️🤙 broh ? Hm ?
A man who snuffs out his emotion becomes a robot. A man who does not develop his mind becomes an animal. Balance must be achieved.
When you are autistic you are half robot half animal 😂
This is the argument colonial slave owners used to justify the view that Africans and nomads are lesser than human, when the latter two actually chose to prioritize cynic-hedonic cultures over techno-progressive ones.
I'd wager that if they'd truly snuffed out their emotions they'd go catatonic.
Wow so FUCKING PROFOUND WOW
@@GhostSamaritan Would suggest you comment it than in the replies.
"The duality of of the autistic masculine and the hysteric feminine." You hit the nail on the head with that one! I've never heard anyone describe modern civilisation so accuratley.
what if all this didnt descrive shit well he is quoting gnosticism...
congratulations 6you can be a vapid tool just like this statist clown is with one simple 3 hour video on gnosticism and western esotericism.
😂 fucking amazing wording 😂
That’s why Christ’s And Nietzsche’s Wisdom Of Becoming Like Children Not Infantile, But Youthful was and is so important now then ever!
@@SQUIDBEARSTUDIO whatifalthist supports arguments that nieztsche would of openly mocked he completely buys into herd mentality.
@@bastait Your right i made a bad comment then.
You should do an April fools video that covers the history and influence of Mongolian heavy metal
Hu are we talking about again?
@@aquillawhingate3248I see what hu did there
It’d be horsing around!
Love it!
RIP Nature Ganganbaigal, may your spirit soar across the Great Blue Sky!
Duuude, the modern HR department being this paradigms version of the clergy is soooo true
Clergy at least were right, if not overly cruel and feudalistic. HR are overly cruel, feudalistic (more like feud - alistic amirite) and are wrong about absolutely everything to the point they live in a dream world that they are likely old enough to be aware of and to hate more than anything but themselves.
@@Pdstor well, Clergy weren't always right, but what the principles / commandments / doctrine they were to adhere to is perfect. They can be held to the doctrine.
As opposed to CURRENT THING(tm)
Yup. I have to watch this twice or thrice to understand and soak in fully. And I am an engineer who watches 24/48hr long videos for certain projects in a stretch. Yet, the amount of ideas and the things I want to write down are way too many.
Never in my life have I been more...in a state of trance than this video. So many 'oh damn, this makes sense', it really really...explains so many things that I always pondered about.
Amazing work. Never stop. God bless.
I’m about to do my 2nd watch until 2 am and I’m glad to do it. I want to send this to everyone I know it’s so real.
What kind of engineering
The “We can be cursed togetherrr” part killed me 😂
Timestamp?
@@Telonious_Terp the last 5 seconds of the video
I lost my fucking marbles when I heard that🤣
Yeah, the self-awareness in his tone was great.
Like, "Everything is gonna' suck for *everyone* ...which means that we'll be together. Aww... isn't that, like, nice or whatever?"
A droll end to a video that made an earnest attempt to be realistic and honest.
I'll say this for him: he's not slave to optimism.
Was sittin with a beer in my hand, watched the full video start to finish & lost my shit when he snuck that little tid bit at the very end 😂😂😂
When visiting my family in Switzerland, I spent most of my time with them at their place, which was all beautiful, heavy wood architecture hundreds of years old, with all the buildings nearby made of that same style. Yet, when we went into the center of the town to the grocery store, we were shocked to find a square, bare, concrete block with no windows. Easy to forget the shifts we have made with globalization and the like.
or the clock, everything in society runs on a clock, but every location that sells normally avoids displaying the time.
They say the beauty of your civilization's architecture determines the general thoughts of that society on their place in the world.
Switzerland is an offshore land. Such a big shame.
I was thinking concrete blocks, large windows, and in the future, IKEA furniture hundreds of years old 😝
@@hufficag I thought IKEA is Swedish and not Swiss. Yes, Swedish.
28:29 as a Greek, I have to say that's very accurate. Western historiography makes it feel like we went extinct after Plato and Aristotle and all 👀
I'd say our culture clearly became modern after 1922
@@NoName-xc6cg Our foreign policy was definitely neutered. However the biggest social change came about after 1974 in my opinion
@@georgios_5342why 1974?
Because that is when you guys created a lot of cultural output that has relevancy to this day.
Minoan and mycenean Greece are fascinating, they have however almost 0 connection to today.
Later Greece was conquered by the Romans and they get the credit for everything in that period (despite Greeks being still very prominent within the empire).
The byzantines created a whole new cultural sphere, but orthodox culture is almost universally seen as inferior to classical.
And since the late middle ages the wider region Greece is in was somewhat irrelevant except for the Ottoman politics and that one event in Bosnia in 1914.
Today Greece is a peripheral state of Europe.
@@user-uf2df6zf5w ouch, that hurt. We have feelings too you know 🤕
My family is from California but I grew up in the heart of Cajun country in the region called Acadiana. In terms of California, my family is very aware of its cultural and heritage being very German and Celtic. My mother’s maiden name is Zentmyer, and that side of the family is very proud of its German roots. We still practice the more Germanic inheritance system where the oldest son gets most of if not all the inheritance and family heirlooms. That’s why it was such a massive and huge deal when my great grandfather gave me his first naval saber instead of my grandfather. Due to the fact that my grandfather had no sons, and the firstborn son of my great uncle being very “modern,” I, as the traditional and heritage aware great grandson have gotten heirlooms I otherwise shouldn’t have. On my father’s side, my grandfather plans on giving all the important family heirlooms to my dad and mom as the firstborn and most appreciative of the family history. My great Grandfathers service weapons will go to my dad with the M1 Garand and captured Arisaka rifle already being passed down. The rifle has a chrysanthemum etching still on it which is a big deal.
Watching this video helped crystallize why I’ve seen in my family. In both sides the first born are still traditional and and we are aware of our heritage and family history to the point we almost venerate it. While my cousins aunts and uncles are all very contemporary and modernist, not being as aware or even caring about our history or traditions.
You're very lucky. My family was nothing but Catholic rice farmers who had no history.
@@LarryWater I’m reminded of that very often. I knew all my great grandparents and still have a couple alive. All my grandparents are alive and we have pretty good recollection of where our family came from.
My family immigrated from England in 1638-39. My great, great grandfather was an Illinois Calvary sergeant in the civil war and his service pistol has passed grandfather to grandson twice down to me. Since I became a father at 45, I will need some good fortune for the tradition to continue; but my son is becoming a good candidate as well.
If your mother was so proud to be Germanic, then why did she marry a Celt
@@alvinlin8140 because we’re Americans first and foremost. We may borderline venerate family history but we’ve been in America for a long time.
I get what you mean about world cities. I grew up right outside of DC and have always been completely used to everyone else being immigrants from literally everywhere but the US (name a country, 80% chance I've known people from there at some point). I'm a Freshman in college now and the students at my college are mostly from rural areas of the state and it's a huge culture shock, despite how technically we're both from Virginia. I have more in common with the immigrants from other parts of the world than with the people from the same state as me. However, the fact that it's people from all over the world, not people from NYC, London, and Dubai, makes me doubt that it's so much that these cities are just islands of a different culture as opposed to places where this different culture, which does exist everywhere, is concentrated.
Let me guess: you’re at Virginia Tech?
@@jameswilkerson4412 yes
It might be a selection pressure, people move from the hinterland to a world city and the ones who acculturate easily are the ones who continue to globe trot long enough to meet you.
Chesterton's chapter on Kipling in his book Heretics actually discusses this phenomenon in great detail.
Could you explain "places where this different culture, which does exist everywhere, is concentrated."
As a British person, I consider myself as a western and I don't condemn my ancestors. I think we did the best we could as humans, I am ashamed of our modern state though.
It's all your fault why the world is so screwed up now.
Proud of my ancestors hate the lesser men and godless degenerates today.
@@pdcdesign9632don’t tell them what’s going on.
@@pdcdesign9632bruh the hell are those emojis
@@HP-GreenblattRUclips emojis you can access via the RUclips desktop site. Awful, aren't they?
Bloody hell!!! I have watched this guy for years and he has mentioned Angola for the first time with a really clear description 👌🏾
Based Angolan
5:27 Part 1 What is modern civilization?
15:40 Part 2 The origins of modernity
39:28 Part 3 The logic of modernity
50:34 Part 4 The secret religion
1:06:31 Part 5 The end of modernity
I have a completely different understanding. I think the historical narrative is incorrect. The great buildings as from prior higher civilizations which have been repurposed by the institutions that have gained power for their own purposes.
whatfiallthis will never call statism a religion cause its his personal favorite.
he loses all credibility when going on about left and right brain mumbo jumbo
Thank you
I fell into a similar Gnostic trap with Jung. I became infatuated with his work, leaving Christianity as I knew it. I found it so fascinating, especially the way that he would speak about things. It wasn’t until a year after Jungian analysis that I encountered the true, Gnostic element of his work: the introduction of Satan into the Godhead (turning the trinity into the “quaternary”), which he saw as a necessary step in the evolution of our understanding of Christianity.
He has a similar theme in “Answer to Job”, where he speculates that God will incarnate his “evil” side as the Anti-Christ in this new age.
I immediately realized I had gone amiss, and was a practicing Gnostic. I’m still dealing with the repercussions to this day. I had always known God was absolutely good, and hearing this shattered my world.
I’ve since returned to Christianity, although I find it a massive struggle after being imbued with Jungian psychology for so many years. Of course, there is some truth in Jung (projection, shadow, etc.), but the “path of individuation” is never ending and essentially a new-age, Neo-Pagan Gnosticism.
Jung interestingly had visions of himself being the “crucified Christ”, and his “soul”, personified as Philemon, urged him to be the prophet of a new religion. I did not know this either, and all his work has become dubious at best.
I think Freud was right when he criticized Jung’s archetypal psychology as a “return to animism”, which Jung most likely would have enjoyed.
Christianity is so special because salvation comes first and foremost, and that we need to step away from evil, not “integrate it”. Once you accept Christ, you watch Him change who you are as a person through the Holy Spirit. He is the “spring of salvation”, a spring that heals from the inside out once a sip is taken in.
Christ is He who stretches out the ouroboros and crushes its head.
Perhaps the ouroboros is better understand as a symbol of our perpetual folly, engagement with sin, and it’s repetitive nature throughout civilization, until Christ returns as King and ends the story once and for all, only to begin a new one full of beauty and grace, devoid of sin. The ouroboros is a serpent, after all.
Wisdom is better than all knowledge. The Gnostics mistake the former for the latter.
Thank you for this comment, I had no idea. My exposure to Jung is mostly from Jordan Peterson, but I don't watch him much anymore, just like Rudyard actually, because there is an offness that comes from their fundamental beliefs not being true. Acknowledging God or the usefulness of Christianity is not enough, and it shows how hungry and desperate we are for voices that aren't atheistic materialist postmodernists, but that doesn't mean alternative voices will in the end lead us to better places if they don't believe in Jesus Christ.
@@Gerwulf97 Glad the comment helped! And I will say that Rudyard has said many times he himself is Christian and religious, unlike Jung or Peterson. He doesn't only say it's useful, but that he is actually a Christian, which is something worth considering.
I find Rudyard's perspectives very illuminating and helpful to understand the world, especially considering he is Gen Z like myself, and he is talking about very real and serious things I think older generations do not get.
And, regarding Peterson, the Bible tells us to judge an individual based off of their fruits. While Peterson doesn't explicitly call himself a Christian (unlike his daughter and wife, who are both practicing Catholics), the fruit of his work has led many to become true Christians, and those who listen who don't become Christian definitely come away with more respect and admiration of the truth of a Judeo-Christian worldview - something pretty much all mainstream academics neglect.
Jung, on the other hand, has undoubtedly contributed something meaningful to the discussion, but he took a few drastic missteps that I think cause misery. The concept of projection, introversion and extroversion, the shadow, and others are his brainchildren (although projection has been known through religious terms since Christ - analogous to the verses "do not comment on the speck in another mans eye when there is a plank in your own" as well as "judge others lest you judge yourselves").
Jung's problem was his hubris, the root of all sin. He had a messiah complex, evident in his fantasies. He had one vision that comes to mind, where a figure he called Philemon told him that he was the prophet of a new religion. He denied he was, but I think unconsciously he wanted it.
His downfall was that he claimed he was an empirical scientist, which was certainly true in the beginning of his career, but as he got older, it seemed his hubris got the best of him, and with his two "greatest works", according to him, 'Aeon" and 'Answer to Job', he completed the process of forming his 'new religion', an Abrahamic, Neo-Pagan religion in which the 'Self" is to be realized intrinsically in a narcissistic manner as opposed to extrinsically in the figure of Christ, leading one to call upon metaphysical, living 'archetypes' as opposed to recognizing archetypes as symbolic representations of one's emotions, to put it simply.
Everything in the Bible that refers to worshipping false idols is important because when we worship false idols we are not worshipping other gods and goddesses, but ourselves and our emotions, which consist of archetypal motifs (remember that Lucifer wanted to be like God and worshipped himself). In order to 'deal with the realm of the archetypes', which isn't really a realm but our emotions in a sense, we need Christ, or else we drown and worship false idols, or worse. This is a similar realization that C.S. Lewis came to after a deep conversation with J.R.R. Tolkien.
This is why fairytales are incredibly complex and useful, because we can recognize their 'unrealness' as being fake or fairy like, i.e. there is no such thing as a 'big bad wolf', but also recognize their realness in the psychological sense and how they can help one deal with coming of age, how to overcome one's "dragons", and other emotional motifs, while still worshipping the True God of Christ, as most fairytales are archetypal stories nestled in a Judeo-Christian worldview.
In effect, it's practical to look at most mythological narratives as fairytales, which can be useful when determining psychological truths. Christianity cannot be viewed as merely mythological (although there is obviously metaphor, such as the creation myth, and Christ Himself speaks in parables), as it is perhaps the only religion which can be traced to a single individual who actually lived, breathed, died on the cross, and ressurected (the later being evident by the ardent and almost insane dedication of early Christians and their persistence on spreading the gospel and their willingness for martyrdom, which would only be possible if somebody saw someone who ressurected). In effect, it is the "archetype made flesh", as put by Bishop Barron (a play on the "word was made flesh").
It seems to me that your decision to reject gnosticsm and Jungian psychology was made out of an emotional response not wisdom. You read something that you’ve been raised to disbelieve and so you disbelieve.
@@Sage1Million No, this is untrue and something I’ve considered. Gnosticism is inherently flawed and the antithesis of the profundity of the Christian message. I have not rejected Jungian psychology, I have taken my insights and will continue to do so. The issue with Jung is that the very Bible that he uses in order to postulate the evil within God clearly states that “God is Good, and God is light - there is no darkness in Him”. Jung intentionally ignores this, much to the dismay of Victor White, one of Jung’s closest friends (Jung referred to White as his “White Raven”). White wrote a very good rebuttal of Answer to Job which I found useful, and maybe you will as well.
Gnosticism has many problems. The first is that it flips Christ’s message on its head. Gnostics believe that in order to be saved they must find “inner knowledge” and transcend a world of evil. Christ’s original message is that nobody can be saved through their own works, but through Christ alone and his sacrifice. We are all damned, and there’s nothing you can do about it. This is why Christ had to come down and be resurrected, because there is quite literally nothing we can do.
Christ is the spring of salvation, the Holy Grail. It’s seemingly simple and not nearly as flamboyant or extravagant as the golden chalice. It’s only once someone takes a sip, as in recognize Christ, are they able to be saved. Once taken, Christ works through an individual and changes them throughout. Salvation comes first.
Gnostics and Jungian psychology believe in individuation, a process of achieving psychic wholeness by integrating shadow elements and the archetypes, with the Anima being the most difficult archetype for men to integrate which usually comes later in life. There is no denying archetypal elements, but whether they are living metaphysical archetypes or rather the personification of archetypal emotions is another story, but I digress.
Individuation does not really exist. It’s Sisyphus’ boulder. One can never fully achieve psychic wholeness if it even exists. And individual simply grows and changes and has life experiences. Certainly there are unconscious elements festering beneath, but whether we are a cork on an ocean is something that hasn’t been proven.
Additionally, gnostics believe that the snake in the Garden was good, and that the bite from the apple was necessary and not an evil step. This is also incorrect for many reasons, but nevertheless it always comes down to the devil’s worst and most sinful attribute: pride.
The desire to be God is the main flaw with Gnosticism and Jungian psychology. “The Self” is worshipped instead of God, with “The Self” being the central archetype and often seen as God, or perhaps a King. Consequently, Jungian psychology holds that each individual is a manifestation of “The Self”, aka “God”, and that we are each individual incarnations of God. This is a great and tragic blunder that doesn’t make much sense.
The Pride of Satan is also clearly seen in Jung’s work. Again, Lucifer wanted to be God, which is why he fell from heaven and continues to cause chaos (metaphorically or literally - I’m unsure). I find it odd how Jung comes to the decision to break apart the trinity by force and insert Satan into the Godhead… that literally sounds like a ploy of the devil, as does the eventual incarnation of evil God in the form of the anti-Christ.
Answer to Job is Biblical fanfiction, and Aion has its own issues. Jung’s work on Alchemy is much more favorable to me, as it is impossible to ignore the alchemical nature of symbols in dreams (as my sister, who knows nothing about gnosticism, had an ouroborus in her dream), but nevertheless none of it is necessary for salvation.
Jung, in effect, is still incredibly useful, and his insights continue to shape my perspective as they have in the past. However, it’s best to take his psychological considerations more than his meta-physical postulations.
And surely emotions were evolved in my decision to turn back to Christianity, but more so because I felt as if I had been duped and I cast Christ aside and thought I could do it all alone. My entire life I have always known (not believed) that God is good, even throughout my complete adoration for Jungianism and the esoteric. I was not raised to believe that God was good because I’ve always had God and could see His hand in my life and I have never felt as if He had abandonded me. I know many who were raised to believe that God was good and they do not believe so now - most actually.
But lastly, I also considered this. Jung loved to be romantic about his view of life, and how he “lived in his own deepest hell” and famously “no tree can reach heaven unless his roots reach down to hell”. I always thought that so clever and wise, but now I find it, honestly, foolish. Is that anyway to live your life, in hell? I looked to those who had the most genuine joy in life and a passion for life itself: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and others.
When it comes down to it, I want to be joyful in my life. At the end of the day, you judge a tree by its fruits, and I began seeing that the fruits of Jungianism and Gnosticism were rotten.
And to you, the one who considers himself a sage: perhaps reconsider gnosticism and Jungian psychology. Being a Christian doesn’t mean being straight edge or not analyzing dreams and such: quite the contrary indeed. But it means surrendering and letting go of this incessant desire to integrate and to become whole. You cannot do it. It cannot be done.
Last critique of Jungian psychology and modern day gnosticism is that it practically ignores Theology, which is, in part, psychological but also metaphysical. Theology is the birthplace of every other branch of scientific thought and has been evolving for thousands of years - from Augustine to Aquinas and beyond. Jung often said the “theologians don’t understand him” (specifically after White’s rebuttal), but I think that he neglected to understand the theologians, and that they have been working on the conception of the trinity.
Am I of the disposition to accept all positions of the Church? No, quite the contrary, and I find demoninations to be of too much importance in my estimation. However, it is important that a follower of Christ has community. Another thing that is selfish and narcissistic about Jungianism and Gnosticism is its overbearing individualism, suffering alone, and that only the individual can find salvation after a long and arduous process. Most Jungians I meet are quite selfish, which is probably why I felt inclined towards it.
Christ, the eternal Tao, is the one who slays and flattens the Ouroboros; He is the alpha and the omega - the author of light. In Christ there is no darkness.
@@cobbingtonjrThank you for defending Peterson. I think too many people want to throw the baby out with the bath water when it comes to him
architecture is highly dependent on the building-science technology and techniques of how its components come together. Cost also plays a huge factor to the features and forms that a building features. Its technology driving the aesthetics. Modern materials of steel, glass, concrete, aluminum, waterproof membranes, modern HVAC systems, Lighting systems, electrical systems, plumbing systems - have yielded the modern industrialially constructed "international modern style of contemporary architecture" it simply is the cheapest and most efficient way to create useable, climate controled, interior space for the purposes of work, live, production etc. Anything outisde this minimalist modern mold is essentially relegated as "ornimentation" and usually requires specialized craftsman in order to add frilly decoration or ornamentation (which was much more prevelant in previous centuries) - ornamentation was more common because of 3 factors: 1. the building owners were relatively rich and they demanded it. 2. the constructors such as veryday construction workers of previous eras were highly under payed and thus having lots of craftsman to create decorative ornamentation was somewhat affordable. 3. there was a much greater importance in a buildings 'stately presence' than today. in modern day, buildings are more often regarded simply as machines which facilitate a specific mechanical function (the human inhabitants being part of this machine) the machine was either a machine for living, or a machine for creating money, or delivering a service, or production or manufacturing of goods etc etc.
I'm thinking, didn't medieval construction create efficient brick houses to contain millions of migrant workers during Industrialization? Those kept you safe from the weather, met all the requirements of housing. But then people realized they were not addressing newly discovered needs, health and safety. And no more slums were built, buildings became designed differently, with more windows and sunlight and ventilation. And now people are building these "efficient" modern buildings, they're not addressing a newly discovered need, so in the future maybe buildings will cost more with more ornamentation in order to address that need
I think we should also consider the psychological impact that the physical environment has on a person, and so design buildings as not just machines that serve mechanical functions but also serve the function of improving people's well being through beauty.
@@plasmabat718 this is often our daily struggle as architects, we always often seek to push our clients to allow for more aesthetics, more comfort, more design appeal and amenities for project inhabitants, be they workers or residents... of course our clients are always slave to their purses, and it is always easier for them to say no to proposed design features. we push and push all we can though, as architects we must ever remain champions for increased built environmental quality.
It’s kind of crazy how much your videos have changed my worldview. Before, I was just you run of the mill republican, I’d vote red for anyone, but (it’s kind of hard to explain) your videos changed my views of reality in some fundamental way, and I stopped believing in the illusions I was surrounded by. I think it was your neutrality, up to that point I had been so used to everything being biased towards one group or another.
Then again, watching your videos may just make me feel smart about myself lol.
Now u are a woke happy trans!
@@hansvogel4335 No that is me.
He is not neutral. He is on the right and says so.
He makes you feel smart? Damn you must have had issues in school to say the least.
@@RAIDENCHEEKSdon’t be a dick for no reason
This video validates a lot of what I've been thinking and feeling for the past decade or so: we're losing a lot of things we need, like family, religion, art, beauty, and nation. All we really have are material comforts and various things to distract us.
But I'm ultimately thankful. Thanks to the videos on this channel, we've been given a chance to change course, if not society, then at least our own lives. And even though it feels like we've been cursed, things are not so different. Life has always been challenging, and can feel hopeless. Our ancestors managed to find a way, and I believe we can too.
Yes, some will rise from the ashes, but make no mistake, our "opposition" has no delusions that he will win in the end, he just wishes to inflict as much destruction and pain upon humanity as possible.
Well, they say you have to lose something to understand its value..... and it's not like most people even seem to care very much anymore.
They WILL, when it is too late.
@@Mcfunfacediversity. Modernity and progressive viewpoints aren’t an evil enemy. Just a side you refuse to understand without innate negative bias.
The modern world has faults but we are in large part comparison with the past. Moving into the right direction
Wars have never been more destructive, society has never been more stratified, there have never been more slaves than there are today. The myths of progress they taught me in school are a thin veneer over an ugly and barbaric era.
@@bennyv4444 🤓🤓
Person: "Hi".
Every American who has ever been to France: "I've been to France".
Peak americana.
Thankfully Americans are no longer willing to fight and die to save France. 🍻
I HEARD THAT IN CLASS JUST TODAY LMAOOOOO
This entire video just went right over your head
The first thing I saw in France was an African taking a shit in the street, a group of Muslims trying to close a factory that makes natural soap from pork fat and a prostitute servicing a client while he is trying to find a blood vessel. France is the post-modernist dystopia.
Wow. I have to watch this again. You’re right. It’s blown my mind. I’m an agent of post modernity by trade, I’m socially engineering a companies culture, mind set, view of the world, to make the machine move faster, consistently, and maximise profit. I’m destroying the previous company society and culture by reengineering the entire structure, breaking long established traditions and ways of being, eliminating exceptions, and disguising it all under the cloud of progress. I’m driving concepts of individualism, Development of the self, picking winners and losers using questionable scientific and behavioural science data amassed since world war 2, creating management decisions based on autistic data. And what’s really made me sit up and pay attention is that I’m really, really good at it. I’m the penultimate outcome of the elites post war GenZ. No values, no religion, fully believe in and practice the deindustrialisation model you presented, I see everyone as equal, don’t recognise difference in culture, religion etc, because my entire world view is a socially engineered construct (like the matrix) and underneath it all there’s nothing. No family, no history, no religion nothingness. So I find myself asking, am I happy, and more importantly do I even know what happiness is. Shit this is deep….. I wonder what the Kardashians are up to these days 😉
A certain enormous number of weeks ago today, someone gave you the opportunity to not get what you necessarily earn or deserve, to change your ways and hopefully repair the damage you did. It was hard. You'll have to figure out for yourself, are you ready to try?
@@mobilityproject3485 so interesting. I went to work for impoverished first peoples tribes for nearly 3 years. Quit the corporates, worked ‘not for profit’ making a difference. I tried, but ended up going into another sector, again. Does that count?
@@mobilityproject3485HAHAHAHHAHSHAHAHA
@@gobot90 you want to die in 20 years?? That's where we're headed today!
what a comment
you changed my behavior yesterday... Fridays is the day I have the house to myself, going to work at home etc... decided to go work at the mall instead in case I had an opportunity to talk to people and decrease loneliness in Mays Landing, NJ. Bumped into that group of special needs people that are at the mall a lot, who asked me to play guitar for them, and we took over the food court with a little folk concert. Just wanted you to know all your talking can have a benefit to society, keep it up! Do the talky-talk.
Reject skyscraper, return to gothic cathedral.
Fight alone - weak
Pray together - strong 💪
Amen
I'm not christian, but cathedrals sure look awesome.
Everyone's a critic until the cathderal starts walking.
Honestly one of the better reasons to become Catholic.
I have been hearing these ideas piecemeal from different people for the past two years. This is the first time I’ve heard them all coherently tied together into a single line of thought. It is as if the highlights of my own intellectual interests have culminated into a single video. You need to expand out this script into a book to get it out to the main stream.
Yes!!! I’d totally read this
He is right
I feel totally the same when listening to this
A _Whatifalthist_ AND a _Pilgrims Pass_ video on the SAME DAY!? Life is looking up!
pilgrims pass? thanks.
Yo you too??? Lets GOOOOO
Pilgrim gang!
Pilgrim's Pass is amazing. They absolutely have to do a podcast together at some point, it would be amazing.
@@billynomates920guess we have a new thing to check out
In England our Georgian and Regency styles are particularly beautiful, they built upon the proportions of the Neo Classical. We haven't bettered them.
It's crazy that despite these styles being universally considered the best by almost everyone across all sections of society, we still refuse to go back to building that way, for some reason
Thank you❤ Whatifalthist, so much😊❤ your earlier videos helped me to understand the world as someone with Asperger's Syndrome at least a little bit.
People on Reddit say you're skewed😅 and I don't listen to them.
I believe in you as my Teacher❤
Consumerists be like: We will make a new utopia around young people consuming and screwing with strangers. Then young people will never want to fight again.
Reality be like: Large scale child abuse/neglect leads to inefficiency and stagnation. Overconsumption times inefficiency equals ecological collapse.
Oh and if you piss off / murder / never create the next young people, the ideology falls apart too. Forgot that.
The ponzi ideology
As a 30 year old I am humbled to have learned so much from someone much younger than me. I personally feel like the world has changed noticeably since about 2010. Kind of a frog in boiling water feel. We all know things are changing for the worse. We all know something bad is on the horizon. Yet we all just keep on doing are normal thing like nothing has changed. This channel does a great job of slapping the reality into the warming frogs that is the modern youth.
I'm 30 too and I agree. It was crazy when I found out Rudyard was 8 years younger than me
Occupy happened in 2010 as a reaction to the last big crash. Scared the shit out of the ruling class. they've been trying to make sure nothing like that ever happens again ever since despite another even bigger crash coming on the horizon
I’m a 63-yr old conservative and this is wicked smart. I seek out diverse viewpoints and it’s really encouraging to hear a young person who can think independently
@@glennm7086Conservative hears another conservative say conservative shit, deems it “independent” thought lol
I'm a 43 year old mom and housewife and I love this channel!
Another point I'd like to make, is that the hard Sciences are becoming less and less hard. And being more and more driven by whatever political, ideological & economic pressures are being pushed on it.
They always were. Look at what they did to Galileo. When nuclear physics started progressing, what did people in power financed to harness these discoveries? The atomic bomb, as it was the most politically "useful" at the time. Even the muslim golden age petered out because the scientists and discovery got increasingly paranoid of having their activities branded as incompatible with islam.
@@seraphinduvolzairo5938Societies that ignore or politicize the hard sciences will always be outcompeted by those who value them for what they are, tools for the advancement of society. The Muslim caliphates or the city states of Italy would be ruling the world right now if they properly utilized those tools, but they didn’t. The only reason why the atom bomb was built was because it was feared that the Germans were racing down their own nuclear program and would win the war, but we got there first due to our valuing the field of science that would lead to it instead of viewing it as “Jew science” that was to be disregarded.
@@seraphinduvolzairo5938 yea i dont think people really understand science dindamentally is just learning about something to manipulate said thing to your desire.
The Gnostics didn't believe human beings are gods, but rather fragments of God, and that sin is derived from seeing oneself as God. The Demiurge is not necessarily a satanic figure, but rather a confused emanation who believes himself to be God when he is only a fragment, and evil in the world is because the Demiurge is incapable of perfect creation, yet keeps trying because he is unaware of his true origins.
Truth, alas author of this video keeps talking about something he donest have enough spiritual experience to talk about with confidence
yea the gnostic ideal is to strive towards self spirituality and asceticism so that your soul escapes the demiurge upon death. this is opposed to the abrahamic belief systems.
As a father of three small children and spending nearly all my time trying to make ends meet (I listen to you while doing the dishes), it's so easy to become self-absorbed into this microcosm that is our family. All this you've said reminds me that we might get hit hard by things way beyond our control and understanding. But yes, what amazingly interesting times we live in!
This is an exceptional video. I feel like I now understand why I feel so empty sometimes, and the direction that society is moving toward. I never thought that not only technological progress was not the way to go but rather the idea of progress is a somewhat foreign concept throughout human history
Christ is always waiting.
@@milko540 huh?
I'm at work RN, and saw that this had been uploaded. I have great anticipation now to watch this video when I get home.
Saying this about another channel is impossible. Really goes to show how great your content is.
Kid, you are awesome! I'm in my early 40s, as are my friends, and we all love your videos. These are highly illuminating, and it gives me hope there are young guys like you out there! Keep these videos coming. Outstanding!
I'm 35 and could not agree more it gives me hope that they ARE paying attention .thank god... gen alpha is going to need leaders like you ahead of them if they are to even stand a chance.
35 and I've been sharing all of his videos with my younger cousins who are old enough/developed enough to understand. I also technically force my 2 year old to listen to them in my car while driving home XD
I'm currently a teenager, and he's been a big source of inspiration for me. In particular, this video has been a huge help recently since I've given this topic more thought.
Can't overstate how much I appreciate this video. Great work! I'll be watching it again and taking notes like im back in collage. So many great insights
One time i told my friend of 4 years after my girlfriend and i broke up “yeah im not a fan of hookup culture. I kinda want a more traditional life with a few kids” and she responded with a disgusted face and said “wow thats a yikes”. First of all, my idea of a “traditional life” at the time was simply having more than one kid, which is fucked up, and second of all, that idea was so traditional that my friend of multiple years was willing to react that negatively to me wanting that life. As if i was insane and fringe for wanting kids at all. An old boss of mine also showed up to work one day and announced to all of us employees that she was writing a book about how only 1 in 10 people should be having kids, because for 90% of people its too much of a sacrifice, and even though her son was in the other room, because he also worked there, she said that had she known how hard motherhood was, she’d never have done it. This is modernity and it sucks.
The anti-human message is strong and well.
I mean, seen the price of daycare? Or, would you count on having a relative close to help with childcare?
So if you can so easily have people accept the idea of a childless playboy lifestyle why is it so hard to get people to accept the lifestyle of carefree leisure and chilling out? I insist that we came to Southeast Asia to get away from Western problems, professionalism, the rat race. We left behind our professional careers because we want peace of mind. And all these expats in China, Shanghai, Beijing, look at me with disgust. They say we must act professional, work hard, essentially endure the same problems and discomfort as in the West, in order to get paid a lot. And I say, paid a lot? That's not why people quit their $60k engineering jobs and come teach English for $10k a year. Sure these days some people make six figures, but it's just weird, everybody insists that suffering and being paid a lot is right, and my idea of chilling out, nurturing your body mind and soul, is cringe.
Now that people think being Hugh Heffner is the proper lifestyle, how do you get people to change to think being the Big Lebowski is the right lifestyle? I'm tired of being criticized so I want to use their own paradigm shifts to show people that I'm right.
man modernity really cursed
@@jameswilkerson4412 i agree thats a lot, but thats another reason why ive become more traditional since then. In a traditional anglo-american family, the grandparents are close and help out, and both parents dont have outside wage-slave jobs so at least one parent is normally around anyway.
Hey man, i hadn't realized that you lived in Texas. Not sure how long you've been here but welcome friend. I have really appreciated your videos for a while now. Great research and topics all around. Glad to finally have something that's genuinely intellectual. Good content is hard to find, keep up the good work.
"I've been to France"
sir this is a Wendy's
France is no longer France. It's africa
No one:
Absolutely no one:
People who have been to France:
"Oh yeah dude there was this one time I went to France"
@@ozumsauce2605Only after traveling to France will you understand
See, I brag about being to Malta, because everyone's been to France, and I've been to Italy and Spain, too, but no one I know even know what or where Malta is. Heck, most cruise ships can't get in there, and only one U.S. warship (not a carrier) is allowed per deployment. So even out of our carrier group, there were only about 200 of us that got to go.
Sounds weird to me. I have been there, but have not mentioned it to anyone in about 20 years. It was good, too, I didn't have to get a whiff of Paris once.
Most people want to hear about the Orient, or the Muddle East for some damn reason. Europe is pretty common these days.
"Chaos is a ladder." a useful line from Little Finger I will never forget. There will be those who want to use the chaos to climb higher, or just get onto the ladder in the first place. I think the best approach is to learn from the ancients and build a society (and it doesn't need to be the whole world, it can be your home, your down, your city, what ever scale you can effect directly or indirectly, but meaningfully) where we live not just for ourselves but for those who will come after us. You don't have to view this as "deathist" after all, if you are still around in ten or twenty years and you did your best to make you world a better place not in some abstract progressive way but in a practical sense you can point to the physical things you did to help those who will be around then.
Littlefinger is a good mentor
Its embarrassing how many Americans don’t know the fact that Spanish is a European language, deriving from Latin just like Italian, French, Romanian, Portuguese
And somehow, the Spanish América isn't from "the west", as if we just appeared from thin air.
This is the best example of the failling education system in gringolandia
Real
that ending was both horrifying and hilarious! I always end up taking your videos very seriously, regardless of whether i agree with your standpoint or not. this one i found myself agreeing with more than any others before. and its true that while we are all cursed together, we can still be there for each other when the time matters.
And THAT is what will hold or break nations appart in days to come.
I love this channel because Rudyard is so earnest. It is great to hear someone passionate about these topics who isn't overly cynical or trying to seem hip. I like the conversational style
I would say his lack of cynicism/pessimism/nihilism, to such a degree that it comes off as if he is actively eschewing it, is one of his bigger failings to me, despite my enjoyment and acknowledgement of his content.
It comes off as if he knows in his heart that there is some degree of validity to those philosophical frameworks, at least as a response to certain situational conditions depending on the individual, but won't allow any affirmation for such things because even acknowledging a hint of it is the crack in the armor that eventually undoes the entirety of one's more positively inclined worldview no matter how strongly grounded they adhere to it, and thus he vehemently avoids it at all cost and denounces it at every opportunity, implied or otherwise.
In the end, that is ultimately his right to do so, even if I fundamentally disagree with almost every aspect of his approach and overall framework to how he tackles these topics.
The older I get - not that I'm old, the realisation that letting the modern elite of society, academia and such, who are the most removed from society, take full rein is a mistake. We're continually eroding cultural anchor points in which to fall back on, and currently steered by those who, are arguably, social misfits with no true sense of identity, culture and/or firm attachment to the greater populace, hence their desire of divisive identity politics. People with a foreign cultural background who attach themselves to these modern elites are essentially grifters hoping to be spared, but are speeding up their demise, they'll be leveraged, disposed of and reviled.
I don't know how many academics you've met, but I would say for the most part this is wild extrapolation
You realize promoting ‘traditional’ culture and assumptions is its own identity politics, right? It’s idpol all the way down.
Another Total Banger from my man Rudy. Serious applause from over here, an international 60+ female Catholic. Well done!
At 1:13:29
I believe what you're referring to in physics is either "observations", wave function collapse, or virtual particle creation in quantum mechanics. I had written up a response to what observations mean in physics before realizing it could've been something else you're thinking about. Here's that explanation though. I can provide additional summaries for the other concepts if requested.
When a physicist says a particle changed from being observed, they are not saying it is because some conscious entity is watching it. An observation in quantum mechanics is an interaction between particles - little bundles of energy. When you bump one particle into another, you gain some information about the target particle at the time of the interaction between the particles (this is the observation in a lab setting), but thereafter the particle likely will have had some properties changed (like its angular momentum) because it interacted with something in its environment. Despite what it's called, an "observer" of any kind is not necessary for it to take place.
Observation really is an awful name for it - it's very misleading.
But that's minor.
This is a very well made video, and it touched on a surprising amount of what I've been thinking about recently, despite coming from a very different perspective. I'm one of the atheists in the audience, and also one of those lib-lefties, for use of the same scaling. We desperately need the wisdom of history. This is really good stuff - I can't wait to watch more!
24:25 "Getting to Denmark" is impossible. Denmark is Denmark because it's never changed.
The ethnic group which lives there is the continuation of a small civilization that just barely survived the Bronze Age Collapse. It is a civilization that has been in continuous existence (and never ruled by a foreign power) since before the invention of writing. This is why its people are so content.
Meanwhile, Modern society has moved in the opposite direction, with America, the child of the European civilization that was conquered the *most* times (England), leading the charge towards "anti-Denmark".
It may be the case that the two paths converge on the other end, but getting there will not look anything like imitating the society which is essentially our reflection.
And ironically it was the Danes who conquered England at one point too.
Denmark was not always such a great place to live. Quality of life greatly improved thanks to modernity.
But yeah modernity bad muhuhu evil vegan liberals and feminism
@@517342 And now America has conquered England too.
I think anti-Denmark may actually be Athens - a city on a hill whose citizens pursued high-minded ideals and lived in luxury, while all menial labor was performed by slaves.
Ironically, the technologies and ideological systems we've developed are more than capable of yielding the benefits of slave labor, if we'd stop acting like we're their slaves.
I recently went to a village in Alaska it was remote there was very little technology with access to internet and it was freezing but what i found there was is religion family and community with not so much need to constantly work coming from a more modern part of America I thought I was gonna be miserable and bored in reality I was happy and miss that place now.
Naw man. Villages have high-speed internet now. 😂
@@jacobzindel987 Not in Alaska, bro.
Punctuation is a good thing. Learn to use it.
I grew up in the small villages in Alaska. No internet, no tv, no computer. The best memories from my childhood are going to church with friends in the morning, then playing in the woods with them after.
@@pauvilreutov2975 you old Russian orthodox?
If there was ever a time to create good artwork, writing, and culture, the time is now. It can be as simple as drawing a picture of Tifa Lockhart from FF7 (to exemplify beauty), or an armored crusader on horseback (to exemplify religion, and masculinity).
I recently watched a John Doyle video where he described how, if you were to create a mural in Portland, Oregon, a depiction of a content mother and her infant child would be defaced faster than an image of Ronald Reagen with an Uzi and American flag. I found his assessment spot on.
or female nicolas cage on a dinosaur?
what you are describing isnt beauty... modern art is garbage , forcefed by marxist subversionists
I would be willing to wager a few bucks that if both of those murals were put up, AND the mother was a woman of color, that they would not be vandalized in that order.
Society is hypersexualized as is, you can portray beauty without someone wearing as blatantly sexual an outfit as Tifa or most modern pop culture women. The fact in general that female beauty in the modern world is so linked to wearing skimpy outfits is a sign that both religion and respect for sexual purity is gone. Ironically, the modern world is a world in which women are only valued for sex. Jeanne d'Arc or even Aerith if you wanted to keep it pop culture would've been much better examples.
Trick question, the Reagan picture would stay up indefinitely because all the hipsters would assume that it is ironic.
@@Quickbobhero That is a good point, I almost feel the need to use one of those new AI programs to cloth Tifa.
The comment about globalized societies having more in common with each other than with their fellow countrymen is spot on. I live in Buenos Aires, a large city that's very exposed to globalization and some people here have more in common culturally, aside from the language, with a Londoner, a Parisian or a New Yorker than with someone from a province of the Argentine interior, or hell, even someone from the suburbs of our city.
that's why we don't need cities anymore, global citizens should move out to own globalist country and leave locals alone
Yep. I live in Finland. And the culture in Helsinki/Espoo/Vantaa (Which are merging) is almost completely different than in the rest of the country. All the way down to the core values of the residents. They are distinctly more "americanized", politically left wing and conformist. When someone like me goes to work in the capital city region its a real culture shock.
Ever since I first heard about postmodern gnosticism and its relationship with queer/intersectional/etc... theories, all the motivations of the people spouting it and the actions they take have made perfect sense to me. Ironically, it's like having my own gnostic revelation of the underlying mechanics of the world today. Because of that, I sometimes worry that I'm suffering a delusion similar to the modern gnostics as some kind of meta-gnostic.
Isn't it odd that in every religion there are people who have to substantiate their beliefs with material proof? It's ironic that today it is the Gnostics, because there is a way of looking at the story of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil in seeing that eating of this fruit makes us discontent and obsess over the imperfections of our current situations. Therefore leading to being cast out of Eden. You'd think a Gnostic would be content in his gnosis that he will leave the wicked world after death without worrying about being cast back down in reincarnation. Why cling to earthly power if you don't believe that it could ever be good?
@@mst5g826 I think the anxiety felt by the gnostics that causes them to double down and cling to earthly power is explained by the two groups that seem to compose them. Either they are the few actual elites that must hold power as more people attempt to poke holes in their social order or they are failed elites who must twist their minds into knots justifying that they are better than the plebs because they know the special words and thoughts of critical theory. Still, both those groups, but especially the latter, can best be summarized as the crying midwit wojak trying to claim 2+2=5
Honestly there's a lot of things I find fascinating and interesting about gnostic doctrines/teachings for which I believe there's definitely some solid points to learn from, but the idea of completely abandoning the world and that one shouldn't seek to help improve it or others' situation is just asinine to me.
You're not crazy, the elites are crazy. They will blow over in the first puff of wind.
The fact that you worry about this clearly makes you less delusional
This guy actually got me watching an hour long video 😭
Power of speaking from the heart yo
That description of European & American suburbs makes me appreciate London suburbs, a ⅓ of all houses in the UK's capital were built with a 1930s architectural style with coloured bricks & differnet perportions. Each house is different from the next in someway from the shade of bricks to the size of windows, no house is the same. I wish we could bring this to more places
Love the video, it has given me a lot to think about like every video you upload
I was brought up in one of those 1920s/30s London suburban houses. Though not identical each house is in fact built to one of only a handful of patterns, but distributed so they don’t appear next door to each other. Throw in a slightly different design of bay window or facia tile colour and you have what looks like randomness.
@@sirrathersplendid4825 Whatever the case, that's far better than American houses. They build them in the exact same style not only in the same neighborhood, but all across the country. Same for the chain restaurants and stores we go to most frequently. Honestly sometimes it's easy to forget where exactly you are because everything looks so similar.
Thankfully America has a very varied geography and climate, at least you can tell what part of the country you are in by the color of the grass or the landscape around you (kind of anyway). Thankfully I grew up in Chicago which has some of the best best architecture in the country, so I didn't have to live in a cookie-cutter suburban subdivision.
@@WorldWide2017 - Those 1920s/30s UK designs were much better than today’s. Most of the stuff built since the 1960s is pretty blocky, sterile and uninspiring - probably no better than in the USA.
“We can be cursed toGETHerrrrr” is the sassiest I’ve ever heard Rudyard in any of his videos ever.
😂 🏆
Yeah, I actually laughed when I heard that.
I visited an art museum recently where the art portrayed Western art by century from 16th to 20th. You could see the slow transition of artists who found inspiration in nature and the real world, to artists who were more interested in their own delusions and ideology.
The 19th century was the last in which any meaningful art was produced. The 20th century exhibit wasn't art, but a deconstruction by those who thought they knew better.
I think this is why Warhammer 40,000 is becoming increasingly popular. Its depiction of the nature of humanity - and how it deals with fundamental existential beliefs and pressures - is one of the most realistic I've ever seen in fiction.
Of course it’s becoming popular because we’re experiencing it right now my brother.
@@franklinshaki9when's the Emperor going to show himself?
Completely agree.
Nice pic btw
"From the moment I understood the weakness of the flesh, it disgusted me..."
40k is a satire of cristofascism
nothing that a centrist would ever be able to understand
About that intro, America did kinda conquer the world. WW2 was America's w*r of conquest, and NATO and the EU and all our other international organizations were our Empire's major institutions. The only reason why it didn't look like an Empire on a map is because we allowed all our conquests to believe they were independent, even though we've really been pulling the strings this entire time. We even went as far as rigging elections and staging interventions in lands that tried to leave our Empire. And our tax law applies to the entire globe and the other nations can't do a damn thing about it. While we may not look like an Empire, we most certainly are one.
The great Satan some would say.
USD as the world reserve currency is all you need to know
Wouldn't WWII have been Germany's w*r of conquest?
Didn't russians actualy conquer half the world into their empire as a result of WW2?
Conquer is a military term, and implies America used kinetic force to occupy and rule most of the world against their will. You could kinda make an argument we do that with foreign bases, but that's not a true occupation of an unwilling nation. Afghanistan was an occupation of an unwilling nation. US military bases in Germany are not an occupation force.
America is definitely an empire, but to call America a conqueror severely downplays how terrible an actual conquest is. If you want to know how horrible an actual conquest is, look at the many wars between the Americans and natives, or Japan's expansion in ww2, or Russia's 'special military operation.'
Strong-arming favorable trade deals from a position of military and financial superiority, immoral as it may be, is not conquest. Sending agents to carefully manipulate a government to do what is best for you, even if that is regime change, is not conquest. Marching across a border, killing people, overthrowing a government, and administering the territory yourself is conquest.
@@stone7281 and what's happening within the United States is now more alarming than it ever was before.
I studied under an Archaeologist who wrote a series of books, like Greek Stones Speak, Roman Stones Speak, etc.
It was all the study of building styles so that you could recognize the civilization and the era of buildings.
I was fascinated with Architecture since I was a child, and I had a lot of questions about those things long before I took the course.
The Mudflood series of videos reminds me of that comparative study of architecture, and it raised a lot of those old questions I had when I was a kid.
I almost want to take up the study of archaeological architecture again.
I bet there are a lot more details to be discovered in these buildings across the world, that you don't get from photos. What about the measures and proportions found in disparate buildings? What do they have in common, and how do they differ?
It reminds me too of something I read once about the Parthenon, that it was built on top of what were supposedly Byzantine era foundations.
Paul Mckentrick. I looked him up on Wikipedia.
I didn't know he taught George H. W. Bush.
He called us students "nabobs".
I liked my oldest professors the best.
Mudflood as in conspiracy?
This is exactly the content I have been looking for a long time: A comprehensive look at modernity and how it came to be. Thank you! I truly enjoy the topics you look into. The only critique I have is that your videos are not 8 hours long 😅
Thanks!
"May you live in interesting times" is how ive started saying goodbye to people i dont like
You know, I'm gonna start doing that as well
Sadly, we all are... so it fits.
I love the Content .. keep it up .. from Scranton originally lol joined the military and traveled the world !!! love how you have realized the lack of perspective that many Americans' have!
I think that if you can travel, it’s important to have that experience at least once or twice a. I’m lucky my parents took me to Italy when I was 16. I’ve done a number of trips since. But on that first one… I learned a lot about the world as well as about where I am from.
Straight magnum opus from Whatifalthist right here. Outstanding video.
ive listened to almost every episode youve created, but this one might as well be the most important and impressive one so far. certain parts of it were very surprising and correspond well with reality and were as such immensely pleasant to ponder, not to mention that your conclusions are, as always, comprehensive!!! amazing job!!!
Man sometimes I watch these videos and remember that this channel has come a long way. Just wanted to drop a comment and say 'Hi' to everyone.
Only on this channel do I pause think about what was just said, or what is shown on screen so much. Thank you what if AltHist for providing such incredible and enlightening content!
Modernity has another curious characteristic that I think has massive psychological implications and we haven't figured out how to deal with yet, and that is the disappearance of the frontier. Expansion and exploration into the unknown (or being expanded upon) is such a hugely important part of our history, and that is essentially over forever now that we have Google maps. Contributing to the vanishing of uncertainty and perhaps the vanishing of wonder are all our various sciences, from weather science and plate tectonics to risk assessment and germ theory, many of our traditional intellectual frontiers are vanishing as we get ever better at knowing what tomorrow will bring. But I'm afraid this might be like exploring a very big room, and it's a cool room with lots of cool stuff, but at some point we more or less simultaneously realize that we've seen everything there is to see, we're trapped in here, and there's a bunch of other people coming to the same realization in the room too. Oh shit, now what?
I'd add that frontier gave more room for bs and sophistry. Its like when you start a project and still have many hours in your budget vs when you're working off the clock to land the project to a functional state before close.
That's why space exploration is one of our only hopes left. Great comment man.
A bit like when the Romans finally defeated Carthage in around 150 BC. They ran out of global powers to fight with, turned inwards and had 100 years of instability while the republic collapsed. Then Caesar came along.
This is something I think about a lot. In the past, scientific discoveries were grounded in reality and had practical applications in the real world. Think the discovery of electricity, or the development of materials allowing us to build better tools. But as science advances more and more, the scientific frontier gets more and more abstracted, until you get to today, where the only things left to discover are incredibly niche, hyper-specialised contrivances that the average person can't even comprehend. It takes a lifetime of study to understand that there even *is* a problem that needs solving, before you can even *start* developing a solution. Why would the average person have any interest in science, or have any emotional investment in expanding our scientific frontier, in this situation?
such a powerful video full of perspective - i am watching it again!
This is a beautifully composed video and overarching essay which has spoken to so much of what I have felt and seen in this world
God I love the guitar opening 🔥
It just sets the stage so perfectly
PS I have one of those Galaxy Lamps already. My 6 yr old loves it!
"If you're the only person who is right, and everyone else is completely wrong -- you're crazy."
Not going to lie, that's my new favorite quote of all time.
You should honestly put that on a t-shirt.
It can turn out that you simply haven't met all those who agree with you.
My experience in hyperconforming woke Ontario.
This quote is just a baseless assertion. There is no reason why the majority can't be wrong and the few can be right.
@@WordBearer48 Are you the only one that is right?
here additional quotes similar to this "a time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, 'You are mad; you are not like us.'" - St. Anthony of the Great
One of, if not the, best video you have put out to date. This one really opened my eyes to what was there in front of my face all along.
“Our era is run by religious fanatics who worship the god of progress” is such a good sentence to describe it
🎯
‘Progressive action’ and ‘struggle’ were common phrases from the national socialists, fascists and Marxists. The idea of the world being in perpetual change. A constant revolution if you will. Just something I’ve noticed.
‘Action’ and ‘struggle’ were common themes amongst the fascists, national socialists and Marxists. The idea of the world being in perpetual change. A constant revolution if you will. Just something I’ve noticed.
Great job! One of your best videos yet. Really appreciate that you share the bibliography
It's impressive just how well modernity coaxes people to be docile and support modernity despite the fact most people can't stand modernity.
As an example, the other day I was listening to this song called "the traveling people" (link listed below), it's an Irish song written in the 1950s painting an idyllic picture of life as an Irish Traveller (essentially gypsy). The song goes into detail saying how you and your family can park your trailer in the woods, "for a week or two for time was not your master" among other things.
I've listened to this song many times but for some reason this week I listened to it and it dawned on me just how rebellious being a gypsy is to the system. I doubt traveller's paid taxes, they used the land as they pleased, and were masters of their own schedule. I cannot say the same for myself or literally anyone else I know. I am aware that traveller's and gypsies are universally hated in Ireland in Europe primarily because they don't assimilate and also tend to steal from others.
Anyway this had me thinking of how nice it would be to live like that with my wife and newborn. But then I started thinking of how will I earn money, how will I eat, I can't just park my car somewhere without people asking me what I'm doing because all the land is privately owned, I don't have the skills or knowledge to live like that. These thoughts made me realize that through technology and our total dependence on the system maintaining so many basic things like water, food etc. It is extremely difficult to check out of the system without serious risk of death because even though we are great at things such as coding, operating a car, etc. We are no longer taught basic skills our grandparents had like growing your own food, digging a well, etc.
m.ruclips.net/video/o0-WtdJpkcs/видео.html&pp=ygUaZnJlZWJvcm4gbWFuIHRociBkdWJsaW5lcnM%3D
You could say that the things you listed out are society's tools to ensure you buy in as much as possible.
"How will I earn money" is right away buy-in. Money is integration into the system to gain access to its resources.
Even if you had all the skills you needed, you would end up needing to participate in some aspect like buying land.
The traveller is not really independent though, they likely need the farmer and the sawmill and the blacksmith. We have always needed to be part of a group, it's just how that group is comprised and interacts.
Being a parasite does have its appeal. However it is not independence.
Modern Civilisation is a harsh mistress. A harsh mistress indeed.
God Bless you! I have always had a deep infatuation with the Tower of Babel and have felt for years that we have built it today. Everyone feels the incoming trials in their bones but we aren’t sure when the pen will drop. Try to take joy in that we will live through interesting times. It will be the most horrific beast to face, but we will endure it together!
Hi Rudyard, I just want to say I love your videos so much, and have loved the development of your channel over the last 5 years. I still miss the odd alt history video but your new ones are amazing and thought provoking, and have really opened my eyes.
I do notice though sometimes I find the last sections a bit difficult to follow, I often watch while I code so it may be my focus, or just that they are massively complex ideas but i think they could be flow a bit better.
PS, Love from NZ
One of your greatest videos bravo. I’d say so far this is your magnum opus
Lived in north Orange County my whole life, basically a giant suburb of Los Angeles proper. I never really thought about it but yeah that’s definitely true- Los Angeles ironically is a city built almost entirely by American Capitalism, with little influence of old Europe- despite first being settled by New Spanish ranchers. It gets a lot of criticism, but I think that’s the point- to have a place so far west as to take the current civilization to the extreme, almost to make its own unique culture.
LA is a cesspool of nihilism and degeneracy. Your streets are filled with addicts and your elites are pedos. the urban monoculture is a disease.
There is nothing structurally wrong with Los Angeles. Single family homes, 3 bay garages and wide roads are all virtues of American society. The problem with Los Angles is the cultural degradation of the area that started around the 60s with the hippies and the 70s with all the illegal immigrants and only worsened from there.
California was a red state solidly.. before Ronald Regan allowed immigrants from Mexico to vote there.. blue ever since. Based upon people who are not American citizens.
true i live in the same place but there clearly a defining line between the culture of LA and the culture of OC even if north OC is geographically identical.
Map at 27:52 incorrectly places west africans (and Adamawa-Ubangi) and as bantu, also places sahelian areas inhabited by west africans incorrectly as the sahara desert.
As far as I know, there was a lot of war enthusiasm before WWI, people expected it to be as glorious as the stories of previous wars. After the war, pacifists and modernists argued that the reason it was so horrible was modern technology paired with this pre-modern mindset. The solution would be to get rid of the mindset, because getting rid of the technology would be impossible and not desirable.
I love your videos. A weakness, perhaps, are the complicated slides with a chart or maybe a list of words. Some of them could take a good ten minutes to examine or explain, but you just click through it to a picture of cows or something.
Only here cause you said we don't watch your civilization videos. Fine, I watched it.
The architectural uprising movements will bring back traditional proportions and beauty to our buildings
What are traditional proportions? The christian nationalist really can be racist about anything huh
14:45 - the recent protests against the 'Far Right Extremists' in Germany (the AfD in particular) are quite telling for your statement. Most the of the AfD platform boils down to "Let Germans be Germans.' They acknowledge the 20th century wasn't the greatest for the Germans, but they do have plenty of culture, history, and identity. They are asking questions about their culture, their identity, and the actions their government are taking to attempt to dilute it.
Strongly disagree. You can engage in all kinds of german culture without supporting the AfD. Go to a traditional festival. Read traditional literature. this is highly regarded in Germany. But most people have a very strong hate against the AfD and their mindset.
@@ElekuYea, but only the AfD wants to preserve these traditions and the german ethnicity. The other parties want to import more migrants to further boost the economy at the expense of safety, social cohesion and the german culture.
I'd love to see more recognition to the bronze age. A lot of historical philosophy tends to ignore the bronze age (mostly not being aware there was a bronze age). What if we were to consider the rise and fall of the bronze age and the inevitable fate of the first cities of man in these philosophies (I think it was the umayyad caliphate who said Babylon was an "excellent source of bricks"). The only exception being China who basically start in the bronze age with the semi-mythical Xia dynasty and end in the CCP.
The Christian and Medieval traditions included the Bronze Age in their historical philosophy, though they called it the age of heroes.
@@bennyv4444 yeah but we knew about jack shit about the societies outside of legend. By the time the Classical Era rolls around, all people know about the Bronze Age is "there were people there who did things." Most of the discourse around the "Heroic Age" was as the name suggests, legendary, for the better part of about 2 and a half thousand years. It's not until guys like Heinrich Schliemann, Howard Carter, and Arthur Evans Hughes start digging and recording their findings that we really get to know Bronze Age cultures and peoples. And that's also not an indicator of nelgect, since before the tech of the 19th century, all we had of them were their ruins and later (500 plus years later) written recordings of earlier oral tales that had changed from the original events. But yes, we should absolutely include Bronze Age Civilizations in our new historical philosophies. Though based on Whatifalthist's video on them, as well as my own research, I'd imagine them to follow basically the same pattern of Rise, Golden Age, Decadence, Fall, Destruction to most likely barbarians of some sort, rinse and repeat.
@@nmkasprkasprowicz4615
We still know pretty much nothing about them, most of what is stated as fact about them is wild speculation.
The part that the ancients knew was that there was a rise, a golden age, and a fall, and out of those ashes their civilization rose. That’s the most important part, and other than a few fun facts that we are quite confident about and one or two very informative tablets (along with many that are not informative at all), that’s all we know for sure too.
~26:00~ the Hellenistic period can represent antiquated modernity. A version of modernity that is finding itself & missing the two thousand years of accumulated knowledge between the two time periods.
"Rational thinking was seen as ungentlemanly." Id agree that Athens had a weird obsession with "rhetoric" or the art of influence and debate, philosophers of the period paved the way for rational thought and what would be come the framework for scientific thought. Aristotle, in all his flaws, is still viewed as the first true scientist. The immediate and timeless influence the rational thinkers of that era have had on our species is collective consciousness is palpable.
Mathematics, perhaps the most core branch of science, was not a foreign concept to the people of this era either. Eratosthenes, Archimedes, and Euclid all contributed an enormous amount to our understanding and perception of the universe in which we live.
Ultimately, the blending of philosophies had by the Greek (Athenians primarily) bled into the eras dominated by Rome.
Stoicism is fundamentally a blend of several philosophies had by Athenians, namely Zeno, Citium and Epicurus to an extent.
Stoicism was a respected philosophy in the early Roman Empire (AD). Stoicism is effectively rational thought nearly broken down to its axioms.
So, an accumulation of knowledge & compounding perspective was beginning to be take its place as a core human principal at this point.
I think at the end of the day, humans are subject to the their innate desire to create meaning. This has taken many forms over the past couple millennia.
Ultimately, progress is a meaning we've created.
It's interesting to consider the perspective that the idea of constant progress is largely a new cultural undertone. I may be so influenced by this ideal that I confuse it as a fundamental aspect of being human or even fundamental to being a creature of the universe. I'd go as far as to say progress is the natural output the physical laws of the universe or even further--of an organism + time.
It's interesting to note that progress is not the norm for civilization but rather a sporadic theme of which civilization experiences time to time. However, I still don't agree wholly with this concept.
Positive progress may ebb and flow // wax and wane throughout history. There may be periods in which society wholly regress as a result of natural disaster, widespread extreme conservatism, or simply strange philosophy. But one thing we can say for certain is humanity has positively progressed in a fundamental sense up to this point in history through gradual, linear, or exponential advancement in theory, technology, and ultimately collective understanding.
This is not to say humanity won't experience future periods of regression, but it's impossible to say that regression or stagnation is the norm. Humanity is a creature of the universe that must evolve & adapt over long periods of time. Humanity has the unique ability to experience a parallel evolution of collective thought and understanding through its ability to accumulate and compound knowledge over time and generations.
Idk where I'm going with this. I hate getting caught up on these mini essays on a shitty mobile UI.
One of the best if not best videos on this subject on this platform bar none
I dont care if it's inaccurate when put in context. "The Unibomber was right" will now and forever be my favorite Whatifalthist quote.
Probably your best video, really enjoyed it and it will influence my world view. Thank you.
Oh my…
You, sir, have a great channel!
I’ve been watching your videos for the last week or so. Many-many thought-provoking things I’ve heard.
This particular video is mind-blowing. Thank you for teaching me!
Uhh ... I really like the idea that the goal of modern society is to look good on a spreadsheet.
Hey whatifalthist, I’m writing an alternate history book. It’s a political thriller set between 1995-2012. Let me know if you’d be interested in it, it changes geopolitics quite a bit to have a WWIII scenario between the US and UK.
I support this
@whatifalthist
I don’t know if he is interested, but I am. Tell me about it.
Bro send details we gotta know
Please send the details, this reminds me of resurrection day immediately.
@@rthompson7182 so the book takes a secret meeting that took place in 1995 in NYC and changes history to have a drastically different outcome.
At the Carlyle hotel, Princess Diana was in the city and met in private with JFK Jr. Nothing apparently happened, but my book uses this as a divergence point to where they develop a secret love for each other and eventually marry. After surviving a plane crash in 1999, the two of them decide to not waste any more of their lives and a focus on influencing the world to be better takes hold. He runs for senate against Hillary Clinton in the democratic primaries and wins. He’s the senator from NY when 9/11 occurs, and Diana is there a few blocks from ground zero as she watches the towers fall. The two become rescue workers in the rubble and heroes. John is the most popular politician in the country.
He loses his popularity when he successfully prevents US troops from entering into Iraq, which now becomes a UK led war. This will have blowback as the 7/7 attacks in 2005 take out the Queen, and Charles becomes the sovereign with an increase in monarchical power.
When the war’s truth comes out, John returns to popularity and runs for president in 2008 (replacing Obama) and succeeds as a Democrat with supermajorities in both houses. However, his first goal is unity, and thus he ensures republicans will be a part of the governance he envisions. Meanwhile Diana is the First Lady and this infuriates Charles.
The rest of the book is basically a more competent democratic administration. Until the crisis in July of 2012 (basically John Jr’s version of the Cuban missile crisis). A parallel between himself and his father takes hold quite a bit. And the notation that he and Diana are like a royal couple are presented.
I think it's important though to remember there can be a sweet spot where there can still be cities and towns that don't destroy each other economically.
Cities can be beautiful, like Tokyo.
Cities can be places that incorporate tradition and modernist order.
There can be cultural coherence in them, and I think that's something still worth fighting for. Cities don't need to be fragmented mazes of safe pockets and dangerous hoods.
Cities don't need to be littered, or consisting of only giant buildings instead of corridors and narrower buildings that create variety.
Strip malls and parking lots don't need to exist to the current extent.
Vision with some humility I think is important going forward.
The final "S" in "Les Misérables" is silent, as it is often the case in french regarding consonants.
"i lived in France"
This is the most French response i've ever seen
Im more rhan 40yo and 8ve lived more rhan 100 ordinary lives. Originally from europe with residency all over middle east, africa and south america. Just wanna say thank you. Your videos resonate with me more than you can imagine. Keep up the good work. World needs you. Thank you
This is beautiful stuff. Good Job.
In Michael Malice's book, The White Pill, he actually talked about how both The Soviets and America both had the secret policy that they weren't going to launch anything in retaliation. So, neither was willing to kill the other in reality.
What’s his source for that? Soviet archives?
That sounds like nonsense though, because the soviets almost did launch nuclear weapons in retaliation to what was a false teport. Luckily identified by the commander. But they were absolutely willing to do it.
That would defeat the whole point of mutually assured destruction, and without that it’s hard to believe the East and West never went to war. Why wouldn’t either side have destroyed the other, their own greatest threat, if they knew there were no repercussions? Why would the side that was annihilated in atomic fire not retaliate? They’d have nothing to lose
@whatifalthist You should investigate second century Assyria and Arbela. Iamblichus for the most extant literature of their worldview. I believe modernism and its Christian roots came from there. Also, the fun idea that a FOURTH Assyrian civilization existed in the shadows of Rome and Parthia until Byzantine and Sassanid religious absolutism destroyed it. Julian the Apostate was a BIG fan of the intellectual progress Assyria was making.
Essentially, I'd compare Assyrian "Neo-Platonism" (bad label for it, but that's how it's categorized) to the Scottish Common Sense school. The Scottish Enlightenment. It was all about categorizing ideas, phenomena, etc. and then taking them as received and working with the relationships between them. Anti-rationalist, pro-empirical, anti-idealist, pro-tradition.