Spengler's (eerily) accurate predictions on the big cities

Introduction. Oswald Spengler, a German philosopher, published The Decline of the West in 1918. Ted Gioia, a contemporary culture critic, has noted that a hundred years later, many of Spengler's predictions have come true. Here are the eight most surprising ones 👇

Spengler predicted that in the future, tens of millions of people will live in cities (most populated cities had 5 million people at his time) and new forms of "fantastic" communication will come up that would seem "madness" to the people of his time .

Spengler foresaw that countries will be split up between the urbanites and everyone else: "There are no longer noblesse and bourgeoisie, freemen and slaves, believers and unbelievers, but only cosmopolitans and provincials. All other contrasts pale before this one."

Spengler saw that no matter how crime-infested or crowded cities got, a big chunk of people will stay loyal to cities to the "wretched" end. Once the "full sinful beauty" of urban life "has captured a victim, it never lets him go."

Spengler wrote at a time when population was rising everywhere, and experts were warning of a "population explosion." And yet he could see that a hundred years later, birth dates would plummet. Urban people don't fear "the family and the name" getting extinguished.

Spengler: “When the ordinary thought of a highly cultivated people begins to regard having children as a question of pro's and con's, the great turning point has come. . . . When reasons have to be put forward at all in a question of life, life itself has become questionable."

Spengler saw that work would become digitized, and thinking jobs would replace manual labor: "These final cities are wholly intellect." He predicted the rise of the "intellectual nomad," foreshadowing digital nomads - permanent travelers who work from a laptop.

When stuck in physically monotonous work - manual labor, village life - people seek physical escape via dancing, music, sports. Spengler saw that when people are stuck in mentally monotonous work - desk work, city life - they'll seek mental escape via conversation, art, betting.

Having lost their religion, people refocus their religious energies on "philosophies of digestion, nutrition and hygiene." Spengler: "Alcohol questions and vegetarianism are treated with religious earnestness—such being the gravest problems."

Bottom line. Spengler wrote about the coming "depopulation" - today half the world has a fertility ratio below replacement rate. He talked about "the sterility of civilized man" - today, average male testosterone is 50% lower than 1970. For more, read Decline Of The West.