For all people don't like the conclusions he came to in his own time, he made falsifiable predictions about the future and I'd much rather people debated those than the merits of the man who made them.
To your point, I think that not only are his predictions about the future falsifiable, but the structure itself has issues. I don't disagree with the whole notion of the cycle of seasons applied to civilizations. I think that is actually a very useful frame that connects humankind to nature and the circle of life that we could do more of. But if he wishes to use the vehicle of the cycle, then he must accept all of its implications, not just the ones which are convenient to him. From "winter" comes "spring." But according to the article "this ‘feeling’ is a remembrance rather than an anticipation. " Why should we accept this frame?
> The time of birth and rejuvenation is forever finished, metaphorically speaking. In this present phase, Spengler’s prophesising limns an authoritative ruler or ‘new emperor’ who emerges in response to the disintegration of culture. He called this the Caesarian age.
It is true that many empires of old were hereditary monarchies of strongmen rulers. Perhaps even today we see authoritarian governments with long running proto-monarchs. But will their tenure survive their lifespans? Have they built a resilient enough structure to do so? The truth is that if his own analogy holds, nature eventually "conquers" man, and winter always gives way to spring. Every empire crumbles back into nature under a relatively long timespan. If this is the case, isn't his idea of a Caesarian age somewhat optimistic and naive? Perhaps even ironically so for someone so commonly known as a pessimist.
Decline of the west
From the vantage of the twenty-first, I say: false.
[1] examples: "Above all, this is manifested in the bizarre hypotheses of atomic disintegration which elucidate the phenomena of radioactivity ... With ideas like these the mythopoetic force of the Faustian soul is returning to its origins."
"Every physics, as I have shown, must break down over the motion-problem, in which the living person of the knower methodically intrudes into the inorganic form-world of the known."
Force is "(1) in the 17th century (Galileo, Newton, Leibniz) ... pictorially formed and in unison with the great art of oil-painting that died out about 1630: (2) in the 18th century (...Laplace, Lagrange...) ... abstract character of the fugue style and is in unison with Bach ...(3) with the Culture at its end ... the theory of functions of several complex variables ..."
etc. etc.
From what I know so far[2] I am prejudiced against it, in that ascribing seasons to civilisations (Spring/Summer/Fall/Winter) strikes me as being parallel to "technical analysis" for stocks: possibly useful for historians in description, but anyone who attempts to apply the model for prediction should hope to be lucky.
[1] I agree with the characterisation of the Washington Consensus as Faustian, and the title of this book might help explain why the Nazis were so obsessed with Saving The West (even if it didn't wish to be saved) from Jewish Communism.
Goebbels, apud https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24141227
> "Die europäischen Mächte stehen hier vor ihrer entscheidenden Lebensfrage. Das Abendland ist in Gefahr. Ob ihre Regierungen und ihre Intelligenzschichten das einsehen wollen oder nicht, ist dabei gänzlich unerheblich."
European powers are faced with an existential crisis. The West is in danger. Whether their governments and their intellectuals will admit it or not is irrelevant.
> "Die Welt hat also nicht die Wahl zwischen einem in seine alte Zersplitterung zurückfallenden und einem unter der Achsenführung sich neu ordnenden Europa, sondern nur die zwischen einem unter dem militärischen Schutz der Achse stehenden und einem bolschewistischen Europa."
Therefore the world doesn't face the choice between falling back into its old divisions or joining a New Axis Order, but only the choice between accepting the military protection of the Axis or becoming Communist.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Decline_of_the_West
The propaganda importance of a Faustian West in decline to be replaced by a Caesarian successor was noted by Linebarger, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/48612/48612-h/48612-h.htm#Pag...
> "... in the political warfare field, [the Germans] succeeded in making large sections of world opinion believe that the world's future was a choice between Communism and Fascism. Since they and the Communists agreed on this the point seemed well taken. Actually, there is no historical or economic justification for supposing that those two forms of dictatorship constitute a real choice in the first place, or that the civilized and truly free countries need ever depart from their ancient freedoms in the second place."
I believe this report of a false dichotomy because it (enforced by armed private militiamen!) was also noted by Weil.
> New civilizations emerging at the periphery...
Well, they're unlikely to emerge within another's sphere, aren't they? Unless they're exceedingly civilised, civilisations behave like cuckoos to their neighbours.
> A rise in strongmen or dictators
Good point. I'll keep this in mind when reading Spengler, but as for two famous strongmen, I believe more parsimonious explanations are:
(a) Putin : neo-feudalism is what one gets when russians spend the 1980's deciding the capitalists had valid criticisms of communism, then the 1990's deciding the communists had valid criticisms of capitalism.
(b) Xi : his decisions are backed because they are popular in china, not the other way around.
and as for the third, I'm willing to wait until 2021 to collect more data, but note that his military has been, in writing, disinclined to cross the Rubicon.
> resurgent popularity of religion
[citation needed] Even in the US context, imx much more religious than ours, religion isn't resurging. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_United_States#...
TL;DR: unfalsifiable, true, false?
TIL Alea iacta est referred to ἀνερρίφθω κύβος (and is referred to by finyish du wedzha). https://laudatortemporisacti.blogspot.com/2017/12/let-die-be...
How would you describe christianity in the roman empire? I might considerit a 'new civilization' once it was adpoted.
In the US, religion is in severe decline in any place near or in a city. Rural religious communities are hanging on by threads. I've seen church closings and communities that have adopted agnostic beliefs fairly qucikly in the last 4 years. Immigrants do bring a lot of religious people here but their children usually do not conform to those beliefs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_of_the_Third_Century
> "The crisis began with the assassination of Emperor Severus Alexander by his own troops in 235. This initiated a 50-year period during which there were at least 26 claimants to the title of emperor, mostly prominent Roman army generals, who assumed imperial power over all or part of the Empire."
Furthermore,
> ... religion is in severe decline in any place near or in a city. Rural religious communities are hanging on by threads.
is not supported by the data[1] on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_United_States#... and we know from the 1950-2019 graph that secular trends are not rapid enough to drastically change the numbers below in half a decade.
For instance, Seattle itself was 63% religious, and as for rural religious communities, alabama was 87% religious.
[1] It's amusing to me how the US divides religious beliefs. For example, my wife, from a traditionally catholic area, divides christianity with the trichotomy of "Christians" (catholics), "Reformeds" (protestants) and "Fishies" (all the other cults). To be fair, she might count orthodox in their own grouping, but when this came up we were talking about local cults.
So (assuming all those racially segegrated listings are evangelical denominations?) she'd say the US a few years ago was 13% reformed, 20% christian, and 32-35% fishie.