Astral Codex Ten

1890s

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1890s

Article

1890s is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between July 13, 2022 and October 04, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as “fares suddenly became very cheap in the 1890s”; “advocate a return to 1890s norms of liberalism and beautiful art”. It most often appears alongside America, Eastern Europe, Fascism.

Metadata

  • Category: Concepts
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: July 13, 2022
  • Last seen: October 04, 2024

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Book Review: The Man From The Future
July 13, 2022 · Original source
In 1870-1914 Budapest and New York were the two cities in the world to which the brightest Jews seemed wisest to immigrate. In them — but in few other places — an intelligent Jew of the 1890s could rise in income and status nearly to the level permitted by his ability. In Budapest Jews quickly became the professional (doctor and lawyer) as well as merchant class […]
As a consequence, there was a flood of Jewish immigration into Hungary in the 1880s and 1890s as there was simultaneously into New York.
To America, after sea voyages became no longer frightening in the 1890s, fares suddenly became very cheap, but for the lowest classes only. The price wars between steamship companies in the 1890s were like those between airlines eighty years later: lots of bargain offers for the masses but not for the business classes. In these price wars the Hamburg-New York steerage steamship fare in the 1890s was halved from $20 to $10, but nonsteerage fares remained expensive, especially on unsinkable ships like the Titanic. More steerage-class Jewish families settled on New York, and more upper-class strivers on Budapest. In ideal high school circumstances, the latter bred the generation of geniuses.
Against The Cultural Christianity Argument
October 04, 2024 · Original source
I am no fan of medieval theocracy. But I do have a weakness for the 1880 - 1930 period of fin de siecle culture, Art Nouveau, economic liberty, and progressophilia. This period wasn't very religious - Nietzsche had already declared God dead in 1882. But the Cultural Christians would argue that such a flowering of culture and optimism could only happen within a generation or two of a Christian society. It (they would argue) contained the seeds of its own destruction, doomed to degenerate into our current postmodernist brutalist whatever. If I want the 1890s back, I shouldn't advocate the (mostly classically liberal) positions of the 1890s. I should advocate for Christianity, the only ideology under which something like those positions can be stable.
That is, suppose I were to advocate a return to 1890s norms of (let's say) liberalism and beautiful art. The Cultural Christian would tell me this is doomed, because the 1890s cultural package eventually fell apart and became the 20th century cultural package of wokeness and postmodernism (and fascism, socialism, New Dealism, etc). Therefore, I should support Christianity.