0023 What is the difference between irrational and rational?

Irrational thoughts are hard to put into speech-alone talk, because our evolved mental modules are adaptations realized in the milieu of hand talk.  They are spontaneous, yet responsive to training.  Character-building cannot be brought about by someone speaking precepts.  Instead, character-building relies on implicit abstraction, which may involving imagining how to live the precepts.  Good habits build character.

Rational thoughts rely on speech-alone talk.  Speech-alone words can label all the parts of a whole, then name relations among the parts, then be used to build mathematical and mechanical models.  Diesen defines the words, “gemeinschaft” and “gesellschaft”, as part of his sociological modeling of civilizational trends.  Yes, Diesen builds a model using the specialized terminology of German Sociologist Ferdinand Tonnies, who publishes Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft in 1887. The book is translated into English as Community and Society.

0024 Remember, the full title of Diesen’s book is The Decay of Western Civilization and Resurgence of Russia: Between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft.

0025 What about the potentiation of civilization by the first singularity?  How does that enter the picture.

Speech-alone talk spreads, through mimesis, from the Ubaid to neighboring hand-speech talking cultures.  Why?  Talk about gesellschaft.  Speech-alone talk facilitates labor and social specializations.  So, the Ubaid quickly becomes wealthier and more powerful than surrounding hand-speech talking cultures.  When the Ubaid sends their emissaries, the difference must be obvious.  The neighboring cultures realize that all they have to do to become wealthier and more powerful is to drop their hand talk.  After some adjustments (like getting rid of the old shamans who resist progress and predict disaster if the people follow the ways of the Ubaid), neighboring cultures are soon practicing speech-alone talk and enjoying a strange blossoming of what gesellschaft can deliver.  They enter our current Lebenswelt of unconstrained social complexity.

0026 Social and labor specialization complexity adds more vocabulary to speech-alone talk.  Each specializationgenerates its own particular vocabulary.  Diverse specialized languages reside within each “mother tongue“.

How do specialized terms work?

0027 At the turn of the 1900s (AD, or should I say, the 7700s U0′?), the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure comes up with a new definition of spoken language.  Spoken language consists of two arbitrarily related systems of differences, parole(talk) and langue (what goes on in our minds when we talk).  Saussure’s new definition implies that each spoken word is merely a placeholder in two arbitrarily-related systems of differences.  So, spoken words have no intrinsic meaning, presence or message.  Decades later, “deconstruction” is the latest academic fashion to capitalize on this misinterpretation.

0028 Why do I say, “misinterpretation”?

Well, I already noted that we have an innate expectation that words (in hand talk) picture and point to their referents.  But, spoken words cannot picture or point to anything.  So, the question of how a spoken word works becomes significant.

Already, in point 0018, I showed one approach.  Each spoken word may be considered an actuality₂ within the normal context of definition₃.  The potential₁ describes the meaning, presence and message that is projected into the actuality₂.  This approach is similar to a dictionary’s approach, but nonetheless different.  How so?  Each actuality₂ is undergirded by elements corresponding to Peirce’s categories of thirdness (meaning), secondness (presence) and firstness (message).

0029 Another approach uses the Greimas square.  Algridas Greimas (1917-1992 AD) is a French-Lithuanian semiotician concerned with how people conceptualize their world.  To me, that sounds like Diesen’s “gesellschaft”.  Conceptualization brings order.  The Greimas square is valuable because it is a purely relational structure that illuminates spoken-words that occupy positions of similar meaning, presence and message, and are essential to a focal word’s place in the economy of a system of differences.

Remember, when discoursing in a specialized language, one must choose the right words.

0030 The general Greimas square is a purely relational structure expressing a geometry built on four rules.

Here is a picture.

0031 Here are are the four rules, along with their application to the topic at hand.

0032 A is the focal term.  For Diesen, the focal term concerns civilization and its attributes (including international relations, political systems, historical changes and so forth).

0033 B is a term that contrasts with A.  For Diesen, gesellschaft and its attributes occupies this slot.  When I think of civilization, I conjure images of bureaucracies and politicians, temples and palaces, the transportation of goods, and so on.  All these images associate with gesellschaft.

One should never say, “civilization”, when one means politics, economics, philosophy, the arts and sciences (that is, “gesellschaft”).  The contrast is palpable.

0034 C is a term that contradicts B and complements A.  For Diesen, gemeinschaft and its attributes occupies this slot.  When I think of the people who live in a civilization, I conjure images of artists and their patrons, the architecture of temples and the solidity of palaces, how people cook and how they dress, and so on.  In this imagery, gemeinschaft (C) contradicts gesellschaft (B) and complements civilization (A).

0036 D is a term that contrasts with C, contradicts A and complements B.  This is the hardest term to locate in Diesen’s theory.  But, take a look at what Diesen asserts:

Civilization is a balancing act between the potentials of the spoken words, “gesellschaft” and “gemeinschaft”.

D must have something to do with “balance”.

0037 Here is a picture.

0038 Diesen does not stop there.

In chapter two, Diesen discusses the cyclical rise, decline and rebirth of civilizations.

He uses the metaphor of seasons: spring, summer, autumn and winter.

If I take a look at the above figure, where would the cycle turn?

To be, it turns on D, the foundational balance, and manifests in A, the attribute of civilization.  The other elements, B and C, operate as two independent poles within the unity of the Greimas square. B and C adjust to the season.

0039 Here is a diagram of the Greimas Square version of Diesen’s approach to theorizing civilisation, presented in part one (chapters one and two) of his book.

0040 In chapter two, Diesen offers several applications.

One paragraph catches my eye.

This paragraph demonstrates that Diesen’s Greimas square has relevance to our current Lebenswelt, all the way back to the first singularity.

How so?

The paragraph recounts one of the written origin stories of the ancient Near East.  Since Marduk is the primary actor, I associate this story to the Babylonians, who flourish thousands of years after the start of civilization in Mesopotamia.

Here is Diesen’s Greimas square, once again.

Allow me to recapitulate Diesen’s telling, adding a postmodern flavor.

0041 In the spring, Absu the father (representing order) and Tiamat the mother (representing chaos) comingle.  Any adult knows what that means.  Children may inquire and get the general impression that the two somehow get mixed up and offspring arise from the confusion.

0042 In the summer, the offspring conjure their own self-anointed revolution and murder the primal order, Absu, who is also their father.  They build a house upon his grave.  But, since it is summer, this is not any old house.  This construction is a party palace.  Without the old order to inhibit the offspring, the party house has many chambers.  Tiamat, absent Absu, changes from the chaos typical of nature to an induced chaos.  Soon, she wearies of all the racket.

0043 In the autumn, the house is assaulted.  I presume from within as well as without.  Who will impose order over Absu’s dead body?  An answer comes from within every chamber.  Every party room offers a replacement for Absu’s primal offspring-spawning order.

While everyone is busy naming their substitutes for Absu, a monster, Kino, arises from the tradition that… um… conspired to murder in the first place.  This monster (C) contradicts the naming of the one who will impose order over Absu’s dead body (B), while at the same time complements the fact that every offspring in every chamber in the party house screams their substitute in the echo-chamber of their own room (A).

Tiamat, the offspring’s mother, weighs in on the assault upon (and within) the offspring’s party palace (A).  Tiamat becomes Chaos Incarnate (D), which may be a harsh way of describing a total control freak.

Think of the second law of thermodynamics and ask the question, “What do control freaks accomplish?”  The answer? They create a bubble of anti-entropic perfection (a complex and apparently crystalline order) at the cost of dramatically increasing entropy outside the system (that is, producing disorder that is greater than the energy required to maintain the intended order).

Each chamber of the party house is ruled by a busy-body control freak…

…who is totally weirded out by Tiamat, the control freak of control freakdom, outraged by the clatter of the little busy-bodies.

Kino’s job is to tell the little control freaks to shut up.

0044 In the winter, a god, Marduk, answers the question of who will restore order.

0045 Marduk fights Kino and wins.  Then, Marduk makes humans from the undead blood of the monster.

Marduk restores the temple (the home for the gods) and the palace (ah, is that the architectural structure that goes over Absu’s grave?).

At the end of winter, Tiamat has been transformed into an enclosure of her former self.

0046 What does this imply?

Diesen’s Greimas square offers snapshots of civilisational cycles. Plus, some of the written origin myths of the ancient Near East depict civilizational cycles.

His two keywords, “gesellschaft” (rational analytical order) and “gemeinschaft” (irrational traditional community) command slots B and C, respectively.

The concept of civilizational cycles clarifies A (the manifestation of a civilizational balance) and D (the fulcrum, the balance point that dwells beneath the manifestation).

0047 The seasons tell a story that revolves around a theme (D).  This theme (D) contrasts with gemeinschaft (C) and complements gesellschaft (D).  Gemeinschaft (C) embodies the theme (D) in intuition, tradition and community. Gesellschaft (B) tries to frame the theme (D) analytically, using specialized disciplinary languages.

The theme (D) contradicts its manifestation (A), because other manifestations are possible for any particular civilizational theme.  By focusing on what is manifest (A), the inquirer cannot formulate the grand theme (D) that it (A) manifests.  Indeed, academics may label what is manifest (A) as the grand theme of a civilizational cycle, thereby veiling the implicit grand theme (D).

0048 Here is a picture of the mythic civilizational cycle for what manifests (A).

0049 In spring, A is empty.

What does this imply?

The storyteller cannot label the initial manifestation (A) of the theme (D).   But, all the elements for labeling the manifestation are present.  Absu is order (B).  Offspring result from the comingling (C).  Tiamat is chaos (D).

Why can’t the storyteller label the initial manifestation?

The particular civilisational cycle that precedes the comingling of Absu and Tiamat is more primal than the our current Lebenswelt, which (for the Babylonians) begins as offspring of the comingling.  Perhaps, A may be labeled, “the comingling”.  That implies that the prior civilizational cycle is occluded.  It cannot be discerned.  Additional clues come from the fact that Absu and Tiamat are already divine existents that represent the explicit abstractions of “order” and “chaos”.

0050 Summer covers the murder of Absu, the father, who represents an order that precedes the order that is constructed by the offspring.  Absu is an order that is not well articulated by disciplinary languages.  The offspring, birthed from both order and chaos, have diverse disciplinary languages.  Some of these groups desire to articulate a vision for the entire community, resulting in Absu’s murder (or perhaps, his deconstruction).  Upon the grave of Absu, the offspring build a house (a palace with a room for each specialized language group).

The summer season captures the generation of wealth (from labor specializations) and power (from social specializations) potentiated by the adoption of speech-alone talk.  Speech-alone talk allows disciplinary languages within a common language, creating factions that may use the same words for differing meanings, presences and messages.  One belongs to a group when one automatically processes words according to that group’s potentials.  At the same time, each group must project their terminology outwards onto others, generating subtle conflicts that cannot be easily solved through discourse.

0051 Conflict (A) increases in the autumn season.  The party palace rocks, as the gesellschaft for each gemeinschaft sees no reason to back down.

The winter season engages the battle (A).  Marduk is the god who chooses (or is chosen) to fight.

0052 So far so good.  I have applied the timeline of four seasons to what is manifest (A).  What about the theme (D)?

Here is a picture of the fulcrum point (D), the grand idea (D) that is hidden by its manifestation (A).

0053 In spring, the fulcrum point (D), the grand idea, is Tiamat, mother and chaos.  Tiamat is the oneness of the natural forces of water on the earth.  In nature, chaos and fecundity are conjoined.  So, the addition of a little order (B), a little specialization, with a concomitant increase in productivity or influence, does not seem so bad.  As the comingling continues and the specialized offspring take on lives of their own (C), they conspire against the order that spawned them into existence in the first place.

In summer, the fulcrum point (D), Tiamat, is like a mother of a litter of kids that realizes that something is not right.  The kids have killed her original consort and built their party palace to celebrate his demise.  Like spoiled brats, each wants the largest room of a house that keeps expanding.  Each wants to receive better and better private benefits and impose more and more onerous public costs.  They sow the wind without knowing that they will reap the storm.

Tiamat (chaos and continuity) slowly transforms into Tiamat (chaos and discontinuity).  The latter Tiamat is what we think of when we hear the word, “chaos”.  The transition reflects greater and greater imbalances between gesellschaft and gemeinschaft.

In autumn, Tiamat behaves as Incarnate Chaos.  She empowers Kino, who is so monstrous that every chamber of the party palace trembles.

In winter, Kino is defeated.  Tiamat is subdued and her remains are used to construct the world in which Marduk rules the house of the gods.

0054 To me, the seasonal shifts in focal point (the house as a home) (A) and the fulcrum point (Tiamat substantially changes in the four seasons) (D) indicate that a manifestation of civilization (A) is not the same as its underlying conceptual being (D).

0055 The cycles for B and C work together.

Here is a picture of the seasons for “gesellschaft” (B).

Here is a diagram for the seasons for “gemeinschaft” (C).

0056 In the spring, an initial articulation of order (Absu, father) (B) comingles with natural chaos and continuity (Tiamat, mother) (D) and produces communities (offspring) (C).  What does this imply?  Gesellschaft (B) opens the door for specialized community (C).  Within a generation or two, that specialized community feels organic (C), because practice accrues implicit abstractions and implicit abstraction is how we evolved to live.

Early inventions in civilization offer examples.  The pottery wheel increases productivity in throwing clay vessels.  The Absu figure (B, gesellschaft) sees that making a clay pot involves repetitive circular motion.  The pottery wheel is an invention that explicitly abstracts this circular motion.  I suspect that speech-alone talk is crucial for labeling the circular motion independently of the making of a pot.  Throwing pottery using pottery wheels becomes a specialization, with its own group interests (C, gemeinschaft) that works to corral business and restrict competitors (B, gesellschaft).

0057 In the summer, the spawned gemeinschaft (C) shut down the possibility of further inventions in the specialization(B).  These actions are explained with terminology that is familiar to the originating order (B) and alien to the originating chaos (D).

Why do I say that the offspring build a party palace on the grave of Absu?

Each room in a party house expresses its own theme.  So the murder of an originating order coincides with the elevation of various specialized orders (gesellschaft).  Each justifies its own group (gemeinschaft).

In the case of the pottery wheel, I suspect that specialists in using one type of pottery wheel (gemeinschaft) rule out any improvements or adjustments to the pottery wheel (further gesellschaft).  Plus, they limit who can use the pottery wheel, thus restricting production to the specialized group (gemeinschaft).  These restrictions rely on other specialists, who are devoted to enforcing such restriction.  Then, this feedback loop takes on a life of its own.  Those who enforce restrictions also strive to restrict entrance into their own markets.

Oh, is there an opportunity for another specialization?

This specialization aims to threaten all other specializations, while demanding payment for “protection”.

0058 In the autumn, gesellschaft strives to articulate an answer to the question, “Who is going to provide order?”

Gemeinschaft responds with Kino, a monster among monsters, consisting of an alliance of political groups successfully dominating or co-opting other alliances.

Do I detect a protection racket?

0059 In the winter, Marduk (a figure expressing the order of a general will, coinciding with gesellschaft) battles Kino (a figure expressing an alliance of specialized groups, each grasping for what it needs to prosper no matter what, coinciding with gemeinschaft in the style of Machiavellian political union).

0060 My conclusion?

Diesen is on target in suggesting that his theory of civilization, here re-articulated as Diesen’s Greimas square, applies to the origin mythologies of ancient civilizations.

But, does that validate Diesen’s Greimas square?

What do other contemporary political philosophers say?

0061 Chapter two, on the rise and fall of civilizations, concludes.

What has this examination contributed to Diesen’s approach to theorizing civilisation?

0062 First, the factors that Diesen (following Tonnies) identifies compose a distinction within a unity.  In our current Lebenswelt, gesellschaft and gemeinschaft are distinct, even though they cannot be separated.  The ability to operate according to a distinction within a unity belongs to the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.  It is manifest in hand-speech talk,which is practiced from the start of our own species until the first singularity (around 7800 years ago).  Hand-speech talkis the first tool of the intellect for Homo sapiens.

0063 Second, just as hand-speech is a tool for coordinating minds, Diesen’s distinction is a tool for imagining civilizational attributes, such as politics, economics, religion and so forth.  Indeed, terms associating to gesellschaft and gemeinschaft occupy two slots in Diesen’s Greimas square.  The distinction inherent in humanity’s first intellectual tool is reflected in the labels that we apply to civilisational attributes.  Gemeinschaft is like the hand-talk component of hand-speech talk.  Gesellschaft is like the speech-component of hand-speech talk.

For these reasons, Diesen’s key terms command the items occupying slots B and C in a purely relational structure, the Greimas square, which serves as an intellectual tool in our current Lebenswelt for characterizing how a focal word or phrase (A) holds its place in spoken language, defined by Saussure as two arbitrarily related systems of differences.

0064 Here is a picture of Diesen’s Greimas square.

0065 Third, Diesen’s theory includes cyclic time.  The items occupying slots A and D modify or develop during the each season, spring, summer, autumn and winter.  Seasonality, too, is evolutionarily ancient.  The Homo genus is adapted to reading the signs of the seasons.  Our kind lives in a world perfused with signs that we recognize as natural.

Corresponding, Diesen’s Greimas square may be used to construct a vision for each season in a civilisational cycle.  This is important because civilisational cycles commence the moment any hand-speech talking culture fully embraces speech-alone talk.

0066 In this regard, anthropologists may compare early cultural developments in the Ubaid archaeological period of southern Mesopotamia (0-1880 U0′) to cultural developments occurring in North America 4200 years after the start of the first singularity.  See Razie Mah’s blog for March 2023, titled Looking at David Graeber and David Wengrow’s Chapter (2021) “Why the State Has No Origin” and the Razie Mah’s e-book, Comments On David Graeber and David Wengrow’s Book (2021) “The Dawn of Everything”, available at smashwords and other e-book venues.

0067 Fourth, the third point has been demonstrated by imagining the items for Diesen’s Greimas square for the four seasons inherent in a written Babylonian origin story, concerning how Marduk becomes the head of the city’s pantheon.

0068 Fifth, I raise the question, “How resilient is Diesen’s Greimas square?  What do other contemporary theorists say?”

Another theorist working in this field is the Russian political philosopher, Alexander Dugin.

Not too long ago, a Canadian graduate student in philosophy decided to write his dissertation on the works of Alexander Dugin.  Half his faculty committee quit, including two mavens of Leo Strauss.  This establishment reaction to Dugin is currently typical in jurisdictions of American Big Government (il)Liberalism.  The candidate, Max Millerman, only appeared to be free to choose his topic for dissertation.  (Il)liberalism offers the appearance of free choice (liberalism) within its constraints of regulatory control (il-).

Is there another word for (il-)?

How about the word “hypocrisy”?

0069 Nonetheless, in point 0044 of Looking at Michael Millerman’s Chapter (2022) “…Dimensions of Dugin’s Populism”appearing in Razie Mah’s blog on February 17, 2023, the following figure appears.

0070  Surely, this diagram, based on Dugin’s exploration of a fourth political theory touches base with Diesen’s Greimas square.

The focal word (A) is an attribute of civilisation.  The people are the ones who stand before God, rather than a king or a high priest representing the people to the gods and the gods to the people.  This is not about so-called “democracy”.  The “people” is a theo-political construction.

The first contrast (B) associates to gesellschaft.  For example, when Jesus asks his followers, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” (recorded in Matthew 16:13), the question obviously asks for opinions fashioned by the various political big-wigs of the day.  Jesus refers to himself using a political term, “Son of man”.

The contradiction to the first contrast (C) associates to gemeinschaft.  According to Dugin, “narod” is a Russian word referring to the pre-political community in our current Lebenswelt.  These folk really do not have the vocabulary to articulate an answer to the second question of Jesus, asking, “Who do you say that I am?”  They are dumbstruck because the obvious answer, “You are the one who we follow.”, is completely tautological.

D, the contrast to C, the complement to B and the contradiction to A (remember, “contradiction” literally means “speaking opposite to”) is Dugin’s theoretical term, “ethnos”.  Ethnos (D) is a grand idea.  Why?  It cannot exist.  Yet, it is crucial for our self-understanding.

Ethnos corresponds to us, in the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.  Ethnos is us, in a world of… what Saint Thomas would describe as… original justice.

0071 A world of original justice?

See Comments on Daniel Houck’s Book (2020) “Aquinas, Original Sin and The Challenge of Evolution”, by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues. 

0072 So, what does that mean?

Do Dugin’s and Diesen’s Greimas squares complement one another?

The question in point five (appearing at 0067) has an answer, saying, “Yes, Diesen’s Greimas square, which incorporates the key words, ‘gemeinschaft’ and ‘gesellschaft’, as well as cyclic time, is resilient and contemporary political theorists propose similar structures.”

0073 Thus, I conclude my examination of part one of Diesen’s book.

0074 Part two of Diesen’s book concerns the rise and fall of political liberalism.  Chapter three opens with a discussion of Western civilisation as an amalgam of political liberalism and nationhood.

What is another word for political liberalism?

Does “pluralism” suffice?

0075 In 1828 AD, French politician and historian Francois Guizot publishes A General History of Civilisation in Europe,in which he proposes that the unity and the advancement of civilisation are founded on conformity to a great idea.

Surely, such a great idea goes into slot D in Diesen’s Greimas square.

The fulcrum point is a great idea.  The fulcrum point balances on a theme.

0076 What about Western civilization?

Diesen suggests that the idea is pluralism, as defined by a balance between liberalism and conservatism.

But, I don’t think that pluralism is the great idea (D).  I think that is is a focal point (A).

Correspondingly, liberalism slides into the slot for gesellschaft (B) and conservatism goes into the slot for gemeinschaft(C)

0077 How so?

Liberals fixate on rational choices.  People are rational actors.

Should I correct myself?

Liberals (B) fixate on opportunities that appear to be rational at the time.  So do illiberals, such as fascists and communists, as well as (il)liberals, such as American big government (il)liberals (“bigilibs”, for short).

Also, conservatives (C) fixate on apparently irrational, religious and cultural traditions that are familiar to their communities.  The conservatives may go so far as to insist that there is an object that brings everyone… oh, more than that… all creation… into relation.  God brings all things into relation, including and especially us, because we are the only creatures in the universe who seem to be aware of this ultimate relational being.

0078 So, if pluralism is the focal word (A), then what would be the theme, the great idea (D), that satisfies Guizot’s vision?

Whatever the theme is, it would enter the slot for D.

0079 Here is a picture of Diesen’s Greimas square, at this moment.

0080 According to Diesen, the purpose of chapter three is to explore the rise of Western civilisation (spring and summer) and threats from contemporary dogmas of liberal absolutism, universalism and civic nationalism.

0081 His declaration of intent inspires me to ask, “Who is sovereign?”

The individual is sovereign in liberal absolutism.

A political idea, what Dugin calls an “-sim”, is sovereign in universalism.

A nation-state is sovereign in civic nationalism.

Oh, lest I forget, international corporations are sovereign in globalism.

0082 Ah, I now know what goes into slot D.

0083 Here is Diesen’s view of Western civilisation, since the time of who?  Machiavelli?  Martin Luther?  Thomas Hobbes?

0084 For each of these figures, Western civilization, often called “Christendom”, is already old.  The longest living institutions are ethnic and religious.  Both contribute to the sovereignty of the nation-state, along with a wide range of other loyalties.  Loyalties extend to the church, the king, the barons, the trade guilds and other political actors.  The word, “religion”, is used to describe competing Christian (but also political) factions.  The (so-called) thirty years war resolves the contested loyalties with the Peace of Westphalia (1648 AD).

The Peace of Westphalia concludes the spring of sovereignty (D) with a treaty elevating the king as sovereign within each jurisdiction.  Plus, jurisdictions are primarily territories of common ethnic, religious and linguistic traditions.

0085 Here is the spring of sovereignty for the West.

0086 The summer starts with the so-called “Western Enlightenment”.  Pluralism enters the picture as the balance between liberals (we, the individuals) and conservatives (we, the people).  The summer of pluralism peaks during the time of the French and American Revolutions.  After that, the West rushes into the mechanical revolution, which empowers individuals and disempowers the people.

Individuals gain sovereignty.  Liberals insist on the rights of the individual.  Rights are often enumerated in constitutions.  Constitutions exemplify gesellschaft.  Prepolitical ethnic religiosity erodes. The term, “secular”, as a way to label irreligious liberals, appears in the English lexicon around 1860, at the end of the summer of sovereignty.

0087 In Western Europe, autumn begins with the consolidation of Germany and Italy, as well as the rise of divisive political movements (including Marxism).  In America, autumn opens with the War of Southern Rebellion and the War of Northern Aggression.  The war is anything but civil, which is the label that gets attached to the conflict, fifty years later.  With this precedent, I re-label the First and Second World Wars as the First and Second Battles of the Enlightenment Gods, the Unexpected War Among Naive Mercantilists (Who Should Have Known Better) and The Hot War Among Fraternal Ideologies.

The natural and social sciences advance.  Educated secular liberals propose rational organizational objectives that demand sovereign power in order to implement.  Religious conservatives are more and more regarded as throwbacks to the superstitious attitudes of pre-scientific ages.

When Pope Leo XIII issues an encyclical decrying the errors of modernism, secular know-it-alls laugh.  Science demonstrates that ancient and Aristotelian explanations of the world do not withstand scientific scrutiny.  Fare thee well, Saint Thomas Aquinas.  It is too bad that you are no longer relevant.

Pluralism operates in name only, because both liberal and conservative elites share a common conviction that a centralizing government is the only authority capable of pursuing rational organizational objectives, such as urban planning (getting rid of ethnic Catholic neighborhoods in urban cities in USA’s “North”) and value-free education(replacing an apparently irrational Bible with principles that every rational agent would agree with).  The revisionist historian, Dr. E. Michael Jones, writes book after book on these topics.  All are entertaining.  All describe how both liberal and (so-called) conservative elites operate against religious folk, of all stripes, during these times.

0088 Here is a diagram for autumn.

0089 In chapter four, Diesen discusses the winter.  He calls it, “the graveyard” of sovereignty.

0090 Diesen starts chapter four, titled “The Postmodernist Graveyard of Western Civilization”, with the claim that postmodernism is the epitome of excessive liberty.

But, what is “liberty”?

What is the meaning, presence and message₁ underlying the spoken word₂?  Can one have too much liberty?  What about responsibility?  Does “liberty” without “responsibility” equal “an excess”.  Or, does it equate to a gesellschaft-based manipulation of a term as a way to deceive those who regard the term according to gemeinschaft-based tradition.

0091 An educated person stands in the university hallway.

I address the authority, saying, “Oh, most academically certified person, what is the message of liberty?”

The warlock replies, “Do what thou wilt.”

Postmodernism takes liberty with language itself, the foundation of gesellschaft.

0091 Pluralism has a new name.  Diversity excludes those who do not celebrate the transformation of the word, “pluralism”.  It is not enough to accept the substitution.  One must “celebrate” it.

Here, I launch from Diesen’s platform, with a scholastic version of a triple-twist.  Let us see whether I can land this feat of mental gymnastics.

Here is the picture.

0092 I speak of the USA.

In the current winter of sovereignty, “diversity” replaces “pluralism” (A).  This implies that one must accept the gesellschaft’s linguistic game in order to even address the focal word, the civilizational attribute, under consideration. Those who do not embrace “diversity” are bigots, phobes, supremacists, and otherwise deplorable (C).  These labels come from bigilibs (B), who cannot rationally defend their postmodern ideologies, which are founded on a new style of science, which I call “interventional science”.  An interventional science promotes models of nature and society that support organizational objectives.  These organizational objectives demand sovereign power.  Otherwise, they would never be implemented.  They do not arise spontaneously.  Instead, these objectives must be broadcast and cultivated, before conformity is harvested.

“Deplorables” (a term coined by presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016) labels those who were ridiculed, by president, Barack Obama, as stupid and backwards people who cling to their guns and religion (the second and first amendments to the American Constitution).

Both of the named bigilibs are globalists, suggesting that sovereignty no longer resides in the individual or the people or the state.  Instead, sovereignty rests in international actors who finance political campaigns and ballot-counting operations in a rigged exercise of so-called “democracy”.  Just like the word, “liberty”, holds a novel, technical definition, so does the word, “democracy”.

0093 Ooof!

That was my landing.

0094 Now, for a little humor.

Comedy is frozen in the winter of sovereignty.

The funny part is that there is no humorous name for bigilibs, because even to say the word, “bigilib” is to identify oneself as incapable of the conformity required by postmodern ideologues.  The adjective, “secular”, will not do, because “secular” means “I am not religious”.  There is no label for “I am religiously not religious.”, especially when the second word, “religious”, means “claiming membership in a Christian faction”.

This comedian has a suggestion.  “Judeo-Pagan” sounds just as legitimate as the term, “Judeo-Christian”.  Plus, the term fits the conceptual claim that “I am religiously not a member of a Christian faction”.  Additionally, the Judeo-prefix adds the Old Testament theme that God (whoever that is) will take retribution on His Enemies, which, for Judeo-Pagans, are Judeo-Christians.

This uncanny logic is on display in the March 2023 issue of the magazine, First Things, where a columnist, Liel Leibovitz, contributes an opinion piece titled, “We Are All Jews Now”.   His point of view coincides with Diesen’s use of the term, “gemeinschaft”, as well as the term, “Judeo-Christian”.  Indeed, Liebovitz writes that America’s Judeo-Christians currently are in the same alienating situation that Jews have found themselves in, over and over again, since the um… well… how should I say it?… theodramatic incident.

You know, the one that the prophets warned about.

Notably, writing from the gemeinschaft stance, Leibovitz cannot see that the other side of the “holy war, waged by fanatics who won’t stop until their chosen beliefs are the only ones permitted to be proclaimed”, also contains of Jews. Very wealthy “secular” Jews patronize amazingly deviant pagans, such as the mavens of social justice, critical theory and social construction.

Judeo-Pagans ride the wave of unfettered financial capitalism, which will be discussed shortly.

Judeo-Pagans are the new gesellschaft, who, in the winter of sovereignty alienate their corresponding gemeinschaft.  Their (il)liberal policies aim to convey the impression of individual autonomy while maintaining censorial regulatory control of public discourse.

Judeo-Pagans are the new gesellschaft, who, in the summer of geoeconomics, support big government programs that impoverish people who work for a living, elevate people who comply with their system by pursuing careers requiring certification, and insisting on open borders.

If Americans are “All Jews Now”, then they are divided into a dominant gesellschaft and a reactionary gemeinschaft, that is, Judeo-Pagans and Judeo-Christians.

0095 Is humor is a dish best served cold?

0096 In 2023, when gesellschaft experts label gemeinschaft as reprehensible, using all sorts of nasty terms, well-funded corporate broadcasters and other minions of big government (il)liberalism take the accusations seriously, even though they are only true in the novel technical senses of the words.  

When gemeinschaft-loving comedians label gesellschaft-certified experts, as “Judeo-Pagan”, everyone is supposed to smile and chuckle.  But, not everyone is amused.

0097 Before proceeding to part three, on the rise and fall of economic liberalism, allow me to recapitulate the rise and fall of political liberalism (part two) using the Greimas square modified for Diesen’s approach to theorizing civilisation.

0098 The key word, labeling an attribute of civilization, is pluralism (A).  Pluralism outwardly manifests the changes of the season.

Here is the picture for Western civilisation from the point of view of the USA.

0099 Each of these statements addresses the question, “What is pluralism?”

“Pluralism” is a spoken word, whose meaning, presence and message change according to the civilisational season.  In the winter season, the word, “pluralism”, is replaced by apparently similar (yet substantially different) term, “diversity”.

0100 Why aren’t conservatives simply “uneducated” in the winter of sovereignty?

Why are they deplorable?

Well, wealthy educated (il)liberals, who occupy most of the federal institutions, including interstate corporations, have a way of buying now and paying later.  The method increases the amount of money that the Federal Treasury owes, under the stipulation that the same amount of fiat currency will eventually be printed by the Federal Reserve Bank, who is currently the main purchaser of loans from the Federal Treasury.  In short, the money borrowed by the Federal Treasury to implement big government (il)liberal objectives may eventually end up as money in circulation, courtesy of the Federal Reserve.

0101 What does this imply?

The so-called “deplorables” are left holding the bag, because they have to either pay the Federal Reserve Bank the amount that the bank printed in order to purchase the Treasury Bills that foreigners, who have figured out the scam, now refuse to buy or pay through inflation.

So, “diversity” means that pluralism is dead, because the ones saddled with the debt will, of course, be blamed for their ignorance of the ways that the meanings, presences, and messages of words have changed over the years.

0102 Here is a picture of the seasons for gesellschaft (B).

0103 Liberals promote individual autonomy.  Some would say, “individual sovereignty”.  Others would say “individual freedom”, without mentioning the concomitant, “and responsibility”.

This promotion sounds rational when compared to the irrational network of overlapping obligations that entangle the average European at the start of the 1600s.

This promotion sounds even better when some authorities start to claim the jurisdiction of other authorities, as if jurisdiction is a plump little lamb and the claimants are wolves (think vast monastic properties and ambitious barons aiming to establish their lordship over the same territories).

0104 When the bloodshed ends with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the notion of the individual is in the air, along with the image of pluralism, picturing a balance between people who are tolerant of others and people who are intolerant (that is, liberals and conservatives).  

By autumn, the educated liberals bask in the warmth of their own righteousness (after all, they are the tolerant ones) and recoil from the lack of interest by conservatives (who should be paying attention to the liberals, but are happily occupied with their own traditions).  In order to resolve this inequity, educated rationalists promote organizational objectives that require sovereign power to implement.  They will get their way even without buy-in by the inattentive conservatives.

0105 The USA North’s victory in the war of southern rebellion paves the way.

One hundred years after that victory, bigilibs are established in the large federal bureaucracies. The expansion of the federal government begins in earnest during the presidency of Lyndon Baines Johnson.

0106 Here is a diagram of the seasons for gemeinschaft (C).

0107 The American Constitution, particularly its first amendment, aims to separate religion from sovereign power.  The reason?  The thirty years of war preceding the peace of Westphalia involves a wicked mix of politics and religion.  Indeed, political action takes place under the guise of religious mandates.  Here, “religious” means “Christian factions”.

Of course, Christian factions do not appreciate the treaty of Westphalia.  The king decides which Christian factions are permitted and not permitted in his jurisdiction.  Members of certain factions (take a guess which ones) migrate to America and establish a new presence for the concept of pluralism.  The federal union of former colonies will not establish a religion (that is a Christian faction), but each state can promote or neglect whatever religion they wish.

Conservatives, preserving and promoting their own religions, are we, the people.

0108 Just as the term, “individual autonomy” (spring) shifts to “individual sovereignty” (summer) then to “individual freedom as opposed to belonging to a backwards-looking religious sect” (autumn) then to “individual freedom without responsibility” (winter), the term, “religious” (spring) shifts to “conservatives” (summer) to “Judeo-Christians, who don’t care about political action,” (autumn) to “Judeo-Christians, who conspire to impose their rigid beliefs upon the ‘freedom-loving’ bigilibs… or maybe I should say… Judeo-Pagans” (winter).

0108 Over and over, Diesen says that a civilisation starts to fail when the balance between gesellschaft (specialties that name political, religious and other cultural things) and gemeinschaft (tradition, community, and all that goes into belonging) fails.

The balance rests on a fulcrum, a balance point, a grand idea, an organizing principle, that also changes through the seasons.

Here is a diagram of the seasons for the fulcrum-theme (D).

0109 At this point, I have described Diesen’s story in my own words.  For Diesen’s own words, the inquirer must consult the text of his book, titled The Decay of Western Civilisation and the Resurgence of Russia: Between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft.

0110 The economic overtones in the political cycle of Western civilisation are obvious.

Part three of Diesen’s book concerns the rise and the fall of economic liberalism.  

Economic liberalism asks the government to avoid market interventions.   The French call the attitude, “laissez faire”, roughly translated as “let the market do what it is going to do“.

0111 Okay, what does the corresponding Greimas square look like?

Laissez faire is a type of economic statescraft.  So, economic statescraft goes into A.

Neo-gesellschaft policies associate to B.  These policies propose rational interventions under the appearance that one is leaving the markets do what they are going to do.

The citizens (C) do not notice any problem, because they follow appearances.  For example, to an atheist, a religious ritual is pure appearance.  So, who is going to object to the il(liberal) nature of neo-gesellschaft policies?

The grand idea beneath economic statescraft (A) is geoeconomics (D).

0112 Here is Diesen’s Greimas square for geoeconomics (D).

0113 Diesen notes that economic statescraft (A) aims to advance the nation in terms of autonomy (freedom from dependence on other nation-states) and influence (by promoting dependence by other nation states).  Sovereign interventions occur in the face of international challenges (B).  Policy (B) imperatives include (B1) controlling strategic industries and (B2) transportation corridors, (B3) regulating financial and economic cooperation and (B4) preserving gemeinschaft and social cohesion.

Ah, this must mean that economic liberalism is a style of economic statescraft (A).

0114 Next, Diesen discusses the rise of Britain, the ascendancy of the USA and the geo-economics of Western Europe, starting around the 1850s.

What does this imply?

I recall a season in the civilizational cycle of political liberalism (that is, pluralism) starting around 1860 AD.  This season corresponds to autumn.

Here is a picture.

0115 Weirdly, the rise of economic liberalism (as portrayed by Diesen) seems to correspond to this same period.

0116 Now, when I consider these two Greimas squares, occurring at the same time, I realize that political and economic civilizational cycles may not directly correspond.  Autumn for one attribute may be spring for another.

0117 What about a slot by slot comparison?

Economic liberalism (A) compares to pluralism (in name only) (A).  In the former, there is a balance between gesellschaft and gemeinschaft, in so far as the entire nation benefits from rational policies (B1-B4).  In the latter , gesellschaft has dominion over gemeinschaft and the balance between the two is tottering, because “scientific” rationalist liberals define organizational objectives that promote their world rather than the world of “unscientific” conservatives.

Secular liberals propose rational organizational objectives (all of which increase the power of central planners (B)). Neo-gesellschaft oriented experts apply so-called “scientific” principles to increase productivity in both industry and agriculture (B).  Larger corporations are able to sustain the regulatory burdens better than small family-oriented businesses.

Religious conservatives are derided as backwards (C) even though, as citizens (C), they are doing pretty well as the state pursues objectives that lessen economic dependency on other nations and increases economic dependency by other nations.  Bureaucrats aim for a favorable “trade balance”.  Industrial capitalism pleases traditional conservative citizens.  Some of these citizens even put their money into banks, instead of under their mattresses.

Finally, the autumn of sovereignty (D) and the spring of geoeconomics (D) coincide.

0118 Now, I recapitulate this examination.

In part one, Diesen proposes a theory of civilization based on two insights, (1) the distinction between gemeinschaft and gesellschaft and (2) the theme of civilizational cycles.

My examination adds value to Diesen’s approach by incorporating both insights into a Greimas square, as follows.

0119 In part two, Diesen describes the rise and fall of political liberalism, using all four seasons.  Pluralism goes into slot A.  Sovereignty occupies slot D.

0120 In part three, Diesen throws a curve.  He portrays two seasons of economic statescraft in a manner that shifts the previous frame.

0121 Chapter five is titled, “The Rise of Western Geoeconomics as the Tool of Neo-Gesellschaft”.  This corresponds to the statescraft of industrial capitalism or restrained economic statescraft (A).

0122 Chapter six is titled, “Unconstrained Economic Liberalism: Death of Community and Society”.  This may be labeled the statescraft of financial capitalism or unfettered economic statescraft (A).

Terminology is evocative, as well as descriptive.

0122 The USA serves as the first violin, so to speak, in a two-violin concerto with the West’s opposition in the cold war among materialist ideologies.

In the summer of economic liberalism, the USA adopts an ideology of perpetual growth, where industrial and agricultural capitalism (of spring) is increasingly supplanted by financial capitalism (of summer).  Diesen uses the terms, “control capitalism” and “unfettered capitalism”.  The transition is completed during the presidency of Ronald Reagan.  One year after his second term ends, the third Battle of the Enlightenment Gods concludes.  The so-called “Cold War” ends.