I'm becoming philosophical. Is THIS simply the order of civilization?

[MallRat]

I read this passage in Jon Stewart's America last night:

"Athens's great experiment ended after less than two centuries, when, in 338 B.C., Philip of Macedon's forces invaded the city, inflicting on its inhabitants the eternal fate of the noble and enlightened: to be brutally crushed by the armed and dumb."

I laughed for about a minute. Then it hit me like a ton of bricks.

He's absolutely right.

Throughout history, we see the same damn thing, over and over. And often, it happens from within- not an external invading force.

1. First, a civilization, an empire, or a great nation is built on innovation, thought, enlightenment, and intellect.

2. Then, the "plain folk", egged on by a power-hungry and cynical ruling class, turn on the noble and enlightened. Reason and thought are derided as "elitist." The people who helped the nation attain its glory are persecuted, repudiated, and ultimately, either exiled or exterminated.

3. Lastly, the nation goes to shit. Either they lose their technological/economic edge in the world, or they overreach in their ambitions for violent conquest, and they're toast.

Is this the way things simply ARE? Is this preordained?

Honestly- what's the first thing that dictators do to consolidate power? They take control of the press, and they shut down the universities.

Here in the United States, this is being done with velvet gloves instead of tanks. Corporate conglomerates are increasing their grapplehold on the media, controlling the messages we see and hear. And our universities have been successfully cast as havens for out-of-touch, radical, ivory-tower professors and their acolytes. In the greater discourse, these great institutions of thought have been marginalized, becoming nothing more than vocational schools.

Communist Russia. Nazi Germany. Burma. Chile. China. Poland. Nigeria. Yugoslavia.

It's happening AGAIN, folks. I don't know how to stop it. Can it be stopped?

Or is this simply the order of things? Is world order just a cruel pendulum, swinging back and forth between enlightenment and atrocity?

The Jew in me (my grandparents were Holocaust survivors) is whispering to me, telling me to flee. The American in me tells me to stay and fight.

So far, the American is winning.

-MR

[MallRat]

1. kick

Damn, GD is still moving pretty fast today.

:kick:

[enigma-e]

6. "A house...

... divided against itself cannot stand."

(Matthew 12:25), quoted in 1858 by Abraham Lincoln.

[letsgetiton]

2. I wrote this yesterday at 5 am:

Mornings

Were there beautiful mornings in Germany
When the orange sun rising promised hope
And the restless wind teased the leaves from their trees
And innocents were starved and gassed

Mornings bright and strong
All across the sunny south
When human beings were bought and sold and beaten and raped
In the face of beautiful mornings

My country is dead
The morning is bright and strong

[MallRat]

3. I'm speechless.

:cry:

[FizzFuzz]

5. a chill up my spine n/t

[Spider Jerusalem]

4. Well...

I think there are better examples than some of those you listed. Imperial China and Russia were hardly beacons of enlightenment.

The arc described by Rome from the Republic to the Empire to the zenith of its power and its eventual decline, collapse and eclipse is a better comparison, one would think.

[el_gato]

7. as far as your point #1

this nation was actually built on genocide and slavery rather than "innovation, thought, enlightenment, and intellect"
in fact, some of our greatest liberal intellectuals gave us the nuclear bomb

I don't see any point in perpetuating the myths surrounding the nature and foundation of this country. It was founded from the get go by the merchant class for the sake of self enrichment.

[KittyWampus]

8. This Country Was Built On ALL Of Afore Mentioned Things

There is ALWAYS "good" with the "bad".

Life and Death are intimately related and interwoven.

Creation and Destruction are the same thing from different perspectives.