Is Every Civilization Doomed to Fail? - Gregory Aldrete

[Warpy]

Fatso has come along right on schedule However, he's skipped the benevolent despot/reformer stage and headed right for tyrant. There will be enough rage by the time we're rid of him to fuel some really real reforms if we can frighten the stodgy iparty insiders (BOTH parties) enough to enact them. We can survive this one.

We might not survive the next, especially if he (and it's usually a he) comes in as a great reformer then refuses to leave the march to tyranny being slower but inexorable.

[TygrBright]

1. Thanks for posting, Warpy. One thing he doesn't touch on, though...

Is that while humans don't learn MUCH from history, we do in fact learn. The basis behind the old saw about history not repeating, but rhyming.

While a lot of the time this manifests as insanity (trying the same thing over and over hoping for a different result), the 'uncontrollable' aspects - technology, climate, history itself - guarantee observably different phenomena sufficient to make significant alterations in the patterns.

What this means about where we go next is unpredictable, but it can as easily be positive-unpredictable as negative-unpredictable. Of course, even that is an overly simplified characterization as the experiences and needs and choices of humans differ (both individually and in cultures) to ensure that what is negative for some will be positive for others.

Yet another reason to hate living in interesting times...

wearily,
Bright

[Warpy]

2. Hey, sranger, LTNS

Polybius was a product of his time and missed a few things that we now know about, like the different types of external and internal stresses that can provoke systems that have worked fairly well into systems that don't work. External stresses can be geologic, climatic, or human caused. Internal stresses can be disease, poor harvest, or an entrenched political class that has decided to sell out to the highest bidders.

He was also too early to have witnessed the 1500 years or so that Byzantium managed to exist, at least as a powerful city state. They had moved back and forth through all the states of the Anacyclosis several times,

In any case, Polybius's theory has held up from culture to culture starting in antiquity. He deserves great respect for that even as we look to causes beyond simple human nature and ask ourselves if they can ever be avoided.