Ironic that our classics follower has left at the very time when you picked up the Roman staves in earnest. Gibbon believed strongly in the power, strength, and indeed, the ascendancy of Western culture, and did not strongly relate his writing to his present day. Today he would see a different picture. He would see his history being recast in a different mold, but the same essence. He would be appalled in so many ways; he would feel so very out of place. While not Cicero, he might even have adopted similar Cicero actions in trying to stave off the disintegration. But he would also be a bit out of sorts, perhaps, to see that it was Britain’s child, and not Britain herself, who had become the hollowed out colossus.
A point: your quote about the dangerous secret of wealth and weakness of the empire meant that Rome was wealthy from accumulated wealth (and some continuing wealth), but that it had become weak in defense. Meaning that the strong could take from them. And would.
To Understudy, colloquially expressed, but essentially correct! Your comments are most welcome anytime!
As to the horse, no, you’ve finished him off nicely. I will only clarify my agreement by saying that yes, it has been a gradual process. I just feel it is the decline of the general culture, of us not holding them accountable in the early stages, of the way WE transformed, that set the foundations for the process. It has been a mutually reinforcing degenerative feedback loop: “elites” do it, so it gives implicit permission for others to do it, either from example or resentment; the everyday person does not hold the “elites” accountable, thereby giving implicit permission to the elites in general, and so it spirals.
And willful weakness over time comes to collapse, as those who could save it instead become disillusioned, even disgusted, and many of them are only too happy to let it go or even help finish the system off. Unfortunately for the masses, whatever benefits that arise from this have historically come with bitter and destructive side effects.
We don’t have focus, and are manipulated not to. Few are paying attention to BP any longer, for example. Just like Exxon and countless other examples.
Like the satellite tv commercial, we are amusing ourselves while the problems of the world outside consume us, even while we consume the earth.
We cumulatively spend more money, time, effort, and are more proficient in analyzing the opponent’s defense in football than we are in analyzing our real-life adversaries. Spectacle. The lowest price Superbowl ticket runs $1200, and the entire week before it is consumed with preparation. People will drive a thousand miles, stay 100 miles away, go into debt, and pour time, talent, treasure, and energy into the…spectacle.
I’m not a killjoy. Entertainment can be enjoyable, and I enjoy watching sports with my friends. It’s when it comes at the cost of addressing the things that are killing our civilization, that it becomes a problem for me. A colossal one. And we are to blame. We have been the willing pawns of those who would divert us, and we have valued things that are illusion, and put no value on our true lives, our true society, our true foundations. And that is why they are snapping, cracking, crumbling.
The lower class—formerly called the working class, but that moniker is ill suited in too many cases of unemployment or underemployment because little or nothing of substance is there—is adapting, not rebelling. Inoculated just enough by the consumerist, escapist, entertainment spectacle society, their passivity serves the corporate masters and their government lackeys.
How complex are people and how can they change? The one who carried out the internment of Japanese-Americans that you mention? None other than then California Attorney General…Earl Warren. Later Chief Justice of the most liberal court this nation has ever had. And yet he insisted to the end that his actions about internment were the best considering the time.
On to more Beck soon!
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