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All the past cultures that have monuments that still stand built them to last

Highlighting the distinction between the minority rule and the majority rule. If 1% of people decide to build monuments to last millenia, there will be monuments from thousands of years ago. If 1% of people decide to be carefully conservationists and only consume what the land/ecosystem can support... say goodbye to that ecosystem.

Great analogy and this is the challenge of humanity

All the cultures that were smart in the 5-10 generation planning scale got wiped out in the short term by the ones that weren't.

Yes you're correct, certain ruling psychopaths wanted the future to remember them forever and as a result used slaves and domination to create long term artifacts with extraordinary narcissistic effort.

I wouldn't call that being "smart as a group"

However I think Ozymandias is a good reminder here