There’s nothing tentative about Zoroastrian religious propheticism. Zoroastrianism is full of prophecy. Zoroastrianism is in fact the role model for all the later, younger Magian religions that came after it and were influenced by it: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam included. That’s why Spengler used the term “Magian” to collectively refer to the entire culture that produced these religions.

***As you likely well know, Lester Ness, Spengler considered Arabian civilization “Western” and counted it, with Christianity, as “Magian”.***

Actually Spengler classified Western and Magian as distinctly different civilizations.

The fact that the West was Christian did not change that fact; the basic cultural/political formation in the West is the nation state (and its feudal precursors) where belonging means citizenship according to geographical boundaries.

The Magian civilization (which includes the Arabian Islamic, Levantine Christian, Jewish, Mandean, Yezidi, Persian Zoroastrian, Manichean, etc., religious communities) was focused rather on the “sect nation” or “nation sect” and not the “nation state” (in the Western sense), where belonging, or “citizenship” (in the Western sense) was a matter of belonging to a religious community, and not to a “nation state”.

In many ways it still is, in spite of an attempt to impose a Western nation state system on to the middle east. Attempts to recreate the Caliphate are in essence attempts to recreate a truly “Magian” state. It’s probably not practical in a world that is dominated now by Western ideas of the state, but that won’t keep some people from trying.

Lester Ness
Kunming
China

As you likely well know, Lester Ness, Spengler considered Arabian civilization “Western” and counted it, with Christianity, as “Magian”.

Indian and Chinese civilization different? No doubt. Buddhism bridged both (and Japan too), but the bridging Buddhism was not a religion in the strict sense of the word, and there are some similarities for all that, seen best in the ancient period.

None of these generalizations, however, are worth much without detailed acquaintance with and delineation of what one is talking about.

Whoever this Andrzej M. Łobaczewski was, he was clearly not using “typical American” as a term of class, but of cultural outlook.

There, especially in the matter of “pone”, jubilational or otherwise, Bush fits the type to a capital “T”, don’t you think?

Lester Ness
Kunming
China

Bush is NOT a typical American in at least one respect. Most of us do not have millionaire ex-presidents for our fathers! He’s enjoyed a lot of privileges the rest of us have not.

As for Islamic civilization being TOTALLY different from the Western, “Christian” one, no, no, no! They are in fact Siamese twins, very similar and intimately connected. That’s why they can argue about the same things. Indian and Chinese civilizations are truly different.

Lester Ness
Kunming
China

Andrzej M. Łobaczewski

It is really beside the point whether Andrzej M. Łobaczewski is a Venus On The Half Shell bequeathed by Stanislaw Lem or a real trout, now supposedly deceased, and–as football coaches and sportscasters used to say at charity dinners–”a great human being in his own right.”

“Ponerology” is a good and legitimate Greek formation. Popularizing it in American English has only this downside–it closes out the scientific study of “pone” and its agents under the same name.

I did not, for various reasons, later translate that into McCain, but he does a fine job of fulfilling the prediction, including his averral during the debate (fere)–
“I am not known as Mr. Congeniality.”

No, he isn’t and that is at least partly why he got the call, despite his age, his mental instability and his life-long incompetence.

It is noteworthy that Congressman Paul, who in effect defused the anti-war vote, was also decisive in making McCain the nominee.