Many people that know their history have likened what the west has been going through to the fall of Rome.
If you don't know what I'm referencing then lets take you on a little history lesson about one of the greatest 1000+ year empires the world has ever known -- and still has lasting impact on the west today, through culture, history and economics.
The fall of the library at Alexandria was probably one of the most devastating losses to antiquity; thousands of years of just pure knowledge, lost, burned, and then later destroyed because of its pagan roots.
I've always likened the dark ages to the cultural shift from science to religion. I have read that the Ancient Greeks had built the first combustion engine, and had made progress in theorizing the splitting of the atom.
Pre Dark Ages was an incredible era of discovery and enlightenment -- but we lost all that in our relentless pursuit of religion.
We didn't pay enough attention to the science.
Why can't we just have a balance? Science and Religion are great. One can have healthy amounts of both!
I am finding that they compliment each other rather than hinder progress.
Us humans, we tend to be all one way, or all another. We aren't very good at sitting with balance, but then one could argue that our governments have always weaponized us to be this way because it suits their purpose.
Rome was a great Empire, it really was. One of the best. Why couldn't it have lasted for eternity?
Well, humans are complex; let me take you through how it lost its science.
Would you believe that in early antiquity, around 300 AD Christianity was a fairly benign religion? Those that believed in it were oppressed, hunted and exiled, killed, even.
Christianity grew though, and it grew fiercely despite attempts to thwart it by Pagan rulers. It was particularly popular amongst the lower classes because of its promise to liberate people from their afflictions regardless of social class. They did this through Baptization.
In short, get Baptized and everything is forgiven!
Eventually, Christianity had grown so big that the numbers of Christians in the Army could have contributed to Constantine I's move to rise it to the halls of power.
In 313, Constantine issued the Edict of Milan, which made the persecution of Christians illegal. This was a turning point for early Christianity.
This is when Rome had a 100 year or so spiritual awakening. Emphasis was given to spiritual pursuits; gigantic rewards were given to people for finding, "The spear of Peter" and such artefacts.
That era saw the almost abandonment of all science related pursuits in favour for religious ones. Not that religious pursuit is bad, but one shouldn't abandon science because of it.
Roughly 100 years later there was a push to go back to science and understand the ways of old, but sadly, almost 5 generations had passed since then and they could no longer read or understand anything related.
Rather than work towards it; forge the most brilliant minds together and work towards understanding the old ways -- they abandoned it in favour of technologies that were current and worked.
This was not why Rome fell of course, but it lost one of its great pillars of knowledge. It was the Romans that introduced aqueducts and central heating to name a few..
The human condition and the inability of our leaders to take ownership of their mistakes and lead a path of correction forward.
We see this right now with young people (and old) throwing around the word "Nazi" like they are handing out sweeties at a children's party.
Where in actual fact a real Nazi would shoot you in the face in the middle of the road for disagreeing with them or something as little as doing their salute wrong. They were cold blooded killers and did not care if they killed children.
There are no real Nazi's in this world today, or, if there is, there are very very little few of them, and they will never be able to be truly open about it.
This is what I call the Human Condition.
If you look at humanity on a graph and chart it as a timeline of advancement then you will see lots of peaks and troughs; ups and downs. The chart would look like a big wave.
We have always forgotten information every 100 years as knowledge has died with us. The knowledge has always been passed on however sons and daughters do lack the passion and flourish over other interests in the new world ahead.
In short we generally forget knowledge of old eventually. Empires weaken in strength and begin to crumble.
If you look at every empire that has ever existed they have always fallen, from Rome and Mongolia, to Britain and Spain; none have their empires anymore. A mere shadow of what was once before.
In a way many have likened the west recently as a dying empire. We say the west because America has strong ties with Europe and other allies, and we may not act as a full empire, but we go to war as one.
Anyone who is my age will remember a time of abundance before the 2008 financial crash and the last 20 years have seemed like we are on a slow regression path back to the stone age. Times are intensely tougher than they were before.
It is not just finance though, it's quite a lot more.
Despite what is going on with the radical profiteering in governments and the sheer lack of care for their fellow human, there are quite deep rooted problems in our society as a whole.
The internet springs mostly to mind right now.
As we break down cultural barriers from across the world and speak to people we would never dream of speaking to in real time (I have friends in Nigeria for example) we are also further disconnected than we have ever been.
When neighbours would once share a drink over the doorstep as their kids play with a sports ball in the garden, this has now been replaced by a life of solitude. Kids will be playing games on the internet or chatting to friends online, and families will be inside watching Netflix.
Our streets are now empty when they were once full with children and adults being mucky and at one with nature.
The richer we have become the less reliant we are on our fellow human and it shows.
Friendships, once a thing forged in fire through conquest, trial and error, and mystery has now been swapped out for the click of a button on a computer.
And boy is it easier to cancel friendships. Unfriend and you're done, and it's so much easier to do now than it was before.
Before we had to make the trip up to their house and display our displeasement with them and cut them off entirely. A thing braved by only the most unsalvageable friendship situations.
It is very dire right now I'm not going to sugar coat it; the internet has completely stripped us from our biological instinct and connection with the nature and the world around us.
The barrage of information that we consume serves more like a self protecting insular bubble than an outwards venture into the unknown.
We see that with the media and film we consume; every year the same superhero movies and the same Political fight whilst nothing really gets solved.
We exist in an illusion, too scared to reach out and touch the unknown. Too scared to take the risks artistry did in the 70's and 80's -- too enveloped by our need for safety, because we have forgotten what it was like to climb a tree not knowing if you were going to fall off or not.
There's an algorithm for everything today, even for the music we consume.
Safe
Easy wins
Crazy right?
But there is hope.
Hope for us as humanity.
It's different now to as it has been in the past.
The masses won't forget like they used to.
Sure, you can say that everyone is a Nazi but those that want to know can search up the very real records and see for their very own what Nazi's were really like and what they really stood for.
We write everything down now, at a rate we have never done before. 100 years ago perhaps 20% of the population were literate, now it's more like ~90%.
And don't even get me started on video. Get on YouTube to literally learn anything you want to.
Hell, my father's very last words to me were over Facebook and they have been immortalized forever, even if it's too uncomfortable for me to look at.
And the masses are educated.
Beforehand it was only the elite and Political class that had access to education, now it's everyone.
I've taught myself economics in the last 5 years. 100 years ago you would need to go to Oxford or Cambridge for that.
We will be able to watch video on what life was like today, 500 years from now.
And Starships? That's new.
Dying? No, no way, we are on the brink of another revolution with AI.
And it's going to propel us into the unknown, and it's going to be magnificent.
Humanity is only getting started.
Prepare.
Prepare for the unknown.
I don't think it was Christianity or religion in general that led to the fall of Rome, at least not in the sense that it led to the abandonment of science. It had more to do with Rome's over extension both militarily and economically. General decadence among the ruling class probably didn't help. It made them ripe for invasion and that's what happened....repeatedly. These invaders were generally less culturally and scientifically advanced and that's what Rome became.