Philosophy Now Forum

we have today, a large group, holdovers from the age,
the Romantic Era.. in which the conservatives dream of a
better existence, a greater existence then found in today's life/
existence... for the conservative is always convinced that,
(in some fashion that isn't quite clear) that the past was
better in most/all ways than the present....

the very motto of the clinical insane, the ''MAGA'' party points to
this need/drive to see the past as being better than today...
that the past was the golden era and today is the silver era....
and this very terminology and meaning was originally from
the Roman times... for that is exactly how the Romans saw their
society/state after Ceasar...as being the ''Silver age''.. and they used
that very word, Silver... to describe their age....second best to the
golden age of the past...

and in the ''Romantic age" after the ''Enlightenment era'' conservatives
rediscover, once again, this idea of a golden age, the past,
and the silver age, the current/time or present age....
and like the Romans of ancient times, the conservative pined for
the golden age, as opposed to the silver age of the present...

and we can see, as mentioned, this in the ''MAGA''
party... Make America Great Again..... but the real problem
becomes the fact that the belief that at some point in the past,
we were in a golden age, is false... think about this....

this belief or value doesn't come about in the Middle ages, or
the Rennaissance, or the during the age of Enlightenment, in which
the future was valued, not the past... there was no worship of the past
until the Romantic era... and again think about it... why was this?
the worship of the past can't happen until there is some means or way
to separate out past from the future... the Age of Enlightenment brought
about a new way of thinking about history.. that history had movement,
it could go from better to even better or could go from better to worse...
that history had movement was a very important aspect to our
understanding of the world... but Kropotkin, how did the Romans
get to the idea of the golden world and the silver age.... From the
Greeks... one way or another, the Greeks lit the world for the Romans..
virtually every single Roman idea was taken/stolen from the Greeks...
including this idea of history being able to move...

but again, think about it... we can't have this idea of the golden
age vs the silver age if, if the society hadn't advance in some fashion...
the golden age vs the silver age requires some movement from the
golden age to the silver age...life had advance enough to separate
the present from the past.... the new way of life, of the industrial revolution
and the political revolutions and the scientific revolutions allowed one
to see this movement from past to present...in the past, there was
no such thing as factories or democracy or science.. but today we have
those and this is movement in history... 

and we can only pine for the past if, if the present was in some fashion
different from the past... and the rise of today conservatives who also
consider this age to be a silver age as oppose to the past, which was
the golden age... again, this only works if the world had change enough
to allow this new belief...the movement of history allows this
understanding of the golden past to the current silver age.....

and the GOP/MAGA crowed believes in a golden past as oppose
to the current silver age... MAGA.. Make America Great Again....
turn America back into a golden age...but here is what is left
unsaid... what age exactly are we turning America back into?
are we going back to a time where blacks were slaves?
or are we turning our time back into an age where women
are treated as property.. in my lifetime, women were not
allow to have bank accounts or have credit cards unless
it was signed by a man...

(for some reason, women having control over their own lives seem to
threaten a lot of men's ego's.. we see that around here a lot..
women by being strong, threaten a man's ego..
a good deal of the MAGA party followers believe in this..
that is why they want to take away rights and power from women...
to help the man's ego.. that is virtually the entire basis of
the fight against allowing women abortions.. to salve men's egos)

but a realistic look at the past, which should convince us that the past
was worse, much worse than today's current situation... as I pointed out,
women were treated as property, that black people were slaves,
that the only ones who could vote were men of a certain amount
of property... that not only were ''all men create equal'' but that
only certain men, white men, and not women, and not immigrants...
were not to be treated as equals...is this really an age to be thought
of, as the golden age?

and that we treat human beings, as best we can, as equals, with
equal rights, as a silver age?

that we give women, blacks, people who think of themselves
as being LGBTQIA, rights, that is considered to be the silver age,
and the age of only white men of property to have rights, that
is the golden age? I like to see that argument being made...

for a person to want to return to the past, to the ''golden age''
really means to me anyway, how ignorant that person is....
any return to the past, the golden age, is doomed to failure
for the simple fact that the past, the golden age, sucked
the big wang...for anyone not being white, middle aged,
property owners.. that is the golden age and that is exactly
the time period the members of MAGA are trying to return us
to, the golden age of only white, middle age property owners
having rights and everyone else being screwed...with no rights....

Now as I am the target group of the MAGA crowed... I am white,
well now senior citizen, who owns property, I should be
the target audience of the MAGA party... but the fact is,
I think the present is vastly better than the past, the silver age....
now is it perfect, nope, but we can, together, make our age
even better and that is the entire agenda of the liberal...
to make the current age, better than the last age...
we think America is already great if, if we actually
do what the constitution and the declaration of Independence,
want us to do which is advance the rights that some have into
rights that every single person should have........
not just American, but rights that every single person
in the world has by virtue of being human...
we no longer think of rights as being specifically American,
but we think of rights a being human... it is a human right
to be gay or trans or black or a woman... and we cannot
remove or take out those rights just because people, not just
Americans are not those targeted for losing these rights..

rights that we think of as specifically American, the right to
an abortion, the right to vote, the right to love and marry
whomever you want, the right to be the sole entity of
making choices for your own body.... the goal is to extend
those American rights into world wide Civil rights for
ALL human beings...

the attack on civil rights, of say gays, in Russia is an attack on
the rights of all gays world wide...

the golden age is really still in the future as we continue to
fight for rights, today limited to some, to rights given to
all human beings...anywhere they live...that is the battle
we face today,

(among the other battles we fight in our modern age)

so, we might adjust the MAGA motto to...

''all humans have rights"" AHAR.. hummmm, that doesn't have
quite the ring of MAGA... I'll have to work on that...

''MHGA'' ''Make Humans Great Again''

still needs work..

Kropotkin

this belief or value doesn't come about in the Middle ages, or
the Rennaissance, or the during the age of Enlightenment, in which
the future was valued, not the past... there was no worship of the past
until the Romantic era

You are mistaken. Belief in a previous golden age has been common throughout history.

Hermeticism or Hermetism is a philosophical and religious system based on the purported teachings of Hermes Trismegistus (a Hellenistic conflation of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth).[1] These teachings are contained in the various writings attributed to Hermes (the Hermetica), which were produced over a period spanning many centuries (c. 300 BCE – 1200 CE) and may be very different in content and scope.[2]

One particular form of Hermetic teaching is the religio-philosophical system propounded by a specific subgroup of Hermetic writings known as the 'religio-philosophical' Hermetica, the most famous of which are the Corpus Hermeticum (a collection of seventeen Greek Hermetic treatises written between c. 100 and c. 300 CE) and the Asclepius (a treatise from the same period mainly surviving in a Latin translation).[3] This specific, historical form of Hermetic philosophy is sometimes more restrictively called Hermetism,[4] to distinguish it from the philosophies inspired by the many Hermetic writings of a completely different period and nature.

A more open-ended term is Hermeticism, which may refer to a wide variety of philosophical systems drawing on Hermetic writings, or even merely on subject matter generally associated with Hermes (most notably, alchemy often went by the name of "the Hermetic art" or "the Hermetic philosophy").[5] The most famous use of the term in this broader sense is in the concept of Renaissance Hermeticism, which refers to the wide array of early modern philosophies inspired by, on the one hand, Marsilio Ficino's (1433–1499) and Lodovico Lazzarelli's (1447–1500) translation of the Corpus Hermeticum, and on the other, by Paracelsus' (1494–1541) introduction of a new medical philosophy drawing upon the 'technical' Hermetica (i.e., astrological, alchemical, and magical Hermetica, such as the Emerald Tablet).[6]

In 1964, Frances A. Yates advanced the thesis that Renaissance Hermeticism, or what she called "the Hermetic tradition", had been a crucial factor in the development of modern science.[7] While Yates's thesis has since been largely rejected,[8] the important role played by the 'Hermetic' science of alchemy in the thought of such figures as Jan Baptist van Helmont (1580–1644), Robert Boyle (1627–1691) or Isaac Newton (1642–1727) has been amply demonstrated.[9]

Throughout its history, Hermeticism was closely associated with the idea of a primeval, divine wisdom, revealed only to the most ancient of sages, such as Hermes Trismegistus.[10] In the Renaissance, this developed into the notion of a prisca theologia or "ancient theology", which asserted that there is a single, true theology which was given by God to some of the first humans, and traces of which may still be found in various ancient systems of thought. Thinkers like Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494) supposed that this 'ancient theology' could be reconstructed by studying (what were then considered to be) the most ancient writings still in existence, such as those attributed to Hermes, but also those attributed to, such as Zoroaster, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Plato, the 'Chaldeans', or the Kabbalah.[11] This soon evolved into the idea, first proposed by Agostino Steuco (1497–1548), that one and the same divine truth may be found in the religious and philosophical traditions of different periods and places, all considered as different manifestations of the same universal perennial philosophy.[12] In this perennialist context, the term 'Hermetic' tended to lose even more of its specificity, eventually becoming a mere byword for the purported divine knowledge of the ancient Egyptians, especially as related to alchemy and magic. This generic and pseudo-historical use of the term was greatly popularized by nineteenth- and twentieth-century occultists, despite their occasional use of authentic Hermetic texts and concepts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermeticism

phyllo wrote: ↑Tue Feb 13, 2024 8:12 pm

this belief or value doesn't come about in the Middle ages, or
the Rennaissance, or the during the age of Enlightenment, in which
the future was valued, not the past... there was no worship of the past
until the Romantic era

You are mistaken. Belief in a previous golden age has been common throughout history.

Hermeticism or Hermetism is a philosophical and religious system based on the purported teachings of Hermes Trismegistus (a Hellenistic conflation of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth).[1] These teachings are contained in the various writings attributed to Hermes (the Hermetica), which were produced over a period spanning many centuries (c. 300 BCE – 1200 CE) and may be very different in content and scope.[2]

One particular form of Hermetic teaching is the religio-philosophical system propounded by a specific subgroup of Hermetic writings known as the 'religio-philosophical' Hermetica, the most famous of which are the Corpus Hermeticum (a collection of seventeen Greek Hermetic treatises written between c. 100 and c. 300 CE) and the Asclepius (a treatise from the same period mainly surviving in a Latin translation).[3] This specific, historical form of Hermetic philosophy is sometimes more restrictively called Hermetism,[4] to distinguish it from the philosophies inspired by the many Hermetic writings of a completely different period and nature.

A more open-ended term is Hermeticism, which may refer to a wide variety of philosophical systems drawing on Hermetic writings, or even merely on subject matter generally associated with Hermes (most notably, alchemy often went by the name of "the Hermetic art" or "the Hermetic philosophy").[5] The most famous use of the term in this broader sense is in the concept of Renaissance Hermeticism, which refers to the wide array of early modern philosophies inspired by, on the one hand, Marsilio Ficino's (1433–1499) and Lodovico Lazzarelli's (1447–1500) translation of the Corpus Hermeticum, and on the other, by Paracelsus' (1494–1541) introduction of a new medical philosophy drawing upon the 'technical' Hermetica (i.e., astrological, alchemical, and magical Hermetica, such as the Emerald Tablet).[6]

In 1964, Frances A. Yates advanced the thesis that Renaissance Hermeticism, or what she called "the Hermetic tradition", had been a crucial factor in the development of modern science.[7] While Yates's thesis has since been largely rejected,[8] the important role played by the 'Hermetic' science of alchemy in the thought of such figures as Jan Baptist van Helmont (1580–1644), Robert Boyle (1627–1691) or Isaac Newton (1642–1727) has been amply demonstrated.[9]

Throughout its history, Hermeticism was closely associated with the idea of a primeval, divine wisdom, revealed only to the most ancient of sages, such as Hermes Trismegistus.[10] In the Renaissance, this developed into the notion of a prisca theologia or "ancient theology", which asserted that there is a single, true theology which was given by God to some of the first humans, and traces of which may still be found in various ancient systems of thought. Thinkers like Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494) supposed that this 'ancient theology' could be reconstructed by studying (what were then considered to be) the most ancient writings still in existence, such as those attributed to Hermes, but also those attributed to, such as Zoroaster, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Plato, the 'Chaldeans', or the Kabbalah.[11] This soon evolved into the idea, first proposed by Agostino Steuco (1497–1548), that one and the same divine truth may be found in the religious and philosophical traditions of different periods and places, all considered as different manifestations of the same universal perennial philosophy.[12] In this perennialist context, the term 'Hermetic' tended to lose even more of its specificity, eventually becoming a mere byword for the purported divine knowledge of the ancient Egyptians, especially as related to alchemy and magic. This generic and pseudo-historical use of the term was greatly popularized by nineteenth- and twentieth-century occultists, despite their occasional use of authentic Hermetic texts and concepts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermeticism

K: reread your post and see where you have gone wrong....

Kropotkin

K: reread your post and see where you have gone wrong....

The post doesn't cover everything about "golden age" thinking.

It's a hint for you to do some research.

phyllo wrote: ↑Tue Feb 13, 2024 8:57 pm

K: reread your post and see where you have gone wrong....

The post doesn't cover about "golden age" thinking.

It's a hint for you to do some research.

K: Ok, I will lay it out for you...

think about the time periods you write about...
Rennaissance period or later... every one of those writers
you mentioned took their ideas from the driving passion
of that time period... a return to the classics.. the drive
to find every single bit of writing both from the Greeks and
the Romans....the entire Rennaissance was a period of
''renewal'' of ideas, the fact is there was very little original thinking
done during the Rennaissance period.. it was mostly about
recovering the Roman and Greeks ideas... and part of the
recovery was this notion of a golden age.. and the silver age....
the Rennaissance wasn't about the golden age until they
read about it in Roman and Greek writings... the notion that
every age had this idea of a golden age and a silver age is just
not true....Ok, give me some examples of this during the Medieval times,
or perhaps the golden age of Muslim writings.. of writings that proclaimed
the greatness of the past, the golden age or their age being the age of silver,
for them, the present age was enough... there was not a drive to find
or recreate the golden age or a belief in their age being the silver age...
it just wasn't there...you may find individual examples, but an individual
example doesn't nullify that an ''AGE'' was not interested in this idea of
a golden age in the past or the present age being a silver age....

(that is the scientific method by the way, to discard or minimize
outliers thoughts and concentrate on the majority values, not the
ones on one side or the other.. for if you concentrate on the outlier's position,
you skewer the results one way or another.. instead of being with the majority
values which hang around the middle and gives one a more representative
idea of that particular concept.. if you have 19 historians believing that
the Medieval times were not interested in this idea of the past golden age,
and one who does believe it, then who do we follow... the majority or
the minority?)

this notion of a golden age isn't universal nor is it necessary... and the
idea of the current age being ''silver'' isn't universal or necessary...
and plenty of ages did not believe in it....

and in America itself, we didn't believe in a golden age or
a silver age until the 20th century... and we can pinpoint the
exact spot where we lost our vision of an America becoming
interested in a golden age or the current times being a silver age...

that moment was around the WW1.. and think about it...
in World War One, America lost its innocence... and that viewpoint
continued through the Second World War... into today....
and think about it... the First World War was terrifying..
and it was followed by the depression followed by the Second World
War and with the new understanding of the Holocaust...

how can we claim to be a golden age if we have such events
as two World Wars, the Holocaust and the dropping of the bomb?
thus ever since, the conservative writers believed in this idea
of the golden age of America and the current age of silver....
Events shattered people's belief in America being a country
in a golden age...we were clearly, if one took even a cursory
look at modern history, not in a golden age...how can you with
the events of the Two World Wars, the Holocaust, the Nuclear
bombs, the Depression....

event that don't promote itself as being in a golden age....
silver at best....and that is where you are wrong..
failing to see the golden age and silver age in
its proper historical place....

Kropotkin

think about the time periods you write about...
Rennaissance period or later... every one of those writers
you mentioned took their ideas from the driving passion
of that time period... a return to the classics.. the drive
to find every single bit of writing both from the Greeks and
the Romans....the entire Rennaissance was a period of
''renewal'' of ideas, the fact is there was very little original thinking
done during the Rennaissance period.. it was mostly about
recovering the Roman and Greeks ideas... and part of the
recovery was this notion of a golden age.. and the silver age....
the Rennaissance wasn't about the golden age until they
read about it in Roman and Greek writings...

So you're saying that they considered the Greek and Roman eras a golden age/ages. Which contradicts what you wrote in the OP.

the notion that
every age had this idea of a golden age and a silver age is just
not true

I wrote that it's common. I didn't write that it happens at all times.

Ok, give me some examples of this during the Medieval times,
or perhaps the golden age of Muslim writings.. of writings that proclaimed
the greatness of the past, the golden age or their age being the age of silver,
for them, the present age was enough

The Medieval times are called the Dark Ages in comparison to Rome prior to the fall.

The Muslims translated the works of the Greeks which they considered advanced learning. So for Muslims of the middle ages, ancient Greece was a golden age.
And there is Muslim golden age:

The Islamic Golden Age was a period of scientific, economic and cultural flourishing in the history of Islam, traditionally dated from the 8th century to the 13th century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age

(that is the scientific method by the way, to discard or minimize
outliers thoughts and concentrate on the majority values, not the
ones on one side or the other.. for if you concentrate on the outlier's position,
you skewer the results one way or another.. instead of being with the majority
values which hang around the middle and gives one a more representative
idea of that particular concept..

Well, you're talking about MAGA yearning for a golden age as if it's some sort of majority view. Why are talking about if it's only a minority view.

this notion of a golden age isn't universal nor is it necessary... and the
idea of the current age being ''silver'' isn't universal or necessary...
and plenty of ages did not believe in it....

Who said it is universal?

and in America itself, we didn't believe in a golden age or
a silver age until the 20th century... and we can pinpoint the
exact spot where we lost our vision of an America becoming
interested in a golden age or the current times being a silver age...

There was the Gilded Age in America ... 1870 to 1900.

that moment was around the WW1.. and think about it...
in World War One, America lost its innocence... and that viewpoint
continued through the Second World War... into today....
and think about it... the First World War was terrifying..
and it was followed by the depression followed by the Second World
War and with the new understanding of the Holocaust...

There were periods of prosperity after both wars.

Which in comparison to the s* happening now, looks pretty good.