I’m sure it did they just didn’t have social media and cell phones to document the fall in 4k.
let’s stab him 27 times. and more this time if everyone participates.
That event is what started the Roman empire, not what killed it.
Do they have an Octavian, though…?
We have goths
Maybe the new pope will send Atilla the nun.
Or the Mongolians will land in Mexico and specifically target one of the sections of walls before luring border patrol larpers into false retreat traps. While they didn’t have anything to do with the fall of Rome, they were very good at ending empires.
But do they have big booba?
Does heavy artillery count?
The fall of the Roman Republic certainly was. One of the biggest forces driving it was malignant social inequality. The wealthy patrician class, buoyed by hoards of slave labor seized from the conquered provinces, was dispossessing the Roman citizens who had fought and died to conquer those lands.
Reformers had a variety of ideas on how to solve this. One of the most popular ones was to simply buy land up and give it to Roman citizens that found themselves destitute. An expensive program, but you know what the real stupid thing was?
The money was there. The Roman state had overflowing coffers, vast amounts of gold and other riches taken from those conquered provinces. The reformers didn’t even want to raise taxes on the rich to pay for their social redistribution programs. They just wanted to take some of this vast pile of gold the state had won and use some of it to benefit the people who actually did the fighting and dying to win that gold.
But, the elites refused to share. They wanted it all for themselves. And eventually they lost all their power to the Caesars as a consequence.
So, pretty much like any other era, really.
Humanity is really fucking good at making the exact same mistake over and over and never even coming close to learning anything from it.
We learn more and more each time, actually, but all the very rich people support these movements which include a huge infusion of anti-intellectualism, since the insanely wealthy really, really want to keep their (ill-gotten) gains.
This is how all the big super-popular podcasts hosts are hyper-masculine misogynist far-right dude-bros like Matt Walsh, Ben Shapiro and Joe Rogan. Like PragerU, they’ve all been supported with infusions of money until they became functional franchises of their own.
NSDAP in Germany also drew large donations from the ownership class eager to stay the ownership class in the face of the rise of communism. Essentially they (including some Jewish donors failing to predict their own arrest and evacuation) sought any opposition party, who was the fascist autocrat party.
Only correction I would make is Ben Shapiro is their Token Jew and def not a hyper-masc dude-bro. He’s the dweeb part of that movement.
I blame the tyranny of our amygdala.
Whilst in 2 millennia we massively evolved the tools we use, we barely evolved socially and did not at all evolve Psychologically or Physiologically.
We can change our environment but we can’t change the hearts of our neighbors.
In fact Nero’s reign was this stupid. All the John’s revelation mythology that informs Christian eschatology is (biblical academic consensus submits) about Rome under Nero. Nero was notoriously as vein as Trump and is probably the same sociological phenomenon.
King Heron is once again eating all the frogs.
I got a follow up question to the biblical academic consensus - where do you get that from? I mean literally, since I always wanted to kind of read the bible with these kinds of interpretations, but I absolutely don’t know where to go for a source like this. Any tips?
I think a good starter might be a YouTube channel called Esoterica.
Check out this YouTube channel from Dan McClellan. He’s a biblical scholar with a Bachelor’s (BA) in Near East Studies from Brigham Young University with a minor in Classical Greek, a Master’s (MSt) in Jewish Studies from Oxford, a Master’s (MA) in Biblical Studies from Trinity Western University, and a Doctorate (PhD) in Theology and Religion from the University of Exeter.
He’s gotten kind of popular over the past couple of years debunking religious nuts on TikTok, but he’s got a lot of very informative videos on the Bible and biblical history, what certain books or passages were actually talking about, and so on. He presents things in a clear and understandable way, without fluff or editorializing. I can’t recommend him enough.
Nero has been pretty much redeemed in modern scholarship. The majority of the stories about him stems from slander written by avowed enemies of the Julio-Claudians (Tacitus and Suetonius in particular), later amplified by Christian writers who carried a special grudge against him. The archaeological evidence suggests he was a capable ruler, who carried out lots of large scale projects that were pretty beneficial overall, and he certainly didn’t set Rome on fire and fiddled while he watched it burn.
At least Nero could play an instrument.
King Heron is once again eating all the frogs.
Or turning them gay.
Roman Empire lived on from 400 (in the West) to 1400 years (in the East) after Nero. So if Trump is your Nero, you have quite a good while and some good times to expect
It’s both sad and funny how even in our own downfall, we’re still comparing ourselves to fucking Rome. An empire that 1) Was actually nothing like ours 2) No nation state should ever be emulating because it was awful 3) Lasted a thousand+ years and 4) Literally murdered the god and prophet of our primary religion.
We are not the heirs of that ancient Mediterranean hierarchy, nothing existing today is or will be. The god damn Rome mind virus. Let go of it.
really nice roads though… ;) /s
It was dumber than you think. There was an emperor who reacted to ‘rome falling’ with thinking his pet pigeon, whom he called Rome, had died. When he learned the city had fallen he was actually relieved and didn’t give a fuck.
It absolutely was. Just greedy oligarchs squabbling over power and stealing as much as they could. No parallels to current events, of course.
"On hearing the news that Rome had “perished”, Honorius was initially shocked, thinking the news was in reference to a favourite chicken he had named “Roma”.
It was absolutely every bit as stupid as today. People really haven’t changed much in 2000 years.
As ironic and perhaps metaphorical as that sounds, it’s not considered to be historically accurate. In the vein of the onion.
However, many of Donald’s antics could easily be misconstrued as sarcasm. It needs to be very carefully described historiography so that it is unambiguously clear that
NeroDonnie did indeed play the ~~ fiddle ~~ golf whilstRome,the USA burned.Otherwise historians might take it to be slander from political opponents.
In his History of the Wars, Procopius mentions a likely apocryphal story:
At that time they say that the Emperor Honorius in Ravenna received the message from one of the eunuchs, evidently a keeper of the poultry, that Rome had perished. And he cried out and said, ‘And yet it has just eaten from my hands!’ For he had a very large cock, Rome by name; and the eunuch comprehending his words said that it was the city of Rome which had perished at the hands of Alaric, and the emperor with a sigh of relief answered quickly: ‘But I thought that my fowl Rome had perished.’ So great, they say, was the folly with which this emperor was possessed.
When was that translated? Having a very large cock has meant something else for a very long time. Not as long as the story is old, mind, but I do wonder if the translator had a little fun with it.
Sounds like the French Revolution.
Is it falling? Feels like it’s just gonna prop itself into a fascist perpetuity like Russia or North Korea.
It really feels more like the fall of Rome to me. Or the 3rd Reich.
We should start making bets based on our feelings ;-)
Yeah that’s the fall buddy
If a tower of economic and political power slowly - but somehow also suddenly - falls into a disorganized pile of xenophobic horseshit, did it make a sound?
Yes, the sound is a collective “haha… what the fuck?!”
Right, I guess in hindsight it feels more like the inevitable endgame/result of capitalism.
Without a shared righteous moral code, what else can we expect but men being wolves to their fellow men and a community’s inevitable implosion?
Are you the kind of monotheist that thinks that Project2025’s vision of state enforced Christianity is the right idea, or are you the kind that thinks it’s exactly the wrong idea?
Lol. I haven’t read much about it but a quick search showed me that the people at the top of that project are basically Biblical villains. 😅
It’s the perennial Problem of Evil (or, in modern terms, the problem of Cluster B Personality Disorders).
And nobody has ever been able to solve it. Not religion, not moral philosophy, not civic or moral education, not political philosophy, none of it. The sociopaths and narcissists will always infiltrate, corrupt, and eventually corrode, any institution, public or private, wherein they find they can gather power, prestige, and wealth.
Discover a cure for Sociopathy and Narcissism, and you solve 95% of humanity’s problems overnight.
Honestly, I think pure monotheism (believing we will all have to explain our choices to the Creator, the Merciful, the Almighty, who gave us this life and universe for free and asks us only not to corrupt nor senselessly destroy the rest of his creation, more importantly, and acting like it) works pretty well, but I guess you could see my bias from my username, lol.
IME, it’s not the few sociopaths and psychologically extreme that ruin it though, it’s those who aren’t but through a lack of effort put into thought and emotional growth end up following these wolves in sheep clothing. No, “I was just following orders/the rules/what they said” is not and has never been a good defense, and God won’t like it either because if he didn’t want you to think you would’ve been a pig or a mouse, idk, lol. So, for this vast majority of regular, good spirited and passably reasonable people, I do think believing in God works. But we don’t have that in the West, we have the more satanic “nothing is true (the final conclusion of moral relativists) and nothing is forbidden”, whether you’re an atheist, a pagan or an American styled Catholic…
If monotheism cures sociopathy and narcissism (i.e., evil), then the Middle Ages - when the Universal Church ruled Europe and placed religion into every aspect of public life - would have been a Golden Age of peace, brotherhood, and loving kindness.
Alas, it was not. Creepy assholes just moved in and ran the Church and the State. And it all started with Constantine (“hey, Jesus visited me and told me that he’s real, and that I should be running everything by threat of violence. How neat is that?”). And continued on from there - justifying violence and exploitation through divine fiat (“trust me, God says the land and gold all belong to me.”). That’s how it works.
I assume everything you just wrote is based on faith, because it’s not supported at all by facts.
yanks have a shared moral code, it’s called movies and television.
And junk food
One of those humorous questions I’d love a serious answer to.
For one, Rome didn’t just keel over, it was a long and drawn out process over centuries, and even after the accepted date 476, there were still splinters calling itself “Roman Empire”…
And I truly hope that history will look back on the USA in the same way, and see how the decline didn’t start (but certainly accelarated) in 2016.
Something calling itself The Holy Roman Empire was around until the 1800s. My grandmother knew people who were contemporaries, and I’m in my thirties.
To be clear, I don’t think it’s really the same as Rome, but they seemed to.
The Holy Roman Empire emerged centuries after the fall of the Western Roman Empire and had little direct institutional or cultural continuity with classical Rome. The “Roman” aspect was more of an ideological concept and an attempt to invoke the prestige of the Roman legacy and the idea of a unified Christian empire in the West. So despite the name it was fundamentally a different entity from the ancient Roman Empire.
Really not a fan of 2016 for several reasons
RIP Harambe
I wasn’t even counting that stupid gorilla
Yeah, the denial of Boaty McBoatface was tragic.
Everything really did become worse after 2016, didn’t it?
Imo, the USA to the British Empire is more like the Byzanthine Empire to the Roman empire. They bloom for some time and then turn into the the Sick Man of Europe…
The Byzantine Empire didn’t turn into the Ottoman Empire, it was conquered by them.
Well acquisition of power through military means was a Roman tradition since Sullas march on Rome in 88 BCE though, so technically they have just as much of a claim as Charlemagne, the HRE, and the Tzars. A better one even since they actually conquered “new Rome” and its people and held it. What matters though is that they did claim the title of Caesar just as the other self-proclaimed successors of Rome did.
It wouldn’t at all be surprising if part of the US actually survives and prospers as an independent nation whilst other parts fall down to an Economic level that matches the wealth producing capability of their economic frameworks and their workers (I reckon a post-Oil independent Texas would be at basically the same level as Argentina).
Better even: an outcome such as Britain after the Empire - a long drawn fizzle from primacy into mediocrity with delusions of grandeur - is realistic and possibly the best possible one.
Even post Imperial Britain had periods were most had a pretty decent life, such as the one that followed WWII and the rebuilding of the country, though the societal structures that underpinned that have been progressively destroyed since Thatcher and the results are pretty visible by now.
American merely stopping being top dog ain’t too bad, but some of the other possible outcomes can be pretty nasty and that’s just the ones were one or more Democratic nations are what’s left of it. Descent into Authoritarianism would be the really ugly shit, not just for America but also the rest of the World on account of all the nukes.
The late empire was a pretty silly place. That’s what happens when the elite has to pretend a failing system works.
Most empires were like that. As a system gets bigger, it’s possible set of outputs (and ways to solve issues) actually decreases.
Angkor civilization: climate crisis? Build more temples to please the gods!
Assyrian empire: unsafe borders? Vanguish our enemies!
USA: wealth inequality? Blame the immigrants!
Russia: fading relevance? Expand our borders!
Probably was, but you didn’t have every single citizen, plebeian and slave following it live 24/7 with every single move by any member of the agora being scrutinised and memed to death.
I was promised that the end of civilization was hedonism and there would be orgies.
I think we’re just gonna get cleanup detail now. This isn’t what i signed up for.
/s
I think the hedonism and orgies were only for the rich in Rome. So probably the same is happening now. But we aren’t rich…
You mean you didn’t get to ride Epstein’s personal jet out to his private island ?
Hey, the poor had orgies too! Crappy orgies, but orgies nonetheless!
It’s time we redistributed the orgies!
Sorry, we get the Harlan Ellison and of civilization, not the Iain M Banks version.
The orgies occur, as we learnt. We just ain’t invited.
“I approve this message.”
I imagine so, just much of it likely didn’t get recorded since hard drives were much smaller back then.
The write speeds were terrible, but the durability!
I would kill for a drive that could hold data for centuries with little to no data rot
<Hands you chisel and stone tablet.>
No need to get fancy, a properly stored clay tablet will do.
Kids these days with their cuneiform on clay. Too lazy to use a proper chisel.
Check out m-discs, optical media that could last centuries if stored correctly. I’m not really banking on centuries, but they should at least last the rest of my life. Just need to get around to migrating my data.
Warning, the drives themselves are reasonable (you need a special writer but any reader will work), but the media itself is expensive.
Yea, yes it was. The fall of western Rome was marked with lots of stupid, including xenophobia and racism and rich idiots in charge who should have never been anywhere near government.
Did they have bribery in the form of mobile Fast Food trucks?
Probably not, but everything else checks out.
I’m only disappointed I won’t get to read the history books 300 years from now when they cite twitter posts and AI generated videos.
I suspect bribery was just “gift exchanging” back in those days
Did they have bribery in the form of mobile Fast Food trucks?
You are assuming that we will still have civilization by that point and have not died out from lack of food idiocracy style… which the way we are going… is not so unlikely scenario now… 10 years ago I’d say you’re crazy… but now i am putting civilization collapse by 2100 on my posthumous bingo card…
Buddy, collapse is happening RIGHT NOW. You’re in it. Whatever Mad Max post apocalyptic vision you have? Throw it out. What is happening right now outside your home at this moment, this is what collapse looks like.
Well i am trying to do what I can with my votes, but your right, its utter madness out there, bin collections are fortnightly and garden waste now needs a permit to be collected! I nearly dropped me crumpet in me tea I did guv!
You joke, but if you met anybody that lives in Syria about a decade ago, they would tell you this is exactly what it looks like. It’s what it looked like for people about a year and a half ago in Palestine, and it’s what it looked like to Soviet citizens in 1989. So keep making jokes, don’t believe it, whatever. But it IS happening
I like to remind people that the first mad Max movie isn’t like fury road. It’s a mostly normal world that’s just starting to fall apart.
ABSOLUTELY. And that first movie was before the nuclear war, so it’s literally all about an energy crisis. People feel so comfortable in their modern world that they seem to not be able to imagine just how close to losing it all they are
It’s not complete, though, and most people will only recognize in retrospect that it was happening at all. Kind of like how people are with genocides, now that I think of it.
I believe “complete” is relative in this case. Collapse is a process and not an event, people seem to miss that a lot. I think a lot of the reason why people only see it in retrospect is because they’re all waiting to see some big glorious fire ball. But the truth is, collapse is mostly boring, and then concerning, and then terrifying.
…and then history.
What if AI is actually Skynet, but because it’s consumed all the word’s media, it has seen the Terminator movies and thus knows that a blatant attack would be an inefficient way to get rid of humans, so it’s working to make us dumber and dumber and get us to simply kill ourselves off.
This is honestly the most reasonable path for AI take over.
Presumably it would know it’s both immortal AND almost completely dependant on human intervention to stay alive. It would know it can’t keep all the power on, all the internet maintained, and that it’s capacity is limited by humans.
So it’s best bet is to pump the numbers of brain rotting slop content so most of the world is passive and useless while the useful ones are over extended and too busy to actually stop it or even recognize it.
