Gentlemen:
I watched – and rewatched – your hour-plus discussion ranging from shoes, ships, and sealing wax to cabbages and kings. It was, to put it mildly, a sheer delight.
Modern Scottish Warrior Goes ‘BRAVEHEART’ on Elites | Neil Oliver | The Glenn Beck Podcast | Ep 171
If I have a complaint, well two actually… first, the section clipped to avoid censorship, obviously beyond your control. Second, that I wasn’t in on it as often I felt like raising my hand to be called on to chip in with something that I thought might contribute to the mix!
Welcome Back, Kotter Arnold Horshack Raising Hand
As, I’m sure, innumerable others also did.
CYCLES
As I said, all of it was just a sheer delight. But in the last segment you guys talked about cycles throughout history. I’d like to refer you to this excellent speech by Bill Whittle talking about, amongst many things, the cycle of civilizations:
Bill Whittle The Assault On Civilizational Structures
It’s long but I watch it regularly as, even with seeing it several times, I manage to continually glean new insights each time. I highly recommend it. And it was, in part, thanks to Bill’s discussion of the cycle of civilizations that I developed – then wrote about – my own observations and theories about the biological roots of civilizational collapse:
Civilizational Collapse and Biology (Part 1) – Urban Scoop
Civilizational Collapse and Biology (Part 2) – Urban Scoop
Civilizational Collapse and Biology (Part 3) – Urban Scoop
Without doubt the above are not the only reasons for civilizational collapse; e.g., IIRC the Hittite Empire collapsed, in part, because of drought. Maybe that’s a factor but, from reading the excellent albeit academic-dry Armies of Pestilence, about the role of plagues in history, strong and growing civilizations can withstand enormous hardships and pick up again. Positing a theory: the biological roots of civilization collapse that I discussed prime a civilization to then be taken down by external agents – agents that would not have done so to a growing and confident civilization.
Great civilizations can survive a lot of things, but not impoverishment of spirit.
– Mark Steyn
Consider Western Civilization and the devastation wreaked by Yersinia Pestis – the Black Plague.
(Image source, and an interesting article in its own right!)
Yet here we are… Western Civilization still stands. So it’s my belief – taken in large part from that book – that while natural events can hit a civilization, it’s when they hit a civilization already in decline and/or wracked by self-doubt and criticism that they’re the death blow. Referring to the Hittites, were they already in decline when this multi-year drought hit? I wonder…
PROGRESS
In that video Bill talks about the West as having a unique mentality – one of improvement. One of not just “that’s the way our parents and grandparents did it”. The example he gives of a village where there’s an open sewer running down the center of the street “because it’s always been that way” – and a Western person would think “Give me some money and an hour at Home Depot and we fix this problem forever” rings true. Pictures I’ve seen of villages in squalor in Africa and Asia, for example… I look at those pictures and watch short videos and think to myself that precise thing: a few hundred dollars in hardware and some effort and it’s solved. But the mental attitude of the people there just doesn’t go in that direction.
In a fascinating book, The Gifts of the Jews, author Thomas Cahill examines how the Jews looked at the world which was – at the time – almost universally seen as endless cycles and cycles within cycles, but never changing… and instead said that things could be directed. Things had a beginning and an end, and progress could be made; that the cyclical nature of things could, in fact, be disrupted and vast improvements could be made by human intent (Ayn Rand was keenly insightful in this view of wealth coming from the human mind). Also within that book was the concept introduced that men and women were individuals, with destinies that could be shaped and guided by their own individual intent, a thought that until then was unheard of in the ancient world. In that world, one’s place was one’s place, one’s fate determined purely by the gods, and it was only kings and queens and other royalty that mattered. That the common man could not just improve his lot by his own hand, but might expect to be able to, was unheard of.
It is my contention, supported merely by an arm-waving argument, that it was this idea – however slender – of individualism and the impact of individuals taken from common stock that drove the initial seeds of Jew hatred among the elites. Also present in this was the idea that the Jews said to the kings and potentates of the time that, no, they were not divine and that there was One above them, immutable, whose power was in judgment of even those royals. Remember that Pharaoh was considered a deity, for example. These we’re-above-you types have never forgiven us for giving mankind these thoughts that undermined their power and authority.
But back to the main track: whether sourced from Jews specifically or Western Civilization or whatever, there was an idea introduced: that cycles back to baseline were not inevitable. That progress could be made by individual actions – as witnessed by the rise of the West, for example, in which the individual increasingly came to the fore.
BACK TO CYCLES
Yet cycles do exist. Consider the meme of the “Great Cycle”
One need reflect on this only momentarily to consider that this cycle does make sense. Indeed, as Bill Whittle discusses in his observation of civilizations, they rise… and then fall in a flash. Again, refer to my three-part series on why I think this is so. Or, at least, how a thriving and successful civilization can be weakened to the point where an exterior agent – human, infectious, weather, or otherwise – can deal the death blow. In light of the above image, consider that the barbarians that helped topple Rome were, in fact, admitted as refugees first:
Until the second half of the fourth century the Goths had inhabited a vast swathe of territory taking what now comprises Romania as well as the Ukraine. In 375, however, they were attacked by the Huns, a tribe of nomad warriors from central Asia who had been moving steadily westwards during the preceding century and a half. In the ensuing war the Goths suffered a crushing defeat and large numbers of them fled westwards towards the Roman Empire. By the summer of 376 an enormous host of Goths, generally estimated at around 100,000, arrived at the River Danube and pleaded with the Roman authorities to be allowed into the Empire.
The Eastern Emperor Valens, at that moment stationed in Antioch, eventually gave permission for the Therving tribe, which comprised about half the total number of Gothic refugees, to be ferried across the river. For at least two centuries prior to this the Romans had actively recruited barbarians into the army (necessary because of Rome’s abysmally low birth-rate) and Valens reasoned that the Goths would provide a valuable pool of new and cheap recruits. The operation to ferry these people across the Danube was an enormous and costly one and took several weeks to complete and, as Ammianus Marcellinus sarcastically comments, “diligent care was taken that no future destroyer of the Roman state should be left behind, even if he were smitten by a fatal disease.”
Unsurprisingly, within a few weeks of their entry into the Empire, the first clashes with the Roman authorities occurred, and by the end of the summer the Goths were at war with Rome. After several military disasters, the Emperor Valens made a hasty return to Constantinople to personally take charge of the campaign, and was killed in battle at Adrianople in 378 — just two years after he had sanctioned the mass immigration.
In parallel with the above is my own contention – long-held – that it was when the “average Roman” finally grasped how utterly corrupt and separated from the honor and responsibility that had been past practice, that they ceased being willing to fight to preserve Rome as the empire, and thus turned towards family and local community preservation. Do both of these not sound familiar in today’s news events of mass migration and fetid governmental corruption??
CYCLES WITHIN CYCLES
So it was fascinating to see you discuss cycles as well, and how we seem to be turning on another part of the cycle – a decline, whether natural or engineered (the latter is my opinion). There is no question that the idea that there are long cycles and short cycles. Within those cycles and advances great strides can be made. But catastrophes do happen too. Whether an EMP, or other thing like a cyberattack brings down the grid:
Or food shortages erupt, or war, after which we can rebuild and renew. Regardless of that history of ups and downs, so many chant the refrain of Oh that’s just not possible.
Consider the Moties, from the scifi book The Mote in God’s Eye. Moties are a species trapped in one solar system, unable to expand outward, and which underwent countless cycles of growth and collapse. So they built museums; not pure museums as we would think, but rather museums of technology, of teaching, so that the knowledge of prior cycles was there and available – and not needing to be reinvented each time. For writing is, indeed, one of the great advances (despite some of its dangers, also discussed at the essay – link in the original, bolding added):
Some years ago, as an intellectual exercise, some friends and I were talking about what we thought was the single biggest advance in human history.
Medicine, monotheism*, science-in-general, fire, language, the Rule of Law not men, and many others – all were excellent propositions with good evidence and argumentation behind them. After batting things around for an hour or so I threw out the idea that writing was the single biggest advance – because it allowed knowledge to accumulate.
And not just accumulate, but be copied, added to, and disseminated far beyond word of mouth or the speaker’s lifetime.
Given the world as we see it, I would like to pose a question: How can you, I, and others who see this cycle turning – for doubtless in my mind it is – preserve what knowledge that we can so that after the collapse, we can rebuild faster with the technological and other lessons learned over past cycles, in particular not just the knowledge of how things are done, but the idea of individual liberty and the supremacy of the individual over The State? That, alone, is a priceless jewel to be preserved.
THANK YOU
So, I hope in the above I’ve added a few thoughts to your mix, absent raising my hand as you talked in real time.
Yours sincerely,
Nitzakhon
An ask: I’m going to try and get this into their hands directly, but if anyone has better and/or direct knowledge, please also attempt to share this with them. Thanks!
