Destroying History

[Speaker to Animals]

I
The reason the idea of moral degeneration as a cause of civilization collapse is so popular is that it's true. Every civilization is founded upon certain moral principles and social divisions of roles and responsibilities. While it's true people can want to transform those guiding principles to "progress" the society, it's also true that every now and again you see something totally different masquerading as a legitimate reform movement, when in reality it's nothing more than people revolting against morality itself.

People uphold moral principles and roles and responsibilities when they believe in the society and that belief is gained if the society works for them. It's as simple as that.

If you don't have financial troubles, you and your family manage well, it's safe to walk in the streets, public services work and so on, I guess your are totally OK with your government. It doesn't mean that you are a supporter of them, you might disagree with the leaders, but you won't pick up a rifle and put your life at stake. Because you have a lot to lose. True revolutions happen only when people feel they have absolutely nothing to lose. And why would they feel so? Not because they are immoral degenarate scum, but because the society and the government isn't functioning, the complex economic system isn't working. And when it's not working for you, it only works for somebody else, then that "social contract" is off. The functioning of the government and the whole system for the individual defines how the individual thinks about the society. Hence why the economy is so important.

Even now, with the moral degeneration we have experienced since the 1960s, we are paying a hefty price. Our fertility rates are tanked.

Have to point out that fertility rate tanks with prosperity. Universally has been so. Rich have less kids than the poor. It's not about religion or values like that. Those muslim countries that are better of than others are seeing dramatic fall in fertility rates.

Our social welfare systems are facing insolvency in a few generations if this continues.

Again something that is in the economic realm.

In any case, you better think long and hard about the consequences of not just modifying the founding moral principles of your civilization but adopting the Bacchanalia-like idea that the only virtue is that there exist no virtues, and the primary social sin is to express disapproval for the worst of the degeneracy.

You think the leftists are for that? What defines degenaracy is quite subjective. How many here have had sex outside marriage / before marriage? I think many if not all. What extreme debauchery!

Would be easier to break it down into bulleted arguments if you care to be charitable.



(1) I agree that one of the factors that leads to this condition is that people begin to feel like civilization is a raw deal for them. Where I disagree is that, in cases of degeneracy like this, those feelings have no legitimate basis in reality. The poorest American lives an incredible life compared to most humans who have ever lived. I would rather live on a fixed income in America today than as some noble in medieval Europe, bet that. I like my air conditioning, fire and police services, hospitals, computer, smart phones, internet, entertainment and comfort, thanks very much. The problem is that people take for granted what they have and become envious of what some others have more than them.

When society truly begins to break down and lots of people are truly disenfranchised from the system, what you will see rather than the degeneracy is people simply ignoring the central government and slowly becoming more parochial. This is what happened in Western Europe in the early middle ages. This idea that there will be a global system, in my opinion, is laughable given the obvious decline of our civilization. Maybe the next iteration of western civilization will be able to do it. Not sure. But our more immediate progeny are headed into another dark age of some kind where things are far more localized even though there likely still will be an internet and communication networks. Things are likely to become much more religious and traditional by the end of this century -- either because the area was overrun by traditional peoples like Muslims in your case, or because of the backlash to the degeneracy and the reformation of society as happened in previously.

(2) I disagree that fertility rates tank simply because of prosperity. Prosperity was increasing for a long time and it didn't affect the fertility rate. The fertility rate took a giant shit because of feminism, the pill, and the legalization of abortion. You are confounding variables in my opinion.

(3) You make a quip that our welfare system's insolvency due to the rise in degeneracy and corresponding fall in fertility rate is merely an "economic problem". That particular symptom is an economic problem, but the cause is moral degeneracy. Period. In America, we have killed off at least fifty million people who would otherwise have lived, worked, and hopefully contributed. God knows how much innovation we lost. But we can roughly calculate the impact on taxes and solvency of government. Demographers and economists go into this in detail in the documentary titled Demographic Winter.

(4) What defines degeneracy is not subjective at all. It is the moral regression of a people. Every civilization is founded upon a foundation of virtues and morals. It's possible to slowly change those over time, but what we are seeing today is not an attempt to transform the foundation of civilization, but to obliterate morality itself. The maxim of the SJW is that every form of sexual deviancy is permissible and the worst social crime is to express disapproval. They make a virtue out having none. That's moral degeneracy.

[Speaker to Animals]

Youtube feed is Johnny on the spot today.



People need to stop making excuses and learn to appreciate what they have.

[C-Mag]

Youtube feed is Johnny on the spot today.



People need to stop making excuses and learn to appreciate what they have.

Freeman just looked him in the eye and literally called Bullshit!
From that moment on Freeman could have said anything and little boy Lemon would have gone along with Freeman. Not that Freeman was wrong or bullshitting on anything, it just shows how weak Lemons daily tripe is on CNN

Lemon is such a punk.

[BjornP]

StA, try reading these pointers on how to read historical sources:

http://www.uky.edu/~dolph/HIS316/handouts/sources.html

Some time ago de o also posted a helpful guide to historical thinking, notably historical method and source criticism:

viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2291&hilit=source%2A

You misinterpret me saying that one should take Roman sources saying that foreigners worship Roman gods with a grain of salt, as me making myself more of an "expert" than ancient Roman sources. Let me give you a few ancient Roman historical sources whose stories even you would feel compelled to look at critically...

And now, as wickeder things advance more fruitfully, and abandoned manners creep on day by day, those abominable shrines of an impious assembly are maturing themselves throughout the whole world. Assuredly this confederacy ought to be rooted out and execrated. They know one another by secret marks and insignia, and they love one another almost before they know one another; everywhere also there is mingled among them a certain religion of lust, and they call one another promiscuously brothers and sisters, that even a not unusual debauchery may by the intervention of that sacred name become incestuous: it is thus that their vain and senseless superstition glories in crimes.

Nor, concerning these things, would intelligent report speak of things so great and various, and requiring to be prefaced by an apology, unless truth were at the bottom of it. I hear that they adore the head of an ass, that basest of creatures, consecrated by I know not what silly persuasion, a worthy and appropriate religion for such manners. Some say that they worship the genitals of their pontiff and priest, and adore the nature, as it were, of their common parent. I know not whether these things are false; certainly suspicion is applicable to secret and nocturnal rites; and he who explains their ceremonies by reference to a man punished by extreme suffering for his wickedness, and to the deadly wood of the cross, appropriates fitting altars for reprobate and wicked men, that they may worship what they deserve.

Now the story about the initiation of young novices is as much to be detested as it is well known. An infant covered over with meal, that it may deceive the unwary, is placed before him who is to be stained with their rites: this infant is slain by the young pupil, who has been urged on as if to harmless blows on the surface of the meal, with dark and secret wounds. Thirstily - O horror! they lick up its blood; eagerly they divide its limbs. By this victim they are pledged together; with this consciousness of wickedness they are covenanted to mutual silence.

So... must be true, then. Christians were incestous, debased egalitarians bent on destroying the Roman empire from within. Right? An ancient Roman source says so. Shall we try Tacitus now?

But all human efforts, all the lavish gifts of the emperor, and the propitiations of the gods, did not banish the sinister belief that the conflagration was the result of an order. Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called "Chrestians" by the populace.

Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilate, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their center and become popular.

On the matter of the Roman charge of "superstition":

https://www.christianitytoday.com/histo ... 12&id=4269

This charge of superstition was perhaps the most serious, and most common, pagan accusation.
...

But what did the Romans mean by superstition? According to several prominent Roman authors, including Cicero and Plutarch, it was any offensive religious belief or practice that deviated from Roman norms. Certain groups were given to such "irrational" religions, in which they acted unpredictably—without regard for the rites, rituals, and traditions of Rome.

Plutarch, the famous biographer, suggested that superstition was even worse than atheism: "The atheist is unmoved regarding the Divinity, whereas the superstitious people are moved as they ought not to be, and their minds are perverted."

So, I guess early Christians were Bacchanalistic, proto-Cultural Marxists, too? You know, if you do not want to interpret or analyze the historical source.

[Speaker to Animals]

I am uninterested in debating anything with you. You have proven that you have no intention of debating or discussing anything charitably. You keep trying to debate points that have nothing to do with the original argument, constantly moving goalposts, throwing out giant wordwalls of nonsense to obfuscate your lack of argument, and then you would go so far as to delete all the quotes I listed in which Roman historians themselves explicitly contradicted you when you replied to my post. Fuck off. You burned this bridge.

You can't even admit when you are wrong when a person quotes a Roman historian saying the opposite of your claim. So, honestly, just fuck off.

[BjornP]

That aside, though, obviously a foreign cult with a decidely non-Roman way of looking at the world DID worm its way into Roman society and slowly destroyed it from within.

Which didn't destroy the Roman state, though. Constant barbarian incursions that eventually became settled foederati within the Roman empire, that eventually became independent states, the reintroduction of conscription which annoyed major landowners, loss of tax base to the foederati and finally the loss of culture as what was once a Roman empire ceded more and more control - more or less voluntarily - over to Germanic warlords. Eventually there was no Roman army anymore - only the foederati...and then the last Roman emperor in the West was simply forced to step down because an Ostrogoth king told him to.

If I remember correctly you do dismiss Gibbon and the "Christianity caused the Roman empire to collapse", right?

[C-Mag]

Personally Bjorn I think you have a great separate topic here, Carlinesque I say

The Christian Cult in Rome

[SuburbanFarmer]

I am uninterested in debating anything with you. You have proven that you have no intention of debating or discussing anything charitably. You keep trying to debate points that have nothing to do with the original argument, constantly moving goalposts, throwing out giant wordwalls of nonsense to obfuscate your lack of argument, and then you would go so far as to delete all the quotes I listed in which Roman historians themselves explicitly contradicted you when you replied to my post. Fuck off. You burned this bridge.

You can't even admit when you are wrong when a person quotes a Roman historian saying the opposite of your claim. So, honestly, just fuck off.

[Speaker to Animals]

Oh I am not going anywhere. I am the only one presenting arguments with sources at this point in any case.

It just got to the point where I realize that guy is a total fraud and wasting my time. He has no intention of debating anything honestly. I caught him flat out lying and deleting quotes to avoid admitting he was wrong.

At what point am I supposed to admit this guy doesn't actually have an argument is only here to obfuscate and lie? I am not wasting my time with a person like that. By all means, fly off the cliff in his clown car along with him. I will stick with what Roman historians had to say about what happened rather than Bjorn's unsubstantiated feelings.

[BjornP]

I am uninterested in debating anything with you. You have proven that you have no intention of debating or discussing anything charitably. You keep trying to debate points that have nothing to do with the original argument, constantly moving goalposts, throwing out giant wordwalls of nonsense to obfuscate your lack of argument, and then you would go so far as to delete all the quotes I listed in which Roman historians themselves explicitly contradicted you when you replied to my post. Fuck off. You burned this bridge.

You can't even admit when you are wrong when a person quotes a Roman historian saying the opposite of your claim. So, honestly, just fuck off.

For the last time: It's not the source, it's your reading of the source, that is wrong. Take some personal fucking responsibility for your own posts, man. Don't pretend that what I am dismissing is the source. I dismiss your READING of a PART of the source, namely the "Dionysian" wife part in the Plutarch source. That's what it's always been about.

As I wrote earlier, Plutarch is a valid secondary source on Spartacus. Doesn't mean that you know how to read him. You try reading that anti-Christian ancient Roman source now. See if you think a historical source must always be treated like someone with a full knowledge of what he's talking about.

So I am not going to "admit I'm wrong" to please your fragile, insecure, little ego, no. If your idea of someone having an "intention to debate" simply means accepting that everything is all relative and that your feelz is as good as both my education and experience as well as the entire academic field of history and common goddamn sense, then you need to find yourself a safe space to crawl into. I don't cater to that "everyone's thoughts are equally valid" bullshit if they clearly have no idea what they're dealing with.

I'll leave you with a part of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle:

A.D. 793. This year came dreadful fore-warnings over the land of the Northumbrians, terrifying the people most woefully: these were immense sheets of light rushing through the air, and whirlwinds, and fiery, dragons flying across the firmament. These tremendous tokens were soon followed by a great famine: and not long after, on the sixth day before the ides of January in the same year, the harrowing inroads of heathen men made lamentable havoc in the church of God in Holy-island, by rapine and slaughter. Siga died on the eighth day before the calends of March.

I guess Monte's gotta watch for dragons. They apparantly herald attacks by ravenous heathens. Hope he's trained with a ballista.