Do Empires fall only due to stupidity??

[TheBlurryOne]

Can I thank everyone for some brilliant responses (particularly myopicmuppet and rip) and for recognising that my use of the word "stupidity" is to maintain a very general and widely answerable prompt. Hopefully, not out of stupidity.

Going back to the original question of the thread, “Do Empires fall only due to stupidity??” What if we are in fact already in or will soon will be forever locked in to a world empire if we recognize it or not? But one which is always threatened by civil war.

But a growing convergence of interests does not mean unanimity of styles. WE will always need as we should honor diversity of thought and respect different human choices, even as we continue to argue about them or fatal stagnation will result

I found this quite interesting and would ask that you expand this idea please possibly using an historical example? Is this empire subject to the same difficulties as the perceived empires which have existed within it?

The greatest cause of an empires to fail is that (for whatever reason) they fail to adapt to a changing world. A world that might have changed in part, as a resuilt, from their own success. No matter how great were your past successes, how pure is your heart, how comfortably you are in your current situation, the world around you continues to change. And as we see around us now, it changes at an ever faster rate. Empires are like living things and like all living things are subject to the laws of evolution. Very little that stands still survives.

This is a second point i quite enjoyed, each law of evolution is quite applicable to empires in general. Perhaps rather than empires existing as living things, it is the society/ies within which are living. As if the governing structure (social political etc.) acts as a sort inanimate shell which both nurtures society and inhibits it. Nurturing society by enabling social growth so that it may one day topple the regime and create a new one. As if society were an organism which required to periodically shed it's skin or shell...

I tend to agree with you to. The world is trying to communicate and in various ways, weave itself together and for a very good reason, even against so much internal opposition. The human race as a whole is rushing into a new condition that it has never been seen before because there are now, so many of us that the old rules no longer apply. One out of every four people who ever lived on Earth is in fact alive right now. And we must be interconnected and cooperative just to sustain these unprecedented numbers or we would face a major die off. To avoid this we must, if we like it or not, work together even closer, all of us.
Human civilization is not guaranteed. Of the minimum sixty-thousand years that anatomically modern people have existed, we can trace human civilization only back for five-thousand. While in the past, when a civilization fails, in different part of the world, there was another one rising. If our worldwide system were to fall we wound all fall together, we might not ever recover as a species for a number of very real reasons that would go even further off topic than we already have

Is the world really trying to come together? Or is it being forced together by the powers of this "world empire" you described, who wish to postpone their arguably inevitable fall? The fact in my opinion, that there is such internal opposition suggest that this state that the human race is "rushing towards" is one which has been devised. I apologise for encouraging further diversion from the topic but if you could elaborate it would be much appreciated!

 

[rip]

Can I thank everyone for some brilliant responses (particularly myopicmuppet and rip) and for recognising that my use of the word "stupidity" is to maintain a very general and widely answerable prompt. Hopefully, not out of stupidity.



I found this quite interesting and would ask that you expand this idea please possibly using an historical example? Is this empire subject to the same difficulties as the perceived empires which have existed within it?



This is a second point i quite enjoyed, each law of evolution is quite applicable to empires in general. Perhaps rather than empires existing as living things, it is the society/ies within which are living. As if the governing structure (social political etc.) acts as a sort inanimate shell which both nurtures society and inhibits it. Nurturing society by enabling social growth so that it may one day topple the regime and create a new one. As if society were an organism which required to periodically shed it's skin or shell...



Is the world really trying to come together? Or is it being forced together by the powers of this "world empire" you described, who wish to postpone their arguably inevitable fall? The fact in my opinion, that there is such internal opposition suggest that this state that the human race is "rushing towards" is one which has been devised. I apologise for encouraging further diversion from the topic but if you could elaborate it would be much appreciated!

I think that you questions deserve a serious reply and I will try my best. I cannot provide a direct example of this new world order and the cooperation it will require to function correctly because this is the first time in human history that the world has been so connected that the very real need for such an order to be forged has come been seen. There are many lesser examples were peoples have come together, put aside their many differences and from that act of gathering together gained strength from those very same difference that once divided them to create something new and better than ever before. But all of those examples are from people’s who’s differences did not span the complete spectrum of human diversity the world contains.

But paradoxically there is one current example of a definable group of international players which have shown the ability to work operatively and profitable together while at the same time and without even to pretense of trusting each other and in fact, they often hate each other, the many international criminal syndicates, organizations, and gangs.

Yes as degusting as it sounds, the criminal elements among us are in fact ahead of the rest of us in finding ways to forge cooperation in difficult environments for their criminal purposes. As proven by the fact the international criminals are far more effective in working together than is the international police forces that are tasked to hunt and control them. I once knew a Swedish guy that worked for Interpol and was based in Cambodia and he let me in on a little bit on the new reality of international crime and their various cooperative networks. The very same people who under most circumstance would most likely kill each other can still find common cause in the pursuit of gain. But if the least desirable among us can find ways to bridge the gap of suspicion and the history of pass animosities, cannot people of higher calling find a way to do the same? But regardless of the morality of the people involved this group of international players is farther ahead of the curve than most of us.

As to the question of social evolution. The primal adaptive mechanism of the human speeches, as we are social animals, is our ability to adapt human culture to current environmental needs. It is far faster and more flexible than biological evolution could ever be and has allows us to inhabit the far corners of the Earth in a very short period of time and has made us the planet’s most successful species. There are so many different types of societies in the world, in part, because different groups of people had to adapt their societies to the physical realities of their own local environment and the demands those environments place upon them required it of them.

Though differences will always exist between people they need not be disadvantaged by that fact, as people become prosperous they gain the ability to disregard the natural environment in which they live and it’s imposed restrictions and hardships. Hardships that their culture had to adapt to so as to then prosper where they were. As they endeavor to create a far more comfortable and safer artificial environment in which to live they evolve away from those requirements. The richer the people of any society gets, the more artificial will be the environment they create for themselves to then inhabit (thank God for air-conditioning in Arizona). These artificial environments are not surprisingly very similar to each other and at least one of the very things that drive cultures apart and cause friction, and misunderstanding between them becomes greatly reduced. The differences that still remain between cultures after they become wealthy become ever more arbitrary, since those differences do not contribute to ether prosperity or health of people but only serve to separate them.

Even with the world’s increased population and the ever increasing expectations of its people for prosperity, comfort, good health, and safety if the combed power of the human race working together we can accomplish all of that with the application human acumen. Our fate is within our own hands if we can forge a system that provides enough cooperation.

 

[joho]

you have to look at how they are created to see why they fail eventually

and it all boils down to one person

we are a hierarchical animal 1 person makes the big decisions for any empire/country/businesses ect more so in the past

you can get a leader with strong drive/ambition/need for power/good decision making skills ect and they forge a empire

but they get old so they have to be replaced

sometimes you get a string of them one after another and you eventually end up with a great empire

but sooner or later you get a leader that makes to many mistakes or even worse a string of poor leaders and you see a decline of that empire

so you could say it is because of stupidity or simply the empire just grew to big for one person to mange

 

[rip]

you have to look at how they are created to see why they fail eventually

and it all boils down to one person

we are a hierarchical animal 1 person makes the big decisions for any empire/country/businesses ect more so in the past

you can get a leader with strong drive/ambition/need for power/good decision making skills ect and they forge a empire

but they get old so they have to be replaced

sometimes you get a string of them one after another and you eventually end up with a great empire

but sooner or later you get a leader that makes to many mistakes or even worse a string of poor leaders and you see a decline of that empire

so you could say it is because of stupidity or simply the empire just grew to big for one person to mange

Your estimation of human fallibility is quite correct but I think the time that anybody can, just by their personality, drastically change human events has passed. Modern societies are not only too complex to control in that way, they are in fact too complex to even understand how they really work when they are working just fine, much less then they falter. There are many vital complex tasks required to keep a modern society running. Each of these vital complex tacks eventually develops their own structures and separate and unique elites to run them.

As just one current example, macroeconomics is a field of great concern too all of us. There are many learned experts but no sound consciences about how to best run modern economies. Why?

It is simply because it takes ten years of collecting and analyzing economic data to understand how an economy works. But by that time the economy has changed greatly to something new and using a ten year old modern to predict the future seldom works very well because of that fact. Modern societies are so complex and dynamic that they can no longer be ruled by a single iron hand. There will be cases where some countries will be ruled with an iron hand, but then that country will just go into decline and that fact does not lead to empire.

 

[joho]

Your estimation of human fallibility is quite correct but I think the time that anybody can, just by their personality, drastically change human events has passed. Modern societies are not only too complex to control in that way, they are in fact too complex to even understand how they really work when they are working just fine, much less then they falter. There are many vital complex tasks required to keep a modern society running. Each of these vital complex tacks eventually develops their own structures and separate and unique elites to run them.

As just one current example, macroeconomics is a field of great concern too all of us. There are many learned experts but no sound consciences about how to best run modern economies. Why?

It is simply because it takes ten years of collecting and analyzing economic data to understand how an economy works. But by that time the economy has changed greatly to something new and using a ten year old modern to predict the future seldom works very well because of that fact. Modern societies are so complex and dynamic that they can no longer be ruled by a single iron hand. There will be cases where some countries will be ruled with an iron hand, but then that country will just go into decline and that fact does not lead to empire.

thats why i said more so in the past

but still a individual leader should not be underestimated even now they just play a different game ie economic dominance they still try to control the populace ie papers internet ect

its still the same type that rises to the top just the rules of the game have changed

could one rise that eventually controlled the world? never say never
but according to the rules it would break back up eventually

 

[joho]

thats why i said more so in the past

but still a individual leader should not be underestimated even now they just play a different game ie economic dominance they still try to control the populace ie papers internet ect

its still the same type that rises to the top just the rules of the game have changed

and you can still credit most leaders with the big decisions by who they appoint to other posts and who they post and so on

ie the good decision maker appoints someone who appoints some good expert then the expert gives feedback that reaches the leader good decision a positive self feed back loop

bad derision maker appoints the wrong person who picks the wrong expert negative self feedback loop



could one rise that eventually controlled the world? never say never
but according to the rules it would break back up eventually

(would have quoted but for some reason if i quote then a moderator has to view it first happened with my first post to and not up yet)

 

[rip]

thats why i said more so in the past

but still a individual leader should not be underestimated even now they just play a different game ie economic dominance they still try to control the populace ie papers internet ect

its still the same type that rises to the top just the rules of the game have changed

and you can still credit most leaders with the big decisions by who they appoint to other posts and who they post and so on

ie the good decision maker appoints someone who appoints some good expert then the expert gives feedback that reaches the leader good decision a positive self feed back loop

bad derision maker appoints the wrong person who picks the wrong expert negative self feedback loop



could one rise that eventually controlled the world? never say never
but according to the rules it would break back up eventually

(would have quoted but for some reason if i quote then a moderator has to view it first happened with my first post to and not up yet)

I would say that most so called world leaders today just respond to events as they happen and very few of them create events that others must respond to. And most of those people that create events that must be responded to, are just crazy. It has been a long time since I have seen anyone appear on the world stage that both creates events and dose so in a positive manner exhibiting positive leadership.

The more you have to lose, both as an individual and as a country, the less likely you are to rock the boat. If you do not have anything to lose and are willing to rock the boat you are probably so weak and unimportant you can be just dismissed and they will just wait until you implode.

This does not mean that some magnetic leader might arise, only that they are very rare events and because more people in the world have something lose, more so than in any time in human history, most people do not want to rock the boat. So a new Genghis Khan is unlikely though not impossible.