Muh cyclical history

There are just too many factors to take into consideration, you can't just throw out "strong men create good times, weak men create hard times". For example Rome didn't fell because it was too good to live and people just decided to chill out.
There were Barbarian invasions, economic crisis ( mainly because of high taxation and inflation, it widened the gap between poor and rich, rich men just said fuck it and went to far away provinces to avoid taxmen, setting up independent fiefdoms). Reliance on slave labor hit hard when there was just no place to conquer and no nation to enslave and put to work.) Also when Vandals went to Africa they mainly fucked up sea trade routes creating more economical problems. I won't even talk about over-expansion of territory and over-spending on military. When they had shitton of land think about how would you administer such land and defend it. They barely had enough troops to stop local rebellions. What about the rise of Christianity? The Huns? The political instability where in a mere century more than 20 men became the emperor.

People who believe in this quote, OP, might know about history, but they do not understand it, do not research it.

Wrong. Non-human animals have not developed institutions, so unless hierarchy means whatever you want it to mean and refers to varying and disparate phenomenon nature is inherently non-hierarchical.

...

What else is there to do but point and laugh?

Sounds pretty specious. Where are his proofs?

PS
If you have friends who think this is a legit quote, just ask them questions, simple questions, about political instability, economical crisis, barbarian tribe migrations, about why roman empire had to reform it's military etc.. Very, simple, questions. And don't give them the answers, make them look stupid, they will eventually research the fall of the empire and find out about the questions you asked and the conflicts behind them. If you give them the answers they will just disagree with it. But this way you make them think dialectical.

There's nothing really to disprove. You should just remind them that the ancient men they worship were fucking reprobates.

2005 edition of ecology of freedom is where they talk specifically about eternal recurrence, but dialectical naturalism roots Becoming as something ontologically rooted in natural evolution also

...

Yes it totally isn't because of the constant civil wars, political instability, having TWO Capitals, Barbarian invasions, having Barbarians enlisted in the Army and the over extension of the Empire that led to Roman Empire crumbling

You're very stupid user.

What the fuck am I reading. That's a very nice way of saying "muh human nature". Bookchinfags constantly claim that Bookchin didn't actually threw Dialectical Materialism under the bus but how is it that every fucking thing I read from him does exactly that?

...

Because it has no basis in actual history.

Rome's collapse occurred for a massive collection of factors - many of which were totally out with it's capacity to deal with. The rise of the Christian Church, the inability to govern such a massive area of land, the divisions created in attempts to govern such a massive area of land, the emergence of stronger powers outside or within Rome, etc.

But the 'hard times create strong men' thing is also complete toss when you look at Byzantium. The 'hard times' of the Byzantine-Persian resulted in the complete collapse of Persia and saw half of Byzantine fall under Muslim rule - never fully recovering. This resulted in a long spiral into complete mayhem, with mass corruption and infighting from which Byzantine would never recover.

Do you even dialectics?

I want to say I'm surprised, but I'm really not. He's saying we need to make a society that has all of the good things that civilisation brings (second nature), without compromising the integrity of the environment.

Second nature isn't "human nature". Second nature is the human characteristics that put humans at a higher level of complexity.

shitpost flag

Of course, case to case there are many factors that influance how ages unfold but..
it does have a point, in the end what ruines empires is the empire itself as it falls into decadence.
How do you prevent decadence would be the question with many anwsers.
Then again, strifes of this board are far from reaching empires, perhaps just yet.

Lmao, what a mumbo-jumbo. The integrity of nature is constantly affected through evolution and environmental changes. There is no "natural" state of nature. Evolva tier reasoning. Nature isn't conscious.

I don't think you even understood Hegel

Rambling about what is natural and what not isn't really dialectic.

Wtf

So are a lot of animals.

I can now see why Bookchins appeals so much to NazBol

Reality.

Bruh, have you even read Hegel?

I've read him in German when I was in high school, user.

tell them to read this book

And yet you didn't understand this pretty simple dialectic. Let me spell it out for you:
Bookchin describes a dialectical relationship with what he calls first- and second nature, first nature being the natural environment and second nature being human civilisation. First nature and second nature are in conflict, you've probably heard something like this from environmentalists: humans destroy the environment, yada yada yada. At the same time, humans are reliant on the environment, since if it's destroyed we all die, and we generally like having grass growing and food to eat. What AnPrims usually say is that we need to go back to our first nature and become hunter gatherers, which Bookchin disagreed with strongly, being a materialist and a huge fanboy for civilisation. So he proposed instead a synthesis between these two concepts, by destroying capitalism and changing society to be more sustainable and the stewards of the environment so we don't end up destroying ourselves. This would eventually turn into full communism.
It seems pretty obvious, but ecology and the environment were not things that early marxists really wrote about, which makes sense considering the environmentalist movement only really got going in the sixties.

This to be frank.

Simplistic and idiotic way to see history

The cyclical model of history has one advantage over some other types that people ITT forget about: it's in motion. The question becomes: can the cycle be broken?

See Althusser's Macchiavelli and Us.

That is a kind of materialist theory tho.

Reality proves it's real.

Antifa only gets hard when a republican gets into office.

It isnt.

But if your on leftypol then you are likely to be a pathological optimist who thinks 'this ideology didnt work the last ten times we tried but Im sure it will work next time.

was bookchin deleuzian?

The OP image is idealist as fuck dude

...

t. the sort of person that Facebook likes things like the OP

History is pretty cyclical tough and the west is obviously experiencing some pretty harsh times.

Decadence is running rampant.Just look at popular culture.And androgyny is incredibly popular.These are all signs of a weakeaning and tired society.

And no.I'm not Holla Forums but culture matters.And Marx's cold economic look at the world never took that into consideration.Feel free to shit on me but the reason this board isn't as popular as it coukd be is clearly because you guys stick too much to politics.Most people don't care about a political critique of the world,or even an economic one.They care about cultural criticism.
Because trough culture even the most classcucked pleb(me) can most visibly see what porky and capitalism might have in store for us.

I might add that even class-consciousness is very much tied to the cultural as much as it is tied to the economic.

And yes,I've talking out of my ass here but if you really wanna change politics you have to start reimagining our cultural landscape first.

P.S:I would very much appreciate some books on what I've been nonsensically rambling about?

Only material conditions matter, cuck. People being 'weak and tired' are a symptom of misery, not a cause.

Also the ancient romans and greeks you probably idolize were gay as fuck and so are you. Faggot.

Oh, and read Adorno. You'll love him.

Read literally any historical text that's been academically verified and sourced

Is a concept pioneered by Christian slave morality - i.e., people who lived in their own shit and learned to 'like' doing so because they could never be in a state of material happiness.

Was a popular concept in art and culture during various great European cultures and was a hallmark of nearly every Greek revival all throughout European history.

Cultural is a byproduct of material conditions and thus fundamentally worthless to discuss without referencing back to material conditions

So you admit you're argument has no grounds?

Pro tip; if you make a claim, the burden of proof is upon you to provide the evidence - not anyone else

I'm quite surprised they would depict him with a small dick.
I always thought the Greeks represented animality with big dicks and virtue with small dicks.
I mean Appollo and the whole arts thing ok, but the fucking god of excesses?

That was allegorical, postulated through a rhetorical question. To act AS IF your life would eternally recur. It's not meant to be taken literally.

Good and Bad is relative to the past events, which means that "Good Times" might as well be "Hard Times" depending on the context you're referring to. Same with "Weak" and "Strong", there is no universal scale of how "Strong" someone is, its just a comparison to the current average that will be irrelevant couple years later and therefore serves no fucking historical purpose due to its ambiguity.

If we're talking strictly about timeline, then fuck that, I'd rather live in Ancient Rome than Modern-Day Middle East.

If we're talking about a country's timeline, then explain why aren't all those 3rd world countries in Africa superpowers now. They're supposed to create good men from hard times that make good times, right? Continent had a history of disease, poverty, starvation, European imperialism and daily civil wars so what's up?

"Niggers"

So did Europe and Asia. You can't possibly be this ignorant of history.
You know why. And while they were never even close to a superpower, South Africa was doing pretty well some decades ago because of the many natural resources and rich soil they have. Now they burn books and blame people instead of working for what they want.

I've read that the post-plague European population had a better immune system because the plague took out the people with weaker immune systems.

I have a tribe that consists of 50 healthy men and 100 moderately healthy men. In order to make the tribe stronger, I decide to kill off the 100 moderately healthy men. Is the tribe as a whole now stronger, or weaker, than it was at the beginning, in terms of total manpower?

Re-read what I said. I was using same logic to a different region and you basically just answered the questions yourself why the theory is flawed.

You misunderstood something there, Europeans were on roughly equal footing when it comes to technology meanwhile tribes in Africa never came close to gaining that much power. They had odds against them, which according to this cyclical theory should turn them into nation of supermen which it DIDN'T.

Is total man power really the goal though? And wouldn't that 50 stronger men now be allowed to breed so that in a generation or two you'd have 150 men as strong as the original 50?

Isn't it? They have more power and can do more things, like conquer a lesser tribe. A tribe with 50 healthy men and 100 moderately healthy men should be better able to conquer a tribe of just 50 healthy men, no?
But the moderately healthy would also be allowed to breed to make total manpower more than if you had just killed them.

No, because original 150 would breed into 450 and those new 150 healthy men would still be around, it's just that you'd also have 300 average men.

Genes a lot of the time are about luck. As population grows, so does the possibility that one child might turn out to be super-healthy as each time someone is born several genes are altered in the making. So yes, total manpower is actually the goal until some disaster wipes out everything except the lucky 1% which I don't find as an advantage.

That assumes that the resources available to the tribe is unlimited. In reality the land can only produce so much food.

Short-term, the tribe is weaker. They may be eliminated by a neighboring tribe, or at least get displaced. Long-term, they selected the best genes and each individual is stronger, the tribe too if there are limited resources. This is assuming there are no highly desirable genes on those you murdered for your experiment.
You don't generally want to kill off 2/3 though, the short-term cost will kill you. What you do is make it harder for them to reproduce, for instance with animu, but still allow a few of them to do so anyway so if there are some useful genes there you get to keep them. I suggest you look into en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_algorithm before butchering the tribe to avoid falling into a local optima.

Greek sculpture was always molded by the needs of the aristocracy and had very little qualitative representation of actual mythology. It was supposed to reinforce exclusive virtues of the ruling class through concepts such as kalokagathia. Therefor, even the god of excesses has to represent the virtues of the state and aristocracy that rules it before such depiction turned into a deeply culturally ingrained canon.

I think this is predicated on the ideal that people ONLY die due to genetic shortcomings alone, and not a myriad of circumstance and logistics which can even kill the "healthiest" person in times of plague.

Gods merciful, you're all so fucking retarded
it's embarrassing that we are the same species

there was no crisis of the sort of capitalist periodic crises
roman economic growth was an extensive economic growth
there was virtually no development of the means of production
so it needed a constant influx of slaves
but Romans could only overextend so much
so it is no wonder that all went downhill after the conquest of Dacia

2nd century was calm on the surface, but underneath, social relations were collapsing
basic unit of the ancient slave societies was a city community of small slaveowners-citizens
process of concentration of land in the hands of large slaveowners was a slow and constant process
but it was in the 2nd century when this process started to structurally change the economy
it was slowly destroying the basic unit of the ancient slave societies, city commune
ager publicus was slowly concentrating in the hands of large landowners at expense of city communes
large slaveowners slowly started to transform their slaves into serfs, so-called colons
centrifugal force was already in motion, large slaveowners were becoming more and more independent, more and more like feudals

then in the 3rd century all this shit surfaced and peaceful times came to an end
from then on roman history was a history of senate emperors vs soldier emperors, or large landowner emperors vs small landowner emperors
roman army was essential in the reproduction of the ancient slave society
retired veterans were reproducing the basic unit, the city commune of small slaveowners-citizens
it is characteristic that the regions that had been colonized by veterans often did not join the uprisings
in contrast to the regions inhabited by colons, who had frequently collaborated with invading barbarians

there was no mass migration of large landowners, you dipshit
it were local provincial large landowners who tried to promote their own emperors

there were places to conquer, but romans were overextended already

what about it?
Roman empire utilized Christianity for its own benefit
and butthurt Jews were pacified by the means of sword

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominance_hierarchy

You can't :^)

f-fifty percent

But then it should be B, meaning that you only have 25% chances of choosing it if done randomly.
But that would make A or D the right answers, so choosing them at random should end up with 50% of probability so the only B is correct so..
So there is no good answer so that would be 0% but then you would have 25% chance of choosing it…
FUCK IT

Because Africa's geography is nothing like Europes and the disposition of resources and the capacity to produce crops, etc. was not possible in the same fashion as within Europe.

In the pre muslim days North Africa used to be called 'the breadbasket of Europe' because its was so much easier to grow crops there.

Yes North Africa, that was part of the major powers during antiquity and eventually became annexed by Rome. The rest of Africa developed much slower as they stayed in tribes for much longer.

And coincidentally it was the most developed place of Africa
Africa is basically small part of the north well connected with the rest of the world trough mediterranea and big chunk under Saharah more isolated with less thick soils.

North Africa has never had the same geo-graphic situation as central or southern Africa and was under the control of several large, distinct entities for several hundred years - by which point it had been subject to severe damage from Christian-Persian wars, and later Christian-Muslim wars

You undialectical motherfucker, stop slandering Hegel's name with this thesis-antithesis-synthesis trichotomy. Go read some more phenomenology of spirit so you can properly learn about sublation and the identity within difference.

Fam, Hegel doesn't have a monopoly on dialectics. Though he never used the term himself, synthesis- thesis-antithesis is a simple way of describing a dialectic.

This triggers the Bookchin.

"In fact, a genetic strategy that makes the behavior of the “social insects” comprehensible actually renders human society incomprehensible. So-called primate “hierarchies” (a completely libelous term) yield strictly individual dominance-submission relationships (another libelous term) on the basis of largely physical attributes – notably, strength, hormonal fortitude, and possibly even intelligence, although the visible distinctions between a “smart” ape and a “dumb” one are barely noticeable in a primate community. It is quixotic ethologists like Jane Goodall-Lawick, rather than apes themselves, who make these uniquely anthropomorphic distinctions. The myth of an intragroup “hierarchy” dissolves completely once we recognize that an “alpha” male chimpanzee is an individual creature, not an institution. His “dominant status” (whatever these words means) lives or dies with the fortunes of the ape, not with the fortunes of the group. Hence, “hierarchy” in the most “caste-like” apedoms or monkeydoms more closely resembles the links in a chain than layers and consciously empowered community structures.

The difference is a crucial one. A weak, enfeebled, unnerved, and sick ape is hardly likely to become an “alpha” male, much less retain this highly ephemeral “status.” By contrast, the most physically and mentally pathological human rulers have exercised authority with devastating effect in the course of history and altered its destiny profoundly. The cry “The King is Dead! Long Live the King!” expresses a power of hierarchical institutions over persons that is completely reversed in so-called “animal hierarchies,” where the absence of institutions is precisely the only intelligible way of talking about “alpha males” or “queen bees.” Sociobiology, with its definitional reductionism, totally dissolves these crucial distinctions. “Hierarchy,” to Wilson, is a “system of two or more levels of units, the higher level controlling the least to some extent the activities of the lower levels in order to integrate the group as a whole.” One is tempted to observe that this “integrative” function must be hot news to an ape or termite. In any case, the terms “system,” “levels,” “units,” and “controlling”—so widely disparate throughout the animal world—are precisely the concepts and categories that Wilson is obliged to explain if the notion of “animal hierarchy” is to have meaning. These explanations are all the more necessary because “castes” of “worker bees” (another group of juicy terms) are in no way comparable to the “alpha males” among primates. Wilson’s fast-and-loose interchanging of “levels” and “units” allows him to recklessly pirouette around every part of animal ethology, from beehives to baboon troops. The genetic origins of beehive differentiation are blissfully transferred to less instinct-governed primate groups and then, almost joyously, to strictly contrived human social and political institutions." - theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-sociobiology-or-social-ecology