While Rome Fiddled

Consequences of Cascading Failure of Good Will:

Rome: Building on slavery (cheap labor), and desiring an ever expanding economy to sustain its “good life,” Rome hocked the future of its children by pyramiding too many multi-cultures (broken borders) too quickly, which made it necessary, in order to temporize defense, for Rome to offer citizenship to unassimilated troops (out of country enlistees), unsustainable incentives to mercenaries (bribes to coalition forces), and grinding tribute to barbarians (WMD armed terrorists).

Consequences: Ordinary people came soon to be no longer able to sustain Rome’s out of control spending and debts; mutual good faith and trust among residents broke; Gods no longer inspired; loyalty and nerve receded; infrastructure weakened; logistics failed; and Rome fell.

Failure of Nerve: The fall of Rome is instructive on how not to inspire and fortify Will-To-Civilize. The inter-empathetic will of Romans, instead of surpassing, allowed itself to be overtaken and surpassed by inertia of progeny of its own forms and physics. As Rome’s will for enforcing law collapsed, its law-enacting became only vanity. Having elevated love of law-making over law-enforcing (form over will), Rome fell from failure of nerve. Losing faith, vision, and fortitude of will, a civilization will “just happen” to perish.

Eternal Recurrence: At key times, Roman leaders lost good will and failed to inspire spiritually empathetic trust and faith in respect of a common ideal of a stable, sustainable, surpassable civilization. Such seems to be an ever-repeating story, insofar as we continue to fall short in inspiring sustainable commitment to an enlightening philosophy.