Falling Empire

If you thought that the age of empires is behind us, think again; America is the heart of the biggest empire the world has ever seen. But if there's a constant in history, it's that empires rise, expand and ultimately decline and fall. This short post concentrates briefly on that final stage, as I believe we are living through right now.

We live in an age of "bread and games" or "bread and circuses" as that other declining empire, Rome, used to call it. As the Romans used their gladiatorial contests to distract the masses from the self-enriching and economy-killing practices of the powers that be, we seem to fare no better with constant distractions like sports, TV-Chefs and Big Brother- or Voice Of [insert your favorite country here]-celebrities. Since "the news" is also owned and managed by those same powers, it mainly serves as a distraction as well, not in the last place because, like everything else, it needs to turn a profit.

We now live, as I see it, in an age of decadence, as described in "The Fate Of Empires" by Sir John Glub. He studied the rise, growth, decline and fall of several great empires and saw a lot of similarities between them. So much even that he was able to distinguish six stages of development in all of them: the age of Pioneers, the age of Conquest, the age of Commerce, the age of Affluence, the age of Intellect and closing with the age of Decadence. If you want to listen to the full audio-book, you can find it right here.

I can easily recognize the stages in our current capitalist empire, and I can also see the common features Sir Glub attributed to the age of Decadence. A few key characteristics of this stage are a huge gap between rich and poor, an abnormally sized, over-extended military, the constant need for instant gratification, an abnormal focus on sex, the best food and the best games. Avery age of decadence has their over-payed sports heroes and fancy celebrity chefs. Games, sex and food, as well as a slew of other things that satisfy our ever growing lust for instant gratification, like movies, TV series, music and other entertainment, occupy the bulk of our collective attention-space. And when we occasionally dabble in a bit of politics, it's the fight, and not the actual subjects or arguments, that interests us most. Education is in decline as well; we only invest in it in so far it's profitable or otherwise relevant for the economy. Add all this together; is it surprising then that we are in a downward social spiral in which anti-intellectualism is gaining ground?

Maybe the most important similarity among empires in decline is the debasement of the currency; if you've read my recent articles, you know that we're living through that as well... So, the question I ask is this: was Trump one of the last emperors of "our" empire? The Emperor before him, Obama, managed to get rewarded a Nobel Prize for Peace, while conducting armed conflicts in seven countries simultaneously while we were too distracted by his minion's bread and games. And is the current emperor really any better now that he's made clear that raising the minimum wage and medicare for all, by far the most popular and wanted changes, are not on his agenda? Anyhow, in the below video you can watch the characteristics of an empire in decline, and decide for yourself if they apply to our times:

Thanks so much for visiting my blog and reading my posts dear reader, I appreciate that a lot :-) If you like my content, please consider leaving a comment, upvote or resteem. I'll be back here tomorrow and sincerely hope you'll join me. Until then, keep safe, keep healthy!