Alt Left: A Theory about Race, Personality, and Civilizational Trajectory with Assistance from Spengler, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche

A great new and very long comment from someone who is apparently a new commenter. A fascinating theory about race and personality and how they tie in with civilizational trajectories, be they forward, backward, or flat. He utilizes and owes a debt to Spengler first, then Schopenhauer, and last Nietzsche to help flesh out his theory.

I’d really like to see what you all think of this post. Please feel free to comment if you can make it through and figure out what he’s talking about. It’s a bit dense but it’s not really that complicated and a lot of you ought to be able to understand it pretty well.

Brian: This is a theory that’s been turning around in my head for around a decade, and I won’t go over every detail, just the gist of it, since to think out every caveat would take too long, and it’s not like a primary interest of research for me, but suffice it to say there is Spenglerian influence here, and through him, Nietzschean and Schopenhauerian influence. I’ve often called it the “I think we’re turning Japanese” theory.

The idea here is that Whites are in the middle of a spectrum between Blacks and Asians, where Blacks are the most chaotic, as you say, and Asians are the most orderly and staid, personified by the Spock stereotype.

The Germanic peoples, who pretty much seeded all of Europe during the Migration and Viking period, were, 2000 years ago during Rome’s heyday, barbarians, quite wild, living for the day, warring with each other to the point where, aside from the Battle of Teutoborg Forest, they could not unite with each other to fight a common enemy, which made them easy pickings for Rome.

The Celtic culture never took off into a high civilization due mainly to the Roman conquests of Gaul and Iberia and also of much of Britain, which eliminated the source-lands and most of the territory in which the Celtic culture had grown. So the civilization that arose after the collapse of the western portion of the empire was seminally Germanic: even France is heavily Germanic (land of the Franks), though it lies in between the more fully Germanic Northern Europe and the more Mediterranean Southern Europe.

Through the Dark Ages and High Middle Ages, the tribal polities of Northern Europe gradually coalesced into larger nations with, it must be stated, the help of the stabilizing factor of the Catholic Church. And by the Renaissance, Europe was becoming, artistically and intellectually, the most dynamic place in the world so that by Early Modern times, European art and science had eclipsed anything that had previously existed in the world.

Note how Asians beat Europeans in math and science in terms of raw ability, but Europeans have produced more than the Asians, which led to the core Asian lands (mainly China, Japan, and Korea) being not directly colonized by European empires but certainly feeling colonialism’s effects and even, especially for China, its boot heels. From the wild and more primitive European stock of two millennia ago eventually arose a civilization more advanced than what Asia had produced over thousands of years.

I suggest that the reason for this was that, although primitive, the Germanic peoples were also like a ball of energy that, if properly tamed, which of course means diminishing some of their raw energy, could produce an explosion of civilizational progress, and this taming is exactly what happened over the course of the Medieval Period.

The Church was a great factor, with its universalist vision of all reality being centered on a single thing, i.e. God (basically it’s a rational vision of the cosmos as opposed to a fragmentary and irrational understanding of it).

But another factor in this shift is likely social selection.

Over that 1,500 years of interaction with Rome and then of forging their own kingdoms after the constant interference from Rome had ended with the collapse of the western part of the Empire, European societies were able to grow into nations, become more complex and therefore more demanding about the intellectual demands on their own people and, whether through sexual selection initiated by women or through some other factor, began “weeding out” those who were too dumb or wild from the gene pool.

So by around 1500-1600, there existed a civilization with much of the raw energy of a primitive people but now harnessed and directed to intellectual and artistic ends, ready to make a gigantic mark on the world.

The point is that primitive peoples are like stores of raw energy or pools of potential that can, in the right circumstances, be transformed into a flourishing of civilization that even outdoes what groups with higher (or previously higher) IQ’s have accomplished. The white IQ might have increased during that transition from tribal chieftainships to modern states, with the selection pressures that such a transition brings.

Spengler believed that Western civilization was becoming old and sclerotic, ready either to dissipate or, like East Asia, ossify for a very long time, its main ideas having already mostly been expressed. He saw Russia as the next civilization to rise, since it was in that nether phase of being quite brutal compared to Western Europe and its descendant nations overseas, but nevertheless already being quite tamed.

Perhaps this explains why Europe, for centuries, has had a visceral fear of Russia, from the Great Game in the 19th century to the Nazi invasion and destruction of the country down to the present-day Establishment fear of Russia and Putin. Perhaps there is a sense that if Russia can break free of the West and get its act together, its potential is great, and in time – centuries perhaps – Russia could eclipse the ever-more sclerotic West.

But even more long-term, if this theory is correct, I can see Latin America rising as a major civilization. It would have to go through centuries of real nationbuilding first as Europe did in the Dark Ages and High Medieval Period into the Renaissance, but there is certainly great natural vigor among Latin American peoples, already somewhat tempered by the widespread infusion of Spanish and Portuguese (not to mention some German and other European) genes in those populations.

Perhaps in a millennium, when the raw potential has been converted into actionable works through a combination of genetic selection and cultural controls, Latin America will be a great civilization offering new artistic and scientific insights to the world and perhaps being expansionist, as civilizations born of wild people getting their act together tend to be. There seems to be a golden mean when a people is no longer too primitive but not yet too domesticated when that people makes its mark.

Which brings me to Africa. Africa today is comparable to Germania in Roman times: getting the first inklings of advanced civilization from the West, which had often mistreated it, and struggling to form real nations in the face of their own enormous divisions and external interference. Africans are chaotic but also wildly creative, especially musically – and music is the closest thing to the human Will or Engine of Life, as Schopenhauer teaches.

Africa in the coming centuries and millennia could go through a filtering that eliminates from the gene pool many of the wildest elements, for example through frequent warfare and sexual selection by women who demand more intelligent mates, as it becomes obvious that the trajectory of society is toward greater complexity.

The continued presence of Christianity and Islam are likely also beneficial for taming the most wild spirit of Africa, whose people are truly at present the most primal version of mankind. But in the intervening centuries or millennia some new religion might come along in Africa as shape the minds of the people as Christianity did to the Europeans during Roman times.

I would think that the Africans, in maybe a millennium or two, after the Slavic nations and the Latin American peoples have “come online” so to speak in the procession of great civilizations, could become the culmination of human civilization, since they are starting with the most raw energy that, were it tamed, would entail the greatest outpouring of intellectual and artistic – i.e. civilizational – creativity that humans could produce.

But a great deal of selection pressure and cultural maturation would be required before this could happen.

Later this century, Africans are expected to comprise ~4

But this fits not only my thesis but also the Spenglerian model to which it is mostly in debt. The ensuing collapse of the West could be the opening that Slavic nations need in order to truly rise and express themselves fully. The development of Africa into a high civilization is a process I expect to take many centuries amid the vicissitudes of other civilizations rising and falling.

As for current White civilization which is headed by “The West” or those nations descended from or heavily influenced by the Germanic peoples, I think we are turning Japanese. We are past the Golden Middle Period and into a period where much of our primal nature remains but is channeled by genetic and cultural discipline and we are in effect slowly evolving into more staid, quiet, competitive – i.e. more Asian-like – peoples.

You can see it with the younger generations who are subject to far more social controls than even I was when younger, and I am not that old. The younger generations seem socially skittish, often autistic, and very different from kids even thirty years ago. Of course much of this is due to technology, but much is also due to our societies becoming increasingly rule-based and micromanaged.

And it is our culture itself that is insisting on this bureaucratization and rationalization of social life, with technology being merely a tool to push this cultural tendency forward.

As one final note, my theory might not work if indeed the different personality types and intelligence levels of the major races cannot change over a millennium or two in such a way that a wilder and less intelligent race can be pared down through social selection to a more disciplined and intelligent race.

If this is not a long enough span of time for such a transition to unfold, then the rise of the Northern and Western European peoples from tribal barbarians 2,000 years ago to the epitome of civilization just a few centuries ago was not due to a lack of enough intelligence to produce such a civilization.

Instead it occurred because this spark already existed during the Roman Empire, except that its expression was limited by a lack of social development until those cultural constraints needed to mold it into an advanced civilization had taken shape.

If this was true, then difference between the primitive culture and the high civilization it became was sociocultural, not genetic.

But even if this were true, it could mean that Africa could still rise as a high civilization, only that it will take longer, since a lot of not sexual but social selection would have to occur in order for this to happen.

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10 thoughts on “Alt Left: A Theory about Race, Personality, and Civilizational Trajectory with Assistance from Spengler, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche”

  1. Interesting post.

    I’ve heard an Iranian postulate that Scythians were like raw energy for Iranian civilization.

    Celtic culture loves itself and is less outward-thrusting than Roman and later Germanic culture.

    The French heart is in France. Even Colonial French were this way and were said to long for their motherland when abroad.

    Irish bards were very Irish-centric. I suspect Roman finds in Ireland were from raids more than trade with Romans.

    Boudicca said Romans were like hares and foxes trying to rule dogs and wolves. Germanic tribes’ military success came from Roman logic mixed with loyalty to their family/tribe/race. You had to think like a Roman to defeat a Roman.

    Russians have a shorter road to high civilization than the descendants of the Incas. The future is theirs if they want it. They have ties to the West on many levels from Byzantine to the Vikings. On top of that they have more resource-filled land than any nation in the West. They are less corrupted by the West than other Slavic nations.

    The only non-Whites that could maintain White heights of civilization are East Asians!

    1. The Russians are in big trouble. They are not having enough children to replenish the Russian population. For quite some time, they’ve been begging, offering monetary incentives etc. trying to get their people to have more children. So far, nothing has worked. Unless this situation does a miraculous turnabout, there’s no way that “the future will belong to the Russians.” Check the birth/death rates. They’re in a very precarious situation.

      1. This is going on in all of Europe too. They’re all below replacement. So is Japan. We are one of the only countries in the West who are above replacement. I don’t see how a declining population could harm a country.

        Say Russia has 180 million people. It declines to 160 million people. Well there should be countries in the world with 160 million people or less who are quite wealthy. Why is this such a terrible thing? We have to reduce the world population anyway. There are too many humans. We have to get used to a world with declining populations. As long as humans don’t go extinct, I don’t think it’s an issue.

        1. A little bit late for a reaction? then again, only news and opinion expires fast.

          Someone wrote ‘the more primitive the people, the more they flock together.’ Hence, overpopulation means decline as one becomes more and more absorbed in groups and masses. Besides, quantity based thinking is typical of the civilizational way of seeing things (‘civilization’ meaning: a low type of ordered mass society). Hence, fewer people (relative, to a degree) means more quality, more room for individual development, more soul, being more free from the dumbing down pressure and activity of the masses.

          I would state that a cultural period of growth and flourishing cannot happen during a period of overpopulation, and certainly not during our times when everything is based on quantities, people (and authorities managing quantities) being obsessed with it.

      2. Sorry to get off topic, but the commenter’s thoughts on Russia triggered the post. The interesting thing is, the U.S. has been seeing the same trend (declining birth rate) for about 30 years or so. Does an aging population put a strain on younger people to have children at a younger age in order to assure safety net needs are met (Pensions, Social Security, Healthcare etc.)? Speaking of the U.S., here are the 10 youngest and 10 oldest areas of the country by median (half are younger, half are older) age in years, including D.C. and Puerto Rico, starting with youngest, as of 2020:

        1) Utah(30.5)
        2) Alaska (33.9)
        3) Washington D.C. (33.9)
        4) Texas (34.3)
        5) North Dakota (35.1)
        6) Idaho (35.1)
        7) California (36.1)
        8) Kansas (36.3)
        9) Nebraska (36.3)
        10) Oklahoma (36.3)

        The oldest:

        1) Maine (44.6!)
        2) Vermont (42.9)
        3) New Hampshire (42.7)
        4) West Virginia (42.4)
        5) Florida (41.9)
        6) Puerto Rico (40.9)
        7) Connecticut (40.8)
        8) Pennsylvania (40.7)
        9) Delaware (40.2)
        10) Rhode Island (39.9)

        The west-east contrast is interesting. For those that have written off California, I think it shows it to still be a pretty young and vibrant state. Also, those Mormons get busy early having kids!

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