"We're just like Rome in the Decadence." "We're decadent, and we're going to fall." "It's all scripted, we can't escape it."
What if I told you that you sound like a true believer in "climate models?" Or perhaps that cute little model about how Covid-19 would kill millions! Millions!
First of all you can't hit me, because I'm on this side of the screen, and you're not. AND furthermore, every night I pray G-d to give me one superpower. Just one. The ability to reach through the screen and bitchslap the heck out of idiots. He still hasn't given me that, so I doubt he's given it to you. For one, wanting to bitchslap people isn't very holy -- I'm told -- so no miracles for you. Ahem. Now that we've established that very important point, let's move on to the main point.
Yeah, yeah, those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. But it's not an inescapable model or an exact repetition. It just tells you how humans are supposed to react to "situation x." Not "factor a b and c are in play. So x will happen."
Yes, many science fiction authors have forecast the emergence of such ability. Psycho-historical equations make a great story, of course, which is why the mind is attracted to it.
The problem, same as with climate forecast are all the factors. You can't tally all the factors that went into something that involves more than one person. Let along something that involves more than one person, and which you only have access to via reports from people who were there. Or, more likely people who knew people who were there. And all the people involved in the transmission of knowledge are people who were raised in a culture so different from yours that you can't guess their bias fully. You can get some idea, but you can't guess all of it.
What does bias matter for reporting what happened? Oh, hell.
Having transferred between cultures and acculturated, I can tell you bias makes you see different things when looking at an event. Yes,okay so it's a given, for instance that Portugal is a far more "patriarchal" society than the US. That doesn't mean that women and men are the same, but the rules are different. It means that even an odd duck "liberated" woman -- which I was by virtue of never caring about people's expectations for me except for not giving scandal to strangers and by not upsetting people without a good reason -- like me was running different software in the head.
When I was traveling to the US to marry Dan, in the airport, there was a family with mom, dad, and four teens. All boys. At the time I thought the other utterly ridiculous. Why? Well, her hairstyle was about 20 years too young for her. She just had straight hair, worn long. And she was ordering everyone around and telling them what to do. It seemed stupid to me. Would my evaluation be the same now? Well, there isn't the back brain assumption that married women will either confine their hair or wear it short. So her hair would probably not bother me. As for ordering everyone, my guess is I'd see a middle aged woman exasperated by clueless young males. Heck, I've probably been that woman a number of times. "Have you gone to the bathroom? Remember you don't want to all rush the bathroom on the plane." "Did you have breakfast? No? Maybe you want to go and get a sandwich, before we board." "Pull your pants up, I can see your underwear. Do you have a belt? Put that one." etc. etc. etc.
What you report changes. My first one would be "Geesh, this woman was harassing everyone, and she was nuts because she had a far too young hairstyle." My second would have been "This poor woman, was trying to keep the kids from doing stupid stuff, and it was a full time job. Even if she was fussy."
Now, the difference between Portuguese culture and American culture is almost non-existent, compared to the difference of head software between us and the average Roman.
On top of that, people see different things. No? Find a cop. Ask him about witness reports. Oh, ask Lawdog for instance. I'll wait. Yeah. Now ask him about witness reports collected a year later, or collected by hearsay.
This is what we're dealing with in history, adding in the fact that the person who wrote down "history" had an ax to grind. Usually a very personal ax.
I am familiar with a lot of it from when I write historical novels. One of the things that amuses me immensely is reading someone else working the same time period I do. Say Tudor England, or Dumas musketeers. The names are the same, but the actual place is completely different. And it's not that their research is wrong -- because I don't read those. I fling them against the wall with force -- but that what they focus on, or how they interpret the reporter's bias is completely different. Take Kit Marlowe -- please. I'm tired of having him haunt my stories -- I can write him as an ugly customer, or a triple agent spy, or a confused, lost young men, caught in a web that he doesn't fully understand. And that's not counting writing him as gay, or straight or bisexual. (And -- speaks sternly to back brain -- I'm not writing Kit Marlowe erotica. No. Drop that idea right now. I am serious. Don't make me get the chancla or doom. Ain't nobody got time for that.)
Then there's propaganda. Rome and in particular "decadent Rome" has been the object of propaganda since it was still very non-decadent by our lights, to when it had been fallen for hundreds of years.
You'll hear other Romans screaming the equivalent of 'get off my lawn' almost from the inception of Rome, because kids those days refused to live in a hut and grind acorns for their bread, or didn't beat their wives into submission as is right or proper, or insisted on bathing, which as we all know weakens the blood. Those dang kids. Decadent.
Now, are there a ton of "vices" humans indulge in as soon as they're a little above extreme subsistence conditions? Yeah. Look, we're apes, okay? Sometimes really creative apes.
Give us a surplus of food, and we over indulge. Funny mind-altering substances and some of us will indulge. (The fact I hate to be out of control of my own mind makes me a very odd duck, so I won't, but trust me, I'm the exception.) Nice clothes, and we'll probably own many more than we need. Or comely whatever partners of whatever sex -- or yes. Shut up Marlowe! -- and a great portion of us will screw their way to glory or at least exhaustion.
Few of us indulge in too much work, too stern a discipline or too exacting a diet. Although it's been known to happen.
So, given that America is the most prosperous nation the world has ever known, you're darn tooting we will be compared to "decadent Rome" the most prosperous nation the world had ever known (for its time) before us.
But does that mean our fate will be the same? Well... probably not. Humans might be the same, but the software in the heads is utterly different, technology is different, and the way America relates to the world has nothing to do with how Rome related to the world.
If you assume it will be the same, you're ignoring all other factors. You're also being oddly Marxist, because he viewed human differences, etc. as meaning nothing. We're all widgets, in widget landia, and running this program. Of course, to get his "program" he relied on a highly simplified version of history that abstracted "factors" and treated them as immutable.
Cue "this is not how any of this works." Not even vaguely. Which is why all his predictions have turned out wrong.
So, should we study history at all? Oh, hell yes. For one because it helps you understand what your culture assumes and why.
But unlike Marxist-history, which is what I learned in Europe, which is all about "the factors of the time, leading to" and individuals don't matter, because another individual would do the same, we should study both the ethos of the time: technology, commerce, beliefs, and the biographies of influential people. Both because it helps us understand how they were and if typical of their time or not, and to understand "the individual as a factor in what actually happened."
Imagine the leader of the continental armies was Benedict Arnold, and tell me the revolution would turn out the same, and we'd have the same USA, save for the capital being called Arnold? Uh uh. Sorry, no. (Though starting a short with someone flying to Arnold DC.. well... And I could probably sell "very similar but different' in a short story. In a novel, it would all apart. The personalities were too different, the trajectory too different.)
So right now? Yeah, we know we're in trouble. And I think, though I'm open to other opinions, that the best model for what we're going through is not "Decadent" (For one, because in our case that was USSR propaganda. Yes, we have tons of vices, but we're not terminal on any of them. No, we're not. See how we resist vices imposed from above.) but "Occupied land." We were overtaken not by another nation, but by a small minority indoctrinated to hate us. To the extent this minority is international, you can see our struggle mirrored all over the world.
I'll add that all over the world, Marxism and it's offshoot of internationalist insanity is on the run, and having to cheat and go violent to stay in power. This if one looks on history for a guide, would seem to indicate it's doomed. How soon? What form will their fall take? What does it mean for us?
I don't know. I have feelings more than clear ideas. But I do know it won't be "like the fall of Rome." Because that model has nothing to do with anything. (And for that matter we don't know really why Rome "fell".)
I do know the last time a "conceptual model of society" -- absolute monarchy -- was on the ropes this way, it took more than 200 years to fall, and a lot of the falls were bloody messes.
OTOH, history seems to move faster now, (probably because communications do) and Marxism is nowhere near as deep set or as close to the basics of human nature as absolute monarchy was. (Though it shares with monarchy the belief in anointed ones. Just different annoying.)
The one thing I know from history is that once the philosophical underpinning of the order, whatever the order is, is fatally damaged in the minds of those living under it, fall will come.
How soon, when and how....? Well, that depends on many many factors, some of which will be unknown unknowns.
What will come after? I don't know. I have a feeling it will be better. But it's a gut-feeling, based on factors I probably can't fully articulate.
I can also tell you that getting there will probably hurt. Though a miracle could occur.
Go ahead and study history. And even feel free to apply it as a predictive model.
But at best remember what we have of the past is a pretty, pretty picture with all the messiness brushed away. In the present? All we have is mess. Comparing the two is imperfect at best, insane at worst.
So when you apply the predictive model, use our different tech, and our different software as factors.
Will you be able to predict the future? No. But it might give you a rough guide. However, stay ready to incorporate things that aren't exactly as you expected they would be, and to change your model on the fly.
Part of the issue with the climate models, or Marxist models of history, for that matter, is that instead of changing the model to accord with reality, they try to wish reality away, so that the results will be as foretold by their system.
Don't be those guys. Always incorporate the new systems as they appear.
By all the factors I can tabulate we win, they lose. The only question is how soon, and what the butcher's bill. And those, I can't answer. I have ideas. They're probably wrong.
There are too many factors, and it's too complicated. The best we can do is work for what is best and endure.
Till we come out the other side.
The future is not scripted. Go do your best to fight for a good one.
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