The Death Throes of Modernity

After an OP discussing this substack by Charles Hugh-Smith: Last Gasp of the Landfill Economy

at the Phora (a private forum) https://thephora.net/phoranova/index.php?threads/the-death-throes-of-modernity.1984

… I wrote:

The background to my ‘predictions’ thread[1] was a comprehensive statement of what I called the ‘Goodwin-Greer Synthesis’ (in some discussions of this topic I use my patronymic rather than the name of my old blog https://macrobius.blogspot.com)

[1]: https://thephora.net/phoranova/index.php?threads/macrobius-makes-predictions-for-2025-2026.1680/

The ‘writeup’ of the predictions was in fact a popularisation, originally intended for a twitter account which I was obliged to nuke because X wouldn’t stop billing me when I wanted to downgrade from ‘paid’ service, and failed to respond to my messages.

Among the Traditionalists being discussed, in contrast to the Modernists (everyone else), I note the variance of views among Orthodox Christians — notably, Sherrard, who like Father Seraphim Rose, rejects Guenon; Dugin, who is both Orthodox Christian *and* profoundly a follower of Guenon, and myself, who stand with Sherrard on this point, but not to the extent I consider the matter beyond discussion, for reasons that should be evident, namely I am unlike Sherrard and Dugin, a modern Scientist and Nuclear Physicist, as well as a computer technologist.

The challenges of Modernity and Traditionalism is of course the topic of this thread: https://thephora.net/phoranova/index.php?threads/traditionalism-in-orthodox-christianity-and-islam.1941/

Anyway, my notes from ca. St Lucy’s Day [Western Calendar], 2024

1. Limits to Growth (Peak Oil, Demographics)

– US Peak oil

– coming collapse

2. AGW (the same thing that broke the ban on Trumpism broke the

forced Consensus of the Obama era)

3. Spenglerian framework for next 4 centuries (constancy of Neo-Platonism)

> Looking at Greer’s work on politics and economics since the aughties (I’m not really familiar with his magical work, except as it intrudes in that strand of writing) I would say there are three essential elements of his ‘synthesis’: 1. the first Limits to Growth was correct (hence, Peak Oil and implications for demographics) 2. AGW is now a dialed in fact and will be the dominant fact in the next few centuries 3. A Spenglerian view of the current state and future trajectory of ‘Western Civilisation’

peak oil (oil resonance)

Differences:  Nuclear, Solar; locality vs nonlocal and quantum;

nonlocal spooky effects are by definition ‘occult forces’

(DIME-FIL, BEST MAPS)

P – interest politics to value politics; beginnings of caesarism

personality, not ideology; death of liberalism after 100 years

E – Catabolic Collapse theory; both Macroeconomics and Finance

but they are not the same (eurodollar system is the reserve currency, not Federal Reserve Notes)

S – class dynamics (leadership, overseers, intellectuals/salary,

wage, dependents)

T – first crisis of technic civilisation

Chaos magic: synthesis of Practical Magic, Quantum Physic, Chaos Theory, Anarchism [Libertarian Socialism]

pseudomorphosis in terms of life stages — Russia and America are

at different life stages

The crisis leading to the end of the first pseudomorphosis

[[ american east-west coast already showing dimorphism ]]

[[ US is as plausibly a Second Scotland and Ireland (and Wales!)

compared to a European Pseudomorphosis ]]

PNW will be borderland of SF – Midwest is borderland of East Coast

Elazar’s three cultures already show signs of a split (Liberal vs Libertarian, i.e. National Socialism vs Libertarian Socialism or Marxism-Leninism vs Wagner)

HRE, Ottoman, Polish Empire (Ukraine)

Prussia, Austrio-Hungary, Russia

Nazi Germany and attempt to unify Faustian culture homeland

‘Wagner’s Revenge’

Spengler see’s INGSOC as foreign, not /our/ socialism

Nomos of the Earth – land/sea dimorphism

Atlantic Alliance (Biden) / Pacific Alliance (Harris) – trade with China vs trade with Europe

Silicon Valley vs Wall Street/The City

Progressive and Socialist successors to Liberalism

Three Saeculum Theory (1794-2033) – 239 (‘lifetime of empire’ – half a dionysian cycle, 3 K-winters)

—–

predictions:

Regionalism will replace

National Unity into coarser elements with conflicting interests

Eventual emergence of internal civil war

Trade with China vs Trade with Europe

Ecological crises will pace the decline

(supply chain disruption and regionalism, impact of variability on

agriculture [carbon] and water cycles, sea level rise, AMOC tipping

point)

Not a multi-polar world, but a multi-climate one

Topics

AIs and power plants

Blockchain

Status of USD as world reserve currency

Economics of supply chain disruption

inflation, unemployment, interest rates

Industrial output and Theory of Constraints (case against outsourcing) – inventory costs, profits move to the periphery

– the future of colonialism

– how will tariffs pan out? (American System of Clay vs interests of the South, and regional fracture)

Of course, the main thing I have to add to a discussion with Greer and Dugin, say, is my take on nuclear physics, which would be the only original contribution to the discussion, really:

Differences:  Nuclear, Solar; locality vs nonlocal and quantum;

nonlocal spooky effects are by definition ‘occult forces’

That is 1/ Western Science already believes in ‘occult forces’ and calls them non-local.  2/ Greer over-emphasizes the role of ‘telluric spirits’ in shaping people locally, regardless of race, which does not respect the non-local/occult nature of the forces at work.  3/ Greer (and I think Sherrard) would reject out of hand the use of Nuclear Power, or of Solar panels, in our current situation.   Greer is explicit about his programme in his _Collapse Now and Avoid the Rush_ as well as _Green Wizardry_.  Nonetheless, there is a lot he gets right.

Greer is not a Traditionalist and I am (in the sense Sherrard was), which of course also makes me part of a Duginite but not accepting *everything* he puts forth.  I also stand with Sherrard that the ‘solution’ to this polycrisis is to be found in Maximus Confessor, Gregory Palamas, and others in the ‘Byzantine’ tradition.  I’m sure there are Russians as well but I’m simply unfamiliar with them.  I will doubtless be learning more, given that I am going to an OCA church[2] here on the Kitsap penninsula.  The OCA is of course American, not Russian, but the Moscow Patriarchate was their mother church.  I can easily see a long term East-West split in Former British North America, with the West Coast leaning towards Moscow, and the East Coast towards Constantinople.  We shall see, or those younger than I am, and their children were.  These things will take over a century to play out, as Greer and I predict.  The prediction of North American continental dimorphism is mine, not Greer’s.

[2]: https://stelizabethorthodox.org