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We think that the real is rational, that the "system" will deliver the goods. The truth is that modern systems are like spiderwebs: break one part & the edifice gets exponentially weaker. Romans who lived through the fall must have been shocked at how quickly things fell apart .
Another period when we turned back the clock was when globalization was reversed right after an assassination in Sarajevo sparked WW1. Keynes writes about this period eloquently. Things were hunky dory & considered permanently so, and then suddenly everything went wrong.pic.twitter.com/KQZ1cjxhsE
When we blithely mock our own systems with tribal glee, when we knock down institutions, when we take political pleasure in zero-sum fights, when we take war less than seriously, just remember that the cave, starvation & the tribal club are never too far away from modern life.
Even the most cynical, jaded and corrupt Romans of Nero's era must have been horrified at what they had unleashed once it was clear they were going way back in time. And once they went back, the only way forward was centuries of deprivation & painfully slow invention.
It's hard to correlate these events with our own era but just remember that Rome saw itself & its progress as eternal, ditto pre war Europe. Modernity is God's greatest gift to us. Cherish it, cultivate it, protect it. Don't let systems get vandalized, institutions get wrecked.
Protecting modernity means protecting systems, institutions & norms of civilization. This is not some idle musing: these things stand between you & your family & chaos. Without truth, systems & objective laws, you don't get science. Without science, you don't get antibiotics.
As Rome fell, it's interesting to note that truth & facts became subordinated to pleasure, corruption, luxury & belief in magic. It's worth thinking about that as you look at our civilization. Modernity, technology, civilization are all very fragile things. FIN
And yet globalization was restored post-WWII, after a couple of decades' hiatus. Again, widely distributed knowledge is far more robust
The Proud Tower is an excellent read on this time. When done, go straight into The Guns of August.
"...the amusements of his daily newspaper..." We literally learned nothing.
I remember years ago that the Integration of international economies contributed to the causes of the war, though at the time many thought it would make war impossible.
Integrated economies have much more to lose from war than others. Pre WW1 European economies were not really integrated ones.
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