From nomadic dwellers to sedentary dwellers and from sedentary dwellers
to nomadic dwellers like Otto and his ilk in space (**|**)?
From nomadic dwellers to sedentary dwellers.
The transition from nomadic dwellers to sedentary dwellers took place
through the so-called „Neolithic Revolution“. Numerous cultural
innovations occurred as a result of the introduction of the productive
economy: it allowed man to become sedentary, cultivating the same soil
for several years; this, in turn, had as a consequence that he began to
construct solid houses, to design building concepts.
The first sedentary people developed the first cult of architecture
in the first cities, which were built as markets on rivers. The cuboid
became the basic element of architecture. The first sacred buildings were
also built, and polygonal wall construction began. This „immunological“
sphere served as protection against enemies, but also for the identity
of socio-economic communities.
The vegetation cycle „sowing, ripening, harvesting“ found
its expression in religious ideas and it was compared with the life cycle:
„birth, becoming, death“. With the beginning of the producing
economy a strong population increase was connected: by the cultivation
of grain and by the later animal husbandry more humans could be fed; this
larger becoming community could manage again more fields, with which again
more humans found nourishment etc.. This also gave man a different relationship
to land, which he had to constantly claim and hold in his possession if
he wanted to cultivate it in the long term. From this arose not only other
relationships to property, but also claims to power and thus conflict
with neighboring communities. Group aggression, which is hardly ever found
among hunter-gatherer peoples, was the result.
Instead of just gathering what nature yields, sedentary people grow
grain and raise livestock - it should be remembered that this ability
to produce agricultural food has remained a foundation to our present
day. Since the time when grain was grown and domestic animals were bred
to increase the food supply, farmers have been able to stay in one place
year-round, including building large permanent dwellings to house many
implements. The breeding of domestic animals was already practiced by
some of the nomads in the Upper Paleolithic - perhaps they were semi-sedentary
(semi-nomads) - but this was done more for reasons of specialized hunting,
that is, for reasons more of the appropriating than the producing mode
of economy. Through the producing mode of economy the domestic animal
breeding got a second aspect, which however should have much more far-reaching
consequences than the first aspect. A third aspect was also to be added
later: Domestic animal breeding for luxury reasons or comfort reasons.
Satyr wrote:
„Kultur wrote:
»If two different nations, which are closely related to each
other, have different opinions about Kultur/culture and Zivilisation/civilisation
or even about Kultur and culture, sometimes also about Zivilisation
and civilisation, because already the meanings of these words are
not congruent, then this is even more true for two different Kulturen/cultures
or Zivilisationen/civilisations. The linguistic differences between
the peoples are like different accents of a (universal) language,
a language family etc., where each language, so to speak, acts similarly
to a „net“ thrown over reality (in the different linguistic
communities the meshes of this net are not of the same size and do
not run everywhere in the same way); and even finer differences, fine-tunings,
so to speak, e.g. dialects (geo[graphic-]linguistic), sociolects (sociolinguistic),
even idiolects ([ego-]idiolinguistic).« **
**
.... Greek has no word for culture other than the one mores adopted
from the Latin languages »koultoura«,
for culture, and for civilization »politismoV«
which is etymologically rooted in the concept of urbanity and governance.
....“ **
Yes, „koultoura“ is a loanword
- a word borrowed from other languages - which indicates that what culture
actually means has been completely lost in Greek. There are many such
examples. And it is a great pity when precisely a cultural folk („Kulturvolk“
in German) like the Greeks are affected by this. The ancient Greek language
lasted for a long time, but towards the end of that time it gradually
became „civilized“, thus deformed. Even the ancient Romans valued
the ancient Greek language more than their own language for a long time
- this changed gradually only since the 1st century BC. Besides Greek,
there is another cultural language („Kultursprache“ in German):
German. I hope that German will not suffer the same fate as ancient Greek
did. But it looks like that it will, and the internet accelerates this
process. English, which has already been shortened to the bare essentials,
is obviously considered a model. This can be observed especially on the
internet too.
But „politismoV“
for civilization is interesting. Why did it get just this word?
Satyr wrote:
„The Greeks used »paideia«
to refer to the habits and training a culture imposes upon a man to
cultivate him into its ideal citizen in a civilization.“ **
Do you know the work „Paideia“ of the German classical philologist
Werner Jaeger (1888-1961), first published in 1934? Jaeger has taken the
title of his probably best-known book with an ancient Greek word (although
not in ancient Greek letters), thus leaving it untranslated, which is
sometimes preferable (what I have also said with regard to the German
word „Kultur“). The book is recommended.
During my studies I also dealt with Greek education, especially Spartan
education. To do that, you can't get around knowing the meaning of the
word.
This study was also about the poems of Tyrtaios. In a seminar I also
dealt with the poems of Tyrtaios. I got a certificate of study for that.
I still remember it very clearly, although it was a very long time ago.
Satyr wrote:
„We are currently moving into a phase where terms like »male/female«
are being detached from a shared reality, converted to obscure metaphorical
ideas/ideals that can mean anything because they are unrestricted by
the tangible world - by natural order.“ **
Agreed.
Satyr wrote:
„So, in the spirit of "bringing it all back down to earth"
all terms must be defined by reconnecting them to a shared experiential
referent, to maintain dialogue, even if in disagreement, as rational
and pragmatic as possible.“ **
Yes. And it must also be filled with „life“.
But that's where I - like Spengler - see one of the problems: If the culture
can no longer be „lived“, then it simply can not be brought
back.
Satyr wrote:
„Kultur wrote:
»I have already indicated in the opening post how Spengler
understands Kulturen (plural form of ›Kultur‹). For Spengler,
Kulturen are ›living units‹, and these ›living units‹
live their cycle like other living beings, ›real living beings‹
(creatures), as the colloquial language would say. Spengler understands
cultures (Kulturen) in such a way, as I said it above: as an umbrella
term, as ›hyperonomy«or ›superordination‹, as
the linguists say.« **
**
To put it in my linguistic context »culture« is to the
superorganism what »spirit« is to an organism, viz., the
mind/body/nervous system expressed outwardly as actions/behaviours,
attitude/demeanour, art/semiotics (including language).“ **
Yes, this can be said. And to the „spirit“ I would add the
„soul“. Or do you equate the soul with the spirit?
Satyr wrote:
„Kultur wrote:
»From Spengler's (and also my) point of view, Zivilization
is the downfall of a Kultur, its unfruitfulness (childlessness, infertility),
its nihilism, its decadence. The Kultur does not become something
completely different when it becomes Zivilization. It remains the
same, but just becomes its Weltstädte (World cities, cosmopolitan
cities), its own form of unfruitfulness (childlessness, infertility),
nihilism, decadence, its downfall, its decline, its decay, its senility,
its dementia.« **
**
Therefore, we might say that »civilization« is the final
phase of a culture - its highest achievement, displayed through urbanization,
regimentation, sclerotic rigidity losing flexibility/adaptability -
just as an organism when it grows old - cocooning itself in its own
past; unable to respond efficiently to environmental changes.“
**
Exactly.
Satyr wrote:
„Kultur wrote:
»Not to be separated from a culture is its Ursymbol (›primal
symbol‹) and its Seelenbild (›soul image‹), both of
which are coupled to the landscape surrounding the culture, because,
according to Spengler, the experience of spatial depth is decisive:
›The fate-directed life appears, as soon as we awake, in
the sense life as felt depth. Everything stretches, but it is not
yet 'the space', nothing solidified in itself, but a constant stretching
from the moved here to the moved there. The experience of the world
is exclusively linked to the essence of depth - of distance - whose
pull in the abstract system of mathematics is called 'third dimension'
besides length and width. .... The experience of depth is - on this
insight everything else depends - a completely involuntary and necessary
as well as completely creative act, through which the I receives
its world, I would like to say dictated to it.‹
- Oswald Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes, 1918-1922,
S. 217-218 (translated by me). **
›The depth experience stretches the sensation to the world.
The being directed of the life was called with meaning as non-reversibility
and a rest of this decisive characteristic of the time lies in the
compulsion to be able to feel also the depth of the world always
from itself, never from the horizon to itself. The moving body of
all animals and of man is designed towards this direction. One moves
»forward«- towards the future, approaching with every
step not only the goal, but also the age - and feels every look
backward also as the look at something past, already ordered to
the history.‹
- Oswald Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes, 1918-1922,
S. 223-224 (translated by me). **
Without landscape, without depth experience, without primal symbol,
without soul image, without relative selfhood (selfreference), without
a breed as cultivation, as culture (!), Kultur in Spengler's sense
is not understandable.« **
**
Space being a defining characteristic of the »Faustian spirit«
- »space« in the Heidegger sense of expanding possibilities,
within which matter/energy is but an appreciation of probability, or
heightened possibility.
Space in the context of a SuperOrganism - with a distinct culture is
its spatio-temporal field of effect - its psychosomatic aura, i.e.,
a field of increased interactivity similar to that of a magnetic field
cast by a solar mass - or in Nieatzchean terms its »will to power«.
The DNA is to an organism what semiotics, i.e., art, language, is
to a superorganism - its genotype; civilization is the phenotype.“
**
Do you mean by „superorganism“ culture (Kultur) too? Do you
mean by „civilization“ „Zivilisation“ in Spengler's
sense or just in the English sense? If you mean that semiotics/language
as the geonotype of a culture (as a superorganism!) and the phenotype
as the civilization, then you are assuming that both culture and civilization
started at the same time, just as genotype and phenotype do. A genotype
is that which is and will be and will have become at some point, and a
phenotype is that which seems, looks, is describable as a phenomenon.
Thus, you do not distinguish culture and civilization on the temporal
level because they both appear and disappear at the same time. Is that
right?
Satyr wrote:
„Kultur wrote:
»The English word ›civilization‹ never means the
German word ›Kultur‹ in Spengler's sense, but denotes only
a part of it, its final stage, which may or may not be subdivided
again into sub-stages, if one wishes.« **
**
Just as the English word »truth« - from the Latin »veritas«,
does not capture the meaning in the Greek term aletheia, »aleqeia«.“
**
Wikipedia wrote:
„The English word truth is derived from Old English tríewþ,
tréowþ, trýwþ, Middle English trewþe,
cognate to Old High German triuwida, Old Norse tryggð. Like troth,
it is a -th nominalisation of the adjective true (Old English tréowe).
The English word true is from Old English (West Saxon) (ge)tríewe,
tréowe, cognate to Old Saxon (gi)trûui, Old High German
(ga)triuwu (Modern German treu »faithful«), Old Norse tryggr,
Gothic triggws,[4] all from a Proto-Germanic *trewwj- »having
good faith«, perhaps ultimately from PIE *dru- »tree«,
on the notion of »steadfast as an oak« (e.g., Sanskrit da´ru
»(piece of) wood«). Old Norse trú, »faith,
word of honour; religious faith, belief« (archaic English troth
»loyalty, honesty, good faith«, compare Ásatrú).
Thus, »truth« involves both the quality of »faithfulness,
fidelity, loyalty, sincerity, veracity«, and that of »agreement
with fact or reality«, in Anglo-Saxon expressed by soþ (Modern
English sooth).“
All Germanic languages besides English have introduced a terminological
distinction between truth »fidelity« and truth »factuality«.
To express »factuality«, North Germanic opted for nouns
derived from sanna »to assert, affirm«, while continental
West Germanic (German and Dutch) opted for continuations of wâra
»faith, trust ...«.“
English, German, Latin, Greek, and almost all other languages of Europe,
as well as West Asia, South Asia, and to a lesser extent Central Asia,
share the same linguistic root, which is called Indo-Germanic because
it is meant to designate the westernmost region (Iceland) and the easternmost
region (India). Political correctness has done a great job here, too,
and made Indo-Germanic into „Indo-European“.
The following film (posted by you): **.
Satyr wrote:
„Kultur wrote:
»If one means the German word ›Kultur‹ in Spengler's
sense, one should not use the English word ›civilisation‹
(›civilization‹). Also the English word ›culture‹,
as I already said, does not exactly denote what the German word ›Kultur‹
in Spengler's sense denotes.« **
**
I've tried to incorporate such subtle ways of indicating nuances,
but it is hard when dealing with a variety of people rigidly defending
their prejudices.“ **
Their prejudices are consequences of their obedience
to authority, their weakness, their convenience, their comfort, their
pampering.
Buddhism is a doctrine of salvation according to which everything in
the world is impermanent, without self (persistent substance) and therefore
suffering (unsatisfactory). Each individual being is a transient combination
of factors of existence that spring up and disappear again according to
eternal laws in functional dependence on each other (cf. Dharma). Since
no good or bad action remains without effect, every stream of individual
life finds its continuation according to the Kharma after death in a new
existence. Moral action leads to gradual purification; realization and
annihilation of thirst (will to live) to liberation, to nirvana.
Nirvana already played an important role for the Brahmins. It is the
state that can already be reached during one's lifetime through the disappearance
of the life drive, which makes rebirth impossible after dying. Nirvana
is understood by the Brahmins as the absorption of the individual soul
(Atman) into the absolute (Brahman), by the Buddhists as an incomprehensible
state of bliss, in which all factors of existence that condition an individual
existence are finally annulled, so that being in Nirvana is equivalent
to nothingness.
Is that something to strive for?
Satyr wrote:
„Kultur wrote:
»But „politismoV“ for
civilization is interesting. Why did it get just this word?«
** **
I don't understand the question.“ **
Satyr wrote:
„Kultur wrote:
»And it must also be filled with ›life‹. But that's
where I - like Spengler - see one of the problems: If the culture
can no longer be ›lived‹, then it simply cannot be brought
back..« **
**
Nothing can ever be brought back exactly as it was - even recollection
has an element of something being lost in time.
I do not even believe in the eternal recurrence, or in reincarnation.
Even if the cosmos goes in cycles it does not repeat in exactly the
same way, due to the factor of chaos, i.e., randomness.
Every cycle is slightly different, so every repetition of a culture
is never like the preceding one.
Without the factor of chaos not only is there no free-will but consciousness
is irrelevant - the universe is described as a tape that repeats eternally
and nothing, not even a god, can change it. It describes existence as
a joke.“ **
Neither Spengler nor I said that something can be brought back.
Satyr wrote:
„Culture = genotype. Inherited memories, across the ages.
Civilization = phenotype. How the genotype, or these memories, reveal
themselves in the present.“ **
Okay.
We need to know our different definitions - for reasons of understanding.
For me, civilization is that temporal part of culture in which culture
descends, like the sun since the equinox at the transition from summer
to autumn.
Accordingly, for me, civilization is a phenotype only then when the
culture is setting, descending, declining, sinking, falling.
Satyr wrote:
„Martin Heidegger wrote:
»With regard to the Latin name for the true, verum, we shall
keep two incidents in mind:
1. Verum, ver-, meant originally enclosing, covering.
The Latin verum belongs to the same realm of meaning as the Greek
alhqeV, the uncovered – precisely
by signifying the exact opposite of alhqeV:
the closed off.
2. But now because verum is counter to falsum, and because the essential
domain of the imperium is decisive for verum and falsum and their
opposites, the sense of ver-, namely enclosed and cover, becomes basically
that of covering for security against. Ver is now the maintaining-oneself,
the being-above; ver becomes the opposite of falling.
Verum is the remaining constant, the upright that which is directed
to what is superior because it is directing from above. Verum is rectum
(regere, ›the regime‹), the right, iustum.
For the Romans the realm of concealment and disconcealment does not
at all come to be, although it strives in that direction in ver, the
essential realm determining the essence of truth. Under the influence
of the imperial, verum becomes forthwith ‘being-above,’
directive for what is right; veritas is then rectitude, ‘correctness,’
we would say.
The originally Roman stamp given to the essence of truth, which solidly
establishes the all-pervading basic character of the essence of truth
in the Occident, rejoins an unfolding of the essence of truth that
begin already with the Greeks and that at the same time marks the
inception of Western metaphysics.«
Heidegger studied „alethia“ very intensively and discovered
that it has to do with „Unverborgenheit“ („unconcealment“).
According to Heidegger, science and technology have inherently the character
of an organized assassination of hiddenness. Heidegger took the decisive
hint for the development of this view from the ancient Greek word for
truth, alethéia, which he translated as Un-Verbrogenheit (un-concealment)
- in one respect probably rightly, since it suggests itself to analyze
the expression as a composite of the word „lethe“, concealment,
mantling, forgetting, and the negation prefix „a“.
Satyr wrote:
„In Greek the term means to re-call - to call forth into lucid
memory - to negate forgetfulness, i.e., un-forgetting.“ **
Yes, as stated above. Heidegger has worked this out very well. Sometimes
two words which are the same in meaning develop into two words which are
opposite in meaning or even negate each other in meaning.
Satyr wrote:
„Kultur wrote:
»Their prejudices are consequences of their obedience to authority,
their weakness, their convenience, their comfort, their pampering.«
** **
Yes.
This is the basic principle of how I define how and why nihilistic schools
of thought emerge and evolve, viz., they emerge to protect individuals
form their own growing self-awarness, exposing them to new sources of
anxiety/suffering requiring the ego to be protected.
This is the fundamental principle connecting Marxism and Abrahamism
- other than the obvious: it erases racial/sexual distinctions unifying
the world's meek, i.e., the world genetically wronged; realizing they've
inherited poor genes that require much effort to be compensated.
Inheritors of poverty always desire to share wealth.
»Exploitation« is an intrinsic part of evolution and natural
selection. Man exploits other species, and hunters exploit the animals
they hunt and consume.
The world sinners, begging for salvation, corresponds to the world
workers, that must unite, across borders and creeds to create utopia,
or paradise on earth.
Both are distinctly anti-nature, offering alternative realities; one
in the beyond or in the occult hidden world, and the other in the eternal
imminent future which is always but a "day away" but is never,
ever, present; both gather to become a power all the worlds powerless;
both have a messianic mission, to save those they most despise in secret;
both must self-cotnradict to remain viable, their ideal man cannot survive
in a world full of competitors but envisions a coming world free from
all »tempters and temptations«where their ideal can finally
unfold uninterrupted, i.e., ideal men, in ideal circumstances, creating
ideal alternate realities - Christianity, for example, is founded on
an anti-traditinola family text, yet presents itself as defender of
family values; Marxism is founded on intelligentsia that secretly despises
the proletariat they pretend to want to raise to power.“ **
Yes, one always has to pay attention to the contrasts here too. Most
people don't even notice them. That's why they fall for it again and again.
Language itself is also filled with contrasts, and it has to be, because
the world it is supposed to depict is too.
|
Kommentare zu Kommentaren im Weltnetz 
),
humanity has a very high value. However, most humanists do not answer
the question of what humanity actually is. There are many others who,
for that reason or not, have arrived at an interpretation of humanity
that not only calls humanity into question, but even turns the very meaning
of the word upside down. But the original meaning itself is also not quite
clear, because already at the time when this word appeared - in antiquity
- mischief was done with it.
“ **
