1) Signs of Decline part 1: Spengler argues an intellectualization of bodily, religious, and cultural phenomenon (such as art) result in a rational interpretation and dissection of things that were once innate and spontaneous.
2) hyper-focus on bodily functions and diet is one of several signs (others to be considered later) that materialism has set in and a culture is falling away from its purpose, “going to sleep” in its winter phase, in which it has nothing more to express
3) Spengler specifically notes vegetarianism and abstention from alcohol as two specific signs that a culture is over-intellectualizing itself and the rot of materialism is beginning to spread. To this I would add our fad diets and exercise, & obsessive concern for our pets
4) In an easier phase, food was obtained through what was produced on the land or via trade in village marketplaces. What was eaten was what was available, and meat was a prize enjoyed by higher classes and fleetingly obtained by the poor or agrarian peoples
5) Even when farmers raised and slaughtered their own meat, it was a resource-heavy product that was to be savored and preserved, “using the whole animal.” But once the megalopolitan phase comes in meat becomes a superfluous commodity, for two major reasons:
6) First, because money has started to generate the civilization, which is now based on a market, rather than agrarian, economy, and because the government has begun providing a base of nutrition to all peoples
7) in Rome, for example, Caesar and all subsequent emperors began sending subsidized grain from Egypt to provide food for the people of Rome, as well as imperial games in the coliseum; Bread and Circuses
8) Food during the imperial phase was produced on massive farms across Europe and North Africa, called Latifundia, and was brought to market in abundance. During this phase, entire cults dedicated to vegetarianism flourished:
9) Plutarch and Pythagoras were well-known vegetarians, however what is important here is that in imperial Rome and later Athens (and elsewhere), Pythagorean and Epicurean cults advocated vegetarianism
10) *literal cults* of vegetarianism, quite like what we see today, state sanction/tax exempt organizations like PETA, online vegetarian and vegan mobs, as well as its commercialization, which brings it into the mainstream more than anything else
11) factory farming is of course a great evil, however it is a symptom that goes hand in hand with vegetarianism as a manifestation of the market economy taking over the agrarian one and people being alienated from the source of their sustenance
12) this is only possible in a megalopolitan empire, where food is found in extreme abundance, and can be discarded with reckless abandon. A farmer couldn’t even *conceive* of vegetarianism because food was both scarce and, when available, only through a lifetime of labor
13) it is this phenomena of over-abundance which leads to the “pet industry,” people fussing over and spoiling their pets, thinking of them as children, letting them behave however they want and shit all over their yard.
14) Animals in an earlier time all had a purposeful they all had a use-value and served as one small part making up the tapestry of farm life, and we depended on them for nutrition. Nothing was superfluous and we had no freedom to become over sentimental about them
15) Now they become an obsession, just like our diet; it is something fit only for a people with *nothing to say,* *no higher purpose.* they same goes for all fad diets and work out routines, it’s one proclivity or another for someone with no spiritual calling
16) In sprint phases, the act of living occupies peoples time, while in a winter phase life is an afterthought, and everything, including time, is a commodity to be “used” wisely or unwisely, just like money, a unit of value
17) when this excessive “free time” is used to pay obsessive attention to bodily functions, digestion, and diet, we know a culture has passed its prime. Sexual proclivities may be viewed in much the same way!
18) next we will consider mimicry and reproduction in art, and see how the Marxist/Jamesonian view of post-modern “pastiche” is an ahistorical, petty misapprehension of a much older and more insidious phenomenon that follows historical cycles as Spengler see them
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