War on the West

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To a degree you're speaking for yourself though because you're not in contact with the corners of culture who do pay a lot of attention to these sorts of things.

I'm thinking of how many Freemasons there are out there, or particularly were in the 20th century. Someone would have brought it up if it was far enough off the mark to be a problem.

I'm not much into alchemy, but do remember that I brought up that we're talking about a caduceus, not a rod of asclepius

That's great, I'm talking about something else though - people. Mason's have a pretty big head count. Groups like SRIA, Martinists, Rosicrucians (modern public orders), Hermetic Golden Dawn and diaspora, Thelemites, still probably less in number in total than Freemasons you but you might be able to 2x that, and a lot of them have served in the military, worked in hospitals, etc.. Back then it was significantly more on the Mason side.

Something else I could clarify - a lot of these groups would hold Hermeticism as their central philosophy but mystic and religious interest in pretty much all of the pantheons is there as well, so it would include both Thoth/Hermes and Asclepius, just more emphasis on the former. Hermetic qabalists have a knack for taking almost any pantheon and sticking different deities on different spheres of the Tree of Life, so it's very syncretic - probably more so than it should be in some cases.

There is a paranoia (echoed in Douglas Murray's book) that there is an internal destruction of the edifice of western culture starting with a re-writing of history.

I actually do agree with the tenent of Murray's central thesis that European descended people are losing touch with the roots of their origins (kind of of like the way kids today have no idea where their food comes from). In both cases the truth be known most people don't care which is unfortunate.

Dopamine hijack without drug addiction as a way of life seems like it's a big part of what's new. Life just wasn't easy enough and the technologies weren't in place. I have a feeling once a lot of this winds down, ie. peak cheap energy passes, we might be pulled back a bit and all of this stuff will come back on our radars when we're stuck looking at each other more than constantly working or constantly entertaining ourselves with the latest gadget.

Does he say exactly what European culture(s) we're losing?
I'm wondering, because I'm pretty sure modern Europe is closer related to Epicurean Atomism than to the ancient Egyptian Toth cult.
But he might not be talking about *modern* Europe, but premodern.

Btw., I live in Germany, I also went to highschool here. Germans are a bit weary of "historical roots" of German culture, because the Nazis attempted to trace 20th century German culture back to the Holy Roman Empire (fair enough, but quite literally medieval), and the Roman Empire of antiquity (whith which 20th century Germany had nothing to do).
Hence the term "Third Reich".
Anyway, it did lead Germans to be very sceptical of tradition, and someone trying to declare something 'traditional' and complaining about society losing its roots.
Those are considered not just dogwhistles.
The nazis also eventually traced their roots to the Aryans of ancient Persia and India. That's where they took the swastika from.
And while it is correct that Proto-Indo-European is the precursor of most of European languages, and got mixed with old Norse, there's not much in common between modern Germans, vikings, and Zoroastrians. So what exactly are modern Germans in Danger of forgetting? Viking culture? Proto-Indo-European culture, about which scholars know very little... Because it's been dead for thousands of years, and none of their gods are around today.

Also: my tomatoes come from spain, my blueberries from Chile, my Salmon from Norway and my tofu from Austria. But when I look at my processed foods, .... Sorry, i don't know where my methylated cellulose comes from, or my stevia glycosides.

That's certainly one reason. Too many distractions.

Yes he's focused on premodern but within the last millennium from the renaissance.

He's talking about two things which have become front and centre of many conservative historians.
1. the biggest attack against western culture is from within and the woke left wing are the cause
2. the woke left wing are causal in modern history being re-written to accommodate inclusivity which means highlighting the achievements of non-Europeans and downplaying the European contributions.

With point 1, Murray doesn't examine an obvious question which is this. If European culture/western values are so strong and robust then why does he think the institutions of record keeping and the educational superiority of western people are so fragile?? This to me is perplexing and Murray isn't the only historian who falls into this trap.

With point 2 Murray misattributes the woke left as causal to this phenomenon when infact the younger generation have infact moved on and in 2022 culture has become a global domain whereby there is a tendency to drift toward "Americanism" in social media, online platforms and in popular media whether it be magazines, television and cinema. Instead of focusing why young people are so disconnected with their history he and other historians blame the left woketivists for attacking white history when infact the target market of both the woke and the conservatives don't actually give two hoots about this debate and are infact too engrossed in the present.

I agree with the globalisation of the youth aspect, and American dominance.

But I want to add to Murray's thing: I lived and studied in the UK for a few years. The British haven't, as a whole, come to terms with how their empire operated (by force), and that it is no longer an empire. It sounds like he refuses to acknowledge that there's some historical baggage to work through, now that it's over.

I mean, jesus, the British started in the 16th century to grind up mummies into pigment for painters, and stopped only "By the start of the 20th century" [...]"owing to a continued decline in the supply of of avaliable mummies", according to wikipedia.
Maybe the West hasn't forgotten so much about its Egyptian roots, as it has carelessly ground them to dust, somewhere between 1600 and 1900.

Yes there's a lot going on and many in Britain specifically are still coming to terms with the end of the British empire and the whole country being swamped my migrants from the very countries whom hated British rule in the last 50 years.

My British neighbour back in the 1990s told me quite candidly that he felt the worst thing the British did was to educate their colonial subjects to work in the colonial administration. He felt the connection between English education and the lack of jobs in many professions in the UK which made him frustrated. He was one of those who escaped the UK to Australia because the country was changing too quickly and he no longer felt comfortable living in the country of his birth.

I don't believe you can change people's perceptions about their identity. Following Murray's thinking, the European identity is at stake, but what he may not realise is that he's telling people that this identity is flimsy otherwise what exactly is the threat?

The German self-perception only changed with the student revolts of '68, in which the children of the former Nazis started questioning their parents. But still in the 90s, a historical exhibition about regular Nazi-soldiers, i.e., the broad public, rather than individual personalities high up in the Nazi regime, caused quite a bit of a stir.

And, yeah, here, there's a bunch of gistorical revisionists who are trying to downplay those 15 years of German history. They are trying to scare the middle class with the spectre of immigrants irreversibly changing German culture, etc.
But when you look at my students, you'd guess German culture consists of Pokemon, instagram and taking MDMA on the weekends.
It would be interesting to try some conservative utopian ideas, though: all women would have to stay home and care for 3 or more children. Would be interesting to see what would happen if you just cut down a country's workforce in half and have large families live on a single income. Property markets would collapse, people would have to live in the middle of nowhere because they can't afford anything more densely populated. Commuter traffic would skyrocket.
And the government would rely on on an immigrant workforce for a generation, whose children would then grow up in Germany, Britain or wherever, and ... Well, that all was the situation in the 60s, 70s, and 80s and what led to the current demographics. ...

Yes it's the same with Britain. When the average Britian thinks of culture it's fish and chips on Friday, pot roast on Sunday, football and beers over the weekend.

In Australia it's fish and chips/pizza on Fridays, football over the weekend and beers/BBQ.

Otherwise its social media and the internet. 90% of young people between 8-18 spend most of their free time surfing Youtube and other online platforms or playing online games.

While the above may be an oversimplification (sport, recreation, music and entertainment also takes up people's time) it's the sum of culture in our modern world. Therefore we are all willing participants to this destruction of our history that Douglas Murray has outlined. Probably he himself has contributed to it without realising.

I can understand that countries with complex histories about territory, lack of independent cultures, or former colonies can create this kind of cultural confusion.
But why is this phenomenon happening in the UK?
This doesn't appear to be just happening among immigrants.


Here in our public education we study poetry as far back as three thousand years ago.
And classical Chinese, or Chinese that seems to conform to the grammar of classical Chinese, is part of popular culture.

Yes infact there are institutions of higher learning, museums, libraries, places of historical interest for those who want to make an effort to learn about their culture and history.

In Britain there are historical societies, book clubs and associations who keep culture alive. That includes poetry, classical music, folk culture, shakespeare etc etc...

Where the conservative establishment have a problem is in popular media that does not pay homage to bastions of culture from the Victorian era and before. Also accusations against the education system.

The problem with all of this is it props European culture as somehow built on a foundation of sand or propped up on stilts that's flimsy and ready to fall over if a single woke left winger writes an alternative history. There seems to be hypersensitivity over this. A lot of the derision is aimed at popular fiction which (by its very definition) is made up. I fail to see how social inclusion in 2022 somehow diminishes the contributions of Wordsworth, Isaac Newton or Fleming?

The question I really wonder about is why a country's own history and culture is not placed in public/basic education.

I wonder to what extent this is due to the high rate of immigration. Or maybe Europe itself has this habit. The latter may be the distinction between high-context culture and low-context culture.
Are France, Greece, Finland, Ireland, Italy different on this issue than the UK, Germany, Norway, Denmark, Switzerland, Sweden?

The issue of immigration (or even the multiethnic composition of the population in the countries you listed) has nothing to do with European people accessing the "high context" culture of their country of birth. It never has.

There is a lack of confidence in the younger generation taking up traditions, cultural heritage or religion and as usual foreigners are blamed.

Like when the outbreak of COVID first took place in Wuhan, local Chinese in Guanzhao blamed Africans for the virus. The fear of Africans spreading COVID in Guanzhao was laughable as they were less likely to have COVID given the restrictions placed on their travel by authorities. The local authorities even participated in municipal edicts in signage warning Africans from entering shops or renting housing. The point was the problem with COVID was internal and completely a product of Chinese incapacity to maintain or control the outbreak so they happily blamed Africans to distract the public from the real culprits.