The Illusion of Eternal Culture

Modernity resists the thought that cultures die. We mistake complexity for durability, innovation for immunity. But Spengler was right: even our loftiest ideals such as freedom, democracy, progress are blossoms of Western culture in maturity. They too will fade.

Eternity is not the destiny of cultures, but their illusion.

To see decline without despair is to recover proportion. A culture aware of its mortality can create more urgently, more honestly. Decline is not collapse but ripening: the fruit completing itself, even as it begins to rot.

And death itself is not only an end. It is compost. Roman law fertilized medieval Europe; Baroque decadence still feeds modern art. Cultures pass, but their remains enrich the soil of future growth. Mortality is the medium of continuity.

The wisdom lies not in hoping for eternity, but in asking: what possibilities can we bring to flower before the season closes?