The Arc of History is Bullshit

I always read what Nick B. Steves has to tweet, because awesomeness:

Every time you don't follow @PoseidonAwoke, an #SJW does not get triggered. (cc: @PlatonicNoir @PolarWashington)
— Nick Based Steves (@Nick_B_Steves) October 21, 2014

By the way, read Roosh about #SJW.

So, it caught my eye when I saw Steves' pointer to Theden and the Anti-Democracy Activist's reply:

@Nick_B_Steves *ahem* https://t.co/XREIOcccEq https://t.co/2PteDlGnxa
— Anti Democracy Blog (@antidemblog) November 1, 2014

The Theden article's basic premise is that the collapse is already here, and that just like the crash of 1929, crashes don't feel very crashy to most people in the crash. It is reasonable that one would expect there to be a hard jolt in any crash, so crash is merely a histrionic, click-baity, headline-grabber. Decline and degeneration and collapse are more appropriate adjectives to describe the process. I suppose most of #NRx is thinking this way, as I noted earlier in October:

Empires fail like rotting apples, slowly, eaten from within. Defining the exact moment of their expiration is impossible.
— Butch Legolas (@PoseidonAwoke) October 3, 2014

I found the Anti-Democracy Activist's post enlightening, and much more scholarly than the overly-chummy prose you are now reading. I now see that my view of history has been cyclical for some time, and found it wonderful to see the Arc of History crystallized.

William F. Buckley wrote in Our Mission Statement in National Review in 1955:

A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it. 

Michael "Martin Luther" King stated:

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.

Former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey echoes King in the NY Times after announcing his resignation and proclaiming his gayness:

The arc of American history almost inevitably moves toward freedom. Whether it’s Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation, the expansion of women’s rights or, now, gay rights, I think there is an almost-inevitable march toward greater civil liberties.

King and McGreevey are grooving along the arc, much as though they are riding on an arrow or a rocket-ship launched at some far away target. I see the arc as a scintillating rainbow, and stars wink and glitter around it and ABBA's Dancing Queen fills the air as the progressives party their way to their final destination: Utopia. Buckley lurks in the shadows, dour and severe as he watches the youth board the ship, but helpless as the Catcher in the Rye, he cannot stop them. The kids party all the way to Utopia, and when they arrive it appears to be Heaven, but with lots of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll. In the morning, awakening from a drunken stupor, surrounded by the sour smell of spilled beer and stinking of stale cigarettes and struggling to remember if they bothered to use a condom, they realize they're at a tawdry gay dance club in a gentrified section of New Jersey. They fumble for their iPhones to call dour Uncle Bill and shamefacedly ask for a ride home.

Progress is progress along the arc. It is the Good News of Utopia proclaimed for all to hear. The problem is that the Utopia never arrives, the arc is just a joy ride to nowhere. The idea that merely moving in some direction is progress is bullshit. Justice is not a destination. Civil liberties are not a destination. Breaking the chains of women and the lower classes and telling them to run amok is not a destination. Liberty is a means, not an end. If one were inclined to listen to ancient dead white guys, one might heed the warning of the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca:

If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable.

The business of civilization is just that: a business. We must work hard to understand its rules, and to judge our place in the market. We must measure and analyze and adjust our strategy on ever-changing sands. Survival requires that we understand our environment and that we exploit its resources to our advantage. It requires cunning and courage and eternal vigilance. Survival and business are war. In war, there are winners and losers. Either you are on a path to conquest, or you are waiting to be conquered; there is no middle-ground, no gay glittering rainbow pathway to Utopia arcing over verdant hills. The Utopians continue to lose direction, to steer the ship of civilization in meaningless gyres.

This is the business of Neoreaction: the business of civilization. It takes a strong stomach to run a civilization; it is either grow and conquer, or submit and die. Let the Utopians drug themselves into submission with lies of Heaven on Earth where a Brotherhood of Man lives in perfect harmony. With a clear head and a sharp eye, I choose growth and conquest - me and my brothers against the world.

the Spandrellian Trichotomy

If Spengler's view is correct, then there is a set of ideas that drive the growth of each unique civilization. It is the project of Neoreaction to analyze and categorize those ideas. So far, the Spandrellian Trichcotomy appears to be the best aggregation. AnomalyUK helpfully elucidates.

Which brings me back to awesomeness and Nick B. Steves, whom I believe to be the creator the image on the left.

Don't just stand there. There's work to be done.