The Rise and Decline of Nations and Civilizations

[@SJSUPhilosopher]

I read in the press that William Bennett was a big time gambler but his suggestion that Jared Diamond participate without any notes was a risk so great that not even Diamond himself wanted to take it. Note how Bennett frames the second questions in terms of how you would bet it. He has gambling on his mind more often than I had supposed. He should talk to N. N. Taleb about risk management.

[@michaels4255]

Bennett liked to play slot machines. Quite a bit, but I don't know whether that really qualifies as a "big time gambler." Trying to forecast the future or suggest policies for the future is always a gamble, because the future is never known precisely in advance and lots of unforeseeable things happen.

[@hvgyhyvfhjuvhjjgfgjfhsdfbr401]

just like all those before it, this will be a turbulent and violent century.

[@vex6559]

you'd be correct on ''lost''...I bought a GED book years ago as a reference for my older ages whence I might forget the little things (and the fact that books are overvalued and content specific books cost a fortune)...High School Student have a GED education....as most subject covered in this GED guide is basic...essentially 1 or 2 paragraphs of an individual history subject and move on...its all over...were gonna have a demographic disaster, agricultural disaster, governmental disaster, and on and on and on...its not a lack of confidence...its a lack of a future...though we're still in our 20s, we know there's nothing for us...thats why most never try

[@6doublefive3two1]

Niall Ferguson crushes it once again.

Great debate! Thank you!

[@ranahki]

Very exciting debate with lots of learning opportunities, thank you.

[@YTC1234]

Anyone that has a gif of Kit Lasch has earned my respect.

[@VoteLaborOut]

Very good speakers very clear points thanks for sharing

[@my2cents.4677]

That “debate” was not about the rise and decline of civilizations but simply about the US-China geopolitical rivalry. The panelists did not once evoke the incapacity of the Earth to sustain the rapacious modus vivendi induced in the western civilization by the Industrial Revolution. I was deeply disappointed that the genuine issue of civilizational decline was discussed pretty much as economists would discuss the rise and fall of stocks on Wall Street. Countless genuine reflections on the topic that this panel covered only in its title can fortunately be found elsewhere in reference works like Toynbee’s “A Study of History”, Ronald Wright’s “A Short History of Progress”, Derek J. de Solla Price’s “Science Since Babylon” and so many others.

[@dreznik]

who is the guy on the right (w glasses) and what book does he reference?

[@YTC1234]

As usual, the historian educates (dominates) the non historians. Meanwhile the sky is blue.

[@kamelkani4051]

Good ideas but I don't see the debate that honest or that deep many points missing in many levels

[@toberses11]

It's clear Niall and Jared are in leagues of their own. Each specializing in different aspects of countries. Niall in Finance, economics, military etc and Jared in Ecological aspects, they type which many historians don't cover.

[@ManHeyuan]

Not sure about Jared, but Niall is certainly over-rated.

[@michaels4255]

@@ManHeyuan Jared is even more overrated.

[@michaels4255]

Sadly, there is no one to cover the sociobiological contributions to rise and decline, which many historians also do not cover.

[@pinchebruha405]

@@michaels4255 dosent Jarrod actually cover the biological sociological aspects in his work?

[@LePlerome]

You don't think that calling every military infliction of deaths a "genocide" kind of cheapens the notion?

[@U47ik8jKT]

I would be in the Arnold Toynbee camp - historically they rise in response to a great challenge and fall when they fail to meet a new challenge. Civilizations tend to be status quo societies that do not adapt to change readily. What makes the American experience unique is that culturally and institutionally we are, and have always been since our founding, a society that accepts change. It is built into our system and our very nature. We are not a status quo society.

[@michaels4255]

We accept some changes - changes in a certain, familiar (if sometimes extreme) direction - but changes in a different direction are intensely and sometimes fanatically opposed.

[@omitsura]

26-27 min. Major success of public education!

[@williame.eduardsapience6520]

Great debate, indeed.

[@HeySergioMata]

We need to push for a type of neo-classicism. There is currently an art movement right now called classical-wave which grew from vaporwave. It's a cycle and we need to balance or we will hit the floor.

[@pinchebruha405]

Yikes these guys were spot on …9years later 😢

[@U47ik8jKT]

We live in democratic societies that have some degree of a free enterprise system that advances us technologically. When wealth is concentrated within the society in only a few and it comes to dominate the free exercise in a democratic political process; or when a growing segment of society is dependent on government for their well-being in lieu of their own individual initiative, then we have a problem. We have a vibrant society and a dynamic economy that should serve us well into the future.

[@michaels4255]

I agree there are problems resulting from extreme social inequality, but it is also true that some very stratified civilizations, far more stratified than today, have thrived for a very long time.

[@U47ik8jKT]

Historically the societies that have done the best were the ones that could advance technological development and exploit that technology. If the benefits of technological progress can be spread throughout the broader society, all the better. Freedom, the free exercise of markets, and law have been key ingredients to our success; but, Western history has advanced technologically at times without these key ingredients.

[@LePlerome]

The same thing can be said for Japan and South Korea, by the by. They, along with Taïwan and Vietnam, ought to go nuclear - to regain the control of their geostrategic destiny and deterr potential Chinese imperialism. Let's not forget that China has already given the nuclear bomb to Pakistan for certain, and to North Korea probably, and is practicing an agressive policy of containment of India (through a tight-knit alliance with Pakistan on one side, and Burma on the other).

[@pinchebruha405]

9 years later looks like Nature has finished Pakistan for the most part with her nuclear flood….😢

[@LePlerome]

PS: The EU is not a federation; it is sadly a bastardly mixture of loose confederalism and Jacobin centralism.

[@LePlerome]

And thanks for all your help in the Southern-Ossetian affair as well. Threaten Russia absurdly after the fall of the USSR by keeping alive NATO and continuing to engage in containment of Russia by expanding it ever more closer to Russia, and then when Russia decides to take a gamble and indeed act as if the Cold War was still on by invading Georgia, don't lift a finger to have them retreat and behave like a normal European country, of course. No economic sanctions, nothing.

[@michaels4255]

Russia did not invade Georgia. Georgia attacked the Russian army because its strongman president who came to power in a US backed coup thought the USA would have his back, which he claimed that Sec of State Condi Rice had promised him orally. US disavowed any knowledge of such a promise, so his attempt to pick a fight with Russia over territories that had been added to Georgia by Stalin but whose citizens carried Russian, not Georgian, passports and did not wish to be part of Georgia, came to nothing. Frustratingly, this story was repeatedly and I suspect deliberately misreported by Western media, just as the Ukraine story is being misreported even more egregiously.

[@markj8268]

These people talk like the classroom is the end all be all... I'd rather have a dominant military than a dominant education system

[@hecke1959]

God gives kingdoms to as he wills,when Babylon lifted herself up in her pride ,she was taken down.

[@JurijPopotnig]

Is there a law or any other rule that says there is no possibility of competing ideas in socialist politics or Chinese politics? Even a dictator has different advisors i.e. competing ideas, but I'm no dictator and no uni prof so I probably have no clue at all. Don't call it cooperation call it networking so it's more capitalist. LOL

[@michaels4255]

The problem is that ideas rarely (please don't cherry pick exceptions, rarely does not mean never) get put into practice unless there are actors independent of a central authority who can put them into practice even if the central authority disapproves. You need a certain amount of decentralization for innovation to occur.

[@corpuscallosum4677]

The new humanity should examine the declines yet recovering of 2 ancient but existing cultures: India and China. The mercantile class was always despised and written into laws as inferior by India and China because of the unscrupulous natures of their profession. Even the pre-Industrial European cultures held the same standard. The wealthiest and most successful of this class could only support the brains of the society, never esteemed and set as models for the 90% of the population. It's almost infantile for cultures to ignore this class' basic profit-first greed. I think the instillation of this core human standard in children from nursery on will be the beginning of our ascendance into a harmonizing global village. It's not the money that's dirty, it's our ALLOWING for it to lead humanity that's the pollution culprit. We have to awaken, using vintage mirrors, to the loss and comprised of these primal virtues of humanity. There should never be education that teach, to the master degree, of the shortest path to gratify the material profit margins and came out to be the saviors of civilization. This Smitten by Adam (Smith) mentality should really stopped. All core virtues that's been passed down since human civilizations should be restored. A firewall ( laws, education, society's sanctions) should be built intrinsically for our next generations. These experts are still looking at the trees, no matter how carefully they dissected the trees.

[@pinchebruha405]

44:58 Wow he is describing America right now…yikes 😢 we’re going the way of England

[@YTC1234]

Moderator Is clueless and totally lost. He realizes he is intellectually overshadowed so he relies on jokes and such to make himself feel better.

[@colonelchuck5590]

300 million wealthy people in China and 1 billion poor.

[@ManHeyuan]

The international order of 1750 was different from that of 1800. The international order of 1800 was different from that of 1850. The international order of 1850 was different from that of 1900. The international order of 1900 was different from that of 1950. The international order of 1950 was different from that of 2000. G7 nations apparently do not possess the intelligence and intellectual capacity to realize that time and tide wait for no man. Good luck trying to freeze time and stem the tide of history! 😂 Changes in the international order had little to do with the actions and policies of any single nation alone. Changes occur all the time, whether you like it or not, irregardless of what the preeminent superpower of the day may think! 😎👌 Savvy policymakers should have the wisdom to facilitate a peaceful transition of geopolitics, instead of running the fools’ errand to forcibly preserve what cannot be preserved. 🙄🤦🤷 Heed this advice, or cataclysmic disasters of epic proportions shall befall all stubborn nations that defy the will of God, or the laws of nature if you like, in the foreseeable future! Maybe some world leaders need to return to the classrooms for real history lessons, even though according to Hegel, nations never learnt from history.

[@michaels4255]

There was very little change to the international order between 1815 and 1914.

[@hecke1959]

God gives kingdoms to as he wills,when Babylon lifted herself up in her pride ,she was taken down.

[@cesarrodriguez8893]

Your an idiot!

[@GuitarosaurusRex]

No, hecke1959 is absolutely correct, and you are, in fact, wrong. And very arrogant about it, I might add.