The Western world is without, as Houellebecq calls it, a "unifying project". With Christianity unlikely to make a resurgence, will Islam take its place? Or will it be something else? Or can we carry on indefinitely this way?

File: 34 KB, 316x483, soumission1[1].jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

Anonymous Mon Oct 12 04:39:32 2015 No.7224586 [Reply] [Original]

The Western world is without, as Houellebecq calls it, a "unifying project".

With Christianity unlikely to make a resurgence, will Islam take its place? Or will it be something else?

Or can we carry on indefinitely this way?

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 04:41:37 2015 No.7224589 >this bitch thinks neoliberal capitalism isn't the unifying project just because there's a bunch of retards with guns in fuckwhoknowswhereistan

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 04:44:19 2015 No.7224591 File: 302 KB, 1594x2578, 1430509092363.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>7224586

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 04:45:33 2015 No.7224594 File: 341 KB, 1328x2148, 1414522069105.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>7224586 >>7224591

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 04:46:37 2015 No.7224596 the radical acceptance of communism

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 04:47:15 2015 No.7224598 File: 326 KB, 1328x2148, 1421875381316.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>7224586 >>7224591 >>7224594

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 04:52:02 2015 No.7224607 >>7224589 >just because there's a bunch of retards with guns in fuckwhoknowswhereistan America?

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 04:59:11 2015 No.7224619 >>7224591 >>7224594 >>7224598 So Houellebecq is basically a robot?

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 05:00:59 2015 No.7224622 >>7224586 Cet homme, dans mon pays, ce n'est rien.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 05:10:19 2015 No.7224635 >>7224622 this he's so much praised on /lit/ but here in France nobody cares about him

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 05:10:52 2015 No.7224636 As long as the west can hold tight for another 50-100 years so we can hit transhumanism and/or strong ai none of it matters.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 05:20:59 2015 No.7224654 >>7224636 >implying the moment we invent artificial general intelligence isn't the day humanity ceases to exist

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 05:24:08 2015 No.7224660 >>7224654 >preferring Sharia to Skynet Nope, gimme those sweet sweet Matt Smith nanobots

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 05:26:32 2015 No.7224665 >>7224660 But Skynet would destroy us completely. At least in the Caliphate you have a choice to convert or die.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 05:26:47 2015 No.7224668 >>7224622 >>7224635 Ça c'est peut-être à cause de votre plebesse ?

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 05:27:21 2015 No.7224671 >>7224654 >>7224660 >>7224665 look at these nerds

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 05:27:21 2015 No.7224672 >>7224635 Except for the people who gave him the most prestigious literary award in France. I mean, sure, plenty of other nobodies won it, but still.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 05:27:53 2015 No.7224673 >>7224665 Skynet assimilated John Connor.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 05:28:41 2015 No.7224674 >>7224668 >Lire Houellebecq >Littéralement On n'est pas couché-core Ferme ta gueule, sous-merde.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 05:35:46 2015 No.7224690 >>7224636 >50-100 years no fucking chance lmao we're going to see the first collapses in 15 years

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 05:40:42 2015 No.7224698 >>7224636 >muh transhumanism capitalist utopia Explain how the existence of such technologies wouldn't simply further class society and exploitation

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 05:42:09 2015 No.7224701 >>7224698 Class and exploitation are spooks, get with the program grandpa.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 05:52:01 2015 No.7224718 File: 7 KB, 266x190, images.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] When has the West ever had a unifying project?

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 05:52:05 2015 No.7224719 File: 400 KB, 640x425, robo santa.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] transhumanism blows your sandnigger cave worshipers out of the water

Anonymous Mon Oct 12 05:57:14 2015 No.7224728
File: 2.49 MB, 1864x2216, Danny_DeVito_by_Gage_Skidmore.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>The first dialogue between transhumanism and faith was a one-day conference held at the University of Toronto in 2004.[82] Religious critics alone faulted the philosophy of transhumanism as offering no eternal truths nor a relationship with the divine. They commented that a philosophy bereft of these beliefs leaves humanity adrift in a foggy sea of postmodern cynicism and anomie. Transhumanists responded that such criticisms reflect a failure to look at the actual content of the transhumanist philosophy, which, far from being cynical, is rooted in optimistic, idealistic attitudes that trace back to the Enlightenment.[83] Following this dialogue, William Sims Bainbridge, a sociologist of religion, conducted a pilot study, published in the Journal of Evolution and Technology, suggesting that religious attitudes were negatively correlated with acceptance of transhumanist ideas and indicating that individuals with highly religious worldviews tended to perceive transhumanism as being a direct, competitive (though ultimately futile) affront to their spiritual beliefs
oh, they scared

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 05:58:09 2015 No.7224729 >>7224718 Who gives a shit about unity? Literally a buzzword.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 05:59:55 2015 No.7224733 Eurocentric Socialism is the only way

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 06:02:07 2015 No.7224741 >>7224586 If Christendom was ever a unifying project, it ended with the Reformation. And I don't think European colonialism brought Western nations any closer together, so I don't really know what would count as a unifying project today.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 06:03:49 2015 No.7224745 File: 154 KB, 800x950, 1437093393138.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>7224733 Euro-fascist pls go.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 06:05:10 2015 No.7224748 This is under the illusion that islam is unified and the middle east isnt a massive shithole of shia and sunni proxy wars

Anonymous Mon Oct 12 06:11:19 2015 No.7224754

>>7224748
I recently read "The Crusades through Arab eyes" and was surprised what an infighting Sunni/Shia shit-fest the Muslim world has been, and that 800 years later it's still the same conflict featuring the same dumb shit

well to be fair, it's different conflicts, but citing the same pretenses for personal gain

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 06:22:27 2015 No.7224779 Anyone got a epub or PDF of Submission yet?

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 06:28:22 2015 No.7224793 File: 945 KB, 1591x3502, 1444180472000.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>7224733

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 06:42:50 2015 No.7224839 >>7224779 No, but I'll sell you my copy on eBay

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 06:50:20 2015 No.7224856 >>7224698 no one said it wouldn't? rich people are going to live in tech enclaves and everyone else will live in the Islamic swamp we really should be phasing out the working class

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 06:53:23 2015 No.7224865 >>7224856 That sounds absolutely shit and also impossible and juvenile.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 06:59:11 2015 No.7224876 >>7224865 of course it's going to be shit I don't see any reason the future won't be shit

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 06:59:16 2015 No.7224877 >>7224672 No, it's worthless. Houellebecq is the Deepak Chobra of current french literature.

Anonymous Mon Oct 12 07:02:33 2015 No.7224882

Every time I think I should read Houellebecq more, I grab a book at random and read the description, and it's always the same

>bored old-ish guy tries to find meaning for his senseless life in random sex
>cue endless whining
>cue endless sex descriptions

I tried reading Elementary Particles and had to give up. Nothing different from what all these "I'm so bored with existence in the West, here is my senseless and aimless debauchery" writers like Easton-Ellis or now Lin put out in the English-speaking world, or Hegemann and their ilk put out in German. All boring and repetitive.

I'm not anti-sex or anti-drugs or anti-whatever, but if you've read one book of that type you've read them all.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 07:04:33 2015 No.7224890 >>7224586 I am Francoise I have see Ouellebecq stealing bars of chocolate in St Jean de Cuculles Such disgusting appearance! His book read like synthetic cheese.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 07:05:33 2015 No.7224898 >>7224882 Try The Map and the Territory, it's very different.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 07:06:11 2015 No.7224901 >>7224882 I agree, but somehow Ellis is much nicer to read to me personally, maybe because he doesn't dress it up as if every single of his books are a big revelation to humanity.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 07:07:09 2015 No.7224906 >>7224890 Bonjour Françoise, comment allez-vous.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 07:07:43 2015 No.7224908 File: 103 KB, 288x499, 1388375704759.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>7224636 >unironically wanting this

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 07:17:14 2015 No.7224924 >>7224619 he speaks to robots yes

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 07:23:26 2015 No.7224934 >>7224898 OK anon, I'll give it a try, thanks

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 07:38:19 2015 No.7224968 >>7224793 >replaces the gun with a katana >replaces the tool designed for murder with a tool that's designed to also commit murder, but it's okay because it's not as efficient That always kills me.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 07:41:27 2015 No.7224977 >>7224586 Haha. No Implosion is the disintegrating project. From there the man can return to what is natural

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 07:53:10 2015 No.7225006 >>7224968 He replaced a "local culture" tool for murder with a "multicultural" tool for murder, straight in line with the message of the left comic

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 10:11:53 2015 No.7225324 >>7224635 lol what. You must not ever read the press or watch any media if you think that.

Anonymous Mon Oct 12 11:20:52 2015 No.7225569

>>7224586
Islam is too dumb to satisfy westerners. The vast majority of people who convert leave it after 3-4 years.

I was one of those people and met many others like me, although I lasted longer. Generally you see them come to the mosque and recite the shahada then they are never seen again. Maybe after doing some more research they realise it's not what Muslims claim it is, nor is it what Islam hating right wingers claim it is.

There's countless lost souls wandering the streets of western cities, so there will always be new people joining.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 12:51:22 2015 No.7225879 >>7224898 It was an interesting read, tho it felt more like an essay than a novel, since its characters are so superficial. Would recommand.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 12:52:51 2015 No.7225885 Just read After Virtue by Macintyre or Milbank's Radical Orthodoxy. Houellebecq has decent ideas but others have said it better and said it first. Or read Huysmans "A rebours"

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 12:53:18 2015 No.7225886 more than anything I'm sick of being on the precipice we all know something's going to happen and we're just sitting here waiting even if it's a dystopian Caliphate hellhole I just want to be there already

Anonymous Mon Oct 12 12:54:25 2015 No.7225887

>>7224898
Yawn. It was mediocre. Had some interesting parts. All the characters were bland and not in the good "un-bland bland" kind of way just "bland bland."

He kind of did a clever thing with putting himself in the novel and it was funny to see Houellebecq getting drunk and living in squalor.

But overall 6/10.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 12:55:26 2015 No.7225889 >>7225569 > he converted to Sunni Islam instead of Shi'a

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 12:55:56 2015 No.7225890 >>7225886 >implying that is not an illusion rooting from pour generation's mass exposure to story-driven media and lack of dominant discourse The world is ending soon tho :)

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 12:57:50 2015 No.7225894 >>7225890 it's all fucking insincere I go on facebook and am inundated with this shit ideology if the west goes I'm going with it

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 13:00:22 2015 No.7225901 >>7225894 > muh west south europe and its culture are not going anywhere.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 13:00:35 2015 No.7225904 >>7224718 This little thing called the catholic church.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 13:01:08 2015 No.7225905 >>7225894 >not liking living in a post-cultural liberal totalitarian distopia Geez, what's wrong about you? You just have to be on the right side of the fence

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 13:01:44 2015 No.7225907 >>7225901 farts

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 13:03:11 2015 No.7225912 >>7225901 good thing I'm eligible for Italian citizenship the west is good and great and beautiful and I love it so fuck you

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 13:04:16 2015 No.7225915 >>7225907 >>7225912 The west IS southern europe.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 13:05:06 2015 No.7225918 >>7225912 Where are you from, my soon-to-be neighbor?

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 13:07:15 2015 No.7225925 File: 82 KB, 571x515, 1356456158245.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>7225886

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 13:08:20 2015 No.7225930 >>7225915 I know I don't want it to be erased >>7225918 Australia

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 13:13:36 2015 No.7225944 >>7224619 An early 90s prototype with Marxist programming.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 13:15:12 2015 No.7225951 >>7225915 craps

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 13:17:42 2015 No.7225955 >>7224622 >>7224635 He's the best selling author not just in France but in continental Europe.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 13:19:29 2015 No.7225964 >>7225930 Hi there. French and American citizen reporting in. What brings you to our small continent?

Anonymous Mon Oct 12 13:23:11 2015 No.7225973

>>7225964
Australia is an ideological wasteland
we put on a front of masculinity and 'boat stopping' but we have the same anglo outrage culture of the US and UK, we're the Last Men and it's getting worse day by day, my friends and family are changing rapidly and I hate it
I don't have hope for the west in general but at least I could spend my last days somewhere beautiful and with nice food

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 13:27:10 2015 No.7225978 >>7225901 Spain is. Not even Sweden has an immigration rate that high. The economic crisis has put a brake to it but the harm is done already.

Anonymous Mon Oct 12 13:27:46 2015 No.7225980

>>7224793
I love that this is an edit of zen pencils, who supports column b.

>>7224968
The katana has a system of ethics deeply linked with its use, the gun doesn't. The katana has persisted into modern life because of this. Nobody in the west has any sort of reverence for the claymore. The original weapon looks like an antique rifle. It's probably "great grandad's nigger catching gun."

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 13:28:51 2015 No.7225982 >>7225973 It's true that I got some mixed echoes from your popular culture. Europe is also in bad shape, but there might be some hope left somewhere. I hope you enjoy your stay. Marrying a local?

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 13:36:34 2015 No.7225998 >>7224754 >The Crusades through Arab eyes >The unironic equivalent of what /tv/ calls a flick Why would you inflict this upon yourself if you are not a specialist?

Anonymous Mon Oct 12 13:39:00 2015 No.7226005

>>7225982
no I have Italian heritage
I mean it's not just immigration, I don't particularly care about living in a white only zone or something like that (though Islam is rubbish)
it's TPP, the extending power of the state and in particular the executive in America, it's increasing infringements on freedom of speech, surveillance, disarmament, marriage of the corporate and the state
and the whole of media and academia supports it

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 13:39:01 2015 No.7226006 >>7225998 I havent read this one bit Maalouf writes fairly well. It is also pretty accessible.

The cats Mon Oct 12 13:40:04 2015 No.7226010
File: 60 KB, 1024x768, image.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>7225980
>The katana has a system of ethics deeply linked with its use, the gun doesn't. The katana has persisted into modern life because of this. Nobody in the west has any sort of reverence for the claymore.

*vapes*

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 13:41:04 2015 No.7226014 >>7226005 Oh. Sorry my friend, you are in for a bad surprise then. Well, maybe not, but still: if TTIP passes, we are going to be sucking US dicks like never before, if such a thing is possible.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 13:42:42 2015 No.7226017 >>7226005 also we all just have to sit and pretend it's all going to be fine when it clearly fucking isn't >>7226014 I realise but at least I can eat some wild boar ragu while it happens

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 13:44:42 2015 No.7226022 >>7224728 >Trace back to the Enlightenment >implying that's a good thing

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 14:27:00 2015 No.7226152 >>7225980 >The katana has a system of ethics deeply linked with its use, the gun doesn't is this a troll? I almost fell for it.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 14:57:56 2015 No.7226264 File: 760 KB, 1280x715, 1443340466899.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>7224793 >the only difference is what funny hats the people wear

Anonymous Mon Oct 12 21:48:44 2015 No.7227834

The obvious incumbent in the world of ideologies is Marxism but the whole thing got kind of tripped up by Nietzsche and Freud so we're kind of at a place in intellectual life not unlike physics where nobody can really square relativity with quantum mechanics. Hackish Frankfurt shit notwithstanding...

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 21:52:18 2015 No.7227845 >>7224586 Idealism, please go.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 21:53:06 2015 No.7227850 >>7224596 were you born yesterday then?

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 21:56:22 2015 No.7227865 >>7227834 Marxism would destroy the west even if the economics worked out

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 22:12:00 2015 No.7227915 >>7225904 You realize the quantity of conflict that were caused by the Catholic Church over the centuries ? It was never much more of an unifying project than the EU currently is.

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 22:54:28 2015 No.7228052 >>7227915 no more than Islam yet Islam was a successful unifying project

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 22:56:44 2015 No.7228065 >>7224607 lel this is such a failure of a post

>>	Anonymous Mon Oct 12 23:01:12 2015 No.7228077 File: 8 KB, 194x259, kensama1.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>7225980 >The katana has a system of ethics deeply linked with its use, the gun doesn't.

Anonymous Mon Oct 12 23:04:15 2015 No.7228091

>>7224901
Houellebecq seems funnier to me, and actually more modest than Ellis. Ellis seems like he literally can't see outside of the depraved culture he's immersed in, and that's what causes him to write that way. Houellebecq seems like he still is able to have a moral stance and feel pity for his characters, and the way he writes is lazy in a funny way. Ellis seems to write in a way that's overwrought, very over-styled in that weird, clinical 90s-postmodern way.

>>	Anonymous Tue Oct 13 10:54:37 2015 No.7229682 File: 945 KB, 1591x3502, 1444645702300.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] The mods deleted this image. THEY DON'T WANT YOU TO SEE THIS! Responses to OP of image: >>7224968 >>7225980

>>	Anonymous Tue Oct 13 10:56:06 2015 No.7229692 >>7225980 >The katana has persisted into modern life because of this. Nobody in the west has any sort of reverence for the claymore. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Churchill

>>	Anonymous Tue Oct 13 11:03:33 2015 No.7229719 >>7224718 Space race.

>>	Anonymous Tue Oct 13 11:10:48 2015 No.7229740 >>7229682 >other cultures are all bad >other cultures are all good That's the same kind of illusion and abstraction.

>>	Anonymous Tue Oct 13 11:15:09 2015 No.7229756 >>7224586 >The Western world is without, as Houellebecq calls it, a "unifying project". That's untrue, you have faggot rights.

>>	Anonymous Tue Oct 13 11:19:32 2015 No.7229764 >>7224622 >Cet homme, dans mon pays, ce n'est rien. C'est quoi ton pays alors? Cependant il peut pas etre francophone.

>>	Anonymous Tue Oct 13 11:22:36 2015 No.7229770 >>7228052 False, Europe always had civil wars between Christianity and competing religions like Gnosticism, Arianism, Protestantism, etc.

>>	Anonymous Tue Oct 13 11:22:38 2015 No.7229771 >>7229764 Retourne te couscousser, Mich-mich.

>>	Michel Tue Oct 13 11:27:26 2015 No.7229794 >>7229764 >Quel est ton pays ? m'interroge donc; car il ne peut être francophone. Corrigé pour toi.

>>	Anonymous Tue Oct 13 11:35:57 2015 No.7229824 >>7229794 J'm'en fous, chuis pas francophone et c'est ma troisieme langue quand meme.

>>	Anonymous Tue Oct 13 12:49:33 2015 No.7230031 >>7225889 I considered becoming shia, but they are just as dumb... maybe more philosophical, but full of superstitious nonsense all the same.

>>	Anonymous Tue Oct 13 12:55:42 2015 No.7230058 >>7228052 Islam has been as it is now for 1400 years; constant infighting, sectarian butchery, rising and falling of empires in competition and destroying eachother, and tribal warfare.

>>	Anonymous Tue Oct 13 12:55:44 2015 No.7230059 >>7230031 They might be dumb but at least they provide you with a regular source of cress.

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/lit/ - Literature