Rome

Following in Ancient Rome’s Footsteps: Moral Decay, Rising Wealth Inequality

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romeCharles Hugh Smith – There are many reasons why Imperial Rome declined, but two primary causes that get relatively little attention are moral decay and soaring wealth inequality. The two are of course intimately connected: once the morals of the ruling Elites degrade, what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mine, too.

I’ve previously covered two other key characteristics of an empire in terminal decline: complacency and intellectual sclerosis, what I have termed a failure of imagination.

Michael Grant described these causes of decline in his excellent account The Fall of the Roman Empire, a short book I have been recommending since 2009:

There was no room at all, in these ways of thinking, for the novel, apocalyptic situation which had now arisen, a situation which needed solutions as radical as itself. (The Status Quo) attitude is a complacent acceptance of things as they are, without a single new idea.

This acceptance was accompanied by greatly excessive optimism about the present and future. Even when the end was only sixty years away, and the Empire was already crumbling fast, Rutilius continued to address the spirit of Rome with the same supreme assurance.

This blind adherence to the ideas of the past ranks high among the principal causes of the downfall of Rome. If you were sufficiently lulled by these traditional fictions, there was no call to take any practical first-aid measures at all.

A lengthier book by Adrian Goldsworthy How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower addresses the same issues from a slightly different perspective.

Glenn Stehle, commenting on 9/16/15 on a thread in the excellent website  peakoilbarrel.com  (operated by the estimable Ron Patterson) made a number of excellent points that I am taking the liberty of excerpting: (with thanks to correspondent Paul S.)

The set of values developed by the early Romans called mos maiorum, Peter Turchin explains in War and Peace and War: The Rise and Fall of Empires, was gradually replaced by one of personal greed and pursuit of self-interest. Continue reading →

Deconstructing Edward Bernays’ ‘Propaganda’ (Part 2)

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“It was, of course, the astounding success of propaganda during the war that opened the eyes of the intelligent few in all departments of life to the possibilities of regimenting the public mind. The American government and numerous patriotic agencies developed a technique which, to most persons accustomed to bidding for public acceptance, was new. They not only appealed to the individual by means of every approach—visual, graphic, and auditory—to support the national endeavor, but they also secured the cooperation of the key men in every group —persons whose mere word carried authority to hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands of followers.” E Bernays

EdwardBernaysEdward Bernays, the ‘Father’ of Public Relations and highly influential in informing modern advertising techniques, quite literally wrote the book on Propaganda. It was released in 1928 and makes the case that “the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society (p.9).”

In this podcast series, Guy Evans examines just how influential Bernays’ ideas were, and details the resulting impact in relation to public relations, advertising, celebrity culture, and democracy itself. This week, Chapter 2 is under the microscope, a chapter that further details the scientific underpinning that explains how the minority influence the majority.

Click here to download this podcast.

Chapter 2 Transcript – “The New Propaganda”

In the days when kings were kings, Louis XIV made his modest remark, “L’Etat c’est moi.” He was nearly right.

But times have changed. The steam engine, the multiple press, and the public school, that trio of the industrial revolution, have taken the power away from kings and given it to the people. The people actually gained power which the king lost For economic power tends to draw after it political power; and the history of the industrial revolution shows how that power passed from the king and the aristocracy to the bourgeoisie. Universal suffrage and universal schooling reinforced this tendency, and at last even the bourgeoisie stood in fear of the common people. For the masses promised to become king. Continue reading →

Mark Wallace Interviews Paul Rosenberg ~ Conscious Resistance

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“There are, unfortunately, people among us who seek power over others. Probably all of us have felt the dominance instinct at some point in our lives, but the vast majority of us learn that it’s an ugly, destructive way of life and we get over it. But some people are wired differently and think of domination as their proper role. These people will always go after power. So long as there are systems that allow them to control and reap from everyone else, they’ll work full-time to get their hands on its levers.” ~Paul Rosenberg

AndrewJacksonMark Wallace ~ I have yet to meet Paul Rosenberg, but I’ve followed his work for years. He’s a brilliant thinker, and from what I can gather via my communications with him, just a damn nice guy!

Paul knows a lot about a lot of things. An adventure capitalist with a broad range of interests and experiences under his belt, current passions include philosophy, theology, history, psychology, and physics. This diverse interest base is reflected in his extensive repertoire of published titles, including A Lodging of Wayfaring Men, The Words of the Founders, and  Production Versus Plunder, not to mention 55 engineering and construction books.

He is also the author of the excellent blog, Free-Man’s Perspective.

Paul is speaking at our Aspen Meet Up, along with Doug Casey and others in August. Sharing a scotch and some intellectual discourse with these two gents will easily be one of the highlights of the year for me! You’ll see how you can join us at the end of this post.

I love reading Paul’s work because I inevitably learn something. That’s always a good thing!

WARNING: If you’re offended by free-thinking, believe government is an honourable institution or are otherwise inclined to think that what you hear from the mainstream news outlets is “mostly the truth”, then you should not read any further. I’d also go as far as to say you are reading the wrong blog.

 

Mark: Paul, you’ve said that, “The meaning of modern existence has devolved to nothing more than comfort and status; discovery is a non-factor. All modern man seeks are food, sex, and comfort, and he/she devotes his/her life to nothing more than mundane things.”

I interact with a global base of friends. Thankfully most of them are not deluded by materialism and empty desires. However, it seems that the majority of the Western world (and increasingly the developing world) has been lulled to sleep by technology, mindless entertainment and a stripping of even the most harmless of tresspassings by overbearing nanny states.

Give us some historical perspective on this. Has this happened before? How does it end?

Paul: Yes, it has definitely happened before, especially as civilizations teeter on the edge of collapse. I generally use the Romans as an example, so I’ll just go with them:

The end of Rome was famously called a time of “bread and circuses,” which simply means “handouts and entertainment.” Here’s one of my favorite quotes from Rome’s fall. It comes from a man named Salvian the Presbyter, in about 440 AD: Continue reading →

Chris Hedges ~ The Folly Of Empire

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TruthDig  October 14 2013

Daniel J. Boorstin
Marcus Tullius Cicero

The final days of empire give ample employment and power to the feckless, the insane and the idiotic. These politicians and court propagandists, hired to be the public faces on the sinking ship, mask the real work of the crew, which is systematically robbing the passengers as the vessel goes down. The mandarins of power stand in the wheelhouse barking ridiculous orders and seeing how fast they can gun the engines. They fight like children over the ship’s wheel as the vessel heads full speed into a giant ice field. They wander the decks giving pompous speeches. They shout that the SS America is the greatest ship ever built. They insist that it has the most advanced technology and embodies the highest virtues. And then, with abrupt and unexpected fury, down we will go into the frigid waters.

The last days of empire are carnivals of folly. We are in the midst of our own, plunging forward as our leaders court willful economic and environmental self-destruction. Sumer and Rome went down like this. So did the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires. Men and women of stunning mediocrity and depravity led the monarchies of Europe and Russia on the eve of World War I. And America has, in its own decline, offered up its share of weaklings, dolts and morons to steer it to destruction. A nation that was still rooted in reality would never glorify charlatans such as Sen. Ted Cruz, House Speaker John Boehner and former Speaker Newt Gingrich as they pollute the airwaves. If we had any idea what was really happening to us we would have turned in fury against Barack Obama, whose signature legacy will be utter capitulation to the demands of Wall Street, the fossil fuel industry, the military-industrial complex and the security and surveillance state. We would have rallied behind those few, such as Ralph Nader, who denounced a monetary system based on gambling and the endless printing of money and condemned the willful wrecking of the ecosystem. We would have mutinied. We would have turned the ship back.

Continue reading →