I believe it is a reaction to the sheer ugliness and spiritual emptiness that the West has created around itself. Our lives have become bland, safe, "inoffensive". We are comfortable but that comfort has become a kind of prison. The suburbs, for instance, provide everything the body needs, while starving the spirit. The cities are geometrical monstrosities from which the mind turns in horror. There is nothing really worth saving. But for a certain kind of person, unwilling to let all of that go and reimagine what our world could be if we simply built beautiful things again, and returned to a human way of living, this curdles into a poisonous hatred for everything, a desire to tear it all down.
I find the idea fascinating that psychological issues or physical ailments can serve as a life sustaining response. Consider the fad of anxiety in teenagers. That sense of dread for the world around them you describe brings about an emotional state that likely enables them to continue in this hellscape. Another component to consider is how many mental issues stem in part from poor digestive health in the “second brain” of the gut. The psychological issues perhaps allow an individual to persist despite having various harmful flora in the gut that has built up from bacteria or food poisoning (not to go full schizo posting but there seems to be some merit in this relationship of health and psychology issues).
Not only that. Have you noticed that certain disorders can be quickly identified by a glance? For example, those on the autistic spectrum disorder are nearly always either rail thin or morbidly obese. In both ways, they are often malnourished or overfed to the degree of illness. To go full “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” how would some malevolent force (like the one discussed on your recent Tonic Seven podcast) replicate in the modern world? It could attack our food supply or make our bodies so weak that the coping mechanism for the sustaining of life as described in this present article is some strange psychological disorder. It is a Lovecraftian thought.
Horrific but probably not far wrong. Even without invoking hyperdimensionals, egregores themselves seem to engineer humans to make them more perfect hosts. And when the egregore is something born of hatred for life, of life contra life....
Maybe this self-hatred of the West is some kind of coping mechanism for the Long Descent after the age of fossil fuels. If you paint our whole situation as one giant mistake, it could become easier to transition into a low-energy future.
Perhaps it’s the triumph of the ‘losers’, speaking of Nietzsche, those driven by ressentiment. Filled with envy, they hate themselves and must destroy the cause of their self hatred.
''Oikophobia'', coined by the British philosopher Roger Scruton, is here used as a non-clinical description of an 'anti-culture' prevalent among Western artists and intellectuals. (Roger Scruton, ''England and the Need for Nations'', (London: Civitas, 2004). It is a combination of:
''oikos'' - from the Greek meaning a “house,” “family,” “people,” or “nation”
– Encyclopaedia Britannica
and
''-phobia'' - extreme or irrational fear or dislike of a specified thing or group
-Webster's Dictionary
An extreme and immoderate aversion to the sacred and the thwarting of the connection of the sacred to the culture of the West appears to be the underlying motif of oikophobia; and not the substitution of the culture by another coherent system of belief. The paradox of the oikophobe seems to be that any opposition directed at the theological and cultural tradition of the West is to be encouraged even if it is "significantly more parochial, exclusivist, patriarchal, and ethnocentric". (Mark Dooley, Roger Scruton: Philosopher on Dover Beach (Continuum 2009), p. 78.)
Scruton defines it as "the repudiation of inheritance and home," and refers to it as "a stage through which the adolescent mind normally passes." Roger Scruton, ''A Political Philosophy'', p. 24.
According to Scruton, culture is the ethical transmission "how to feel" passed down from one generation to the next. Virtue is taught through imitation of the heroes, gods and ancestors not by mere copying but through the imagination and "moving with them" which high culture provides. The repudiation of a common tradition blocks the individual's path to membership in the "original experience of the community". Instead of apprehending spiritual and intellectual received wisdom as an epiphany the 'anti-culture' of repudiation produces mere nihilism, irony and false gods. Roger Scruton, ''Culture Counts'' (Encounter Books, 2007), pp.36-9.
I believe it is a reaction to the sheer ugliness and spiritual emptiness that the West has created around itself. Our lives have become bland, safe, "inoffensive". We are comfortable but that comfort has become a kind of prison. The suburbs, for instance, provide everything the body needs, while starving the spirit. The cities are geometrical monstrosities from which the mind turns in horror. There is nothing really worth saving. But for a certain kind of person, unwilling to let all of that go and reimagine what our world could be if we simply built beautiful things again, and returned to a human way of living, this curdles into a poisonous hatred for everything, a desire to tear it all down.
I find the idea fascinating that psychological issues or physical ailments can serve as a life sustaining response. Consider the fad of anxiety in teenagers. That sense of dread for the world around them you describe brings about an emotional state that likely enables them to continue in this hellscape. Another component to consider is how many mental issues stem in part from poor digestive health in the “second brain” of the gut. The psychological issues perhaps allow an individual to persist despite having various harmful flora in the gut that has built up from bacteria or food poisoning (not to go full schizo posting but there seems to be some merit in this relationship of health and psychology issues).
It is not that we are afflicted by bad ideology, so much as bad digestion - I think there's a lot to this.
Not only that. Have you noticed that certain disorders can be quickly identified by a glance? For example, those on the autistic spectrum disorder are nearly always either rail thin or morbidly obese. In both ways, they are often malnourished or overfed to the degree of illness. To go full “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” how would some malevolent force (like the one discussed on your recent Tonic Seven podcast) replicate in the modern world? It could attack our food supply or make our bodies so weak that the coping mechanism for the sustaining of life as described in this present article is some strange psychological disorder. It is a Lovecraftian thought.
Horrific but probably not far wrong. Even without invoking hyperdimensionals, egregores themselves seem to engineer humans to make them more perfect hosts. And when the egregore is something born of hatred for life, of life contra life....
Interesting... thanks for sharing. I wish I could 'restack' comments.
All good. I get a great deal out of both of your writings, so it’s enough that you read the comments and perhaps find inspiration for future pieces.
Maybe this self-hatred of the West is some kind of coping mechanism for the Long Descent after the age of fossil fuels. If you paint our whole situation as one giant mistake, it could become easier to transition into a low-energy future.
Perhaps it’s the triumph of the ‘losers’, speaking of Nietzsche, those driven by ressentiment. Filled with envy, they hate themselves and must destroy the cause of their self hatred.
''Oikophobia'', coined by the British philosopher Roger Scruton, is here used as a non-clinical description of an 'anti-culture' prevalent among Western artists and intellectuals. (Roger Scruton, ''England and the Need for Nations'', (London: Civitas, 2004). It is a combination of:
''oikos'' - from the Greek meaning a “house,” “family,” “people,” or “nation”
– Encyclopaedia Britannica
and
''-phobia'' - extreme or irrational fear or dislike of a specified thing or group
-Webster's Dictionary
An extreme and immoderate aversion to the sacred and the thwarting of the connection of the sacred to the culture of the West appears to be the underlying motif of oikophobia; and not the substitution of the culture by another coherent system of belief. The paradox of the oikophobe seems to be that any opposition directed at the theological and cultural tradition of the West is to be encouraged even if it is "significantly more parochial, exclusivist, patriarchal, and ethnocentric". (Mark Dooley, Roger Scruton: Philosopher on Dover Beach (Continuum 2009), p. 78.)
Scruton defines it as "the repudiation of inheritance and home," and refers to it as "a stage through which the adolescent mind normally passes." Roger Scruton, ''A Political Philosophy'', p. 24.
According to Scruton, culture is the ethical transmission "how to feel" passed down from one generation to the next. Virtue is taught through imitation of the heroes, gods and ancestors not by mere copying but through the imagination and "moving with them" which high culture provides. The repudiation of a common tradition blocks the individual's path to membership in the "original experience of the community". Instead of apprehending spiritual and intellectual received wisdom as an epiphany the 'anti-culture' of repudiation produces mere nihilism, irony and false gods. Roger Scruton, ''Culture Counts'' (Encounter Books, 2007), pp.36-9.