In history class, I never understood how “advanced” civilizations could collapse.
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@Strandjunker advanced -> ad vance? cannot be good
@hendrikstier @Strandjunker where does the "d" go? His couch?
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In history class, I never understood how “advanced” civilizations could collapse. It just didn’t seem plausible.
Anyway, I’ve seen enough. I get it now.
@Strandjunker Jared Diamond's 2005 'Collapse' book is much more readable than his 'Guns, Germs and Steel' and walks though some historical collapse scenarios. It has been over a decade since I read it so I'm sure the field has evolved and i might be misremembering, but the main gist I recall is there are too many rich people in advanced societies and too much pressure gets put on ecological systems that allowed the civ to succeed in the first place.
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In history class, I never understood how “advanced” civilizations could collapse. It just didn’t seem plausible.
Anyway, I’ve seen enough. I get it now.
I read 700 pages of frickin Jacques Barzun for this‽
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@hendrikstier @Strandjunker where does the "d" go? His couch?
@makja @Strandjunker stochastically…
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In history class, I never understood how “advanced” civilizations could collapse. It just didn’t seem plausible.
Anyway, I’ve seen enough. I get it now.
@Strandjunker can't decide if the US government is currently being more or less ridiculous than the Romans appointing a horse to the Senate
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In history class, I never understood how “advanced” civilizations could collapse. It just didn’t seem plausible.
Anyway, I’ve seen enough. I get it now.
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In history class, I never understood how “advanced” civilizations could collapse. It just didn’t seem plausible.
Anyway, I’ve seen enough. I get it now.
Evil, greed, hate and stupidity for the perfect ingredients for it.... always have been...
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@Strandjunker can't decide if the US government is currently being more or less ridiculous than the Romans appointing a horse to the Senate
@FishNamedDog @Strandjunker (leaving aside the reality of Inciatius' term in the Senate), Caligula was Emperor in the 30's AD; Alaric's sack of Rome wasn't until four centuries later.
Settle in for the long haul, is what I'm saying
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@Strandjunker can't decide if the US government is currently being more or less ridiculous than the Romans appointing a horse to the Senate
@FishNamedDog @Strandjunker republicans are putting on a coup that superficially resembles a hapless clown show. Was the horse part of a coup attempt?
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In history class, I never understood how “advanced” civilizations could collapse. It just didn’t seem plausible.
Anyway, I’ve seen enough. I get it now.
@Strandjunker but just imagine the value we’re creating for shareholders!
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In history class, I never understood how “advanced” civilizations could collapse. It just didn’t seem plausible.
Anyway, I’ve seen enough. I get it now.
@Strandjunker It all feels like a house of cards, doesn't it?
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In history class, I never understood how “advanced” civilizations could collapse. It just didn’t seem plausible.
Anyway, I’ve seen enough. I get it now.
@Strandjunker Those who don't learn from history...
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@FishNamedDog @Strandjunker republicans are putting on a coup that superficially resembles a hapless clown show. Was the horse part of a coup attempt?
@TransitBiker@urbanists.social @FishNamedDog@mastodon.social @Strandjunker@mstdn.social More a way for the emperor to insult the senators, kinda like "You think you're the top of Rome, but you can't tell me what to do any more than this horse can!"
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@TransitBiker@urbanists.social @FishNamedDog@mastodon.social @Strandjunker@mstdn.social More a way for the emperor to insult the senators, kinda like "You think you're the top of Rome, but you can't tell me what to do any more than this horse can!"
@TransitBiker@urbanists.social @Strandjunker@mstdn.social @FishNamedDog@mastodon.social It's questionable if that exact thing actually happened, but it fits into how after the first two the emperors increasingly stopped pretending the republic was still intact and they were just the most influential senators (with a ridiculous amount of other offices/honors). The coup against the republic was long done by then (though there were many to become emperor instead of the emperor).
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In history class, I never understood how “advanced” civilizations could collapse. It just didn’t seem plausible.
Anyway, I’ve seen enough. I get it now.
@Strandjunker Fair enough.
“Computer, end simulation.”
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In history class, I never understood how “advanced” civilizations could collapse. It just didn’t seem plausible.
Anyway, I’ve seen enough. I get it now.
@Strandjunker Advanced civilisations collapse in the same way that wise old men die. It's not only plausible, it's the natural order of things.
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@Strandjunker it's an empire and all empires are bound to fall.
@TheOneDoc @Strandjunker At least we got quite few recent examples, like USSR in the 90's as well.
So better documented than ancient ones like roman empire, bronze age, … -
In history class, I never understood how “advanced” civilizations could collapse. It just didn’t seem plausible.
Anyway, I’ve seen enough. I get it now.
I still don't get it. I'm a news junkie in the US, and I still don't understand what I'm seeing, even though it's all around me. It just makes no sense
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In history class, I never understood how “advanced” civilizations could collapse. It just didn’t seem plausible.
Anyway, I’ve seen enough. I get it now.
@Strandjunker Every civilisation collapses eventually, for different reasons. Quite often the system cannot maintain its complexity any longer because the complexity costs keep growing while the resources dwindle, and often the system tries to solve the problem by adding another layer of even more complexity because that was the thing that had always worked in the past.
Once you stop looking at civilisation as a human endeavour run by a bunch of experts and thinkers and begin to look at it as a self-organising complex system consisting of all kinds of humans, most of whom don't really know what they're doing and just repeating what seemed to work in the past, you begin to realise that every civilisation eventually crosses the point of no return where collapse becomes inevitable. The Industrial Age is quite likely already beyond saving, we crossed the line some twenty years ago. -
In history class, I never understood how “advanced” civilizations could collapse. It just didn’t seem plausible.
Anyway, I’ve seen enough. I get it now.
