Seriously, though. How often do you think of the Roman Empire?
I know this is a joke/meme, but I sincerely think of the Roman Empire a surprising amount of times. I find myself obsessing over how Roman citizens were living just as complex lives as we are today, or about Marcus Aurelius’ life and philosophy, or about how the Republic fell and became a totalitarian state.
Often because I always had an interest in their history.
As a kid I was fascinated by the fact they existed, were so successful and then disappeared.
As an adult reading more details about their society and civilization, it amazes and terrifies me how we are following the same path and mentality. Which means we may very well be on the same path of self destruction. When they were in their glory, they were never aware that they would die out. We are feeling the same way today with total confidence.
2,000 years from now our decedants may see us in the same way we see the Romans today.
That’s definitely how I think about them. In comparison to housing policies or rent issues and what their outcome was… and deep horror at what it means for our potential future.
To be fair history rhymes not repeats but that mostly seems to come from us having better tech and therefore better conditions but the human actions and ideas seem to be annoyingly on repeat.
The only thing that seems to progress is our technology
We are capable of improving and making our technology very very efficient within a short period of time.
However, our mentality, our logic and our behaviours will take many more thousands of years to evolve … the imbalance is like watching a monkey with a machine gun or a grenade.
And evolution, change and the future doesn’t mean things will be rosy either … evolution doesn’t mean better from your perspective or some other person’s perspective … evolution just means change.
We could evolve our civilization into a socially minded mutually beneficial shared utopia … or into a totalitarian model where we divide the species into the powerful served by the weaker ones … or into something more equitable … or something far more terrifying … or we just completely and utterly destroy ourselves and leave no trace of our species or our descendants on the planet.
I eat 2 cups of food for lunch on weekdays because if it was good enough for a roman soldier to march on it’s good enough for me to go clickity clack on a keyboard.
I frequently think about the late phase of decadence and dysfunction, followed by collapse. I figure the American empire is treading a similar path, just on a faster timeline.
I joked about my wife competing for a job with another candidate by having a gladitorial match. She was like, “Roman Empire again, huh?” and I was like “… fuck.”
Sometimes. I don’t get why people idolize it and mourn its fall though, the whole thing seems like it was defined by slavery and murder and domination and is honestly horrifying.
Pretty often. One of my main research interests is the Gospel of Thomas which ends up extremely tied to events around the Roman empire.
Just a day or two ago I was looking at when Lucretius’s De Rerum Natura was popularly being read and cited given the apparent link between those two documents.
Generally only if something else prompts it. Such as this meme and the news around it, or a game, or a work of fiction referencing it for some reason. It doesn’t come up independently in my head.
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