Toynbee has many unusual and novel arguments. Here he takes on both the classical liberal argument re: increasing the division of labour and art elitists like @iohndee . He argues esotericism is always a failure as if the “uncreative majority” are owed access by the minority. https://t.co/yyjPZHXG79

I am not even being facetious. The impetus that leads a man to devote all his time and energy creating a game like Dwarf Fortress is the exact same creative force that built the pyramids and everything else. Women just prefer to do *something else*.
"@OGRolandRat https://t.co/9zEOSJw1dX" - Schembrox

Men build, women maintain. I have long held that women uphold any moral order, women typically are the best disciples also. Women can be devoted in a way that is missing in the male paths. So says the Baron.
"@OGRolandRat I agree.
Most will not see it, but contained within DF is whatever the drive is that you are describing. [It's still amusing nonetheless.]
Women's 'something else' is mostly social oriented maintenance interplay." - Schembrox

Happy new year all: https://t.co/5PcU23RF6g

The Forbidden Texts
Happy New Year (Chat Now Open)
Dear reader, apologies for my silence of late. I have been working on my new book The Prophets of Doom. I have until 1st February to get this in. I may post some snippets in the next month. It’s been a tough book to write. There are chapters on Giambattista Vico, Thomas Carlyle, Arthur de Gobineau, Brooks Adams, Oswald Spengler, Pitirim Sorokin, Arnold Toynbee, Julius Evola, John Bagot Glubb, Joseph Tainter and Peter Turchin. Each one of these figures both wrote a small library and has a small library of books and articles devoted to them in the secondary literature. In addition, a lot of these guys led quite interesting lives. I’ve been trying to thread a needle of providing a few interesting biographical tidbits in each chapter without letting these details take over the substance of the book which is an all-out assault on the Theory of Progress. As a flavour: Carlyle was one of the most famous men in Victorian England; Gobineau was a fallen aristocrat who was sent on a mission to Iran and then became obsessed with Persian culture; Adams was from the family of John Adams and came to be influential in Theodore Roosevelt’s inner circle, despite his reputation as a moody bastard; Spengler was a staunch loner but he did meet Hitler and died amassing old books and a collection of ancient Middle-Eastern weaponry; Sorokin was a revolutionary in Russia who even served in the Russian Provisional Government before overthrow and imprisonment by the Bolsheviks, he then was exiled to the USA where he came to be hated by his colleagues at Harvard and even instituted a coup of a American Sociological Society; Toynbee was a mega-star historian who was bitterly hated by professional historians, he also served British intelligence in both World Wars, and met Hitler who he low-key defended; Evola, I’m sure you’re aware of; Glubb led the Arab legion in Jordan and stayed loyal even after his attachment was over and became a global expert in Arabic history. As such, the task has been gargantuan — much bigger than the task I’d set myself in Populist Delusion.

I was hoping to do an article over Christmas called “On Spectacle and Power” about how and why power can use spectacle but dissidents cannot. Unfortunately, I’ve been sick and am just now re-emerging. This was a topic with which Shakespeare critics, especially the new historicists, were obsessed in the late 1970s and 1980s. You may have heard of Stephen Greenblatt, from whom I have often borrowed the idea of containment, but the original analysis of the use of spectacle for power was in a book by Stephen Orgel called The Illusion of Power (1975). Shakespeare studies for about 20 or 30 years might as well have been called “power studies”.
Anyway, all that is for next year. As a little New Year gift, I’ve opened the chat. I will try to use this feature in 2023. Have a good one all. Stay sensible, stay centred.
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Paging Hans-Hermann Hoppe and @RadicalLib . Here Toynbee points out that Democracy makes for more destructive wars and points out the limited nature of war under absolute monarchy. https://t.co/rQnJE6BQ74

Toynbee doesn’t that accept mass education has been a success. On the next page he says: “the people are in danger of falling under an intellectual tyranny engineered either by private exploitation or by public authority.” https://t.co/jNjhZ7IBSA

Poppycock. His direct comparison point is Napoleon and the aftermath of the French Revolution.
"@OGRolandRat @RadicalLib Also, the reason wars weren't so atrocious back then in the 18th c was because the means of fighting them was with less developed weapons - unlike in more contemporary times. It's got nothing to do with what royals would 'allowed' by their subjects." - Richard Madden

I don't have any "system" since in my view all power functions everywhere and always in the same way. It is just that democracy is the worst possible of all systems. See my book, The Populist Delusion, for more.
"@OGRolandRat I genuinely don't understand why you favour monarchy AA. You've posted pro-royalist sentiments in the past but you can't seem to grasp the royals of today are the total opposites of those in past centuries. This is why I think we should question why we should retain them." - Richard Madden

I'm afraid you've got a great uphill battle there. People like Christopher Ricks are still alive. John Carey is still alive. There are people with immense knowledge out there.
"My resolution: I will know more about poetry by the end of the year than any shitlib professor living." - Byronic Norwood Groyper

I am hearing that Sly Sneak will be gifting the world a New Year's present soon on AA Gold.

Every day Evola gains souls and grows stronger, every day he is one day closer to resurrection in dark necromancy ritual.
"Fucking Gatorade commercial lmao https://t.co/XjxFRlVDOn" - Florian Elwood