Today

One of the methods to understand decline is to focus on aesthetics. Aesthetics is contrary to technique. Every civilization uses technique to fulfill aesthetics. But aesthetics exists in the work, especially in the master work. But what is a master work? The full realization of the prime symbol of a civilization in a particular work of a particular mastermind.

Today we live in an era of technique, because the prime symbols of our civilization have already been fulfilled. The work is the technique itself. Nothing transcends the technique. There is no work after it. That is why our art today is consumed, but not felt. It is not even art at all, it is a commodity. Even Nobel prizes are consumed commodities. Art requires universal transcendence, in the same way that Euripides transcends till today, in a way that it also transcends commodification. However the Roman Coliseum was consumed, and there it lies in ruins. So our stadiums, our gigantic museums and government palaces will lie in ruins. Why? Because there is nothing else to do but to expand the technique. And the technique is self-destructive. Our technique has reached nuclear capacities after all. Just finish drawing the graph. Do the math.

The technique is banal. The banality of technique. We as individuals, by virtue of our individual rights, are mere products of modern technique. Technique ourselves! Professionals! Qualified labor! Human bodies turned into commodities! Vacations? Commodified festivities! What is it that you cannot see? Progress is the fancy name of decline. Development is the elegant but mediocre synonym of mass consumption. It's pathetic. Aren't you happy about it? We should be happy! That's what our individual rights are after all: commodified individual guarantees so that we become functional members of the capitalist form of production. Do you really think that there is an inherent care for our individuality? We function better in the system with that protected individuality of ours. If we are not functional we are thrown into unemployment. It's that simple; that banal. Homo economicus is the non plus ultra of the banality of our modern existence.

But there is nothing wrong with this. There is absolutely nothing wrong. What is inevitable cannot be wrong. Otherwise the world would be pure wrongness, and that only leads to suicide. No we don't have to commit suicide because of the mediocrity of our times. Rather we have to die tragically. Of course those that see die tragically; nostalgically. Those that don't see die banally. The world of fairness and justice and of individual rights has its virtues. Everything goes. God, the True God that died in the cross is dead. But dead where? In our hearts. He doesn't speak to us anymore as modern men. Our banality prevents it. God doesn't speak to banal beings like us, products of technique, commodified biological bodies. We have reached the point of even consuming the Holy Scriptures! Of producing and distributing them en masse!

No, there is nothing wrong with decline. Decline is liberal; at least for now. Decline summed up with capitalism can become something more monstrous than the banality of the mediocrity of liberalism. It can become totalitarianism. It has already shown its face! But its not dead. It's far from dead. The only thing remaining is that Caesar's laurels crown the man commanding from the White House. That Nero signs the presidential orders and vetoes the congressional legislation. He will become the legislator! And this we can't avoid.

I wonder who will be the Christians of our age. Who will be those from which the new civilizations will be born, hundreds of years from now, after all our fancy technology and wonders of engineering lied wasted by our own nuclear bombs. We only have to crown the Caesar. That, then, will be all.