“The Catastrophe” What the End of Bronze-Age Civilization Means for Modern Times

brusselsjournal.com ^ | Tue, 2009-09-15 09:20 | Thomas F. Bertonneau

[AnAmericanMother]

Any physical evidence on any of the others? (not being snarky, I really want to know).

[Noumenon]

Wow. Just - wow. Here’s the money quote from the very end of the essay:

Our electronification, our material flagrancy, and our sense of rightful endowment likely render us more, not less, vulnerable than ancient peoples to sudden unforeseen catastrophes whose occasion might simply lie in a power failure but whose form (or rather formlessness) will be greed and rapacity at their rawest and whose story will be one of the precipitous collapse of those institutions that, despite our delinquency or our contempt, formerly protected us from “evil things.”

There is no debate that there are those among us who relish the work of destruction. This author renews my contention that what's at stake here is nothing less than our own civilization. We either rise up and rid ourselves of the monsters who mean to destroy our Republic and rule what's left of us in a flame-shot hell of slaughter and atrocity or face a thousand years of darkness and cruelty.

[Nikas777]

Great point - I would add the Chinese banning exploration of the outside world because the Chinese assumed they knew all that needed to be known. So civilizational collapses can also be self induced.

China sent a world spanning fleet out in 1421 (may or may not have reached American but for sure went to Africa) and on their return their emperor ordered the fleet burned and trade with the outside world banned.

[Nikas777]

I dod not take your comments as snarky at all. No worries on that part. I have heard that Atlantis was really a re-telling of the Trojan war.

I like the Thera theory a lot as the Atlantis origin of the story but the fit is not exact in all cases - like the location of Atlantis in the Atlantic.

[Noumenon]

I submit that this mentality persists amongst the ruling elites in China to this day. Even in recent times, one must ask how much was lost in the ‘Great Leap Forward’ and the Cultural Revolution’ (Orwellian, isn’t it?) in just this last century.

Priceless artifacts and documents were destroyed. They’ll do it again.

[Nikas777]

That is true. But to be fair Communism was a Western European invented ideology. So who are we to judge? I mean WW1 and WW2 nearly ended European civilization if not for America to take up the slack. Who knows? In the long term WW1 and WW2 (and the Cold War) could have destroyed the European and American Western Civilizations.

[Noumenon]

I tend to think that Communism was merely a convenient vehicle - or protocol, if you will - for the continuance of of a cruel culture that treated the majority of those who lived within it as chattel.

[dangerdoc]

bump

[Sherman Logan]

“The Mote in God’s Eye” by Niven and Pournelle has an immensely ancient alien civilization with a LONG history of such collapses and rebirths with “museums” set up that can only be entered when post-apocalyptic groups regain sufficient civilization and knowledge.

[brityank]

Interesting thesis, not without relevance to our situation today.

Civilized people go about their lives on the dual assumption of institutional permanency and a continuity of custom. The assumption that plans made today will see their fruition tomorrow belongs to the background of organized existence and contributes to motivating our purposive behavior. The same assumption can lapse into complacency, however, so that, even as signs of trouble emerge on the horizon, a certain denial disarms people from responding to looming disruption with sufficient swiftness and clarity. People take civilization for granted; they rarely contemplate that it might come tumbling down about their ears. Insofar as the historical record has something important to teach ordinary people who are not specialists in the subject, it might well be the lesson that all known societies before the modern society have come to an end. Some of them have come to an end abruptly and violently.

In our complacency we have allowed the vandals and charlatans free access to our halls of power, and as the 9-12 March showed folks are waking from that complacent somnambulism. Meanwhile the powers-that-be prepare to acquire more Bread & Circuses, and ignore the coming conflagrations. There was a reason that traitors heads were stuck on pikes at the entries to the cities - we should encourage that again.

[brityank]

If I was wealthy I’d have a "reader."

Join Congress, and they will provide you with a 'Speed Reader' !!       ;^)

[the invisib1e hand]

Join Congress, and they will provide you with a 'Speed Reader' !! ;^)

Maybe they should hire "bill readers."

[AnAmericanMother]

Isn’t the location of Atlantis in the Atlantic Ocean primarily based on a passing comment (Plato? Herodotus?) that it lay “outside the Pillars of Hercules”? Setting aside that Herodotus was the Original Gossip Columnist (he got a lot of stuff right, just the same), I wonder if (a) there’s more than one location of that name; and (b) how far removed the author was from the event by that time. Also whether that might just mean “a long, long way away”, like our “once upon a time” or “Land of Nod”.

[B-Chan]

How will our civilization end? One need only look around. Neither war nor natural disaster has destroyed a single city in our day (New Orleans, after all, still stands), yet cities and parts of cities across the nation lie in ruins: East St. Louis, Philadelphia, Newark, Cincinnati, Cleveland, and above all Detroit. No asteroid has fallen upon them, no artillery shelled them, yet there they lie in ruins.

What have these cities in common? Answer that question and you will answer also the question of how our civilization will end.

You will also find yourself banned from Free Republic. For even here, the truth dare not be spoken aloud.

[Pyro7480]

Single-party Democratic rule for decades...

[Nikas777]

If you are hinting that "Blacks" or "Minorities" are responsible for the collapse of cities then you are mistaken in that I blame the de-industrialization of America for it.

Just like Babylon went away because the rivers it lived off moved so too these American cities are collapsing with the loss of the things that got them built in those locations in the fist place.

Just like the west's mining cities (yes cities) vanished after their ore was depleted so to is Cleveland and Detroit vanishing as their reason for being also vanishes.

[Nikas777]

See my #36 for my reply to B-Chan.

[Nikas777]

I have heard one theory state that the story of Atlantis was a story told to Solon when he visited Egypt by their learned men.

But what Solon did not know is that the Egyptians were retelling Solon about the events of the Trojan war/Thera but changed or elaborated the story over time to the point the Greeks did not recognize it (though maybe Plato did in his commentaries which explains why he dropped the subject suddenly). So it could be that when the story was first told Thera (or Troy) seemed far away to the Egyptians but as time went on those places were not so exotic anymore because of all that trade with the Greeks so the Egyptians changed the location to one that seemed the correct distance away to compensate.

Sort of like how to a story teller New Orleans seemed once a long distance away from New York in the 1700s but 200 years later it was not and it would be like the story tellers now substituting Los Angeles with New Orleans to emphasis the long distance in such an imaginary story.

[happygrl]

The Brussels Journal, which chose to print this article, focusses on the impact of Islamic immigration on Europe, and its effect on Europe.

It may be that it is from this perspective that leads to concern about a collapse of civilization.

[Nikas777]

You should read Fjordsman’s blog on there.