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63 About this deal
The government provides extensive welfare for the poor. In the case of the city of Rome, which had perhaps 1.2 million people around A.D. 170, government-provided "bread and circuses" (food and entertainment) helped to keep the masses content. About one half of its non-slave population was on the dole at least part of the year.
In 1976, at the age of 79, after a lifetime of service in the British army where he held high commands and fraternized with presidents and kings, Lieutenant General John Bagot Glubb, a.k.a Glubb Pasha, wrote a short but penetrating essay about the life cycle of superpowers called “The Fate of Empires”. The Age of Decadence – the empire is getting old… Civil dissensions arise. The boat is sinking, and instead of collaborating to repair it or to build a new one, political factions fight each other over the leftovers. Immigrants flood the cities. Memories of old rivalries reappear. In response to the sinking of the empire, the helpless citizens react with aggressiveness or with a mentality of “after me, the flood”, an atmosphere of pessimism and frivolity arises. People live for themselves and for the moment, thus accelerating the breaking apart of the empire. The corrosive effects of material success encourage the upper class and the common people to discard the self-confident, self-disciplined values that helped to create the empire. Then the empire eventually collapses. Perhaps an outside power, such as the so-called barbarians in Rome's case, wipes it out. Or maybe an energetic internal force, such as the pro-capitalist reformers in the Soviet Union, finishes the job instead. Many of God's faithful followers will be protected from the tribulation (Revelation 3:10). And, most importantly, Jesus promises eternal life to all who truly believe, turn from sin and persevere in their faithful obedience: "He who endures to the end shall be saved" (Matthew 24:13).
Internal reform—the rise of Han China
A community of selfish and idle people declines, internal quarrels develop in the division of its dwindling wealth, and pessimism follows, which some of them endeavour to drown in sensuality or frivolity. Ancient Greece is a peculiar example given their high development of reason, the shortness of its duration, and the suddenness of its vanishment. The Greeks achieved one of the most influential but short-lived civilizations by focusing exclusively on reason and population control (birth control, eugenics). Eventually, this “great breed” died out. Such analysis is an ancient pastime, of course. Everyone from Xenophon to Ibn Khaldun to, closer in time to Glubb, Oswald Spengler, had offered such analyses. Glubb doesn’t seem to realize this, however, or at least doesn’t advert to it. He says of his plan, “No such conception ever appears to have entered into the minds of our historians,” and he complains that all historical study is “limited to short periods.” I suppose if that means “modern British historians,” there may be some truth to his claim, but it’s obviously untrue on any wider scale. This points up my main complaint with this book—although it has some interesting things to say, it betrays a blinkered focus far too often. The British as a whole (with plenty of notable exceptions) were often accused of superciliously ignoring other cultures, other than as they intersected with England and the West, and while that tendency was probably exaggerated, for in many ways the British were far more cosmopolitan than us, Glubb’s analysis is, as they say, miles wide and inches deep. Maybe being narrow is inevitable in what is not a magnum opus, rather just two magazine articles (the second largely responding to criticism of the first), and being narrow doesn’t mean no interesting conclusions can be drawn, but it definitely undercuts the impact of the book. As long as the enemy fights he must be beaten relentlessly, but a defeated enemy and especially the civilian population must be treated generously.
The first half of the Age of Commerce appears to be peculiarly splendid. The ancient virtues of courage, patriotism and devotion to duty are still in evidence. The nation is proud, united and full of self-confidence. Boys are still required, first of all, to be manly—to ride, to shoot straight and to tell the truth. (It is remarkable what emphasis is placed, at this stage, on the manly virtue of truthfulness, for lying is cowardice—the fear of facing up to the situation.) The experiences of the human race have been recorded, in more or less detail, for some four thousand years. If we attempt to study such a period of time in as many countries as possible, we seem to discover the same patterns constantly repeated under widely differing conditions of climate, culture and religion.
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No model can describe reality in an absolute way, and this model, like any other, is an approximation of truth. But it can give us a glimpse to certain realities. As in the case of the Athenians, intellectualism leads to discussion, debate and argument, such as is typical of the Western nations today. Glubb, Sir John Bagot (1983). The changing scenes of life: an autobiography. Quartet Books. pp.58–59. ISBN 978-0-7043-2329-2. As people cynically give up looking for solutions to the problems of life and society, they drop out of the system. They then turn to mindless entertainment, to luxuries and sexual activity, and to drugs or alcohol. The Lost Centuries: From the Muslim Empires to the Renaissance of Europe, 1145–1453, Hodder & Stoughton, 1966, Prentice-Hall, 1967.
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