It might, though to be honest, I think it’d have been more helpful to bring up your list much earlier in debates with certain “unconvinced people”, so that they understood we weren’t just comparing America to Rome one-to-one. Even if it won’t change their mind, it might change the minds of onlookers who’re tired of the usual repetition and want to hear some new insights.
It would be immensely valuable if you would actually use examples from them instead of constantly reinforcing the misconception by referencing only the Roman case
This very thread has been going for seventeen pages now, since October 2020. Bringing it up "much earlier", or "actually using other examples" are great ideas. If only I'd done it years ago--
Wait. I did. Quite extensively. I've talked about all of this in depth. Now, to be clear: no matter what false accusations some may raise here, I'm not uninterested in engaging with criticism. Quite the opposite. And my extensive posting history on this topic shows, more than anything else, a fairly broad willingness to engage with all sorts of critiques.
What I object to is answering objections and then having to answer the
same ones again... to the
same people. Because that's the issue I have with some "critics". There are some people here who, instead of engaging with the argument, attack a straw man. And when I then explain what my argument really is... they shut up for a while... and then go right back to attacking the same straw man. All the while
knowing that it's a straw man. And that's intellectual dishonesty.
(To make matters worse, the arguments raised by the people of this sort are almost invariably the rather superficial ones, rather than the interesting ones! The terminally dishonest cannot even be
creative in their dishonesty.)
You can read this thread that we're in right now, and
this one, and quite a few other posts of mine all across this site (and a load more from back in the day on AH.com), such as for instance
this post. And there are many, many examples of my willingness to elaborate on High Cultures that
aren't the Classical or Western High Cultures.
Just now, however, I re-opened this thread specifically because
someone else made a video that
was explicitly about the parallels with Rome. And I did it mostly to post some
critiques I had! It's not so strange that I talk about Classical civilisation when analysing a video about Classical civilisation.
the Roman case that we have dozens of systematic differences from which render the exact causation literally impossible.
Causation? That cause, as I said but a few posts ago in this thread (
and have been saying for many years) is human nature. Rome being the way it was doesn't "cause" the West to be the same way. That's the straw-man of my argument, raised dishonestly by people I've already corrected on that matter many times. Again, it's fine to disagree, but at least disagree with what I actually
say, not with some faked parody that isn't my real argument.
So, again: Rome being the way it was doesn't "cause" the West to be the same way. Human nature causes the shape of civilisational history to constantly repeat the same patterns, because humans react to very fundamental realities in very consistent ways. Not as individuals, but in large groups. Because large groups regress to the mean. The shape of human history is the result of
average human behaviour.
This means that there are always lots of deviations in the details, but the larger patterns remain the same.
None of Rome's results actually make sense because we don't actually have the same problems,
I find that we do. These are also the same issues that China faced during the Warring States era, and Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period, and Mesopotamia during the troubled and disordered Middle Assyrian period (and concurrent Babylonian Late Kassite and Post-Kassite period). Among many others.
The basic problem is that the legitimacy of the old order (which, despite many political upheavals in earlier ages) was critically assaulted, ultimately falling away and opening the doors for chaos and revolutions of various sorts. The decline of the old order begins a few centuries before the "chaos period", first as a non-fatal assault upon the old order.
So we witness, for instance, the attacks of ambitious power players upon the authority of the Zhao in China, beginning the Spring and Autumn period. This is informed by new philosophical schools that challenge old assumptions about the correct order of things. This cycle escalates, forming ever more (and ever more
daring) upstart lords, while giving birth to a growing group of increasingly radical schools of thought. Then an ambitious conqueror upsets the apple cart by outright
dismissing the old authority, opening the gates for a free-for-all that's dominated by the aforementioned power players. This is the era of warring states.
We see that same pattern recurring in the other High Cultures that I mentioned,
and we see it in the Classical World,
and we see it now. (For us, the attack upon the old authority was the Reformation, which gained a political dimension when ambitious princes used it to end their traditional fealty to Rome and/or to the Holy Roman Emperor. This led to escalating violence and division, and to the Westphalian order, and to new schools of thought, which radicalised... and then the ambitious Napoleon upset the apple cart and outright teminated the old political order by dissolving the Holy Roman Empire, and this opened the gates for a free-for-all between the national power-players. Which we see in the rabid colonial rivalries and the escalating wars between the nation-states.)
You claim we don't have the same problems as Rome? We have the same problems as
China, which
are the same problems that the Classical world faced, and which Egypt and Mesopatamia faced, et cetera.
because of how much of the system is designed for the specific purpose of preventing any kind of violent top-down overhaul.
That's the core purpose of every system. Self-perpetuation is the most basic of motivators. Pretending that this is unique to the current time is pretty far out there. And pretending that our current establishment is uniquely hyper-capable so as to be able to remain in charge forever (whereas all other establishments across the millennia have tried and
failed) is to ascribe to the current elite a level of competency that they have not ever shown themselves to possess.
To say nothing of the rather critical failing that your comparisons are the transition from Republic to Empire when unlike almost all of your examples the majority of the "High Culture" is fully separate governments an ocean away.
You'll note that I reference Classical High Culture quite often. Speaking of "Rome" is short-hand. We're talking about a High Culture that includes the Hellenic polities, and grew to encircle the Mediterranean. Rome was not part of Greece, and "a sea away". Qin was a frontier marcher state separated from the Chinese heartland by mountains. Carthage, the equivalent of this for the Canaanite High Culture, was
also "a sea away" from Phoenicia.
The scale, now, is greater. Certainly. Just as the Classical world-system was greater in scale than the Egyptian world-system, which was after all far older. When we reference the exaples I have mentioned here, there is nothing to indicate that scale "changes the rules". Same things keep happening. Just...
larger.
All the arugements you actually make had a synonymous government with ample ability to FORCE a change in direction across the bredth of them. Your "Caeser" has to fight World War Three with nuclear exchanges against the "Optimates" to do so.
It's possible.
@Zyobot often raises the same scenario of a "world war III" being the potential equivalent of Caesar's Civil War.
Personally, I have doubts, because the underlying pressures (conflict
within society come to dominate) do lend themselves to precisely the civil war kind of outcome. And civil wars are fought differently than international wars. The goals aren't the same. You don't want to reduce to a cinder that which you intend to own.
Caesar, after all, didn't march on Rome to burn it down. And however radical some of her ideas may have been, Hatshepsut razed no cities or temples. Even such brutal tyrants as Ashurnasirpal II or Qin Shi Huangdi never sought to burn the world to the ground. They sought to re-make it, yes. But not to destroy it.
You and Cherico constantly presume that patterns will continue while refusing to engage in any discussion of the actual causation. There are fundamental dependencies of how Caeser happened wholly absent in the West, and there has been no explanation given of the substitute.
This is a lie, and I'd say one of ignorance-- but I know you've been present in threads of this type at earlier times (and I think in this very thread, too), and I've talked about this extensively. Even if you've somehow missed everything I've ever said on the matter: you can see with your own eyes that this thread has gone on for 17 pages. You feel confident enough to make bold statements. Are you telling me that you are critiquing a position without having actually read what the advocates of that position have actually said?
Because that what it seems like. Or more credibly: you do know, but you feign ignorance, and even claim that I "never gave an explanation" of things that I've explained in
great detail. Again: there's no obligation to agree with my views, but to claim that I never elaborated on those views is a blatant untruth.
The previous "cycles" had a formally recognized upper class with distinct rights and priviledges, a majority of the population involved in food production, trade being a minor part of day-to-day livelyhoods as a result of the previous, little official power in the general population, open ties of military and political authority, and sundry other structural matters of immense importance to Rome going from a Republic to an Empire wholly absent in the modern West.
Again, "Macro-historians" obsess over patterns and refuse to address criticism that the causes of their examples are not around today to insist that their theory is correct because it fits the old data, no matter what the current says. It's the bullshit of avowed Malthusians ignoring industrialization of agriculture, and a remarkably exact mirror of the shenanigans that climate modeling gets up to.
Another quite blatant lie, when you say that macro-historians refuse to address criticism. On the contrary, I've answered this whole line of thought in
this thread, which I already linked.
Long story short: there have been quite a few changes since the neolithic revolution. None of them have altered human nature. Saying "this time it's different because we have better technology" is nothing but self-deception. We just use more advanced means to do the same things.
When human nature is fundamentally altered, or the existing scarcity paradigm is transcended, I think the macro-historical model will cease to be relevant. But that has not happened, and shows no sign of happening.
This assumes that human nature is dramatically more significant than the societal structures developed by increasingly capable and unnatural lifestyles. It's a limiting factor to variance, but to assume that just because we've not had appreciable genetic changes we cannot have radically altered basic modes of thought from the last run around and upended the basic way that material needs are met and the form wants take is a farce.
Yes, it does assume that human nature is more important that factors that are derived
from human nature. I agree that it's not reasonable to assume that "we
cannot have radically altered basic modes of thought from the last run around" -- but do note that if you're saying that such a world-shattering change has occurred, the onus is on
you to prove it. You flip that around, but I'm reasoning from historical evidence.
You're saying "it's different this time!"
That's a big claim, and throughout history, it's almost always been a
false claim. So, again: the burden of proving that is on you.
You're off to a bad start by claiming that we have supposedly "upended the basic way that material needs are met and the form wants take". That's just not true. We still live in the same scarcity paradigm that was established by the neolithic revolution. We have
refined that system, but we have not overcome it. Or do you see replicators around? We compete over the same scarce means-- just with more advanced tools, and on a larger scale. And we are still motivated by the same fundamental drives.
Again, "Macro-historians" obsess over patterns and refuse to address criticism that the causes of their examples are not around today to insist that their theory is correct because it fits the old data, no matter what the current says.
As per the above, my position is actually that you're massively and incorrectly over-stating the importance of the "data" you reference. I'm not somehow unaware of it; I simply don't find the argument that it "changes everything!" at all convincing. Because contrary to what you argue, we still play the same game. You say I obsess over patterns; I answer that you obsess over details and consequently miss the big picture.
a remarkably exact mirror of the shenanigans that climate modeling gets up to.
I must again point out that
you are the one claiming "everything is different this time!"
Which means that, in fact,
you are the one arguing for the equivalent of the "hockey-stick graph" here. I'm the one basing my conclusions on the long-term trend, and cautioning you that claims of big sudden changes require a lot more evidence than you're showing...
In the absence of convincing arguments that we have indeed reached the "end of history", I maintain my view that history continues undeterred, much as it ever has.
