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by ggm 1405 days ago
Hard not to see parallels with the end of the Roman empire. We know we could do better, we can't be bothered trying very hard and we'd rather moan about the good old days. All it needs is the more motivated (not very) barbarian hoarde to decide they'll do the social reconstruction we won't.

Edit: I actually place great faith on coming generations. The kids are alright.
3 comments
notsapiensatall 1404 days ago
This is a popular trope, but could you say exactly when the Roman empire ended?

If we are in a Rome scenario, the good news is that we probably won't live long enough to see the real collapse.

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ggm 1404 days ago
The reason I liked it was precisely because how long it took. Also, the barbarian hoarde was pretty un barbarian, it instituted the emergent states through the dissolution of the holy Roman empire. Really, Gibbons was sort of wrong. The invaders became "us" in almost every sense. Sucked to be Roman, but then.. it didn't.

Very few of the "lost arts" were truly lost. I could have gone to the democratising effect of the rise of Islam, where much "lost knowledge" was recovered in due course but that's a whole other story (depreferencing inheritance over functional ability)

The key point for our functional decay as a society might be the ubiquitous rise of cynicism combined with increasing joins over gerontocracy and kleptocracy.

https://acoup.blog/2022/01/14/collections-rome-decline-and-f... is good

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Balgair 1404 days ago
Oh gosh. If anything, we're entering a golden age. Yeah, climate change is going to be a real pain. But nothing really more than that on a civilization scale. Global poverty is at an all time low, hunger has never been lower, overall health is the best it's ever been, education is going great globally, we've never been more equitable between the genders, our access to clean water is the highest ever, etc. And all these metrics are just going to get better, more or less.

https://upgrader.gapminder.org/

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agumonkey 1404 days ago
I don't know how people reconciliate metrics like all time poverty low with the article linked.
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PontifexMinimus 1404 days ago
> All it needs is the more motivated (not very) barbarian hoarde to decide they'll do the social reconstruction we won't.

Putin thought he could be that horde. He is failing, and failing badly, in Ukraine.

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