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Of course, it's fairly important to always remember that macro-history is comparative history, so we're looking at relative positions. When we take the long view, we see why the "younger" Roman culture could eclipse the more "elderly" Greek culture, but to some extent, that's the luck of the...

It's certainly true that the emergence of the "winner" of the tumultuous period is almost always a marcher state, or (in smaller contexts), a leader with some real "rough" experience. We might refer here to the vitality of youth, of which a certain dynamism is a key aspect. Stagnation, after...

Please take this dumb, off-topic fight elsewhere. Start your own thread for that nonsense.

Well. There you unmask yourself. And what you show ain't pretty. You accuse others of being on the side of the KKK, but your own statements could come straight from one of their virulently anti-Catholic pamphlets. Not a good look. Anyway, I ask that you both take this off-topic hate-fest...

My argument: "Reform would have been better than schism (for the reasons which I detailed)." Your response: "But what if reform didn't happen, huh?" That's a complete non sequitur, which doesn't interact with my argument at all. Your question has obviously been answered, because it's what...

I disagree with that assessment of the historical situation. In fact, even Martin Luther's initial actions did not make a schism outright inevitable. The notion that division (rather than reform) was the only possible outcome is completely deterministic (...which, I suppose, makes it valid to...

People here are ignoring that Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia) was a noted reformer of the Church, and has gotten a bad rep because his enemies (who were far more corrupt that he was; Julius II owned seven brothels) wrote all the histories. Also, anyone who defends Savonarola -- a pychopathic...

My reaction came across more harshly than I meant it to be. I was just trying to clarify my thoughts. I didn't mean for it to come across as attacking your post. And yes, what I expect is certainly worse than what you outlined! My view is that history has no "good guys". Not really. There are...

I didn't say "condemn", I said "proscribe": a dooming to death or exile; outlawry; specifically, among the ancient Romans, the public offer of a reward for the head of a political enemy. The era in which this becomes pertinent is not a time for messing around or writing sternly-worded letters...

As usual, he has sharp and astute observations. Generally correct, too, with only ever a few point that are a bit more iffy. But in the context of macro-history, he suffers from a confusion of terms. Specifically, no clear concept of civilisation. And because of that lack of clear definition...

They were, in their own way, derailed much earlier than that. As I wrote, somewhat tangentially, when we discussed Alexander recently: The obvious model for comparison [when it comes to an ATL triumph of Alexander] would be the Maurya monarchy in India, which was founded around the same time...

My own contention has long been that the Mongols derailed Chinese history, rather in the way that they also derailed Russian history, and Alexander derailed Persian history. These respective "targets" were hit at different stages in their cultural development, and that affects the precise...

As far as the shape of things is concerned, I certainly do agree the Spanish Civil War is fairly decent model for what the coming escalation of the wider social conflict across the West will look like. Not some relatively neatly divided territorial schism, but a messy struggle with...

Certainly. I admire Alexander very much. He sought to be Akhilles reborn, and he succeeded. A mythical hero- figure for the ages. And like his Homeric idol, he didn't live to see old age. Such men rarely do. ‐---‐-------------------- My thinking is that Alexander's march into India would...

Yes, Alexander was (on average) a fairly noble figure, albeit with considerable temper issues. For his time and place, he definitely qualified as a virtuous ruler. Most within his empire regarded him as a liberator, which is always telling. The main issue is that he was a batshit crazy...

You're missing the point here. (In the thing about nuclear weapons, too, by not actually reading what I wrote about human perception and how it impacts our behaviour-- but I'm not going to repeat myself on that. I'm convinced that what I said was clear enough, and should be intelligible.) The...

As you said: the Qin regime was never sustainable. China derives its name from Qin (just for anyone unclear on this: the 'q' is pronounced like 'ch'), but that's sort of comparable to the way every Roman emperor was 'Caesar'. Goazu of Han was to China what Augustus was to Rome. The man who spent...

Confucian advisor: "O son of Heaven, we need to created an ordered and centralised system to extert power over all the rea--" Emperor Gaozu: *literally stands up and starts taking a piss in the Confucian advisor's hat, then forces him to put it back on* Emperor Gaozu: "That's what I think of...

Yeah, what @Crom's Black Blade points out gets to the essential matter here. Apply Aristotelian logic to the problem, and you see where the comparison to a child goes wrong. In fact, it illustrates the difference. A mind (or an imitation thereof) is not a static image. It's a dynamic, we might...

We must be wary of the implicit assumption that typical populist agenda is, ah... economically sensible. Obviously it has valid points (some very valid), and is by definition rooted in real (and unduly ignored-by-the-elite) grievances, but that does not mean that the populist solutions are...