Warrior/Fighter/Military Culture, Hierarchy & Negotiation

[SuperPulp2789]

Or how "Alphas" would likely actually work

 

[Vladicus]

What's an Alpha then? Multiple definitions and ideas about it and we do need to define that first to know what we're discussing exactly

 

[SuperPulp2789]

What's an Aloha then? Multiple definitions and id3as about it and we do need to define that first to know what we're discussing exactly

Click to shrink...

Aloha is a Hawaiian Hello

As for Alpha, I think it's more about who is in charge

Usually people think it's simply who is the biggest, strongest and/or most "dominance" over a group

So people look at the guy with big muscles and height, whom everybody else maybe follows

But in the Armed Forces, your boss isn't necessarily the guy with all of that

I think people simply summing up relations to Alpha, Beta or Omega or Sigma whatever, will miss out on the many social ques or "social contracts" involved

If the Alpha is a big asshole, there's a chance that two smaller Betas will kill him or stop following

There's an implication that the Alpha is forcing or coercing others into following

Doing that in the longterm isn't good for inspiring actual loyalty, neither is just making people dependent on you as people can feel threatened by it or demeaned and "ungrateful"


Beta's are mostly the followers, guys who follow the Alpha. Social Darwinists miss out on the whole likely to kill the Alpha if he's too much of an asshole. Or that even followers choose whom to follow and can switch to another Alpha

Hierarchies form sooner or later, but they are/can be flexible

Family Alphas, can't use "because I said so" for too long

 

[Vladicus]

Aloha is a Hawaiian Hello

Click to shrink...

Sorry, wrote from phone, and didn't bother to check spelling till now.

As for Alpha, I think it's more about who is in charge

Usually people think it's simply who is the biggest, strongest and/or most "dominance" over a group

So people look at the guy with big muscles and height, whom everybody else maybe follows

But in the Armed Forces, your boss isn't necessarily the guy with all of that

I think people simply summing up relations to Alpha, Beta or Omega or Sigma whatever, will miss out on the many social ques or "social contracts" involved

If the Alpha is a big asshole, there's a chance that two smaller Betas will kill him or stop following

There's an implication that the Alpha is forcing or coercing others into following

Doing that in the longterm isn't good for inspiring actual loyalty, neither is just making people dependent on you as people can feel threatened by it or demeaned and "ungrateful"


Beta's are mostly the followers, guys who follow the Alpha. Social Darwinists miss out on the whole likely to kill the Alpha if he's too much of an asshole. Or that even followers choose whom to follow and can switch to another Alpha

Hierarchies form sooner or later, but they are/can be flexible

Family Alphas, can't use "because I said so" for too long

Click to shrink...

So an alpha is the guy that leads because he's stronger or better at a given activity necessary for the groups existence.

In hunter gatherer society it's the best hunter, in gangs/militaries it's the best at killing and so on. In groups created not by violence, it's the one who's both more skilled and more physically intimidating. This social hierarchy you describe would also be enforced through intimidation and violence. Am I close?

Hmm, this social hierarchy based around physical prowess and intimidation sounds to me like feudalism. You get the most powerful guy around, the king/ Alpha. The lesser nobles/Betas whichare less capable/powerful but subordinate to the big guy. Then the Omegas/Commoners which are not strong enough to be higher in the totem pole and the Sigmas which refuse to be in the social hierarchy and be self sufficient.

This sort of social system would work when there's no other existing structure as it's easy to implement, Someone at the top, their buddies beneath them, then their buddies in a similar arrangement with those around them, until you have a strata with no one beneath them and individuals that do not belong to it and strike it out on their own. Simple to understand, simple to implement and requires no other requirements except the capacity of violence and competence of the leading clique.

Reminds me of how Slavery is a civilizational cheat/ crutch. You need something done that requires great amounts of people? Force them with violence to complete it. It's inefficient economically and culturally damaging in the long term, but it allows you to actually do things when the systems to do the same things with freemen are just not reliable. If the slaves are vanquished enemies, then it's also a way to deal with one's captured enemies once one defeats them.

The Alpha system is the same, just the easiest way to structure a society where none exists.

 

[humon]

I'm not sure what the actual question is here. Are we just discussing systems of command and control? Or are we doing sociology? Are we talking about writing fictional hierarchies, or navigating them in the real world?

Personally I'm a fan of Jordan Peterson's view of the world, where the "alpha", meaning the natural leader that emerges out of a small group of individuals (chimps, humans, bonobos, same idea), is not necessarily the biggest and strongest, although that gives initial advantage, but more often the one who is most attendant to the needs of others in the group. It suggests a social contract idea, where if I am the alpha, it's because the group chose me as the guy to look to for cues on what to do, because I've shown that I: (a) have the ability to take care of the others in the group when they need help (weaklings need not apply to this role); and (b) am willing to do so reciprocally (assholes don't last long either -- sic semper tyrannis).

Peterson has many times pointed to the research that when a troop of chimps is being led by a tyrannical individual, that arrangement is very unstable. All it takes is for the tyrant to have an off day and show a little weakness, and then three or more betas will gang up on him and rip him apart. Caesar wrote that seizing power is like grabbing a wolf by its ears; you don't dare let go. He found out the hard way what happens when you let go. Don't be Caesar.

In every hierarchy, there are a set of virtues that determine where people fit into that hierarchy. Usually nobody writes any of this down, but it's implicitly understood by everyone who's part of the hierarchy. The easiest case to look at is in sports, where they actually do write some of this down, in the form of the rules of the sport. The virtues that define a sports hierarchy are the virtues that one must have in order to win games, and especially to lead a team to victory. The rules of a sport are in fact designed to encourage certain virtues, like athleticism, determination, teamwork, strategic thinking, and leadership. You can see this whenever a rules change has to be made to deal with an exploit or overused strategy that the rules makers feel is 'cheap', since it allows a team of lower skill to negate the advantage of a higher skilled team.

In a military, it's less formalized, since you're trying to win wars and kill people, not just score points on a board. There is also the issue of peacetime incentives being very different from wartime ones. When there are no battles to be won and lost, the skills for winning battles become secondary to the skills of playing politics within a bureaucracy, which is how you end up with woke generals and diversity recruiting (things that I predict would disappear very quickly if an actual shooting war started tomorrow). In the same way that sports attempts to encourage certain virtues, military cultures form concepts of honour and valour to encourage positive virtues within their ranks, and men who stray from these ideals are looked upon the same way as cheaters in sport: they are trying to win without having the right virtues.

Note that a short-sighted person may say that winning by any means necessary is a virtue in itself, if winning is all that matters. The response to that, is that you have to not only win the battle at hand, but you also have to keep winning in future battles. A strategy of cheating may offer short term success, but is not stable in the long term, as eventually the cheater is caught, or his opponents adapt and start using the same strategy right back at him, which then degrades the game into a messy hatchet fight that nobody wants. So honorable virtues are in place also for this reason, to protect the integrity of the game so that we aren't all forced to regress to the most brutal and chaotic forms of it.

That brings me to street gangs and prison gangs, where these people exist in an environment that has chosen to reject norms of decency (people who want to play fair don't become criminals in the first place). You can think of them as being another step down from militaries in terms of how formalized they are. In a gang, it's a continuous war with no rules, and the only thing that matters is control of territory. Projecting a fearsome image becomes more important, because you don't have the resources to fight all your enemies at once. Instead, you have to make them afraid of you so that they don't dare attack you, and then you don't have to fight. So that sort of gangland honour culture may be what confuses a lot of people when they think about alpha and beta labels. They see the image of the ruthless gang boss terrorizing everyone and they fail to separate that image from the actual person behind it, who is probably relying a lot more on qualities of leadership than on brute strength in order to actually make the gang function effectively.

I don't really like using terms like alpha/beta/omega/sigma, because it puts people into boxes that I don't think are all that useful. I think it's more useful to talk in terms of leaders and followers, aspiring leaders, subversives, free riders, and so on. A soldier may start out content to be a follower and just do what his sergeant tells him, but then circumstances could force him into a leadership role, and if he has the right mindset and level of experience, he can rise to the challenge. Another soldier may come into it thinking he should be in charge of everything, and he needs to have that ego beaten out of him during basic training.

Also, the 'sigma' term is bullshit, and I just roll my eyes at anyone who uses it. I take it as a synonym for hedonism, which I always say might be fun in the present, but it has no future.

 

[SuperPulp2789]

Sorry, wrote from phone, and didn't bother to check spelling till now.


So an alpha is the guy that leads because he's stronger or better at a given activity necessary for the groups existence.

In hunter gatherer society it's the best hunter, in gangs/militaries it's the best at killing and so on. In groups created not by violence, it's the one who's both more skilled and more physically intimidating. This social hierarchy you describe would also be enforced through intimidation and violence. Am I close?

Hmm, this social hierarchy based around physical prowess and intimidation sounds to me like feudalism. You get the most powerful guy around, the king/ Alpha. The lesser nobles/Betas whichare less capable/powerful but subordinate to the big guy. Then the Omegas/Commoners which are not strong enough to be higher in the totem pole and the Sigmas which refuse to be in the social hierarchy and be self sufficient.

This sort of social system would work when there's no other existing structure as it's easy to implement, Someone at the top, their buddies beneath them, then their buddies in a similar arrangement with those around them, until you have a strata with no one beneath them and individuals that do not belong to it and strike it out on their own. Simple to understand, simple to implement and requires no other requirements except the capacity of violence and competence of the leading clique.

Reminds me of how Slavery is a civilizational cheat/ crutch. You need something done that requires great amounts of people? Force them with violence to complete it. It's inefficient economically and culturally damaging in the long term, but it allows you to actually do things when the systems to do the same things with freemen are just not reliable. If the slaves are vanquished enemies, then it's also a way to deal with one's captured enemies once one defeats them.

The Alpha system is the same, just the easiest way to structure a society where none exists.

Click to shrink...

I'm not sure what the actual question is here. Are we just discussing systems of command and control? Or are we doing sociology? Are we talking about writing fictional hierarchies, or navigating them in the real world?

Personally I'm a fan of Jordan Peterson's view of the world, where the "alpha", meaning the natural leader that emerges out of a small group of individuals (chimps, humans, bonobos, same idea), is not necessarily the biggest and strongest, although that gives initial advantage, but more often the one who is most attendant to the needs of others in the group. It suggests a social contract idea, where if I am the alpha, it's because the group chose me as the guy to look to for cues on what to do, because I've shown that I: (a) have the ability to take care of the others in the group when they need help (weaklings need not apply to this role); and (b) am willing to do so reciprocally (assholes don't last long either -- sic semper tyrannis).

Peterson has many times pointed to the research that when a troop of chimps is being led by a tyrannical individual, that arrangement is very unstable. All it takes is for the tyrant to have an off day and show a little weakness, and then three or more betas will gang up on him and rip him apart. Caesar wrote that seizing power is like grabbing a wolf by its ears; you don't dare let go. He found out the hard way what happens when you let go. Don't be Caesar.

In every hierarchy, there are a set of virtues that determine where people fit into that hierarchy. Usually nobody writes any of this down, but it's implicitly understood by everyone who's part of the hierarchy. The easiest case to look at is in sports, where they actually do write some of this down, in the form of the rules of the sport. The virtues that define a sports hierarchy are the virtues that one must have in order to win games, and especially to lead a team to victory. The rules of a sport are in fact designed to encourage certain virtues, like athleticism, determination, teamwork, strategic thinking, and leadership. You can see this whenever a rules change has to be made to deal with an exploit or overused strategy that the rules makers feel is 'cheap', since it allows a team of lower skill to negate the advantage of a higher skilled team.

In a military, it's less formalized, since you're trying to win wars and kill people, not just score points on a board. There is also the issue of peacetime incentives being very different from wartime ones. When there are no battles to be won and lost, the skills for winning battles become secondary to the skills of playing politics within a bureaucracy, which is how you end up with woke generals and diversity recruiting (things that I predict would disappear very quickly if an actual shooting war started tomorrow). In the same way that sports attempts to encourage certain virtues, military cultures form concepts of honour and valour to encourage positive virtues within their ranks, and men who stray from these ideals are looked upon the same way as cheaters in sport: they are trying to win without having the right virtues.

Note that a short-sighted person may say that winning by any means necessary is a virtue in itself, if winning is all that matters. The response to that, is that you have to not only win the battle at hand, but you also have to keep winning in future battles. A strategy of cheating may offer short term success, but is not stable in the long term, as eventually the cheater is caught, or his opponents adapt and start using the same strategy right back at him, which then degrades the game into a messy hatchet fight that nobody wants. So honorable virtues are in place also for this reason, to protect the integrity of the game so that we aren't all forced to regress to the most brutal and chaotic forms of it.

That brings me to street gangs and prison gangs, where these people exist in an environment that has chosen to reject norms of decency (people who want to play fair don't become criminals in the first place). You can think of them as being another step down from militaries in terms of how formalized they are. In a gang, it's a continuous war with no rules, and the only thing that matters is control of territory. Projecting a fearsome image becomes more important, because you don't have the resources to fight all your enemies at once. Instead, you have to make them afraid of you so that they don't dare attack you, and then you don't have to fight. So that sort of gangland honour culture may be what confuses a lot of people when they think about alpha and beta labels. They see the image of the ruthless gang boss terrorizing everyone and they fail to separate that image from the actual person behind it, who is probably relying a lot more on qualities of leadership than on brute strength in order to actually make the gang function effectively.

I don't really like using terms like alpha/beta/omega/sigma, because it puts people into boxes that I don't think are all that useful. I think it's more useful to talk in terms of leaders and followers, aspiring leaders, subversives, free riders, and so on. A soldier may start out content to be a follower and just do what his sergeant tells him, but then circumstances could force him into a leadership role, and if he has the right mindset and level of experience, he can rise to the challenge. Another soldier may come into it thinking he should be in charge of everything, and he needs to have that ego beaten out of him during basic training.

Also, the 'sigma' term is bullshit, and I just roll my eyes at anyone who uses it. I take it as a synonym for hedonism, which I always say might be fun in the present, but it has no future.

Click to shrink...

When it comes to Hierarchies, I take note that "strength" comes in many different forms

Which is why you can have lots of big strong guys answering to a smaller nerdier looking guy

Either the guy's that smart, confident, charismatic and rich or those big strong guys have too many issues which make them easily manipulatable

When it comes to Feudalism, there is definitely a point in time in which the strong guy's descendants don't match their ancestors' ability, but they have a "Mandate of Heaven" which in Chinese Mythology, was theorized to have been followed simply because the Uncle of an Heir just didn't want to see more instability. So the new "alpha" isn't really a Renaissance Man or Super Strong, but he's presented or assumed as such and mainly delegates.....it's for both good and ill, because sooner or later, that lack of meritocracy which went in the way of nepotism screws others over.

Hell, as I said before, they mainly delegate, they just have to NOT screw up

As for "Sigma Males", I know they're rather cringe when mentioned, but I think they can best be described as people with strength, skills and/or personality which makes it that they can sort of survive on their own. They're NOT gonna come in and start playing shitty "power plays" on others, such as simply sitting on a slightly higher seat to look down on someone and make that someone look up to them. They're just on their own till they need help. They are there for money and/or survival and/or just because they enjoy something like videogames, no petty power plays.

 

[John_Oakman]

Well, first thing first, there is a huge difference between a warrior and a soldier (and/or citizen militia if we're going back far enough).

• The Soldier is a worker: he does soldiering as a job (either for a while or as a career), he takes off his uniform after work and a lot of times tries to not take his work home with him.
  • A conscript is a really short term soldier (seasonal if you will)
• A warrior on the other hand, assuming a pure form of it (which rarely occurred in history btw), is someone who live and breath the glories of war: He is a warrior 24/7, his entire identity is based upon fighting and victory, and the glories derived from that.
  • Ancient Sparta, often the poster child of a warrior culture, is probably closer to the antebellum south in the sense of large land owners ruling over a large number of slaves. They famously tried to avoid fighting too far from their home terf due to shitty logistics and fear of helot rebellion, often using oracles as a cop out.
  • Vikings, another popular examples, are more raiders than warriors. It's a seasonal gig and fighting pitched battles is not desirable (loot & scoot is the order of the day for the most part)
  • Mongolians (and the other central Asian nomadic tribes throughout history from the Huns to the Manchus) were not full time warriors, but rather than their lifestyles really translate well into a certain type of mobile warfare. Also they achieve their greatest successes when they incorporate a lot of their defeated enemies and their professional expertise (Chinese gunpowder and Persian siege engineers really helped a lot in the later conquests).

On the individual level the warrior is generally superior to the soldier, but soldiers (or rather, the societies that produce soldiers) scales up much faster and larger (and the differences more pronounced the higher the overall tech levels are).

 

[SuperPulp2789]

Well, first thing first, there is a huge difference between a warrior and a soldier (and/or citizen militia if we're going back far enough).

• The Soldier is a worker: he does soldiering as a job (either for a while or as a career), he takes off his uniform after work and a lot of times tries to not take his work home with him.
  • A conscript is a really short term soldier (seasonal if you will)
• A warrior on the other hand, assuming a pure form of it (which rarely occurred in history btw), is someone who live and breath the glories of war: He is a warrior 24/7, his entire identity is based upon fighting and victory, and the glories derived from that.
  • Ancient Sparta, often the poster child of a warrior culture, is probably closer to the antebellum south in the sense of large land owners ruling over a large number of slaves. They famously tried to avoid fighting too far from their home terf due to shitty logistics and fear of helot rebellion, often using oracles as a cop out.
  • Vikings, another popular examples, are more raiders than warriors. It's a seasonal gig and fighting pitched battles is not desirable (loot & scoot is the order of the day for the most part)
  • Mongolians (and the other central Asian nomadic tribes throughout history from the Huns to the Manchus) were not full time warriors, but rather than their lifestyles really translate well into a certain type of mobile warfare. Also they achieve their greatest successes when they incorporate a lot of their defeated enemies and their professional expertise (Chinese gunpowder and Persian siege engineers really helped a lot in the later conquests).

On the individual level the warrior is generally superior to the soldier, but soldiers (or rather, the societies that produce soldiers) scales up much faster and larger (and the differences more pronounced the higher the overall tech levels are).

Click to shrink...

I guess today and the future, the difference between warrior and soldier will be somewhat more pronounced

Whilst yes, warriors can follow orders, even they will balk at a number of them and perhaps decide the ones giving the orders aren't worth command any longer. It makes it so that their loyalty is more to the current group rather than high command.

It's why Rome was endangered more than once by its own legions who campaigned so far away, they ended up following their closest commanders

Transfer this Warrior/Soldier Mentality to everything else, you will get loyal and hardworking and disciplined people. Possibly with similar problems as before. Start violating the social contract at the workplace and make "cooperation" shitty as possible, with something like a "political commissar" around, you will either get rebellions or desertions.

More collectivist cultures like that of Asia, can possibly, more reliably take control of their soldiers because they're just that loyal. Takes much longer for rebellions to form.

 

[humon]

I am getting a vibe of warrior vs soldier equating to that of dealer vs pusher, in Steppenwolf's philosophy (mind, you there is far more to heaven and earth than dreamt of in Steppenwolf's, or Horatio's, or anyone else's philosophy)

~The dealer! The dealer is a man, with the love grass in his hand~
~But the pusher is a monster! Good God, he's not a natural man~
~The dealer! For a nickel he will sell you sweet dreams~
~But the pusher ruin your body~
~Lord he'll leave your~...~Leave your mind to SCREAM!~

So I agree. God damn the pusher. God damn all that shit. My version:

~You know I seen a lot of people walkin' around... with vaccines in their eyes~
~But Big Pharma don't care... hmm'mm... if you live, or if you die~

~The doctor! The doctor is a man with your good health in his hands~
~But Big Pharma is a monster! Good God, he's not a natural man~
~The doctor for a visit will give you lots of good health advice~
~But Big Pharma ruin your body, Lord it'll leave you... leave you... full of SHEISSE!~

So the thing with feudalism: The steelman of that is that the families with a lot of resources can use those resources to educate their offspring to be wiser and more virtuous than the common man, thus making him more fit to rule. In reality that happens sometimes but not all the time. And so you get a situation where some noble lords deserve it and others don't. Those inclined to revolutionary ideals will naturally point to the ones who don't deserve it as a casus belli.

Eat the rich; eat the kulaks; eat the cats; eat-eat the cats.


On the rest of it, I should say I am not Christian, but I have been following some Christian youtube channels ever since Jordan Peterson made it a topic worth considering. One of these channels presented a good framing of how Jews reacted to the dominance of the Roman Empire in the time of JC. They split into four camps: The Pharisees were the reactionaries, holding to Mosaic law in defiance of Caesar; The collaborators wanted to work with Caesar to extract wealth from their neighbours; The zealots wanted to fight Caesar with everything they had; and the ascetics went into the desert to isolate themselves from Roman influence and achieve purity that way.

We are in the same situation now, where the Pharisees are the woke right, the collaborators are the woke left, the zealots are the proud boys, and the ascetics are the IDW. But none of them have the complete solution.

Another way of slicing it is that in a time of authoritarian empire, there are four reactions: Collaboration; Nihilism; Hedonism; and Heroism. In other words, Leftists; Doomers; Sigmas; and Petersonians. (I am biased of course)

(had to edit because I mistakenly said Philistines instead of Pharisees. I always get those words mixed up. Blah...)


If the difference between a soldier and a warrior is their willingness to fight without coercion, then it is important to talk about what motivates men to fight in the first place.
1. Defence of their families and homes.
2. The chance to gain spoils.
3. They have no other choice, because a tyrant will kill them if they refuse to fight.

The first case is what Machiavelli would have endorsed; a citizen army defending their homes. But, of course, men like that cannot be convinced to go fight wars of conquest or be persuaded for very long with bullshit arguments about WMDs or "spreading democracy".

The second case is what ISIS and Boko Haram relied on--we'll conquer these people and take their women as our own slaves--but naturally it makes such an army hated by everyone they come into contact with.

The third case is Russia and the Soviet Union. Since 2022 we've been seeing how effective that strategy has been. Every piece of fiction that has ever placed a team of plucky heroes against incompetent henchmen of an evil empire has picked up on this pattern. Humans make terrible slaves and when you sent them to war in that capacity, they just lose.

The conflict between western and eastern strategy--respect for the individual vs. sacrifice for the collective--well, I remember a story told about a joint training exercise between the USA and China, where an American general and a Chinese general both had the task of seizing a fortified hill. The American general put his soldiers to the task per their training. They set up machine guns with suppressing fire and slowly advanced on one position after another until they reached the top. After 45 minutes they had taken the hill with zero casualties and 20,000 bullets spent. The Chinese general then told his men, "I want that hill", and they rushed it en masse. They took it in less than 5 minutes. The American general said, "You took a thousand casualties!", and the Chinese general replied, "Yes, but we only spent 40 bullets!"

 

[SuperPulp2789]

I am getting a vibe of warrior vs soldier equating to that of dealer vs pusher, in Steppenwolf's philosophy (mind, you there is far more to heaven and earth than dreamt of in Steppenwolf's, or Horatio's, or anyone else's philosophy)

~The dealer! The dealer is a man, with the love grass in his hand~
~But the pusher is a monster! Good God, he's not a natural man~
~The dealer! For a nickel he will sell you sweet dreams~
~But the pusher ruin your body~
~Lord he'll leave your~...~Leave your mind to SCREAM!~

So I agree. God damn the pusher. God damn all that shit. My version:

~You know I seen a lot of people walkin' around... with vaccines in their eyes~
~But Big Pharma don't care... hmm'mm... if you live, or if you die~

~The doctor! The doctor is a man with your good health in his hands~
~But Big Pharma is a monster! Good God, he's not a natural man~
~The doctor for a visit will give you lots of good health advice~
~But Big Pharma ruin your body, Lord it'll leave you... leave you... full of SHEISSE!~

So the thing with feudalism: The steelman of that is that the families with a lot of resources can use those resources to educate their offspring to be wiser and more virtuous than the common man, thus making him more fit to rule. In reality that happens sometimes but not all the time. And so you get a situation where some noble lords deserve it and others don't. Those inclined to revolutionary ideals will naturally point to the ones who don't deserve it as a casus belli.

Eat the rich; eat the kulaks; eat the cats; eat-eat the cats.


On the rest of it, I should say I am not Christian, but I have been following some Christian youtube channels ever since Jordan Peterson made it a topic worth considering. One of these channels presented a good framing of how Jews reacted to the dominance of the Roman Empire in the time of JC. They split into four camps: The Philistines were the reactionaries, holding to Mosaic law in defiance of Caesar; The collaborators wanted to work with Caesar to extract wealth from their neighbours; The zealots wanted to fight Caesar with everything they had; and the ascetics went into the desert to isolate themselves from Roman influence and achieve purity that way.

We are in the same situation now, where the Philistines are the woke right, the collaborators are the woke left, the zealots are the proud boys, and the ascetics are the IDW. But none of them have the complete solution.

Another way of slicing it is that in a time of authoritarian empire, there are four reactions: Collaboration; Nihilism; Hedonism; and Heroism. In other words, Leftists; Doomers; Sigmas; and Petersonians. (I am biased of course)


If the difference between a soldier and a warrior is their willingness to fight without coercion, then it is important to talk about what motivates men to fight in the first place.
1. Defence of their families and homes.
2. The chance to gain spoils.
3. They have no other choice, because a tyrant will kill them if they refuse to fight.

The first case is what Machiavelli would have endorsed; a citizen army defending their homes. But, of course, men like that cannot be convinced to go fight wars of conquest or be persuaded for very long with bullshit arguments about WMDs or "spreading democracy".

The second case is what ISIS and Boko Haram relied on--we'll conquer these people and take their women as our own slaves--but naturally it makes such an army hated by everyone they come into contact with.

The third case is Russia and the Soviet Union. Since 2022 we've been seeing how effective that strategy has been. Every piece of fiction that has ever placed a team of plucky heroes against incompetent henchmen of an evil empire has picked up on this pattern. Humans make terrible slaves and when you sent them to war in that capacity, they just lose.

The conflict between western and eastern strategy--respect for the individual vs. sacrifice for the collective--well, I remember a story told about a joint training exercise between the USA and China, where an American general and a Chinese general both had the task of seizing a fortified hill. The American general put his soldiers to the task per their training. They set up machine guns with suppressing fire and slowly advanced on one position after another until they reached the top. After 45 minutes they had taken the hill with zero casualties and 20,000 bullets spent. The Chinese general then told his men, "I want that hill", and they rushed it en masse. They took it in less than 5 minutes. The American general said, "You took a thousand casualties!", and the Chinese general replied, "Yes, but we only spent 40 bullets!"

Click to shrink...

We can't get too into politics

But I like to make hierarchies out to be like familial and at times, even "romantic" relationships

For abusive ones, take note and beware of gaslighting

Women are less likely to be physically abusive or combative, but they're actually just as violent as men, they just channel their aggression in different ways. The feminine is more subtle compared to the masculine.....the feminine as such is NOT something you would watch out for.

Hierarchies based entirely on ability?

Not prepared to deal with whatever mind games that will occur later. At the same time, said hierarchy's organization will become vulnerable to outside forces because whilst they managed to conquer it's organization, they couldn't make it actually work or be healthy. They may even have driven off people to their enemy's side or they just quit or are already dead and/or ruined.

I have heard people use "Machiavellian" as a critique, but after awhile they're just being obsessed with being legitimately virtuous rather than any pragmatism. A lack of pragmatism for a virtuous man, means he won't be prepared for when/if someone stabs him in the back, because he simply assumes virtue of everybody else. Ideally a balance should be struck between self-interest and genuine care, very hard to achieve. Same with meritocracy and "the Game of Thrones" in the workplace.

A lack of genuine virtue for a pragmatic man, means because he treated everything as "enlightened self-interest" would mean sooner or later, people will abandon him when he's useless to them

 

[John_Oakman]

It's why Rome was endangered more than once by its own legions who campaigned so far away, they ended up following their closest commanders

Click to shrink...

Rome's civil wars started when the soldiers became more professional, but the root causes has little to do with said professionalism. For the majority of the early Republic Roman soldiers were more of the citizen militia type, and soldiering evolve into lifelong careers as Rome's conquests left the Italian peninsula and campaigning became multi year affairs. Adding to the problem was the client patronage system that's one of the main component of Roman culture, where the legionaries source of income (and their positions even) derives from their commander.

It's telling that for all the civil wars the majority of combatants involved agree on the existence of the Rome as a whole, the difference being who should be in charge of said whole. An example in contrast is the various Euasian khanates: they usually do end up splitting apart into smaller khanates through inheritance and fighting over succession.

 

[SuperPulp2789]

Rome's civil wars started when the soldiers became more professional, but the root causes has little to do with said professionalism. For the majority of the early Republic Roman soldiers were more of the citizen militia type, and soldiering evolve into lifelong careers as Rome's conquests left the Italian peninsula and campaigning became multi year affairs. Adding to the problem was the client patronage system that's one of the main component of Roman culture, where the legionaries source of income (and their positions even) derives from their commander.

It's telling that for all the civil wars the majority of combatants involved agree on the existence of the Rome as a whole, the difference being who should be in charge of said whole. An example in contrast is the various Euasian khanates: they usually do end up splitting apart into smaller khanates through inheritance and fighting over succession.

Click to shrink...

And there's the problem of yeah, being loyal to specifically the guy nearby

It doesn't help in their case, they were also being paid by said guy

I think part of Caesar's rise to power involved many soldiers coming home to find their families enslaved, competing with foreign slaves and other foreigners and the Bankers fucking things up....so what were they fighting for? What were they all working for?

 

[John_Oakman]

And there's the problem of yeah, being loyal to specifically the guy nearby

It doesn't help in their case, they were also being paid by said guy

I think part of Caesar's rise to power involved many soldiers coming home to find their families enslaved, competing with foreign slaves and other foreigners and the Bankers fucking things up....so what were they fighting for? What were they all working for?

Click to shrink...

It took a while for the modern concept of nationalism (of loyalty to the abstract concept of a nationstate rather than something far more personal such as the local ruler/community. That's when the contrast between warriors and soldiers (as far as the loyalty aspect is concerned) really took off.

 

[SuperPulp2789]

It took a while for the modern concept of nationalism (of loyalty to the abstract concept of a nationstate rather than something far more personal such as the local ruler/community. That's when the contrast between warriors and soldiers (as far as the loyalty aspect is concerned) really took off.

Click to shrink...

I think even that strikes a balance, problems arise when the community/village gets way bigger and can no longer be called one

Even families get abusive, neglectful and toxic. You become lonely even there.

 

[John_Oakman]

I think even that strikes a balance, problems arise when the community/village gets way bigger and can no longer be called one

Even families get abusive, neglectful and toxic. You become lonely even there.

Click to shrink...

I meant the object of loyalty rather than the intensity of loyalty, which is dependent more on the individuals in question.

Though modern military indoctrination do tend to make soldiers more loyal, though what they're loyal to is another matter entirely.

(i.e. in the American Civil War a lot of those who joined the confederates saw their state as the nation state in question rather than the USA as a whole (as the greater American identity itself wasn't completely formed yet), and thus their loyalty is to their individual states)

 

[SuperPulp2789]

I meant the object of loyalty rather than the intensity of loyalty, which is dependent more on the individuals in question.

Though modern military indoctrination do tend to make soldiers more loyal, though what they're loyal to is another matter entirely.

(i.e. in the American Civil War a lot of those who joined the confederates saw their state as the nation state in question rather than the USA as a whole (as the greater American identity itself wasn't completely formed yet), and thus their loyalty is to their individual states)

Click to shrink...

What Armed Forces had large numbers of non-combative "commissar" types? As in, clearly NOT gonna go into combat

Is there to ruin Social Trust and keep people afraid?


Also, probably not gonna be back, till at least a week, gonna avoid much internet again for a bit

 

[John_Oakman]

Another thing to consider about a "warrior" society is militarization: specifically that for every resource/labor/time spent on military/martial values is one (or rather a number between 0 to 1 if adjusting for cases of duel use) resource/labor/time not spent on everything else (the rest of the economy, among other things).

Of course most large nations/societies can't do with no military spending, but a full blown militarized society will be one that sucks massive amounts of talents away from everything else, and might stunt growth of such where it even affects military capabilities.

(think of the balance of militarization of a society as a curve similar to the Laffer curve)

A real life example of such would be Nazi Germany, whose technological prowess was more relying on existing institutions that predates them (and they did a lot of damage to those). A fictional example would be the Klingon Empire, where despite a centuries lead on humanity they were on a near peer level by the 23rd century and the Feddie's side piece by the 24th century.

 

[SuperPulp2789]

Another thing to consider about a "warrior" society is militarization: specifically that for every resource/labor/time spent on military/martial values is one (or rather a number between 0 to 1 if adjusting for cases of duel use) resource/labor/time not spent on everything else (the rest of the economy, among other things).

Of course most large nations/societies can't do with no military spending, but a full blown militarized society will be one that sucks massive amounts of talents away from everything else, and might stunt growth of such where it even affects military capabilities.

(think of the balance of militarization of a society as a curve similar to the Laffer curve)

A real life example of such would be Nazi Germany, whose technological prowess was more relying on existing institutions that predates them (and they did a lot of damage to those). A fictional example would be the Klingon Empire, where despite a centuries lead on humanity they were on a near peer level by the 23rd century and the Feddie's side piece by the 24th century.

Click to shrink...

The alternative, which is more recent, is channeling that warrior spirit into being aggressive merchants, builders, farmers etc

Or other very risk taking jobs or ones with more emphasis on refinement

But I can say whilst we have all gotten more materialistic and greedy, we're NOT really into getting more skilled in various forms

It's like how Asian Tiger Moms ruined Confucianism

They valued the job of Imperial Bureacrat more than the knowledge and learning itself, end result? Lots of brittle broken kids who no longer believe in themselves and an elite few shitty bureaucrats

 

[humon]

Division of labour is a good point. I recall Sparta was only able to become a warrior culture because they had Messenian slaves to do all their farming for them, which freed up the citizen class to spend their time training for war. Feudalism in the middle ages was pretty similar; the peasants did the work of keeping society fed, so the nobles could invest all of their resources into being more effective knights on the battlefield. In the modern era, mass mobilization for the world wars required many sacrifices at home, including running up large debts... debts that bring to mind the story of Moloch, where an ancient Greek city state was so desperate for victory in war that they would sacrifice their children to the bull-god of competition. In a sense, that's what debt spending does.

Yoda said, "Wars not make one great", and I would agree, in the sense that war is only ever destructive in an objective sense, in spite of it motivating innovation (kind of like the broken window fallacy), but I would amend it to say, "Wars not make one great, but losing them will make you dead"

So I think what we can extract here is:
- Having to fight wars all the time with different enemies will motivate a nation to sacrifice economic productivity to get really good at fighting
- Being really good at fighting will make it less likely that you have to fight, because other nations are afraid to go to war with you, and will pay tribute instead
- Not having to fight all the time can free up some resources to go back into economic production... if you're not rigidly ideological about your warrior culture and you haven't turned war into a racket
- Extended peace can also lead to decadence, as parasites within the ruling class divert those freed resources to themselves instead of anything productive (this is what bureaucracies/theocracies always do, until war kicks their asses)

I was reading Ray Dalio's book a couple years ago and he had a graph showing the usual cycle of a civilization using several metrics that rise and then fall in sequence. It started with a rise in education, which then led to rises in technology, which led to economic productivity, which led to gaining reserve currency status, which allowed the funding of a strong military that makes that nation an empire. The decline then starts with education being abandoned (degrading in quality and having its purpose corrupted), which makes technology stagnate, then the economy declines, reserve currency status is lost, and finally the military is the very last thing to go, when they can no longer afford to keep it running under the stress of war with a strong challenger.

 

[SuperPulp2789]

Division of labour is a good point. I recall Sparta was only able to become a warrior culture because they had Messenian slaves to do all their farming for them, which freed up the citizen class to spend their time training for war. Feudalism in the middle ages was pretty similar; the peasants did the work of keeping society fed, so the nobles could invest all of their resources into being more effective knights on the battlefield. In the modern era, mass mobilization for the world wars required many sacrifices at home, including running up large debts... debts that bring to mind the story of Moloch, where an ancient Greek city state was so desperate for victory in war that they would sacrifice their children to the bull-god of competition. In a sense, that's what debt spending does.

Yoda said, "Wars not make one great", and I would agree, in the sense that war is only ever destructive in an objective sense, in spite of it motivating innovation (kind of like the broken window fallacy), but I would amend it to say, "Wars not make one great, but losing them will make you dead"

So I think what we can extract here is:
- Having to fight wars all the time with different enemies will motivate a nation to sacrifice economic productivity to get really good at fighting
- Being really good at fighting will make it less likely that you have to fight, because other nations are afraid to go to war with you, and will pay tribute instead
- Not having to fight all the time can free up some resources to go back into economic production... if you're not rigidly ideological about your warrior culture and you haven't turned war into a racket
- Extended peace can also lead to decadence, as parasites within the ruling class divert those freed resources to themselves instead of anything productive (this is what bureaucracies/theocracies always do, until war kicks their asses)

I was reading Ray Dalio's book a couple years ago and he had a graph showing the usual cycle of a civilization using several metrics that rise and then fall in sequence. It started with a rise in education, which then led to rises in technology, which led to economic productivity, which led to gaining reserve currency status, which allowed the funding of a strong military that makes that nation an empire. The decline then starts with education being abandoned (degrading in quality and having its purpose corrupted), which makes technology stagnate, then the economy declines, reserve currency status is lost, and finally the military is the very last thing to go, when they can no longer afford to keep it running under the stress of war with a strong challenger.

Click to shrink...

I think at times the decline can occur in multiple fronts at once

And when it comes to decadence, a country maybe so used to winning, they lower the standards or even worse, decide to make wars purposely unwinnable, but they won't say that to their own people

It probably helps that for the upper class, less and less of their own will actively be participating in the war on the ground itself. WWI to the European Nobility's credit, sent a LOT of its own sons to fight and die there, it showed how they were willing to truly fulfill a Noblesse Oblige with them doing actual self sacrifice rather than just expecting others to sacrifice in their stead….it also traumatized the F out of them, which may have fucked over the general culture in the coming years

As I said before, it's possible to apply this "warrior culture" or competitiveness, aggression and risk taking to stuff like business. I am of the opinion that many are currently on a state of decay and a "Fuck that guy who actually has art/science/engineering/history etc skills for real, he's NOT brown nosing or being PC AF for us, he doesn't belong here, what a rude POS!" which would encourage a Kakistocracy or a Rule By The Incompetent, because it's easier to control those with no skills, because they know it's only because they have none that they were given those high positions over those with them

 

[humon]

It's lions and foxes all the way down.

Spoiler: I'm going to shitpost a bunch below

"You don't waste good iron to make nails. You shouldn't send good men into the army" - Chinese conventional wisdom right before the Mongols conquered them

Kakistocracy - rule by the worst
Khakistocracy - rule by those who wear khakis
Kekistocracy - rule by cartoon frog memes
Cacastocracy - rule by the shittiest
Cacostocracy - rule by cacodemons (but in puerto rico it means something else)

Speaking of being easier to control, I opine that child molesters are in fact the most likely to succeed in a bureaucracy, because they are by far the easiest to control. It's why Hollywood, the FBI, the BBC, and every other elite institution is so full of them...

Every time I see headlines about the world going to shit, I remember that 2006 movie, Children of Men, and I imagine myself as Michael Caine's character

Me in 2006: "Why are there so many jihadis in this movie?"
Me looking at news from Europe in 2017: "...oh"


Talking about making wars unwinnable, what's the quote... "Every great cause starts as a movement, becomes a business, and ends up as a racket" -- If you're being paid by the hour to deal with a problem (or better yet, 'cost plus'), the last thing you want to do is go ahead and solve it. It applies just as much to war as any other grift.

Lions are the warrior culture.
Foxes are the guys who figure out they can use the system to tell the lions what to do.
At least, for as long as the lions actually respect that system and are willing to serve it.
Which becomes less and less the case the more the foxes corrupt it and use it to abuse the lions.
Sometimes when that happens, the foxes need to look outward, or downward, and find new lions that are easier to control, but those guys end up acting more like hyenas.
Because they never respected the system, they're just here because there's free food.
The Lion King tells the rest of how that story goes.

Too many lions, and you're constantly fighting everyone.
Too many foxes and you forget how to fight.

 

[SuperPulp2789]

It's lions and foxes all the way down.

Spoiler: I'm going to shitpost a bunch below

"You don't waste good iron to make nails. You shouldn't send good men into the army" - Chinese conventional wisdom right before the Mongols conquered them

Kakistocracy - rule by the worst
Khakistocracy - rule by those who wear khakis
Kekistocracy - rule by cartoon frog memes
Cacastocracy - rule by the shittiest
Cacostocracy - rule by cacodemons (but in puerto rico it means something else)

Speaking of being easier to control, I opine that child molesters are in fact the most likely to succeed in a bureaucracy, because they are by far the easiest to control. It's why Hollywood, the FBI, the BBC, and every other elite institution is so full of them...

Every time I see headlines about the world going to shit, I remember that 2006 movie, Children of Men, and I imagine myself as Michael Caine's character

Me in 2006: "Why are there so many jihadis in this movie?"
Me looking at news from Europe in 2017: "...oh"


Talking about making wars unwinnable, what's the quote... "Every great cause starts as a movement, becomes a business, and ends up as a racket" -- If you're being paid by the hour to deal with a problem (or better yet, 'cost plus'), the last thing you want to do is go ahead and solve it. It applies just as much to war as any other grift.

Lions are the warrior culture.
Foxes are the guys who figure out they can use the system to tell the lions what to do.
At least, for as long as the lions actually respect that system and are willing to serve it.
Which becomes less and less the case the more the foxes corrupt it and use it to abuse the lions.
Sometimes when that happens, the foxes need to look outward, or downward, and find new lions that are easier to control, but those guys end up acting more like hyenas.
Because they never respected the system, they're just here because there's free food.
The Lion King tells the rest of how that story goes.

Too many lions, and you're constantly fighting everyone.
Too many foxes and you forget how to fight.

Click to shrink...

It's the whole "Good Times Make Weak Men, Weak Men Make Hard Times, Hard Times Make Strong Men, Strong Men Make Good Times" thing

But the beginning and the end can happen simultaneously

If you can find Noah and his Ark, do what you can to get aboard and hopefully actually contribute

If not, go and try and burn it down together with Noah, his family and all those animals inside

Carthage and the Barbarians could be your own friends/family/associates/coworkers/neighbors/etc who decided to move elsewhere because YOU and everybody else are making their work unnecessarily hard

It's kind of why I like Libertarian SciFi, instead of futilely trying to save the system, go make a new home elsewhere or in some small enclaves, like a black market community of sorts.

Though frankly, I doubt earth governments would try conquering those places, it would be admitting there are things beyond their current geopolitics and also perhaps admitting those they see as enemies whom they practically exiled and already hated, are doing something right and as such it's time to plunder. When doing so, would admit they have stuff you need, they built said stuff, why didn't you build that stuff instead? What inadequacies do you have that makes it so you have to raid someone who's never been your enemy?

 

[humon]

What inadequacies do you have that makes it so you have to raid someone who's never been your enemy?

Click to shrink...

Because fuck those guys, that's why.

I'm being serious. Cain killed Abel to eliminate the evidence that it was possible to do better. This is the essence of envy, and the guiding philosophy of weak men.

And the sad truth about libertarianism is: The side that wants to win always defeats the side that just wants to be left alone.

Earth governments would leave the outer rim alone only in so far as they find it prohibitively difficult to attack those far-off places. The driving ethos would be sour grapes. "I can't reach it so there's probably nothing of value there anyway". If it becomes easy to attack them, like with advances in technology, or if one of the clans tried to establish a colony in the Inner Sphere, and that colony then flourishes and outcompetes the Inner Sphere worlds a hundredfold... then IS would have to destroy it by any means necessary, just to save face.

 

[SuperPulp2789]

Because fuck those guys, that's why.

I'm being serious. Cain killed Abel to eliminate the evidence that it was possible to do better. This is the essence of envy, and the guiding philosophy of weak men.

And the sad truth about libertarianism is: The side that wants to win always defeats the side that just wants to be left alone.

Earth governments would leave the outer rim alone only in so far as they find it prohibitively difficult to attack those far-off places. The driving ethos would be sour grapes. "I can't reach it so there's probably nothing of value there anyway". If it becomes easy to attack them, like with advances in technology, or if one of the clans tried to establish a colony in the Inner Sphere, and that colony then flourishes and outcompetes the Inner Sphere worlds a hundredfold... then IS would have to destroy it by any means necessary, just to save face.

Click to shrink...

Problem is, if you hit back, you're no better than them

Alongside sayings like "kill him and you will be just like him" and "turn the other cheek" are kinda ingrained for many

Frankly, I think or recall, that the only reason the Loonies from Robert A Heinlein's The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, bomboarded not just the many military bases but also the civilian centers was to get rid of their ability to do war on them, plus the invaders already tried killing their kids

As even during WWII, the Allies bombed Dresden, Germany. They may have been the Nazi's, but lots of them were civilians.

When it comes to War Crimes, people are mainly looking at the sadism and greed, but since war is as old as at least the Stone Age. I think the reason so many warriors committed war crimes, was in order to destroy their enemies' ability to do war and maximize gains, like the number of children they will have

Speaking of children, i heard one theory, people reproduce so much, in order to possibly kill their enemies and/or their children, so as to confirm their bloodlines' dominance

 

[humon]

If you hit back without principles, using the same tactics that you find abhorrent, then you become like them. But if you hold to principles and use honorable tactics, you don't become like them (no matter how much the media might try to spin it otherwise). This idea that you're just supposed to stand there and take it when someone abuses you is just loser talk. You're meant to fight back, but to do it smartly, and not allow yourself to become irrational or fall into atrocity traps.

People have many children mainly when they live in a dangerous world where they don't know if their children will survive to adulthood. When the survival of children becomes more certain, people have fewer of them. The metrics for every country in the world sort consistently by the country's wealth, and when people from poor high fertility countries emigrate to rich low fertility countries, they have fewer kids.

I recall seeing something about an ancient Chinese philosopher who said it was important to grow the population in order to be competitive with rival tribes, and that there's some Islamist doctrine about outbreeding Europeans to defeat them demographically, but I think that's secondary to what I said above. When a man sees his child being born, his first thought is not, "Another warrior for my tribe; through our wombs we will conquer them". He's thinking something more like, "This is my future. This is what I want to live on after I die"

It is an ugly facet of Darwinism that one strategy for reproductive success is to commit genocide on all rival lineages. Chinese history may in fact be littered with the use of such strategy in different places and eras. I don't have a good counter to that except to say that genocide is easier said than done, and if you can't do it completely, you're in for a hell of a backlash. God said to Moses, "I will visit the sins of the father onto the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me". What I take this to mean is an argument built on the Rawlsian veil of ignorance: You don't know what the state of the world will look like a hundred years from now. You won't be alive then. You don't know which families and tribes will have power and which ones won't. You won't know what political ideologies will be popular, or what religions, or who all will have nukes. So, in that state of ignorance, what do you want the future to look like? Will it be a future where tribal groups try to genocide each other like Highlander, until there can be only one? Or will it be a future where we find a way to all get along and thrive, and the only people who have to die are the criminal misfits who refuse to play nice? Then, go and be the change you want to see in the world.

That's my secular argument for morality, in a nutshell. But of course, a sufficiently powerful WMD could undermine it, which is why I'm not completely ready to discount the deity yet.

 

[SuperPulp2789]

If you hit back without principles, using the same tactics that you find abhorrent, then you become like them. But if you hold to principles and use honorable tactics, you don't become like them (no matter how much the media might try to spin it otherwise). This idea that you're just supposed to stand there and take it when someone abuses you is just loser talk. You're meant to fight back, but to do it smartly, and not allow yourself to become irrational or fall into atrocity traps.

People have many children mainly when they live in a dangerous world where they don't know if their children will survive to adulthood. When the survival of children becomes more certain, people have fewer of them. The metrics for every country in the world sort consistently by the country's wealth, and when people from poor high fertility countries emigrate to rich low fertility countries, they have fewer kids.

I recall seeing something about an ancient Chinese philosopher who said it was important to grow the population in order to be competitive with rival tribes, and that there's some Islamist doctrine about outbreeding Europeans to defeat them demographically, but I think that's secondary to what I said above. When a man sees his child being born, his first thought is not, "Another warrior for my tribe; through our wombs we will conquer them". He's thinking something more like, "This is my future. This is what I want to live on after I die"

It is an ugly facet of Darwinism that one strategy for reproductive success is to commit genocide on all rival lineages. Chinese history may in fact be littered with the use of such strategy in different places and eras. I don't have a good counter to that except to say that genocide is easier said than done, and if you can't do it completely, you're in for a hell of a backlash. God said to Moses, "I will visit the sins of the father onto the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me". What I take this to mean is an argument built on the Rawlsian veil of ignorance: You don't know what the state of the world will look like a hundred years from now. You won't be alive then. You don't know which families and tribes will have power and which ones won't. You won't know what political ideologies will be popular, or what religions, or who all will have nukes. So, in that state of ignorance, what do you want the future to look like? Will it be a future where tribal groups try to genocide each other like Highlander, until there can be only one? Or will it be a future where we find a way to all get along and thrive, and the only people who have to die are the criminal misfits who refuse to play nice? Then, go and be the change you want to see in the world.

That's my secular argument for morality, in a nutshell. But of course, a sufficiently powerful WMD could undermine it, which is why I'm not completely ready to discount the deity yet.

Click to shrink...

You know, I get the Fall of Rome might be exaggerated

But if I could or would actually write some fiction

It would involve a frankly insane and incompetent society, trying to gain influence over its more comparatively stable and growing ex-members

Why? Because they're actually reproducing, building, rebuilding and going somewhere

After so many years of vilifying them, it's time to actually start co-opting and promoting them like the Romans did with the Christians