If there is one thing I have learned from the first two quarters of the World Classics Program it is that a) our sense of decline precedes us, and b) that human societies can be seen to cycle through periods of prosperity and growth and periods of decline and stagnation. While this is a simple idea, seemingly valid after a quick moment of thought, it is quite contrary to the assumption that we carry around in our minds on a daily basis. We think the world, i.e. the political boundaries we consider countries and states and Unions, is a constant. We don’t walk around thinking that Europe won’t be Europe forever, and we certainly don’t walk around thinking that the United States of America won’t be around, more or less exactly as it is now, forever. And if we do ponder America as a changed entity, we will certainly think that the changes are “progressive” (as opposed to regressive or upstart) and of our own decision making as a body of voting people.
Studying cultures before us can bring great insights to our present day circumstances, and studying Rome can be an uncanny experience for a person who lives in the twenty first century. If Rome, in all her power—her political, economic and cultural systems—fell to another power, what Country today could believe themselves to be everlasting? Yet we do. Most of us believe America to be everlasting.
If we could visit the great Roman leaders in the misty shade of the underworld, would they tell us to avoid particular traps and landmines, or would they tell us to assume that the decline of our civilization is a given, and to spend time and energy smoothing transitions instead of pretending we can avoid them? I’m not sure, but I can easily imagine both situations.
Rome seems so similar to America that it is worth pointing out some parallels. Rome came into being on the backs of Greece and other advanced cultures around the Mediterranean World, she did not necessarily invent what she seemed, for a moment, to perfect. America can be seen likewise. We came from European countries and ways, eventually to overtake a new land while embodying what wisdoms we could glean from those we conquered. We did not invent democracy, or the republic, or any other system we see as so inherently American (economic or otherwise), but in our hour of stability, we seem to have perfected these ideas and practices as our government shifts hand repeatedly from candidate to candidate, party to party.
Of course, like Rome, we are not without our critics, both from within as from without; those who think our ways as far less from the ideal or even blatantly apathetic in the face of crisis. We have rooted our culture, like Rome before us, in material things in a such a way that there can be no confusion between the have’s and the have nots. Some of us live decadently, while some of us have empty cupboards. The vast majority of Americans are as un-empowered to make true change in our lives as the non-citizen proportion of Roman civilization. We may call more humans citizens, and we may give them certain “inalienable rights” but your birth, your class, your location, your looks still hold a heavy hand over your access to opportunity. Some, perhaps from the Roman aristocracy or a Philosopher King or two, might say it is less civil (less human) to call a slave a freeman and systematically disable his societal participation than to just call a slave a slave and let him work within the territory to he best of his abilities. This is a new way of conceiving of the “American Dream” or on the old adage, to “call a spade a spade.”
While the Romans had their societal troubles, I believe they dealt with them more frankly than we know how to do today. I believe they were more mentally prepared to deal with hardship and inequality and suffering than we are today. But before we romanticize them in this way we must consider the other side of the coin. Romans were also prepared to live luxuriously, and it is the decadent lifestyle that we Americans aspire to today.
Pictures of the “ideal” are broadcast into our minds daily of the latest color, the new style, the redesign of the luxury car that now has the advantage of “added safety features” and, if you are lucky, good gas mileage. All of us folks (and I mean the term in the way Sue hears it) strive to keep up—the masses (of which I would consider myself part) go into debt in order to seem as if we are keeping up, another only barely smaller mass of folks decides to identify with another way (only to establish a sub-cultural hegemony that merely looks different than the dominant one, but which is imbued with the same lines of thinking as what the sub-culturalist thought he discarded). And the few with enough money to do as they please? They find themselves more miserable as the purchases mount up because their belongings fail to fulfill them.
I believe Roman society had all of these elements as well. I believe Greek society had all these elements before them. Plato called this stumbling block of man the “pursuit” of “perishable things” and thought it the root of human fallibility. Ovid called it “the damned desire of having” and saw us on a motley progression towards unhappiness from the steel age on. The awareness of a steel age and the changes it brought to the structure of society parallels our own awareness of the Industrial Revolution and the changes it wrought.
If we were to meet with a congregation of Ancient Romans in the underworld, I believe they would all gasp and clutch their stomachs aching with uproarious laughter when we speak of this Industrial Revolution. I think that, after they calmed down, they would tell us, respectfully, that the word “revolution” means nothing other than the turning of the wheel. And that all there is, really, is the turning of the wheel. I imagine we Americans, like all stubborn children ignorant of times before them, will have to learn the hard way. Our way.
Tags: decline, revolution, social issues, wisdom