The Roman Empire still Rules
7 reasons why our civilization has barely evolved beyond the Roman Empire*
Reporter: “Mr Gandhi, what do you think of Western Civilization?” Mahatma Gandhi: “I think it would be a very good idea.”
Ah, most of us, Westerners, believe we live in a modern world that has evolved very much since the days of Rome. Nothing is, sadly, further from the truth. Technological advances don’t mean civilization! It is our human care and respect for others and the world that has hardly advanced at all. In fact in some cases, like damaging our environment, it even has become worse.
Edit 2024: Francis Ford Coppola explains why modern America reminds him of ancient Rome. Yes he made a movie about it.
In fact, many basic credo’s of Rome still rules at the core of many of our convictions, principles, and actions. Here’s seven of them:
1. The Empire has to grow and conquer to stay healthy.
The economy of Rome made conquering almost necessary. Raising armies is expensive. So to pay for them you have to conquer and plunder. We see the same in many video games, like Total War. To win, or even survive, constant expansion is needed. The same with our big corporations and the USA: grow or die. And they grow aggressively. Natural resources are plundered, people enslaved, armies or employees stationed in faraway places.
The FED and European banks consciously make sure there’s always a little inflation when they can. Because inflation means pressure to start earning more. It means companies and people need to expand their income. It creates constant strive, which is good in the sense of economic growth. The question is, who really benefits from it? Unlike in the game Total War, Rome discovered there were limits to expansion. And others learn and copy your trick. Hence we see ever bigger corporations bullying it out. Meanwhile, we have evermore more products in-store, we buy from fewer and fewer companies, that just love the dream of monopolies, as did Rome. Basically, Capitalism is theft.
Is this still necessary? No! There are many business models possible where growth is not needed. Some family businesses have existed for ages without growth. The unchecked growth of big corporations is, for me, similar to cancer. Whole economies ran on circular processes, that we (the West) consciously damaged, so our goods would find a market and our needs found cheaper sources. Economical experiments and research like with transition towns and permaculture show that alternatives are not only possible, they are very much healthier for our planet too. The economy should support the whole to flourish, not endanger us all.
2. Slavery feeds the upper classes.
In Roman times the slaves lived among the wealthy. Many illegal underpaid workers today have no choice but to condone bad treatment for fear of expulsion. Many very underpaid workers in thousands of sweatshops, plantations, and factories in especially Asia, South America, Africa work for a minimum wage, with so little overhead they haven’t time to even consider other options. They are caught in very bad conditions (with fake contracts about which corporates say, ‘hey, that’s not slavery, that’s a business agreement.’) with no way out. All these hidden poor workers build our iPhones, grow our coffee & chocolate, often tend our gardens, clean up our shit after us. And then the American prison system is so full of forced labor, and full of prisoners with unfair harsh sentences (10 years for stealing bread? One year extra for refusing commands?) just to fill up workplaces in prison. If you don’t want to work, you get isolation. This whole sick system should be brought to justice as robbery or at the least as a scam. Company owners running such schemes should be called to justice. Because it’s not okay!
When listening to Black American culture, or to Native Americans we can see how long and deep the pain of slavery and genocide lie. How much suffering, low self-esteem, and sometimes bitterness is carried over to the next generations? The Christian bible says: “Do unto others, what you would want to be done unto you.” Yet we keep on doing it, all dressed up nicely with more fake papers (the Native Americans know about those) or hidden away in huge factories in faraway places, or the huge private prison system, outside media attention. If we don’t demand justice for them, we will come to a point where we won’t get it ourselves. Then raw power will be all that’s left to defend ‘our’ interests. Priding our ‘civilization’ should mean living deep morals. Then the West would make real friends. Sadly our civilization is in that department as deeply lacking as the Roman Empire was, only with better PR, probably because of the global presence of new media and Hollywood glitter (see bread and games).
Is this still necessary? When you believe the lobbyists of big corporations yes. I say no! Their power would be over when everyone got paid fairly. Self-sufficiency for everyone, fair prices would make the rich poorer and the poor richer. Is that bad? No, it will create more stability in the world, more peace, less need for war. Your t-shirt and your meat might raise in price, and the CEO might lose half his income (from two to one million), yet it does make a huge difference for all those who hardly can survive on 16 work hours a day.
Slavery hurts. It hurts for generations. It makes people think they are better than their victims. If the consumer is king, then buy local and as social as possible. It is happening. There are many positive initiatives, yet these are still considered counterculture. And that is very very sad. And no law seems to pressure big corporations (similar to Roman plantations or mines) to make real work of it. So the pressure for honest laws, that respect people's rights.
3. Displacement to have power over people.
The Romans would take Germans and post them in Egypt, and post-Egyptians in Spain. Thus their soldiers could not rise up against their commanders, or they would never ever be able to cross the Roman Empire to go home. In WWII the Germans posted (i think) Georgians on the Atlantic Wall. Today many foreign workers, from cool ex-pats to Philippine housemaids can only be in another country as long as they have a work contract. Far from their own environment they often have to allow mistreatment and, yes, slavery dressed up as fair contracts.
A second-way power-through-displacement is created is consciously creating turmoil in potentially powerful countries, psychological displacement in your own country, and just across the border in a refugee camp. The War on Drugs, the poverty of Africa, the turmoil in the Middle East all keep local economies from growing healthily and becoming truly free of corporate, foreign influence. Added to this can be the mass migrations because of war and poverty. Right-wing politicians make us worry about these immigrants and refugees, and make us forget what system actually created them.
A third form of displacement is the distribution of foods. Monocultures mean that many poor working on coffee fields, cotton fields, etc, must import food for daily life because their own environment doesn’t provide it anymore. This gives much power to the distributors (read corporations) and takes it from locals, who are now pressured to accept, once again, unfair prices.
Is this still necessary? No! We value jobs such as crafting, farming, cleaning, nursing, even teaching, or soldiering so low that they barely can survive. When farmers become enslaved by corporates like Monsanto, you know it’s wrong. We should not only reward the amount of profit someone brings in; we should also reward the contribution to society as a whole (including its health), the pressure and pains that come with the job, and see that the work on the floor actually realizes things. That bringing in money at the cost of others or nature is valued is madness. That high ranks can determine their own salary is madness. The top of the pyramid should work to carry the lower ranks, not eat them. Stealing from the poor, manipulating contracts on them should be, because it is, a crime. Only then the system may become sustainable. Currently, it is not. And it is the same leaders that are bringing us towards a very possible new system collapse, as they did in 2008 and, and well actually all before that one too. Also, monocultures are not healthy for the land. Diversity or integrated agriculture is actually much healthier. It helps people to survive when the market for whatever they produce collapses.
4. The justice system is basically unfair.
Our Justice system is so Roman at the core. It is very much ritualized revenge in many cases. The state will commit revenge for you if it seems justified. The state uses justice as an enforcement tool if you don’t agree with their rules, or want to live freely outside of it. We think this is normal because it is the dominant system. But does that make it civilized? Can that be different? Very much, but who even thinks about raising that question?
It’s still very much class justice. Is it really true, that the best way to solve a crime, is to have a debate between two, unequal, sides in front of a third (judge and or jury)? Two sides of which one side will always have invested more time, more money, more pressure than the other side. Can you fight a Corporate Giant on your own? Does a black boy in the USA have a chance with his pro bono lawyer, against a state department convinced he did the crime, even willing to tamper with some evidence to make the case stick?
Justice Black has stated, “There can be no equal justice where the kind of trial a man gets depends on the amount of money he has.”
And things are getting worse. Elites mold laws by sword (read gun) point, lobby and fund pressure groups, or just pay huge bribes; it all has the same effect: they get benefits others don’t. You know it’s sick when CEOs can ravage the environment or underpay large numbers of people, without consequences, while one black boy smoking a joint can be put in prison for a senseless amount of time. And with his story, we’re back at slavery.
Is this still necessary? No! I have asked many people in the legal system if anyone is really trying to innovate the way it worked. They claimed they were so busy learning all the little laws, they didn’t have time for the bigger question. Some resist change. The biggest resistance to change comes from the American privately owned prisons. ‘Hey there’s profit here, so let’s keep it this way.’ There is little, that is hopeful. Here are a few examples. Mediation works very well in small cases, like conflicting neighbors, and doesn’t make one the winner and the other a loser. In Norway drug addiction, and small crimes that come out of that, are treated as a disease. The results are stunningly positive. In some African villages (where they never had prisons at all, before the West imported them) they not only look at the thief, they also wonder what society as a whole has neglected that this person felt the need to steal. In others, they stand around the ‘criminal’ with love in a circle until he is ‘healed’. The deeper lesson of all these hopeful things is that everyone needs to feel connected. Most crimes happen out of disconnectedness, lack of empathy for others, and pure focus on easy profit. Does that describe many of our leaders too? Think about that for a bit. Because most poor and middle-class people want to care, feel connected, loved, and part of something bigger. That is also why crime keeps rising when punishment means you are only pushed more out, and prison kills your capacity for empathy. And that is why all those who bring humanity, warmth, and attention into prison are the biggest key to positive change.
5. Bread and Games
Many poor people shout louder for their football team than for the injustices all around them. Many lower classes talk more about certain television shows or celebrities than they do, about how they could change their conditions. The dominance of silly media with many popular shows about totally nonissues, or blowing small matters out of proportion. Even the billions spend on advertising keep delivering this basic message: buy this, then feel good. The air time for messages such as these politicians stole from you, this is how much. These corporations kill the planet. These politicians gave them the contracts to do so. Your T-shirt doesn’t say made by a 10-year-old girl. And your food label in the supermarket doesn’t say picked by a 12-year-old boy, grown on GMOs, sprayed with chemicals that may damage your fertility. In fact, the reality along the line is kept away from us. Hey, we prefer the games. They are more exciting and feel less threatening than all unfairness that makes our private shopping so easy.
And on top of this. Today you better say Hamburgers and Gaming. This unhealthy food kills the planet, yet the profits are too good to stop. And the logic of many video games is ‘It’s okay to kill for what you want.’ ‘There are always bad people out there, out there to get you.’ ‘You need to expand and loot to grow.’ Most games are all about ‘us vs them’. I hear there is a lot less empathy for others among young people, more agreeing with hard decisions, because ‘hey, that’s how it works.’
And then a friend immediately added, look at the focus on violence as entertainment. Indeed. Bloodshed in movies and games sells. The number of games that add ‘splatter scenes’ is growing. Do we feel less and less, that we need more and more hard stuff to even feel affected by what we watch?
Is this still necessary? If you are defending the system and want a status quo, then yes, this is very necessary. I see new ideas are needed! Bread and Games is a huge industry. And here is my fun part. Like it is now is not necessary. I played (cooperative) games that had no ‘us vs. them’ and still made many people enjoy and run, like Switchball. I played games that helped to care and act to improve life. On the internet we not only find more distractions, we also find growing networks of people discussing solutions and new ideas. So enjoy your game, but don’t think it’s life. It’s business. And if you seek entertainment, seek that with also explores new ideas and or makes you think. I do hope for game designers to come up with new ideas. Consider Scifi or fantasy worlds, with totally different economies, experimentation with different rules of law, and see how people respond, or act through them. We just don’t need more of the same, ‘kill them, get rich, get better stats’.
6. Patricians and Plebeians
Yes, there are classes. Like the Romans, we do have upper-class people (patricians as they called them) who seemed to have everything and lower people (plebeians they called them) who just counted less. And yes, one can achieve a rise in class. And even though there are examples against the rule, to keep the American dream (lie) alive, the jet-set in Europe and the USA is mainly white upper-class. And I don’t know how it works in Asia, but also there is an elite of very rich with many privileges too. And these very rich get away with stuff poor people shouldn’t even consider trying, like not paying taxes. Superrich people live in unrestrained wealth and currently, around 3 individuals own more than what the bottom 50% of the USA owns together. They have luxuries no normal person can attain unless they become lackeys of the clique at the top. Money now decides the political agenda and even laws can be bought, making the whole unjust class system even worse.
Is this still necessary? No, not like it is. Yes, people have different roles and functions in society. Yet for people, their role and function are not one and the same. And the talents or longings of their kids might be entirely different. Letting the poor be uneducated, or limit their opportunities to develop is actually intellectual theft from society. It degrades growth as a whole. Owners meanwhile have advantages from a large poor uneducated minority, stupid enough to consider voting Donald Trump. No wonder things don’t really change much, even when the need for it is huge. Unfairness breeds corruption. Corruption breeds violence. People are not the same, yet there should not be higher and a lower for reasons of looks, age, culture, or beliefs. Perhaps the division should focus less on wealth, and more on, how are you helpful for the whole?
A kind of structure can be found in all societies. In this, we are even more tribal than the Romans. You’re with us, or against us. You, with those clothes, tattoos, designer classes, and that car are part of that group. And you with that skin, well you must be one of ‘them’. It is natural to want to belong, to be ‘in’ and never to feel ‘out’. Yet our whole behavior towards others that we consider ‘out’, diminish not only their potential for true growth and understanding; it damages your own as well.
“The United States is now relearning an ancient lesson, dating back to the Roman Empire. Brutalizing an enemy only serves to brutalize the army ordered to do it. Torture corrodes the mind of the torturer.” ~ James Risen
7. Roman citizenship is a treasure
Outside Rome are the barbarians (read terrorists?). Only those that behave very much like us may acquire the much-coveted status of Roman, eh, I mean American or European Citizen. We build walls to keep them out. We fear what disease, different ideas, or terrorism(!) they might bring. As with Roman senators, our current leaders look civilized, talk behaved, and sensible, yet they incite the wars, they live low morals and they keep on damaging the planet in the face of overwhelming evidence, to protect their interests. In fact, our leaders are the barbarians dressed up as people and many ruffians may turn out as people, dressed up as street urchins. Cultural looks are not the same as the actual effect on others and on the planet. We should look less at those that fire guns in strange countries, and more at those of us, who sold or gave them the guns, and the reasons to fire them.
Is this still necessary? Well as long as we keep all those outside very poor or in turmoil, they want to flock to our lands. So, no! When we would be fairer, truly more real as well, they wouldn’t have to close our borders. If history has shown one thing, it is that every human being of every color, background, or culture can become a genius that presents the whole world with a new treasure. Once we thought blacks had no soul, women couldn’t learn or vote, criminals were not human. Those all have been lies, we told ourselves for a reason. As long as we keep telling those lies about potential enemies, poor, uneducated people we damage the potential of the whole, we damage them and we narrow our own potential as well. We need to start learning from other cultures, those that are still left, and see what they have to offer as solutions to problems we face. We need to be more humble, for, as I showed here, our ‘civilization’ has not really progressed much since Rome. We need to invite a bigger diversity of voices and colors to be part of the conversation, of what we can and want to be as a whole.
Some very hard and very hopeful words to end with
I stopped at seven, but there are many more similarities. I haven’t even mentioned Roman Mafia politics, how they made deals and had a very corrupt pyramid of power, where one hand washed the other. I could add how the USA is considered an Oligarchy (by Princeton), with a few rich families running the place, just like Rome for most of its time. I started with a picture pointing out the obvious looks of many government buildings looking like Roman temples. I didn’t explain the infighting at the cost of the whole, yet almost never enough to sink the ship (until the end of the Western Roman Empire). We could add the tribal politics and mindset, that is still so present in our organizations. We could compare Roman Gods with Hollywood stars, both clubs of bickering beings, inciting massive gossip and adoration. In other points, I may have hinted out the unscrupulous politics of just going and conquer at the cost of the conquered. We saw Rome just march its armies onward and we see the USA and its allies having military bases everywhere. We see our corporations plunder natural resources and leave whole countrysides poisoned, ravaged and bare. Oh, you think they have honest contracts? Then why don’t the locals earn anything? Why doesn’t it visibly boost the local economy in a visible healthy way? Does permission from dictators count? We see our bigger nations seeking and finding reasons to place military occupation near important natural resources for the corporates the politics are working for. I trust and fear full-time historians might see and know many more aspects. And is it likely real change will happen soon? I fear not, because the ‘Romans’ in our midst make way to good money out of it.
And you might say ‘but what about our democracy?’ I say: watch this. Or follow up this article with this one; “Our leaders are not our leaders anymore.” from which I edited a few points into this article.
“If you look at great human civilizations, from the Roman Empire to the Soviet Union, you will see that most do not fail simply due to external threats but because of internal weakness, corruption, or a failure to manifest the values and ideals they espouse.” ~ Cory Booker
Can we make a change? Is it even possible?
It is very, very, hard to change a deeply ingrained principle or conviction that has survived centuries. Like a virus, it changes form and name, yet the essence of the system stays the same. Many people, even the victims of the system, may defend it wholeheartedly, as it is the world they know. They believe the upper class has their interest as the heart (because they say so), and believe the lesson is, ‘If you don’t act enough like us and with us, you’ll fail’. Currently, the whole world is in danger of failing because of these convictions and attitudes. A huge economical system collapse can happen. New wars can happen, with mostly poor people, fighting other poor people, probably over resources we could do without if we really innovated and shared more.
When you don’t want that, stop trusting the carriers of the system. Because it might be us, the ‘civilized’ middle class who believe the stories and protect the elite from change. Our votes, or apathy, towards politics, keep their logic in power. Rather question, challenge and shock their beliefs. Start building self-sustaining networks that can work around the elite. For centuries most economies were small, local, and self-sustaining. We broke those down for profits. Build them up again. Make friends across cultures, learn from the wisdom of elders of other civilizations. Be kind to everyone. Protest crazy rules, like TTIP (if you don’t know about this scam you’re behind) or that the genome structure of basic food, like broccoli, can be patented by corporations. Buy local. Pay better salaries to those under you, or let them vote if you earn that pay raise. And a thousand other little things that help lessen the power of the elite, and value the humanity of those at the bottom, and the health of our planet much more. Once you started seeing and acting, you’ll find you’re not alone.
