History Western Civilization, Rome and Cyclical History

Bassoe

Well-known member
I'm still confused. The notion that all civilizations inevitably become more authoritarian and stratified over time until increasing nepotism leads to a ruling class too incompetent to manage logistics creating civilization-destroying cascade failures or defend themselves against violent replacement by a new ruling class, whether foreign invaders or internal dissidents, yes, I agree with that, I don't like it, but it fits the evidence I've seen in history books and in the modern world with the rise of the security state and chronic failures of just-in-time globalist economics. I just don't see how you get from there to a benevolent-ish status quo outsider becoming dictator and fixing things, or a dictatorship once founded staying benevolent.
 
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Skallagrim

Well-known member
But,sometimes end of cyvilization.
In China dynasties changed,but China cyvilization remained the same till 1949.

When in Egypt,Sumer and Babylon their cyvilization died.

And,we have cases when cyvilization died,but leaved it successor - like with anciemt Crete,Greece,and Rome.
Interesting,what would happen after current Europa fall?

Would our cyvilization be replaced,just like in Egypt,or new cyvilization would be partially our ?

Egypt and China both 'fell back together' after the end of their initial cycle. The reason seems to be a geography that greatly fosters unitary organisation (centred around one or more great rivers) and keeps out external threats (deserts and mountains, respectively).

In such cases, you get a new universal empire after a few centuries of chaos, instead of the whole cycle starting anew.

In most other cases (like Rome) the civilisation dies after its universal empire ends, and ibstead of being reborn, new civilisations are born and 'inherit' elements from their precursor.

The latter is also the most probable fate for the West.

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Hate to be that guy, but it seems like this thread conversation has hit a wall and is going into a loop.

So actually a decent demonstration of human history, then? :cool:

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I'm still confused. The notion that all civilizations inevitably become more authoritarian and stratified over time until increasing nepotism leads to a ruling class too incompetent to manage logistics creating civilization-destroying cascade failures or defend themselves against violent replacement by a new ruling class, whether foreign invaders or internal dissidents, yes, I agree with that, I don't like it, but it fits the evidence I've seen in history books and in the modern world with the rise of the security state and chronic failures of just-in-time globalist economics. I just don't see how you get from there to a benevolent-ish status quo outsider becoming dictator and fixing things, or a dictatorship once founded staying benevolent.

All concentrations of power lead to bad ends over time. This doesn't mean that the actual development on every scale is always like that. Only that the trend is always like that.

Imagine it as a building, facing the ravages of time, as all things must. If a house decays and rots over time, there comes a point where it gets condemned. Or more probably, it turns into a crack den full of degenerates, and then burns down with most of them inside. And then a new building is put up. The new building will also decay, but it'll take time. For a while, it'll be good.

Some buildings are better-designed than others. Some construction materials are more durable than others. The design and the bulding blocks of our current age are unusually poor and weak.

Now, if enough shitty buildings are put up, and the inevitable results manifest, there will eventually be a reaction. People will say: "Tear that shit down! Build good, traditional houses of stone!"

And for the longest time, that call will be ignored. But then you get to rock bottom, and then the call is heeded because everything else has failed. And then the good, old-fashioned houses of stone are built again.

They, too, will decay. But they do last longer.

This is the Principate. If our current society is the shoddy council estate turning into a crack den, and the civil war is the fire, then the Principate is the new building that is put up on the ashes-- made of stone, in a classical style. It works, because it is the only solution. Because it is the thing that happens when everything else has been tried and has failed. That is when men turn back to tradition, and find that it still serves them well, as it did in ages past.

It won't be forever. Entropy is relentless. The Principate yields to the Dominate, and all the old errors get repeated-- with an ultimately fatal outcome. The trend is unaltered. But you'll find that there can still be golden ages, even if every civilisation is ultimately doomed. And the Principate is the greatest golden age of all. Because it is built on the burnt-out ruins of everything that didn't work.
 
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Bassoe

Well-known member
All concentrations of power lead to bad ends over time. This doesn't mean that the actual development on every scale is always like that. Only that the trend is always like that.

Imagine it as a building, facing the ravages of time, as all things must. If a house decays and rots over time, there comes a point where it gets condemned. Or more probably, it turns into a crack den full of degenerates, and then burns down with most of them inside. And then a new building is put up. The new building will also decay, but it'll take time. For a while, it'll be good.

Some buildings are better-designed than others. Some construction materials are more durable than others. The design and the bulding blocks of our current age are unusually poor and weak.

Now, if enough shitty buildings are put up, and the inevitable results manifest, there will eventually be a reaction. People will say: "Tear that shit down! Build good, traditional houses of stone!"

And for the longest time, that call will be ignored. But then you get to rock bottom, and then the call is heeded because everything else has failed. And then the good, old-fashioned houses of stone are built again.

They, too, will decay. But they do last longer.

This is the Principate. If our current society is the shoddy council estate turning into a crack den, and the civil war is the fire, then the Principate is the new building that is put up on the ashes-- made of stone, in a classical style. It works, because it is the only solution. Because it is the thing that happens when everything else has been tried and has failed. That is when men turn back to tradition, and find that it still serves them well, as it did in ages past.

It won't be forever. Entropy is relentless. The Principate yields to the Dominate, and all the old errors get repeated-- with an ultimately fatal outcome. The trend is unaltered. But you'll find that there can still be golden ages, even if every civilisation is ultimately doomed. And the Principate is the greatest golden age of all. Because it is built on the burnt-out ruins of everything that didn't work.
Yes, I know the current system doesn't work and following alternative systems which have been previously tested and demonstrated to work would be better. However, said systems would inconvenient the rulers of the current system and while they're getting less powerful as the current status quo declines, they've still got the most expensive military on the planet and possibly the most intrusive surveillance state in human history (which is only getting more effective as software replaces human spies), so getting them to step down could be tricky.

Or to put it another way, the economics of America in the fifties when one-third of the workforce was unionized and offshoring and mass migration weren't as much of a thing objectively worked better for us than than the current ones, in the sense of average people being able to afford to live, but worse for the rulers, in the sense that they had to offer first-world salaries.

We've seen what happens when reformers try to win elections on economic populism.
It won't work until someone BTFOs the glowies.
 

Cherico

Well-known member
Yes, I know the current system doesn't work and following alternative systems which have been previously tested and demonstrated to work would be better. However, said systems would inconvenient the rulers of the current system and while they're getting less powerful as the current status quo declines, they've still got the most expensive military on the planet and possibly the most intrusive surveillance state in human history (which is only getting more effective as software replaces human spies), so getting them to step down could be tricky.

Or to put it another way, the economics of America in the fifties when one-third of the workforce was unionized and offshoring and mass migration weren't as much of a thing objectively worked better for us than than the current ones, in the sense of average people being able to afford to live, but worse for the rulers, in the sense that they had to offer first-world salaries.

We've seen what happens when reformers try to win elections on economic populism.
It won't work until someone BTFOs the glowies.

The btfo thing is a predicted outcome. As is the the same tools the establishment using against the populists being used against them.
 

Bassoe

Well-known member
The btfo thing is a predicted outcome. As is the the same tools the establishment using against the populists being used against them.
My point is, if the guiding cornerstone of future American society is to "do what worked historically", why would they be imperialists? The American empire has been an unmitigated disaster for the American people. The military-industry complex and security state it created attempt to justify their own existence by provoking additional conflicts and are directly responsible for every single war we've gotten caught up in since the fall of the Soviet Union. Miscellaneous middle-eastern terrorists? They armed and trained them. China? Guess whose globalist economic system offshored jobs and turned them from basket case to superpower. Klaus Schwab and his neofeudalistic fan club? Without glowies infiltrating anyone dissatisfied with the status quo, they'd have been assassinated by the endless hordes of people they pissed off long ago. The escalating current proxy war with Russia which is increasingly risking global nuclear apocalypse? They're the ones who broke their promises about extending their anti-Russian alliance straight to Russia's borders and couped Viktor Yanukovych in favor of their puppet.

Imperialism has failed. You want national defense, you turtle up in your own territory with enough doomsday weaponry pointed at everyone else to make war obviously futile and treat resource and manufacturing autarky as the security issue.
 

Cherico

Well-known member
I honestly think we will accidentally fall into imperialism much like the Romans. Europes whole identity right now is built on very fragile non truths that they have escaped history.

All it takes is one major war and everything that makes modern Europe function collapses. The us will basically be stuck propping them up until one day we wake up and their a part of an empire we didn't ask for or want.
 

Blasterbot

Well-known member
I honestly think we will accidentally fall into imperialism much like the Romans. Europes whole identity right now is built on very fragile non truths that they have escaped history.

All it takes is one major war and everything that makes modern Europe function collapses. The us will basically be stuck propping them up until one day we wake up and their a part of an empire we didn't ask for or want.
Explains the reaction that some people have about Ukraine. "we are beyond waging wars over land" is a hilarious take that I have heard too many paraphrase. if the idea of people fighting over borders is an attack on their idea that WW2 was the war that ended major wars it makes more sense.
 

Bassoe

Well-known member
we are beyond waging wars over land" is a hilarious take that I have heard too many paraphrase.
Our land, aka, our own country, is protected by nuclear MAD deterrent. Everything else is just proxy wars which make us less safe by allowing our corporations the opportunity to outsource.

If you wouldn’t blow up the world rather than lose any given conflict, it doesn’t existentially matter to you so give up and stop wasting money, resources and lives.
 

Bassoe

Well-known member
There's a difference between the "elite" and the People.
It hasn't worked for them either. Selling out their countries' industrial prowess and demoralizing their populations might've made them richer on paper, but has left them potentially too weak to force everyone else to play along with their system. These idiots made a grave miscalculation. They thought that they would be able to shut out Russia from the world economy and control their behavior financially. They looked at Russia's GDP and estimated that they could bully them based on that alone. What they failed to appreciate is the critical nature of industry. GDP is not everything. A gas refinery and some DEI commissar makework job both count as "GDP" on some oligarch's ledger sheet but back in reality we all know only one of those careers has actual value.
 
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ATP

Well-known member
My point is, if the guiding cornerstone of future American society is to "do what worked historically", why would they be imperialists? The American empire has been an unmitigated disaster for the American people. The military-industry complex and security state it created attempt to justify their own existence by provoking additional conflicts and are directly responsible for every single war we've gotten caught up in since the fall of the Soviet Union. Miscellaneous middle-eastern terrorists? They armed and trained them. China? Guess whose globalist economic system offshored jobs and turned them from basket case to superpower. Klaus Schwab and his neofeudalistic fan club? Without glowies infiltrating anyone dissatisfied with the status quo, they'd have been assassinated by the endless hordes of people they pissed off long ago. The escalating current proxy war with Russia which is increasingly risking global nuclear apocalypse? They're the ones who broke their promises about extending their anti-Russian alliance straight to Russia's borders and couped Viktor Yanukovych in favor of their puppet.

Imperialism has failed. You want national defense, you turtle up in your own territory with enough doomsday weaponry pointed at everyone else to make war obviously futile and treat resource and manufacturing autarky as the security issue.
Mostly right,with one exception - Russia do not exist anymorre,and USA offered KGB Ukraine in 2021 - but Moscov do not agree,and choose war to show their power.

Which is good,now we see how powerpuff they are.

P.S They are kgb so,in theory,it could be maskirowka ,and real army wait in hddeen cities foe RIGHT HOUR.
 

Skallagrim

Well-known member
The thesis that the West (or in any case, America) should adopt a "turtle mentality" (and that, supposedly, "imperialism" has failed) is based on severe -- indeed, fatally dangerous -- misapprehensions.

1. If you adopt a "turtle mentality", you're not becoming a well-defended superpower. You're becoming Tokugawa America. That's cute, and it'll work for a good while. Plausibly a few centuries. And then the proverbial gunboats come, and your civilisation is killed. For real. Forever. (Look at Japan as it is now: a society that survived the death of its own culture. Is that a prospect to which one should aspire?)

2. It also means that you surrender roughly everything West of Hawaii, East of Bermuda and North of the Panama Canal to your enemies. This means they have more of everything. It means you're boxed it. It means you've built a prison for yourself, and imagined it to be a fortress.

3. Although this may not matter to some, it is also the path of treason and dishonour. America chose to become a contended for hegemony, and crushed all other contenders in the West. The responsibility of victory is that you actually get the job. If you didn't want to be hegemon, then you should have opted for isolationism back in 1914 (or better yet, 1898) and then stuck to it. That didn't happen. America already made its choice. To abdicate it now is to forsake responsibility for the choice.

4. More practically: to step onto the road to hegemony, go 90% of the way, and then step off it again... that makes you all the enemies, but deprives you of the means to adequately contend against them. Your MAD deterrent will not save you. No deterrent, no system or technology, has ever been permanently unassailable. It's a matter of time before someone invents some new weapon or technology that renders nukes utterly meaningless. And given the drawbacks of the "turtle mentality" (outlined above), overwhelming odds are that your enemy invents it first, rather than a stagnant and isolated Tokugawa America. So on that day, or a day soon thereafter--the gunboats come.

5. Finally, "imperialism" hasn't "failed", because it hasn't been properly initiated yet. What America has been doing up to this point is the prelude to imperialism. This is always a chaotic process full of dumb mis-steps. But once you start that process, your choices become "failure" (which equals death) or "triumph" (which means: embracing imperialism without further hesitation).

At this stage, the only viable path forward is the path that leads to triumph. Anything else is at best a slow suicide.
 
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Blasterbot

Well-known member
I don't completely disagree. I just think America is going to need to put some serious effort on focusing inward. we spent the last 2-3 decades getting hollowed out. and we really do need to put effort into America. not simply in the sense of pumping up GDP, but in actually being a country. America has half assed being an empire for a bit now. It needs to make the choice of is it actually going to be one or it needs to stop throwing money and lives into it.
 

Skallagrim

Well-known member
I don't completely disagree. I just think America is going to need to put some serious effort on focusing inward. we spent the last 2-3 decades getting hollowed out. and we really do need to put effort into America. not simply in the sense of pumping up GDP, but in actually being a country. America has half assed being an empire for a bit now. It needs to make the choice of is it actually going to be one or it needs to stop throwing money and lives into it.

Oh, certainly! There's currently a re-alignment going on, which is related to "oh, shit, we wasted too much capital on pointless wars!" -- literal and metaphorical capital, both. But no there's dumb wars and there's smart ones. There's the necessity of getting your house in order, and the necessity of facing rivals abroad.

Often, in history, we see that the two feed into each other. Some internal issues going back to the Gilded Age were solved in the process of fighting World War II. As I've noted before, I think there's some serious floundering going on now, and I don't think it'll stop very soon. I'd expect a major shift, both domestic and geostrategic, just past mid-century or so.

In part, that happens because the current uncertainty is an embarrassing weakness. Confronting the world with renewed vigour, thereafter, plays a part in restoring the sense of "being a country". (Or, as it happens, "being an empire".) I don't think it'll solve all the problems -- but it'll lay the ground work for the solution.
 

Cherico

Well-known member
Oh, certainly! There's currently a re-alignment going on, which is related to "oh, shit, we wasted too much capital on pointless wars!" -- literal and metaphorical capital, both. But no there's dumb wars and there's smart ones. There's the necessity of getting your house in order, and the necessity of facing rivals abroad.

Often, in history, we see that the two feed into each other. Some internal issues going back to the Gilded Age were solved in the process of fighting World War II. As I've noted before, I think there's some serious floundering going on now, and I don't think it'll stop very soon. I'd expect a major shift, both domestic and geostrategic, just past mid-century or so.

In part, that happens because the current uncertainty is an embarrassing weakness. Confronting the world with renewed vigour, thereafter, plays a part in restoring the sense of "being a country". (Or, as it happens, "being an empire".) I don't think it'll solve all the problems -- but it'll lay the ground work for the solution.

honestly man I am just sick of buracrats getting increasingly over invested in peoples private lives becoming ever more intrustive and obnoxious.
 

ATP

Well-known member
The thesis that the West (or in any case, America) should adopt a "turtle mentality" (and that, supposedly, "imperialism" has failed) is based on severe -- indeed, fatally dangerous -- misapprehensions.

1. If you adopt a "turtle mentality", you're not becoming a well-defended superpower. You're becoming Tokugawa America. That's cute, and it'll work for a good while. Plausibly a few centuries. And then the proverbial gunboats come, and your civilisation is killed. For real. Forever. (Look at Japan as it is now: a society that survived the death of its own culture. Is that a prospect to which one should aspire?)

2. It also means that you surrender roughly everything West of Hawaii, East of Bermuda and North of the Panama Canal to your enemies. This means they have more of everything. It means you're boxed it. It means you've built a prison for yourself, and imagined it to be a fortress.

3. Although this may not matter to some, it is also the path of treason and dishonour. America chose to become a contended for hegemony, and crushed all other contenders in the West. The responsibility of victory is that you actually get the job. If you didn't want to be hegemon, then you should have opted for isolationism back in 1914 (or better yet, 1898) and then stuck to it. That didn't happen. America already made its choice. To abdicate it now is to forsake responsibility for the choice.

4. More practically: to step onto the road to hegemony, go 90% of the way, and then step off it again... that makes you all the enemies, but deprives you of the means to adequately contend against them. Your MAD deterrent will not save you. No deterrent, no system or technology, has ever been permanently unassailable. It's a matter of time before someone invents some new weapon or technology that renders nukes utterly meaningless. And given the drawbacks of the "turtle mentality" (outlined above), overwhelming odds are that your enemy invents it first, rather than a stagnant and isolated Tokugawa America. So on that day, or a day soon thereafter--the gunboats come.

5. Finally, "imperialism" hasn't "failed", because it hasn't been properly initiated yet. What America has been doing up to this point is the prelude to imperialism. This is always a chaotic process full of dumb mis-steps. But once you start that process, your choices become "failure" (which equals death) or "triumph" (which means: embracing imperialism without further hesitation).

At this stage, the only viable path forward is the path that leads to triumph. Anything else is at best a slow suicide.
True.Turtle option is good - if you are Tom Bombadil.For humans it is suicide.
 

Cherico

Well-known member
So, Skallagrim. Humour me for a moment.

Could the world have ended up with a Dutch based universal empire? In all honesty, I think I'd prefer you lot in charge over the yanks.

The dutch live on the murder highway between Germany and France so it's unlikely. Honestly it's amazing their doing as well as they are.

As for us after Europe committed cultural suicide during the world wars your choice for who would run said universal empire were America and Russia.

And let's face facts for all of our issues we are no way as bad as the Russians.
 

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