Building Culture

The Death of Roland

I'm writing this the day after the Nice attack where a Tunisian man drove a truck through a crowd of people, killing 84.

It's apparent to me that the culture of the Western world has been systematically undermined by Empire builders. This is not a new phenomenon. It's happened again and again and again. Old religions are periodically replaced with new ones, old beliefs are strained and break against new technology and new conditions.

The culture, the way of life of people is like the set of attitudes and practices of a large extended household. It forms the walls of the structure and defines what's inside and outside and how the people inside the walls should behave. How are the walls undermined and destroyed?

Well, the wall analogy--brick and mortar walls is misleading, maybe strands of spider web silk is a better one. Cultural walls are made out of stories, songs, rituals, analogies, images and relationships. The thought experiment of mythmademan is that these entities are actually alive and have their own form of consciousness. They're the expression of the local gods, or maybe are the gods.

The gods of the West's new technocratic empire are the disembodied math god and the history god. In their ascent, they subverted and set aside all the other gods in the minds of their followers and subjects. They paved over the wilds of imagination and replaced the songs of the people with accountant's ledgers.

Culture is built by connecting with the gods. Replace the concerns of the accountant with a story about a local tree, for example.