Civilizations do not have "their own destinies". They are subject, like everything else in the universe, to the original order established by the Father of all.
First come the Barbarians - energy, magical thought and natural law: it is morning, spring, the youth of the Nation.
The energy of the Barbarian, his creative imagination, makes Civilization itself blossom: laws, culture, social organization.
When this first impulse, channeled by the civilizing vision, reaches its peak, the Nation knows its orgasm, its June solstice: it enters its afternoon, its radiant summer, its adulthood - that is, without knowing it, in its decline.
Polite morals gradually make us forget Natural Law - and, consequently, forget war... Abundance, peace, the paternalistic state make energy something rustic... "hillbilly"... pagan... Skepticism, rationalism, positivism, all the screwed-up theories, Humanitarian and unnatural "intellectuals" spread among the idle... No longer directly confronted with the realities of life, love and death, man gradually abandoned magical thinking, which he judged "infantile"... It was then, for the Nation, the equinox of September: the beginning of decadence - the evening, autumn, middle age...
Just as autumn has exquisite colors, periods of decadence have funny aspects; because, in the hope of rekindling the fading flame, one is capable of almost any perversion, which is very amusing... This is why Baudelaire, in Dandyism, greeted a "setting sun"...:19th century dandyism was, for white youth, a desperate attempt to revive the energy, panache, barbaric colors in the mercantile boredom and bourgeois values of the decadent industrial society. But however shimmering it may be, the twilight glow of autumn leads straight to Scorpio, that is to putrefaction, swamp and death...
First come the Barbarians - energy, magical thought and natural law: it is morning, spring, the youth of the Nation.
The energy of the Barbarian, his creative imagination, makes Civilization itself blossom: laws, culture, social organization.
When this first impulse, channeled by the civilizing vision, reaches its peak, the Nation knows its orgasm, its June solstice: it enters its afternoon, its radiant summer, its adulthood - that is, without knowing it, in its decline.
Polite morals gradually make us forget Natural Law - and, consequently, forget war... Abundance, peace, the paternalistic state make energy something rustic... "hillbilly"... pagan... Skepticism, rationalism, positivism, all the screwed-up theories, Humanitarian and unnatural "intellectuals" spread among the idle... No longer directly confronted with the realities of life, love and death, man gradually abandoned magical thinking, which he judged "infantile"... It was then, for the Nation, the equinox of September: the beginning of decadence - the evening, autumn, middle age...
Just as autumn has exquisite colors, periods of decadence have funny aspects; because, in the hope of rekindling the fading flame, one is capable of almost any perversion, which is very amusing... This is why Baudelaire, in Dandyism, greeted a "setting sun"...:19th century dandyism was, for white youth, a desperate attempt to revive the energy, panache, barbaric colors in the mercantile boredom and bourgeois values of the decadent industrial society. But however shimmering it may be, the twilight glow of autumn leads straight to Scorpio, that is to putrefaction, swamp and death...