History Western Civilization, Rome and Cyclical History

Cherico

Well-known member
Once the ball has started rolling with crushing Islam in that part of the world, why stop there? Perhaps India would go on to conquer Pakistan and Bangladesh, reuniting the Raj in some shape or form. Need the “living space” for such a massive population after all.

Question, how do (if they have any) India’s cycles work?

Edit: And if they did have cycles, did Islamic conquest derail them?

That's actually very likely, Pakastan only has enough nuclear weapons to greatly enrage india not put them down India has enough nukes to flatten them and afterwards still have plenty of hindus to settle the area and perminantely take control. Bangladesh might be smart enough to survive by apeasing their neighbor next door. Pakastan not so much.
 

Poe

Well-known member
Once the ball has started rolling with crushing Islam in that part of the world, why stop there? Perhaps India would go on to conquer Pakistan and Bangladesh, reuniting the Raj in some shape or form. Need the “living space” for such a massive population after all.

Question, how do (if they have any) India’s cycles work?

Edit: And if they did have cycles, did Islamic conquest derail them?
India is historically a lot like post-Rome Europe. They have essentially never been a single civilization but are a cultural spectrum filled with multiple civilizations that compete with one another but unite against common enemies. They have, however, been less successful than Europe at actually fending off invasive civilizations and so large swathes of it have been conquered. The current incarnation of India is the first time in history the entire subcontinent has been under the control of a single entity (even Britain shared some of it with Portugal.)
That's actually very likely, Pakastan only has enough nuclear weapons to greatly enrage india not put them down India has enough nukes to flatten them and afterwards still have plenty of hindus to settle the area and perminantely take control. Bangladesh might be smart enough to survive by apeasing their neighbor next door. Pakastan not so much.
I don't see this as likely. The Hindus are good about respecting other religions so long as those religions keep quiet and don't seek independence from them. It's more likely that these regions remain Muslim but have their fundamentalist sects purged and become similar to the Indonesian muslims.
 

Cherico

Well-known member
India is historically a lot like post-Rome Europe. They have essentially never been a single civilization but are a cultural spectrum filled with multiple civilizations that compete with one another but unite against common enemies. They have, however, been less successful than Europe at actually fending off invasive civilizations and so large swathes of it have been conquered. The current incarnation of India is the first time in history the entire subcontinent has been under the control of a single entity (even Britain shared some of it with Portugal.)

I don't see this as likely. The Hindus are good about respecting other religions so long as those religions keep quiet and don't seek independence from them. It's more likely that these regions remain Muslim but have their fundamentalist sects purged and become similar to the Indonesian muslims.

I'm going to have to disagree with you there, you have a whole lot of very poor people who want their lives to get better by any means possible and you have a historic enemy that has engaged in generations of terrorism. Thats not a recipie for good times for said historic enemy.
 

Blasterbot

Well-known member
I don't see this as likely. The Hindus are good about respecting other religions so long as those religions keep quiet and don't seek independence from them. It's more likely that these regions remain Muslim but have their fundamentalist sects purged and become similar to the Indonesian muslims.
they are usually. on the otherhand centuries of bad blood combined with easy handouts and scape goats is a hard thing for any government to ignore in good times. if bad times as we exepect to see in the future? it gets even harder.
 

S'task

Renegade Philosopher
Administrator
Staff Member
Founder
China, however, that's an interesting case! As we know, China is very resilient. Unlike Rome, which fell apart and periheshed -- giving birth to successor-civilisations -- China fell back together. Rome, upon its fracturing, produced three centuries of chaos in the West.
One thing I think the Macro-historical analysis you're pushing is lacking in is accounting for geography, which has massive influences on civilizations and the people living there. We know people adapt over time to the geography they find themselves in, and likewise geography influences people's culture.

In China's case, it makes perfect sense that they're fall back together while Rome would not, and that lies in Geography. Rome's empire, as expansive as it was, also featured many major natural geographic barriers and divisions that made a unifying central Empire an unusual feature of that region's civilizations. The Alps, Carpathians, and Pyrenees are all major mountains that divide Europe, and then you have the Bosporus Strait dividing Europe from Asia minor, the harsher deserts dividing the Middle East's inhabitable regions and the Sini acting as a major choke point between Asia and Africa. Add in the major rivers of Europe that provide multiple route to the sea and, well, the Mediterranean world is just naturally heavily divided in a way that makes conquest and central control very difficult and tends to lead to multiple competing core regions that end up close to equal. We see that throughout the history of the region: Egypt vs Babylon vs Assyria. Greece vs Persia. Rome vs All Comers.

Meanwhile the geography of China lends itself much more to centralized civilization there with no real competing regions for competing peer civilizations. It's much easier to unify the core of China from a geographical perspective and once you have that core, there's no actual peer powers, just outlying civilizations that while they can be annoying and China cannot actually conquer them, also cannot actually threaten the Chinese core regions due to the massive disparity of population and wealth. The Qing and Yuan do represent outside conquest, but are also noted as situations where in effect the Chinese civilization in effect absorbed the conquerors. Try as they might the Mongols and Manchu could not and did not change the Han Chinese civilization, rather they had to adopt Han ways of ruling and organizing in order to rule China. It is quite telling the one time an actual threat to Chinese Civilizational dominance arose in the region was when China was in a broken up period... and it took a LONG series of negatives and near perfect play by the Japanese to even threaten it (and even then it's doubtful the Japanese could have actually pacified and conquered China in the long term).

This wealth and power is also why the Chinese ended up with an isolationist mindset. There was no nearby trade worthwhile aside maybe certain spices from Indonesia... and those as often didn't come in via Chinese trade but via Vietnam. Meanwhile the Eurasian Steppe was long the home of hostile raiders (the Mongols were the most successful but they were hardly the first or, as you noted concerning the Machu the last) meaning that to the Chinese those lands were off limits and worthless anyway, a danger to be kept away via fortifications rather than exploited, and of course what is now western China is a mountainous desert and wasteland that form a major natural barrier even to this day.

Meanwhile the only peer civilization region to China that is geographically proximate is India... and between India and China stand the worlds tallest mountains which basically form a nigh impenetrable barrier between the two civilizational cores that meant there was no competition between them and limited cultural exchange. Oh, and the jungles of SE Asia limited the long way round between them.

Basically, from a geographical standpoint China's civilizational core is almost as securely isolated as one can be while not being on a different continent or on an island, and because of that geography it leads to different mindsets and civilizational development.
 

ATP

Well-known member
Compilation of few articles:

1.Why leftist made their tools belive in climatism,genderism and other shit? becouse they are sect.
Once sect leader made people belive in absurd thing - for example,56 genders - they would blindly follow him no matter what happen in real world.
When normal people in this scenario would abadonn him.

2.In Mexico authorities remove Columbus monument in 2020 - with statues of Antonio de Marchena,Pedro de Gante,Diego de Deza and Bartolomeo de las Casas - monks who helped either Columbus or local indians.
Monument was attacked many times before.

3.Europe was made on realism in philosophy - reality exist,could be discowered and had laws which do not contradict itself.
When idealism always lead to revolutions and failed try in building paradise on Earth.

4.french priest Guy Pages speaking with Piotr Doerre in 2015 claimed that current muslim migration is another try of anti-christian elites ruling there in destroing France.

5.Luder heresy was built on capitulation to sin - people could not live morally,so they should made sins,but keeping Faith.
Becouse he belived,that human nature is arleady destroyed by sin.
We,Catholics belive otherwise - human nature is hurt by sin,but thanks to ascetic pratcises and prayers we could not sin.

6.Christian love of peace is not pacifism - we could and should fight.Starting with our sins,but later with enemies who attack us or our country.
Becouse,as St.Augustine said,as long as we fight,we are victorious.

7.There is Puy du Foy in Vandee - park when people could watch stories from France History.They buyed in 2016 ring of Saint Joanna d'Arc.
When Sonia Dreapeauu,who worked there, touch it,she started belive in God - and her children and husband followed.

8.Current pope have close relations with anglicans,from 2013 have many contact with Justin Welby.He even cosplayed mass in one of Rome chirches in 2024.
In the same time,africans - both catholics and anglicans - reject modern heresy.
 

Skallagrim

Well-known member
Question, how do (if they have any) India’s cycles work?

Edit: And if they did have cycles, did Islamic conquest derail them?

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, and whose originator -- Chandragupta -- was essentially the Alexander of India. Considering Alexander's place in the macro-historical model, this also answers the what-if of the "Napoleon victory scenario", because that one occupied that same place in history as well. It's an empire that remakes its world-system, but which is established too early to be able to properly "collapse" into a true universal state.

India is an example of what happens when an Alexander, or a Napoleon, triumphs. It is the only known example of this happening. That it can happen is no surprise: macro-history shows us the most likely course of events, the reasonably plausible sequences of developments that will -- all things being equal -- happen in the great majority of instances. But outliers exist. There are "long shot" outcomes that will very rarely happen... but still do sometimes happen!

Now, Chandragupta is said to have physically witnessed Alexander in India, when he was a young fellow. It's conceivable that so clear and so conveniently observable an example gave him an advantage: an unmatched free lesson in what correct things to do, and what pitfalls to avoid. Perhaps that's why he pulled off what Alexander and Napoleon did not: he triumphed. He outcompeted his enemies. And that is not what usually happens. This kind of man, in all other known cases, either lost to his accumulated enemies or otherwise perished before stabilising his conquests. As did Napoleon, as did Alexander, as did Fuchai of Wu (the Chinese instance of this "type"). This means that in winning, Chandragupta pulled Indian history onto a path less travelled.



To provide some context: Indian history is not the history of the Indus Valley civilisation. That culture is to India, perhaps, what the Minoans were to Greece. A "previous inhabitant" of a part of the broader region, who left a cultural legacy (and to some extent a genetic one), but whose civilisational life did truly terminate; and who was supplanted by the new inhabitants. (In both cases, the new inhabitants were Indo-European invaders.)

The persons involved have been lost to time, except in the vaguest of mythologised references, so little can be said about the founder-king (i.e. the "Charlemagne") of India; except that the ancient structuring of society (that goes back to the Vedic days) very expressly prioritises the priestly class-- which might lead us to suspect that it was probably a priest-king of some sort. That the idea of an idealised "unified realm" of these Indo-Europeans very much existed is not in doubt, however. The name of it is Aryavarta. That is: "Land of the Aryans".

Like Post-Carolingian Europe (...and like the petty realms of the Hellenic Dark Age; and like the competing fiefs of deeply ancient China after the mythologised first Son of Heaven...), Aryavarta fell apart into multiple kingdoms that competed in their own world-system. One that didn't fully extend into South India, by the way. The heartland of the Aryans was always the Gangetic plain. (And this is still the sacred artery of Indian culture, the almost literal life blood of the civilisation.)

India had its own counterpart to the Reformation. You know of its fruits, and of its foremost figure. Siddharta Gautama, who is called the Buddha. (Jainism, lesser-known, is another offshoot of the same development.) And as with any such evolution of religious and intellectual thought, there was a reaction: the final closure of the Vedic legacy-- the "closing of the Vedas", and the formalisation of the leading ideas and doctrines that (at least on the fundamental level) still define Hinduism as we know it now.

And then, in the wake of this great change, came new states. New, more ambitious realms, with more ambitious rulers. There came intellectual schools, new philosophies. Note that just as Alexander was the literal student of Aristotle (and thus, in a very meaningful way, a product of the Sokratic revolution in Greek thinking), and just as Napoleon was a product of the Enlightenment philosophies, Chandragupta Maurya was the student of the great Indian polymath of that age; Chanakya.

So, up until that point, Indian history fits the expected model quite perfectly. Things happened just as we might expect them to happen. But then... a step to the side. Into the unknown. We can easily extrapolate what might have happened, if Chandragupta had failed. The Maurya Empire would be stillborn, but there would be no return to the old regime of states like the more modest Nanda Empire that came before. The ambition of kings would be even greater now, with the example of Chandragupta before them. And the warring states of India would compete fiercely-- as did those of China, as did those of the Hellenistic world, as did the competing states in China. Three centuries of war, during which the new philosophies of the age would develop into greater extremes. And ultimately... one great winner. Perhaps a state arising from (to the Aryans!) "semi-barbarian" Southern India would have arisen to subjugate them all, and establish the Caesar of India almost concurrently with the lifetime of the actual Caesar in Rome.

But that did not happen.



Instead, India -- having been steered off the beaten path -- ended up in a cycle that isn't entirely unlike what happened in China after the Mongols. There's still a discernable pattern, but it's a holding pattern. Competing states, giving way to a hegemon, which collapses, giving way to competing states again, which again produce a hegemonic power... and with stunning regularity! The Indian "holding pattern" is different from the Chinese one, but it very much seems (comparing also to post-Mongol Russia) that any true derailment of a civilisation ends up putting it into some kind of holding pattern.

What is interesting is that the states of Southern India were, by this time, integrated into the cultural whole. Chandragupta and his unmatched grandson Ashoka never managed to militarily subdue those regions, but the cultural evolution of the Indian subcontinent was towards unity. Indeed, the realms of Southern India soon became true contenders in the hegemonic contest.

This established (and culturally fruitful but politically recursive) pattern of Indian history was not, in fact, derailed by the Muslims, but co-opted by it. The Delthi Sultanate simply become the latest in the cycle of hegemonic powers, before weakening into a shell of its former self by the time they got to the 1390s, thus producing another period of inter-state competition. But thereafter with Muslim rulers as another gaggle of contenders in the mix. And not an unskilled faction, either, because two centuries later, the Mughals had made themselves the great hegemons in the North, whereas the South could not coalesce against them. Which in turn lasted until the early 1700s, when Marathas supplanted them very rapidly... only to quickly fall into an ineffective confederation, thus promising another period of division...

But then the Fire Nation attacked Britain showed up.

And you know how that turns out. All previous contenders were kicked aside, and Britain unified the subcontinent under its aegis. A process completed by the mid-19th century. Any period of contention between the Indian states was very effectively cut short, and the British Raj was more effective a hegemonic structure than any predecessor had been. After a century of unity under this foreign rule, independence resulted in a new break-up... of sorts. The outlying Muslim regions split off. But really, they cannot be said to have ever truly been culturally unified with India as a civilisation. And the subcontinent itself remained united. That legacy lasted.

Viewed in this way, we must consider the possibility that -- contrary to all leftist anti-colonial diatribes -- Britain actually unfucked India. Britain, just by being there, appears to have broken the holding pattern. India may now resume its historical development, albeit unknown in what specific way it will do so.

My personal expectation is that we're coming up on a cultural re-invention of India, and one that is rather markedly "Hindu" in its manifestations. The "new India" -- the unified India -- that Britain has left behind must complete its own re-making, and I think they will do this by... well, "cleansing" themselves of the ultimately foreign Muslim element. I don't particularly expect virulent anti-Buddhism, but Hinduism will be taking the lead.

Whether the resulting cultural sphere politically falls apart into warring states again, or produces a Universal Empire as if picking up where it left off so long ago, or even goes all the way back and births its own "second Charlemagne-type" to fully begin again as wholly new incarnation of itself... I cannot say. There is no precedent for this. But from 200 BC to AD 1850 -- a whopping two millennia of time -- India was moving in a circle, historically speaking. Always moving, and in a way always dynamic, but never getting to a new place. Always treading the same ground again, just in new sandals.

But now, that is over. India is going places again.



---------------------------------------------------------------------------



One thing I think the Macro-historical analysis you're pushing is lacking in is accounting for geography, which has massive influences on civilizations and the people living there. We know people adapt over time to the geography they find themselves in, and likewise geography influences people's culture.

In China's case, it makes perfect sense that they're fall back together while Rome would not, and that lies in Geography. Rome's empire, as expansive as it was, also featured many major natural geographic barriers and divisions that made a unifying central Empire an unusual feature of that region's civilizations. The Alps, Carpathians, and Pyrenees are all major mountains that divide Europe, and then you have the Bosporus Strait dividing Europe from Asia minor, the harsher deserts dividing the Middle East's inhabitable regions and the Sini acting as a major choke point between Asia and Africa. Add in the major rivers of Europe that provide multiple route to the sea and, well, the Mediterranean world is just naturally heavily divided in a way that makes conquest and central control very difficult and tends to lead to multiple competing core regions that end up close to equal. We see that throughout the history of the region: Egypt vs Babylon vs Assyria. Greece vs Persia. Rome vs All Comers.

Meanwhile the geography of China lends itself much more to centralized civilization there with no real competing regions for competing peer civilizations. It's much easier to unify the core of China from a geographical perspective and once you have that core, there's no actual peer powers, just outlying civilizations that while they can be annoying and China cannot actually conquer them, also cannot actually threaten the Chinese core regions due to the massive disparity of population and wealth. The Qing and Yuan do represent outside conquest, but are also noted as situations where in effect the Chinese civilization in effect absorbed the conquerors. Try as they might the Mongols and Manchu could not and did not change the Han Chinese civilization, rather they had to adopt Han ways of ruling and organizing in order to rule China. It is quite telling the one time an actual threat to Chinese Civilizational dominance arose in the region was when China was in a broken up period... and it took a LONG series of negatives and near perfect play by the Japanese to even threaten it (and even then it's doubtful the Japanese could have actually pacified and conquered China in the long term).

This wealth and power is also why the Chinese ended up with an isolationist mindset. There was no nearby trade worthwhile aside maybe certain spices from Indonesia... and those as often didn't come in via Chinese trade but via Vietnam. Meanwhile the Eurasian Steppe was long the home of hostile raiders (the Mongols were the most successful but they were hardly the first or, as you noted concerning the Machu the last) meaning that to the Chinese those lands were off limits and worthless anyway, a danger to be kept away via fortifications rather than exploited, and of course what is now western China is a mountainous desert and wasteland that form a major natural barrier even to this day.

Meanwhile the only peer civilization region to China that is geographically proximate is India... and between India and China stand the worlds tallest mountains which basically form a nigh impenetrable barrier between the two civilizational cores that meant there was no competition between them and limited cultural exchange. Oh, and the jungles of SE Asia limited the long way round between them.

Basically, from a geographical standpoint China's civilizational core is almost as securely isolated as one can be while not being on a different continent or on an island, and because of that geography it leads to different mindsets and civilizational development.

I very much agree with your observations here! It's not true, however, that macro-history ignores such factors. On the contrary, Spengler devotes extended sections to the influence of geography (and other material circumstances) on the character of any given culture, and Toynbee was even more attentive to this matter. Neither have I, minor latter-day observer that I am, neglected to highlight this matter-- including repeatedly in this thread. In fact, I've said much the same that you say here, although typically as one of multiple points in any given post; so your observations here add some detail that I surely neglected to mention at times.
 
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ATP

Well-known member
@Skallagrim ,it remind me some document from Discovery about India History - where another kingdom coming was illustrated by some dudes/only legs were shown/ coming near another dude plaing slayed warrior.
Forget title,as usual....
 

Lord Sovereign

Well-known member
But then the Fire Nation attacked Britain showed up.

And you know how that turns out. All previous contenders were kicked aside, and Britain unified the subcontinent under its aegis. A process completed by the mid-19th century. Any period of contention between the Indian states was very effectively cut short, and the British Raj was more effective a hegemonic structure than any predecessor had been. After a century of unity under this foreign rule, independence resulted in a new break-up... of sorts. The outlying Muslim regions split off. But really, they cannot be said to have ever truly been culturally unified with India as a civilisation. And the subcontinent itself remained united. That legacy lasted.

Viewed in this way, we must consider the possibility that -- contrary to all leftist anti-colonial diatribes -- Britain actually unfucked India. Britain, just by being there, appears to have broken the holding pattern. India may now resume its historical development, albeit unknown in what specific way it will do so.

My personal expectation is that we're coming up on a cultural re-invention of India, and one that is rather markedly "Hindu" in its manifestations. The "new India" -- the unified India -- that Britain has left behind must complete its own re-making, and I think they will do this by... well, "cleansing" themselves of the ultimately foreign Muslim element. I don't particularly expect virulent anti-Buddhism, but Hinduism will be taking the lead.

Whether the resulting cultural sphere politically falls apart into warring states again, or produces a Universal Empire as if picking up where it left off so long ago, or even goes all the way back and births its own "second Charlemagne-type" to fully begin again as wholly new incarnation of itself... I cannot say. There is no precedent for this. But from 200 BC to AD 1850 -- a whopping two millennia of time -- India was moving in a circle, historically speaking. Always moving, and in a way always dynamic, but never getting to a new place. Always treading the same ground again, just in new sandals.

But now, that is over. India is going places again.
God save the King, Britain wins again.

But that is actually a really interesting way of looking at it. Such a future Indian Empire, which could be a contemporary of the American Principate if the macro theory is correct, would be almost a strange cousin of the West. Because despite being profoundly Hindu, there’d be a bit of this new India that is somewhat Anglo, especially in terms of how its government is set up (India is a parliamentary democracy, and nobody wants rid of Parliament). Who knows, perhaps in time India may well regard Britain in the same way the Americans do (Much as was the relationship between Rome and Greece).

For a country that never quite became universal, Britain’s impact on history has been truly titanic.
 

Bassoe

Well-known member
Is it accessible to a low tech civilization?

I mean I don't know much about fracking.
Depends how low we're talking.

You could likely do it with 1980's tech, now we know how.
We could definitely get back to where we are without coal or oil, assuming we keep the knowledge. The reason the industrial revolution used what it did and went the direction it did was because we didn't even have any real understanding of electromagnetism prior (and a century before we didn't even have calculus) thus we had to learn the nuances of electricity, and how to to control it, as we learned to utilize the first fuel source for it. Assuming we have some knowledge still around controlling electricity starting from even solar could be feasible, we would just be starting with very little amount of electricity and bootstrapping our tech from there and we become more sophisticated.
Unclear leaning on no. A civilization without readily accessible oil and coal couldn’t build fission reactors or powersats from scratch without a preexisting energy source for industrialization and woodburning/wood gasification seems to run into scaling issues where trees aren’t growing fast enough to meet demand.

That said, it’d make a great foundational myth for a future post-nuclear empire.

That while we’ve lost the capability to build them, we know nuclear bombs are possible and it’s only a matter of time until the technology is reinvented, therefore our only chance of preventing a second nuclear war is to conquer the entire world now using the comparatively safe lower-tech means at our disposal.
Who knows, I'm positive there will be a solar system wide civilization in the next thousand years but others here may be more pessimistic.

The modern battle for the US is so important imo because it's the civilization in the best position to lay the foundations for a space fairing society and if that gets captured who knows when the next chance for liberty will be. Maybe never, and I'd consider eternal enslavement worse than humanity just dying out.
You kidding? We’ve been living out a firsthand demonstration of what the US would do with a global empire since the fall of the Soviet Union. Once beating the commies ceased to be a justification, our space program got budget-cut into oblivion.

All the American Rules Based International Order pseudo-empire does is:
  • Convert capitalism by selling products into subscription service company town feudalism so the ruling oligarchs can get continually paid for contributing nothing while everyone else spends their whole lives slaving away just to keep ahead of the rent.
  • Shortsightedly destroy their own manufacturing and resource-extraction capacities because it was cheaper to send it all abroad to be done by literal slave labor than pay for first-world wages and working conditions.
  • Keep their now technically worthless currency afloat by invading anyone who tries to make a viable competitor.
  • Wreck their Middle Eastern fiefdoms with indiscriminate bombings and invasions.
  • Wreck their European fiefdoms with an invasion of survivors from the Middle Eastern forever wars who’re certainly radicalized now by the destruction of their homes if they weren’t before.
  • Take a delusional cult from the depths of the internet and sabotage Occupy Wall Street by making it the state religion, then go on a holy war to spread it worldwide.
…and when all these failures add up to losing superpower status, start a potentially nuclear World War to try and keep it.

Looking at historical examples, the best modern/near future societal order for ensuring a colonized solar system in a millennia would be two or more superpowers kept from direct conflict with MAD deterrence competing to be first to self-sustaining asteroid mining colonies and infinite wealth relative to their rivals. Ideally followed by said colonies declaring independence and another similar arms race over interstellar colonization and so forth and so on.
 

Cherico

Well-known member
Unclear leaning on no. A civilization without readily accessible oil and coal couldn’t build fission reactors or powersats from scratch without a preexisting energy source for industrialization and woodburning/wood gasification seems to run into scaling issues where trees aren’t growing fast enough to meet demand.

That said, it’d make a great foundational myth for a future post-nuclear empire.

That while we’ve lost the capability to build them, we know nuclear bombs are possible and it’s only a matter of time until the technology is reinvented, therefore our only chance of preventing a second nuclear war is to conquer the entire world now using the comparatively safe lower-tech means at our disposal.

You kidding? We’ve been living out a firsthand demonstration of what the US would do with a global empire since the fall of the Soviet Union. Once beating the commies ceased to be a justification, our space program got budget-cut into oblivion.

All the American Rules Based International Order pseudo-empire does is:
  • Convert capitalism by selling products into subscription service company town feudalism so the ruling oligarchs can get continually paid for contributing nothing while everyone else spends their whole lives slaving away just to keep ahead of the rent.
  • Shortsightedly destroy their own manufacturing and resource-extraction capacities because it was cheaper to send it all abroad to be done by literal slave labor than pay for first-world wages and working conditions.
  • Keep their now technically worthless currency afloat by invading anyone who tries to make a viable competitor.
  • Wreck their Middle Eastern fiefdoms with indiscriminate bombings and invasions.
  • Wreck their European fiefdoms with an invasion of survivors from the Middle Eastern forever wars who’re certainly radicalized now by the destruction of their homes if they weren’t before.
  • Take a delusional cult from the depths of the internet and sabotage Occupy Wall Street by making it the state religion, then go on a holy war to spread it worldwide.
…and when all these failures add up to losing superpower status, start a potentially nuclear World War to try and keep it.

Looking at historical examples, the best modern/near future societal order for ensuring a colonized solar system in a millennia would be two or more superpowers kept from direct conflict with MAD deterrence competing to be first to self-sustaining asteroid mining colonies and infinite wealth relative to their rivals. Ideally followed by said colonies declaring independence and another similar arms race over interstellar colonization and so forth and so on.

As has been talked about before.

We are in the most retarded of a civilizations life spans late modernity.

Rome, China, and lots of other great civilizations were fucking retards during this period and then became great after they grew out of it. That said this is also a dangerous period of time where pronounced stupidity can end your entire civilization like carthrage.
 

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