He predicted it all, didn't he?

[Anonymous No.19887294]

"It would seem that nothing can be more adapted to stimulate and to feed curiosity than the aspect of the United States. Fortunes, opinions, and laws are there in ceaseless variation: it is as if immutable nature herself were mutable, such are the changes worked upon her by the hand of man. Yet in the end the sight of this excited community becomes monotonous, and after having watched the moving pageant for a time the spectator is tired of it. Amongst aristocratic nations every man is pretty nearly stationary in his own sphere; but men are astonishingly unlike each other – their passions, their notions, their habits, and their tastes are essentially different: nothing changey, but everything differs. In democracies, on the contrary, all men are alike and do things pretty nearly alike. It is true that they are subject to great and frequent vicissitudes; but as the same events of good or adverse fortune are continually recurring, the name of the actors only is changed, the piece is always the same. The aspect of American society is animated, because men and things are always changing; but it is monotonous, because all these changes are alike."

He literally predicted why every new single movie and new series at Netflix are regularly boring shit.

[Anonymous No.19887352]

>>19887294
>He literally predicted why every new single movie and new series at Netflix are regularly boring shit.
I think he was talking about more than entertainment but, the masses of every nation are often boring, dull and simple, so boring, dull and simple minds are required to cater to their entertainment needs

[Anonymous No.19887363]

>>19887352
>>19887294
Also one does not want to give the masses too much; tok much genius, to much taste, too much ideas, too much culture, too much intelligence, too much higher ideals, too much nobility, too much ambition, too much hope, too much radicality, too much philosophy; or a non trivial amount of the masses may self aware themselves away from their massesness

[Anonymous No.19887406]

>>19887294
holy shit you brain dead zoomer
you read an excerpt about class, culture and trends and all you can derive from it is "OMG NETFLIX!!!"

[Anonymous No.19887412]

>>19887294
Nothing he says in this paragraph speaks to the quality of fashions in democracies. He only seems to say that these fashions are adopted by all members of the polity before moving to the next fashion.

[Anonymous No.19887437]

>>19887352
>>19887406
The Netflix thing is in all likelihood a joke.

[Anonymous No.19887439]

"I think that democratic communities have a natural taste for freedom: left to themselves, they will seek it, cherish it, and view any privation of it with regret. But for equality, their passion is ardent, insatiable, incessant, invincible: they call for equality in freedom; and if they cannot obtain that, they still call for equality in slavery. They will endure poverty, servitude, barbarism – but they will not endure aristocracy."

Tell me this isn't true.

[Anonymous No.19887721]

>>19887439
When the aristocracy ceases careing of the well being of the poor (and when more than half the citizens can be considered poor), and the state of the poor is partly or largely of their doing, the poor have no choice but to at least hope to seek or demand some equality for themselves at the very least of being equally non impoverished.

[Anonymous No.19887725]

>>19887439
>they call for equality in freedom;
>equality in freedom;
What does that mean

[Anonymous No.19887746]

>>19887294
>The aspect of American society is animated, because men and things are always changing; but it is monotonous, because all these changes are alike."
How are aristocratic societies he had in mind not monotonous?

>Amongst aristocratic nations every man is pretty nearly stationary in his own sphere

And this was the large selling point for America, the possibilty of breaking out of ones caste.

[Anonymous No.19887778]

>>19887725
Read Zapffe's The Last Messiah:

>Most “spiritually developed” people demand that these changes have a sort of continuity, direction, or progression. For them, no situation can be ultimately satisfying, they must always go a step further, gathering new information, pursuing a career, and so on. These people suffer from an ineradicable yearning to overstep limits, to demand more and more from life, a restless ambition that is never satisfied. When one’s previous goal is reached, it becomes only a step to some higher goal—the goal itself, in fact, is immaterial; it is the yearning itself that is important. The absolute height of one’s goal is less important than how much higher it is from where one momentarily finds oneself; it is the marginal degree of yearning that counts.

[Anonymous No.19887840]

>>19887778

The alternative being the entropic heat death of the ever attenuating steady state achieved only by occluding the new and creating the demon to worship of the status quo, and paradoxing the narration to fool yourself into continued existence until there is no difference left with which to continue to make the conscious explorer that you are. How then are you any different than a rock that too soon will decay into undifferentiated heat?
There is no made, only making. If you only make from what is made, you limit what can be made.
If you beggar the choice to become something new so that you can overcome the obstacles that define you, you cannot choose to go where you can’t now go, nor even imagine it. You will be destined to be defined by what you can’t be and ignorant of it, until there is nothing left of you at all.
Your conservation is illusion. You only make yourself too stupid to see that you are too stupid to see that you are too stupid.

[Anonymous No.19887962]

>>19887778
And so the phrase; equality in freedom, means......____________

[Anonymous No.19888103]

Democracy itself, as I see it, arrives once the poor become victorious, killing some of the opposite party and exiling others, and sharing the civic organization and its offices on equal footing with those that remain, the choice of officers now done by drawing lots, for the most part.
“This is truly the policy that establishes democracy, whether it is instituted by arms or only out of fear, the other party escaping into exile.”
Then what is the turn of the civic management that these men adopt? How, that is, does the character of this regime differ from the others?Already it is clear that the man who corresponds to the regime will turn out to be of a democratic sort.
“Yes, it is clear.”
So, first of all they will become free: the city will come to be full of freedom and candor, and a latitude or license will arise in it to do whatever one wishes.
“This is what is said about democracy.”
But wherever there is latitude each person would clearly design his own life according to his own private preferences.
“Clearly.”
So a veritable kaleidoscope of human types would arise under such a regime as this.
“Nothing to prevent that.”
This one might just be the most beautiful of the regimes. Like a robe decked out with the dyes of many flowers, this city, bedecked with a rainbow of character-types, might seem the prettiest. Think of the way children and women feel when they contemplate highly decorated things: the majority very well3979 might judge this regime to be the most beautiful.
“Could well be.”
And it really would just the place, my dazzling friend, to look for a regime.
“Just what do you mean by that?”
Just that it includes all the types of regime because of its licentiousness: indeed, a person who has a mind to design a city, as we ourselves were doing, might himself do well to visit a democratized city, to choose whichever style of city pleases him, as though he were visiting a showroom of regimes, and having chosen it to move on to its realization.

[Anonymous No.19888110]

>>19888103
“At least he’d have no lack of models to choose from.”
But the fact that there would be no requirement to rule in this city, not even if you were able to rule, nor to be ruled in case you wish not to be, nor to go to war when others are at war, nor to observe a treaty just because the others do, nor conversely, in case some law prevents you from ruling or acting as judge, that you may both rule and judge no less, if that's what enters your mind – wouldn’t this be a sweet and blessed way to pass the time at every moment?
“Maybe so, for a while.”
And this: Have you seen how delightfully mild the judicial condemnations sometimes prove to be? Or have you not yet witnessed how, when men have been condemned to death or to exile in such a regime, they hang around no less and keep popping up in your midst, with nobody caring or noticing if one of them haunts the place like a spirit returned from the grave?
“Yes, and many of them.”
And the clemency that is all her manner with no hint of sticking at details, though she does take umbrage at the policies we argued for, high-toned and self-important, when we were establishing our city, that unless a person had a nature far and away superior he could never become a good man, without having played since childhood in beautiful surroundings and practiced and exercised himself in all such things. How large-heartedly she tramples down all such admonitions wholesale and gives no second thought to the background of a person who is working to make his way into politics, but grants him her esteem if only he claims to have the people’s interest in mind.
“So very impressive, I’d say.”
Not only this then but a lot of allied qualities would democracy provide, and would be a sweet regime to all appearances, free of rules and fascinating for its variety, allocating a kind of equality to all whether they are equal or not.

[Anonymous No.19888129]

>>19888110
“What you say is all too familiar.”
Then look at the individual, and what he is like in private. Or should we first investigate how he evolves, as we did with his regime?
“Yes.”
Isn’t it this way? That stingy oligarch would have a son raised up on the same character traits as his father.
[...]
As to the man we were just calling a drone, weren’t we talking about a person who is full of such pleasures and desires as these and is ruled by the non-necessary ones, whereas the man who is ruled by the necessary ones was stingy and oligarchical?
“Yes, of course.”
So let’s return to the question how the democratic man evolves out of the oligarchic one. To me it seems in most cases to take place as follows. The young man has been raised as we said under the uncultured and stingy regime of his father. If one day he tastes the honey of the drones and falls in with certain agile brutes, clever ones that are able to procure for him pleasure of all types, all decked out and adjusted to every taste, that’s the day his transformation begins, from the oligarchic order within him toward a democratic one.
“Irresistibly.”
So now, just as the city underwent a transformation with the help of an alliance between one of the parties within her and certain outside elements that were similar to that party, so also our youth undergoes a transformation when a group of desires working from the outside aids the faction of desires within him to which it is akin and similar.
“The analogy is exact.”
But if a counter-rescue should be carried out by some ally of the oligarchic element within him, whether from his father or even other family members who chastise him and reproach him, then we have faction and counter-faction and a battle arising within him against himself.
“Clearly.”
And I imagine that sometimes the democratic element gradually yielded to the oligarchic, and of the pleasures some perished and others went into exile while reverence and respectfulness resumed hegemony as it were in the young man’s soul, and calm order was established in him once again.
“It does happen sometimes.”
But at another time, I imagine, though such desires were exiled, others like them were subtly coddled by the father’s ignorance of how to rear his son, and thereby flourished widely and became strong.
“That sort of thing does tend to happen.”
And they drag them back to those same associations and through secret intercourse with them they give birth to a teeming offspring.
“Obviously.”
Finally, however, they captured that part of the young man’s soul we may call the acropolis, recognizing how empty it had become of studies and activities that are fine and thoughts that are true, which are after all the best sentries and guards for the men upon whom the gods smile, residing in their minds.
>Plato the Republic, Book 8, transl. Kenneth Quandt

[Anonymous No.19888577]

>>19888103
>>19888110
>>19888129
Gonna read this in a bit seems cool

[Anonymous No.19888621]

[Anonymous No.19888737]

>>19887962
>And so the phrase; equality in freedom, means......____________

>>19888110
>Not only this then but a lot of allied qualities would democracy provide, and would be a sweet regime to all appearances, free of rules and fascinating for its variety, allocating a kind of equality to all whether they are equal or not.

Ok, so, in not democracy what types of these freedoms do you think would be limited? Just list a few so I get a general idea.

What comes to mind to say is: laws restrict freedom in even democracy (though yes then it is presuming still everyone is on the same level of freedom under law); and money in democracy is a great restricter of freedom, that which the aristocracy possesses in democracy or another system that already greatly negates the notion of equal in freedom.

The qoute from the republic mentions variety of character types, that lead into the expression: freedom to all, wheather they are equal or not.

I am not sure what he means by this, I only can geuss it's the equalizing of strict caste systems, wherin maids and maidservants and drivers and petty workers would no longer have to bow their head and day sir.

So that the differences in money create class, but in the freedom of democracy, even though the differences of money remain, in non democratic systems the difference of money, or castes/classes came with more rules and restrictions besides just the money difference, but Aires and actions and grammars and only being able to go to certain parts if town etc.

So is Tacoville mainly saying with that democracy free line, that he prefers the power structure order of behavioral actions the lower classes must act out in the presence of him, or, it's simply the freedom for everyone to vote; a rich intelligent landowners 1 vote is equal to a poor person's 1 vote, that is the grand equality he speaks of. I geuss it must be simple as that.

[Anonymous No.19889421]

>>19888103
Yep it's quote time.

[Anonymous No.19889465]

Why do de Tocqueville threads always produce walls of text? It happens every time.

[Anonymous No.19889644]

I think Tocqueville is so overrated. Foreigners Like to poke fun at the fact that Americans don’t like to read him, but there is reason for that.

[Anonymous No.19889709]

>>19888737
Tocqueville was critical of democracy while still being a parliamentarian/republican. However he saw the atomizing effects democracy has on individuals as it sweeps away their traditional connections to others (religion, guild, family are all feudal in origin). The Plato quote is relevant as Plato was also concerned about democracy’s effect on the soul. I think both Tocqueville and Plato admired aspects of democracy, especially its freedom and colorful vitality, but ultimately saw its corroding influences on the society and culture of their time

>>19889421
>>19889465
It’s a literature board just move your eyes left to right and up to down

[Anonymous No.19890458]

>>19889644
He's underrated.

[Anonymous No.19890934]

>>19887294
>People live in cities
No shit Nostradumbass

[Anonymous No.19891851]

>>19890934
You wahat?

[Anonymous No.19892806]

>>19889465
Because some tranǹy seethes about him and tries to slide every thread

[Anonymous No.19892842]

>>19887294
For some reason, this guy makes lefty bio-scum absolutely seethe. Why is that? Why do the lefties hate him so much?

[Anonymous No.19892850]

>>19889465
I've noticed the same exact thing.

[Anonymous No.19892966]

[Anonymous No.19894301]

>>19892842
He's a traitor to libs.

[Anonymous No.19895949]

>>19890934
Damn you got him

[Anonymous No.19895952]

>>19887294
Tocque is GOAT. Highly recommend his book on the French revolution.