Something Like Late Antiquity Will Happen Again

[pbrower2a]

(10-02-2016, 07:55 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(09-20-2016, 08:32 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: Given:
1) Late Antiquity was not in any way unique at the time - there had been previous, repeated falls of earlier Civilizations
2) Clear failure of the "glue" that has held the current post Middle Ages wave of Civilization together
3) Rising mass migrations from less Civilized parts of the world
4) Reactionary forces here in the West using #2 and #3 to bolster their own ultimately self destructive plans
5) The onset of zero / negative economic growth meaning less and less to invest in infrastructure, education and human development
6) Even if we reverse anthropogenic environmental mods and impacts, the Law of Averages dictates that the unbelievably favorable environmental conditions enjoyed since the Little Ice Age cannot and will not last
7) Ongoing evolution of harmful microorganisms, parasites, toxic molds / fungi, etc;

A mega Unraveling is an inevitability. It is not a matter of if, but when.

The only real question would be, would the next mega Unraveling phase with a future Saecular 3T, would it phase with the conclusion of the current or future Saeculum, or is this the sort of thing that is more random in nature, and does not phase at all with the Saecular "carrier frequency?"

DISCUSS!

What century do you have in mind for "late antiquity"?  Are you talking about the collapse at the end of the bronze age?  Fall of Troy, Sea Peoples, Mycenean and Hittite civilizations wiped out?  Or are you talking about some other period?

That makes sense.

In a way we are still in the Renaissance. Paradoxically the highest technology of our time allows us more access to antiquity than people not in antiquity ever had. There was never an end to the Renaissance, but instead only a change in direction. The Renaissance seems to have slowly morphed into the Enlightenment, itself in part a rediscovery of ancient values (think of the American and French Revolutions and of the emancipation of workers, including both agricultural slaves in the 19th century and industrial workers in the early 20th century).

The Renaissance re-established classical standards of esthetics and scholarship but did not challenge the contemporary norms of politics. The American and French Revolutions looked in part to antiquity for models of democracy. Such was the transformation.

When we recognize ethical and cultural decadence as such, and not solely for novelty, then we can get out of nasty times. When we see nothing wrong with something rotten, then what passes as conservatism simply preserves the rot. Rot is unstable and destructive in its own right.

I see much of the fault of our time in an educational system that inculcates no values and lets people take whatever path they want with neither cultural nor moral guidance. K-12 education? Most of its fault lies in inequities of spending (middle-class kids get much more resources than do poor kids) and in some corrupt districts (like the Detroit Independent School District, which may need to lose some of its independence). It's in university-level teaching, where high-school kids go in hooked on mass low culture which by default gives one practically no values, and even if it has academic rigor gives one no cause to believe that there is more to life than sex, material gain and indulgence, bureaucratic power, and cheap thrills, and often find nothing better except connections to facilitate getting more of the same.

If you want to fault K-12 education, then look where the teachers and administrators come from. I would like our K-12 teachers to have more liberal-arts training so that they can suggest that there is more to life than... I need not repeat it. Look also where most of our leaders in business come from.

I once saw a question posed at a mock interview.

"Mrs. X is a 55-year-old executive secretary at your company. She and her husband intend to go on a once-in-a-lifetime second honeymoon in Paris, where they will get to enjoy much that they have deferred for years while they were working for your company. She has not worked here solely for the money, which isn't all that much. You couldn't pay her enough for her contributions in part because you would overturn the reality that secretarial and clerical staff would insist on being overpaid. She has her vacation time aligned with that trip. She can;t put it off a month or so without paying hefty fees for rescheduling the second honeymoon, and her husband would have similar difficulties in rearranging things. All of a sudden, as she is in the last days before setting off to the City of Lights, your company undergoes a merger with a failing competitor, and you will need her skills to make the merger work. How do you get her to cancel the trip?"

Here is my answer.

No, you do not disrupt that second honeymoon for the merger. You try to make that merger work without her, or put it off until she has returned from Paris. Is she that important? Yes -- and you want to make sure that she is at her best when the merger goes through.

This second honeymoon represents much that you value in her -- her planning, her foresight, and her commitment. Someone simply putting off a trip to a gambling casino or an amusement park or a camping trip to the Rockies? Such takes little foresight or planning, and the younger worker who gets pressured to put such off for a couple of weeks will enjoy the trip just the same a couple weeks later. You can make all sorts of promises to a younger worker, like job security for making some adjustments.

So you get her to stay to make the merger work on time. But while she is doing paperwork she is thinking about the boat cruise down the Seine for which there is no real equivalent in America. While she is making phone calls to facilitate transfers of assets she is thinking of the stroll down the Champs-Élysées that she might otherwise be doing. While she is making the customer lists of your former competitor yours she contemplates the might-have-been of an irreplaceable journey through a gallery of the finest paintings and sculptures of existence.

Can she do this alone? It means more with her husband. Are you going to risk her marital stability for that? She has loyalties bigger than to her boss and the management of this company. This second honeymoon is no spur-of-the-moment jaunt; it involves virtues that she shows on the job: planning, foresight, dedication, and denial of instant gratification. It might be far easier for your company if she were shallow enough to be interested only in some big-ticket item that she could buy, like some household remodeling, a car, or a boat. But she is 55, and she may see this second honeymoon as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. After all, her husband just got a diagnosis of a terminal condition. Oh, you did not know that? That's why you cannot expect her to put the second honeymoon off. There might not be a next year for the second honeymoon with her husband.

Induce her to defer (really abandon) the second honeymoon, and she might be good only for the merger. You show to your subordinates that the company exists only for making money irrespective of human cost, which puts your firm on the ethical level of a crime syndicate. Oh, there is more to life than making money for your employer? Look also at what it could do to her performance. For the sake of everyone it is best that you accommodate her family life, something more primal to people than the acquisitive instinct.  Within three months she retires anyway because she does not really need the money.

Now if she goes on that second honeymoon? Your staff will enjoy finding out about it on her communications from Paris. Learning that this is a possible objective in life while 30 might bring out the best in other employees. Maybe they will start thinking about long-range plans; maybe they will find that foresight offers rewards. It's easier to work for a company that demonstrates that there is more to life than material gain and indulgence for owners and executives. Doing the right thing isn't easy, but it usually has better consequences.

After the second honeymoon is over you can complete the merger. Or while it is going on you can hire some recent college grads as temporary help to facilitate the merger. Or you can get existing staff to stretch their abilities while she is away. She won't be around in ten years, and you will need someone to do what she has been doing. Maybe she isn't so tech-savvy as those kids. She is 55, and you cannot trust her to be around for ten years. But if her employment outlasts her husband's remaining life, she could be a desirable employee for some time.

So what about the people at the former, but failing company that you are transforming into a subsidiary? Maybe about 10% of them will be lucky enough to keep their jobs. The failing competitor was hemorrhaging good workers, which you can reasonably expect when people aren't getting raises for five years or so. Management was crappy, and you might prefer the temps who coordinated the transformed a company's assets into yours than the people who used to have custody over them.

...The 'right' answer is probably to make promises that she can never accept, offer her a pay raise as an inducement, or threaten her job security.