I haven't had a chance to read your book Peak Human yet, but this makes a lot of sense. When you close borders and limit trade, you're depriving the world of ideas, innovation and progress. Remember Carl Sagan's reflection at the end of Cosmos. He poop pointed out that the Mediterranean Sea made it easy to escape the tyrants and keep trading goods and ideas.
Valuable observations. Interestingly, Plato/Socrates thought that the solution of Athenian problems was a sort of ideal state that without social mobility and that would be isolated, located away from the sea and protected against the poisonous influence of the outside world...
Who is the "you" in your question? Regardless, I love some of the stuff you post. Do you know "The Hegelian Dispatch?" Also a good read. I will consider making a pledge after taking your Substack for a drive. Cheers.
PS. I will think of you when I make my pilgrimage to Napoleon's tomb in May.
The author of the post I suppose. I was quite proud about my post, haha.
Unfortunately I haven't actually had the time to write much about Hegel directly due to my work for Ave, there's only some allusions in my article "Why is European Federalist rising". Hopefully soon though.
I think this inverts the causality. Trump isn’t the cause of our problems, nor is he driving them. He is the consequence of a long failure by our political experts. This failure produced Trump and MAGA and has left the so-called experts with no idea how to respond.
The cause of America’s decline is the same as the cause of any civilization’s decline: the dominance of bad ideas, produced and sustained by a deeply degraded intellectual class.
There is always a category of people who believe that they have better knowledge and superior ideas than do the ‘so called experts’ and the ‘deeply degraded intellectual class’. They sell themselves as saviors to the populace, rightly pointing out that the people in charge have made a lot of mistakes (and often grossly exaggerating those mistakes). They claim to be uniquely energetic and imaginative, and promise that they will make Athens great again. Yet once given the opportunity to implement their half-baked ideas, it only hastens the decline.
The leaders who try to replace bad ideas with even worse ones benefit from the ability to blame their predecessors for all of their own bad outcomes. They use this period of opportunity to grab even more power and impose even more radically bad ideas.
We clearly need people with better expertise than those who got us into this situation, and who don’t seem to have any idea how to get us out of it.
Politics is the only profession where no real familiarity with the subject appears to be required. At best, we’re often offered opinions that would be unremarkable in an undergraduate seminar.
The problem is in believing that the “right” people will solve the country’s problems. Voters are demanding what no political leader or expert can deliver. Modern societies and economies are far too complex for anyone to comprehend much less manage. The best government can do is, in Adam Smith’s words, provide “peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice.” When it tries to do what it can’t - heal the planet, deliver equality, correct histories wrongs - it will fail to do what it can.
By golden ages, I mean great cultures, not great empires and territorial expansion. Some of those creative, dynamic civilisations were empires, others were city-states.
I haven't had a chance to read your book Peak Human yet, but this makes a lot of sense. When you close borders and limit trade, you're depriving the world of ideas, innovation and progress. Remember Carl Sagan's reflection at the end of Cosmos. He poop pointed out that the Mediterranean Sea made it easy to escape the tyrants and keep trading goods and ideas.
Valuable observations. Interestingly, Plato/Socrates thought that the solution of Athenian problems was a sort of ideal state that without social mobility and that would be isolated, located away from the sea and protected against the poisonous influence of the outside world...
Did you see my X post from more than a week ago?
https://x.com/AveEuropaPolicy/status/2012848185639678045
No I hadn't, but thank you, this is great. I make exactly this argument in Peak Human.
Who is the "you" in your question? Regardless, I love some of the stuff you post. Do you know "The Hegelian Dispatch?" Also a good read. I will consider making a pledge after taking your Substack for a drive. Cheers.
PS. I will think of you when I make my pilgrimage to Napoleon's tomb in May.
The author of the post I suppose. I was quite proud about my post, haha.
Unfortunately I haven't actually had the time to write much about Hegel directly due to my work for Ave, there's only some allusions in my article "Why is European Federalist rising". Hopefully soon though.
Will check out!
Pagans persecuting Christians is more myth than reality.
That is true for most of Rome's history, but not for the late empire, especially Diocletian.
Time for a new global democratic and free human civilisation
I think this inverts the causality. Trump isn’t the cause of our problems, nor is he driving them. He is the consequence of a long failure by our political experts. This failure produced Trump and MAGA and has left the so-called experts with no idea how to respond.
The cause of America’s decline is the same as the cause of any civilization’s decline: the dominance of bad ideas, produced and sustained by a deeply degraded intellectual class.
Perhaps, then, it is a downward spiral.
There is always a category of people who believe that they have better knowledge and superior ideas than do the ‘so called experts’ and the ‘deeply degraded intellectual class’. They sell themselves as saviors to the populace, rightly pointing out that the people in charge have made a lot of mistakes (and often grossly exaggerating those mistakes). They claim to be uniquely energetic and imaginative, and promise that they will make Athens great again. Yet once given the opportunity to implement their half-baked ideas, it only hastens the decline.
The leaders who try to replace bad ideas with even worse ones benefit from the ability to blame their predecessors for all of their own bad outcomes. They use this period of opportunity to grab even more power and impose even more radically bad ideas.
We clearly need people with better expertise than those who got us into this situation, and who don’t seem to have any idea how to get us out of it.
Politics is the only profession where no real familiarity with the subject appears to be required. At best, we’re often offered opinions that would be unremarkable in an undergraduate seminar.
No other serious profession operates this way.
The problem is in believing that the “right” people will solve the country’s problems. Voters are demanding what no political leader or expert can deliver. Modern societies and economies are far too complex for anyone to comprehend much less manage. The best government can do is, in Adam Smith’s words, provide “peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice.” When it tries to do what it can’t - heal the planet, deliver equality, correct histories wrongs - it will fail to do what it can.
Civilization, not empire? The difference is enormous.
By golden ages, I mean great cultures, not great empires and territorial expansion. Some of those creative, dynamic civilisations were empires, others were city-states.
Thank you