The Next Warrior Age - Right Under Our Noses?

[Bob Butler 54]

(06-26-2020, 03:08 PM)Isoko Wrote: This happens to all democracies eventually. If the rot grows too deep, they become like Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire that switched to long term Caesarism. If it is just a crisis but society itself relatively intact, then the Caesarism runs on the scale of Lincoln and Churchill, that is short term affairs.

Looking at the current prognosis for the West, I would say that we are in for a long period of Caesarism these time around. The societies in these countries are starting to fragment and slowly collide into major civil strife, meaning that this is going to be a long, drawn out affair requiring strong leadership in order to turn society back around again into something more functional.

Now whatever happens after the Caesar period, whether classical democracy returns to full point or the eventual civilisation collapses is another question entirely.

By Caesarism you seem to mean strong and competent leadership.  Yes, you have to be strong and competent to solve a crisis.  This is necessary for the duration of the crisis heart, but has recently relaxed with the cycles over the following turnings.  

It seems the prototype Grey Champion has to be willing to listen to his experts, who are in many past cases generals, but who may this time be doctors or police chiefs or city mayors.  He must have a vision of how it has got to end up, what the new birth of freedom must include.  He must have the ability to communicate that vision, that his people will contribute to it.

I will note Caeser lived in the Agricultural Age.  Autocracy was the norm.  Yes, a few Greek city states and Rome under the senate flirted with variations on democracy, but for the most part kings or autocracy was the norm.  Lincoln and Churchill lived in the Industrial Age, in culture where democracy was much more the norm.

Your leader must be strong and competent enough to handle the crisis, but the government is not so strong or competent again until the next crisis.

Now I have used ‘autocracy’ much as you have used ‘Caesarism’.  To me it means a culture has not fully grown out of the Agricultural Age and taken full advantage of the Enlightenment values of human rights, equality and democracy.  They have not really grown into the full Industrial Age format.  They are still addicted to the old pattern, leadership of, for and by a few elites.

And autocracy is a bug, not a feature.  It means the culture is behind.  It will struggle to compete against other cultures.

But this does not imply that during a crisis one doesn’t or shouldn’t do what you have to do.  We will for a time have a strong and competent crisis government.  We will handle the crisis.  If not we will keep getting stronger and more competent until we do solve the crisis.

And then, thus far, we have relaxed into the high mentality, and we are not so strong and competent again until the crisis comes around.

I would just watch yourself basing your pattern of how things work on the Agricultural Age.  As a progressive, I view the cultures of the time as badly flawed, and most of the crises that have happened since removed flaws that used to be an accepted common practice.  It was a struggle to get rid of kings, slave owners, dictators, etc…. Don’t assume that it is a nature of civilizations to revert to the bad old days.  We are still growing out of it.  The rejection of racist violent policing is a example of how and why elements of the old days will suddenly be focused on and removed.  That is what ‘a new birth of freedom’ is about.

Autocracy and being like Caesar are bad signs.  They have to be stomped on when the chance comes round.