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> Hell, ask a few people when the Western Roman Empire ended. Good luck with that. There are folks who will tell you it never did end. If you're that far in denial, how could you ever reason from your current historical position to the long run?

AFAIK, the argument over when the western empire fell is not so much about the facts, so much as the meaning of the word "fall". it's inherently arbitrary to point to the "end" of a civilization with routine violent regime changes, varying degrees of centralized control, continuous contraction/expansion of borders, and cultural/ethnic mixing from the territories. everything we think of as "roman" was constantly in flux. if you look solely at centralized political/military power, the western empire clearly fell in the late 400s AD. if you look at cultural influence, you might argue it lives on today in the catholic church.

>cultural/ethnic mixing

Those two, as far as I know, are the same thing. I know biological "race" has some negative connotations, but I guess you could also say "ecotype" to refer to roughly the same thing, which I reckon was what you were trying to do--correct me if I'm wrong.

I think culture and ethnicity are not exactly the same, but I couldn't tell you specifically what the difference is. I don't mean anything terribly specific here, just looking for a convenient way to express the set of things that are different between one group of people and another, aside from the political borders they happen to live within. as a weird example, if china conquered half of france, we would still consider the people that lived there to be french, not chinese. if a single chinese family moved to france, we would probably consider them to be french after a certain number of generations. but if many chinese families moved to france and integrated with the existing society, we would consider that society to be not entirely french or chinese, but something new.

It is interesting to note that if you read Roman generals' letters from the fourth/fifth centuries AD, they seem like they have no idea that their civilization is in the late stages of decline, something totally easy for us to recognize millennia later. It's weird and uncanny, and kind of concerning given contemporary circumstances

Actually, that's reassuring. Virtually everyone agrees we are in a state of decline right now.

Covid aside, which is self inflicted, I highly disagree.

Funny, I agree with him because of things like Covid being self-inflicted. We're so unable, as a species, to avoid even known risks (yes, we've known about the risk of new Coronaviruses since SARS), prepare for them, or deal with them when they've actually occurred. Even now, a not insignificant part of the US population thinks Covid is a hoax. Or that climate change is a hoax. We're reaching a point where catastrophic failure is just a stone's throw away, and we're already seeing the system buckle (rise of the Republican's hold over Congress, the rise of Trump, the rise of far right activists across Europe, growing environmental issues causing things like surges of refugees and civil war, unrest across the globe, etc.). It's only going to get worse from here as problems go unsolved and people's suffering grows.

Respectfully, politicians you don't like gaining power isn't evidence of the system buckling.

The other issues aren't exactly unconcerning, but I think we have to acknowledge that this is a quite peaceful time. For most of history, what we call "unrest" was the status quo, and there were in addition wars of open territorial conquest which are nearly extinct today.

If you believe:

- Continued urbanization is essential to growth as we know it

- Non-urban voters are less attuned to what cities need to grow

Then regardless of political ideology, our disticts + FPTP method of growing makes non-negligible growth of the real economy very difficult.

You may want to refresh your knowledge of American history. All those things you flag have always existed. It’s no different now.

History tends to get highly filtered and very little attention is paid to the incredibly bumpy road those times represent.

Strongly disagree we’re (the US) in decline at all.

If you think we are, you’d have to agree that the EU is post-decline. The UK, France (the list goes on) are all countries that are past their peak of power, influence and prestige.

But I would argue those EU countries haven’t declined in a negative sense. They’ve just evolved into something other than a global superpower.

Strongly, why? The us is declining in lifespan, people's happiness, education, govt and this was all before covid. Cv19 failures have revealed the problems more than ever.

Europe has some issues too but they don't have the same systemic failures we have. Also, Europe can be independently successful or failing from the us.

France is not past their peak of power unless you count centuries old empires. UK and Germany sure, neither of them have any strong foreign policies and especially the UK isolated itself by their own decision.

France in comparison is building alliances in the Mediterranean, the Middle East and Africa. I believe they have a lot of growth in their future. They are far form done and very much realpolitik and with expansion in mind( plus one of the few countries that still holds colonies across the world).

the EU is the white dwarf of human societies

That's really interesting. Do you know if this cluelessness extended beyond the military elites?

Do you have any references for these letters ? It would be very interesting to read through them.

A lot of this stuff is just ship-of-Theseus for politics; institutions and power structures gradually break down and are replaced piecemeal with other ones, making it difficult to identify a cutoff date. Not only that, what are the boundaries of "our" "civilization" - what's not ours, and what's not civilization?

Trying to stay at a meta level, this discussion is almost intractable _because_ of the issue of definitions. It reminds me of the SCOTUS 1964 case for obscenity, where one justice notes "I'll know it when I see it" [1] You can look at, say, Western Europe after 700AD or so and see that things are not as good as they were 500 years before, but it's quite arguable which (if any) of those things constitutes a "decline" Charlemagne, after all, was crowned (among many other things) "Emperor of the Romans" [2]

In fact, even during its heyday, the Roman Empire defied defied definitions. Were you Latin? Roman? A citizen? These and other terms all meant different things as the civilization progressed. There was almost a determined effort to keep shifting definitions around such that the Roman Empire never died. In fact, IIRC, there's a 60 Minutes segment where they interview some Greek monks living on an island. The flag they're flying? The flag of the Byzantine Empire, of course. (Also, the word "byzantine" is mostly our own invention. They considered themselves thoroughly Roman)

Having said all of that, it's completely obvious to any outside observer that major changes occurred, many of which had a negative impact on the population. So something happened. Until one starts in with definitions of what exactly constitutes a valid OEM part for our Theseusian ship and what doesn't, folks are free to completely ignore the discussion, no matter how bad things get.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlemagne

I like your style.

I recently read "Decadent Society" as part of a binge on what another commenter calls "conservative intellectual" literature of the past couple of years. I'm not sure Douthat really makes a great case for his thesis but there is, to me, a sort of haunting note of truth to it--a sense of your "Fizzle" having entered a feedback loop that is difficult to ascertain from the inside.

Since I did march through the literature binge, I'll add that some conservative authors are quite a bit more pointed in their analyses than is Douthat. "Age of Entitlement," and "Return of the Strong Gods" are two titles that come to mind.

I for one look forward to our new techno-barbarian conquerers pouring out from Steppe.

did you mean these guys? (techno tree advanced) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jM8dCGIm6yc&t=27

or these? (techno genre) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FteYOA2cDkg

(they're evidently sweeping out of the steppe in all directions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvW8JEuIo58 )

Awesome to hear Kargyraa throatsinging again! Hadn’t heard this since Paul Pena / Genghis Blues. Music transcends culture...

If the fall of civilization means more 'songs' from The Hu, then maybe things won't be so bad.

> growth and progress or stagnation and extinction?

A false dichotomy, since humans are uniquely able to harmonize with any environment through observation and planning. The need to buy stuff is the only reason we think of “progress or stagnation”

Coincidentally enough, today is actually the anniversary of the deposition of the last Roman Emperor in the west, Romulus Augustus. That happened on September 4th 476.

I think the main questions are:

- How fast can we respond (provide a solution) to problem <x> - What are our dependencies, and how does it affect our ability to respond to problems <X>

Or in other words, we run out of things, or encounter problems we cannot adapt to.