12-18-2022, 04:15 PM
Cycles within cycles? I think of the Roman Empire, a rotten entity at its inception with a veneer of grandeur and prosperity and even an almost-modern mass culture... but the leadership deteriorated, the culture shifted to the anti-material ideology of early Christianity, the tax base shrank as only the poor paid the taxes and the big landowners who exempted themselves from taxation got to be a bigger share of the economy. Technological innovation vanished, and creativity vanished.
Maybe a technological fix such as steam power would have given the Roman classical world a new economic life. Even without movable type the Romans would have done mass printing on a huge scale, improved the speed of both land and sea transportation by replacing oars with steam engines and horses with steam cars. The problem was "what would you do with all the slaves?"
Maybe a technological fix such as steam power would have given the Roman classical world a new economic life. Even without movable type the Romans would have done mass printing on a huge scale, improved the speed of both land and sea transportation by replacing oars with steam engines and horses with steam cars. The problem was "what would you do with all the slaves?"
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.