>The stages of the rise and fall of great nations seem to

That table isn't really accurate, being that the Assyrians were around forever, and only half of the Roman empire collapsed.

It would seem that our friend is attempting to mold the evidence to his theory, rather than the other way around.

I think if you begin with a criteria like "greatness" that can't be measured, you're going to get shit results.

Also, read some Joseph Tainter nigga.

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>>1655560
chinas already (2016) overtaken usa in gdp

This "progress" or "cycle" of civilizations is the biggest meme there is. There's nothing inherent in the basic ontology of the world that says civilizations ALWAYS and HAVE TO obey this social cycle, it's totally made-up. It's projection of human emotions onto a series of social movements that really transcends any individual's attempt to distill it into an "Age of X, Y, and Z." It's bullshit frankly.

>>1656966
I wonder what the next Opium war will be. China is taking all the white people money. Last time, China did this, we fucked them up with drug addicts. Whats it going to be this time?

With the west becoming a druggie land, wouldn't it have a hard time managing its resources effectively?

>>1657000
buy chinese silver mines in us bonds imo & annex fields for cannabis growing

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>>1657000

>>1657000
china prob start buying out everyone else too busy bent over and sucking american cock mines with their us debt if they know whats smart for them and anybody who knows whats smart for them wont accept usdollars any which way, toxic asset

>>1655560
>ottoman empire
>"fell" before suliman the magnificent

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>>1656984
this

we look for this pattern obsessively as westerners because it happened twice in our history, owing to the broken geography of Europe making it difficult for a central authority to maintain a throttle-hold on power, but also because it is woven into the very fabric of our identity, as the Judean precursor culture survives not one but two separate Diasporas by simply outlasting their enemies, so there's this belief that civilizations naturally grow decadent and fall, leaving the virtuous to pick up the pieces.

There's just one problem with this hypothesis; on the other side of the continent China has existed as a unified country for nearly 2,200 years surviving dynastic changes and foreign conquest. Ancient Egypt survived way longer than even that, surviving through interregnums and dozens of dynastic cycles.

Civilization doesn't "fall", it can, however, experience sclerosis. Over time a larger and larger percentage of society's wealth falls into the hands of fewer and fewer individuals who find ways to avoid taxes and risky investments and invariably squander most of their wealth on political speculation, until their economy grows so flimsy that the slightest external shock (be it a foreign invasion or a natural disaster) can be enough to send the whole house of cards crumbling to the ground. For the Romans this was the hunnic migrations exacerbating the problem of super wealthy aristocrats paying huge numbers of Germans to fight as mercenaries fueling their bid as usurpers while the infrastructure built by the Julio-Claudians and Flavians grew dilapidated and fell into disuse. Life improved for the average Italian when the Ostrogoths seized Italy which flourished under their rule until most of the population was slaughtered and its infrastructure razed during the horrendously destructive Byzantine reconquest, leaving a power vacuum which was quickly filled by the Roman Catholic Church, which played the role of a 'decentralized' central bureaucracy

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>purposely excluding Egypt
>counting Alexander's conquest (which only lasted less than a decade) and Hellenic age as the peak of Greece's rise and fall, even though post-Alexander there was still a bunch of sovereign polises and leagues that doesn't make it different from Classical age (479 - 330), which had the most art and humanist achievement
>Roman Empire stops being an Empire in 180 for some reason
>Byzantine Empire doesn't exist
>Ottomans are no longer significant after 1570 even though they keep the West away
>Chinese and Indian dynasties don't count
>France, Italy, or the Netherlands don't count either because they're nations! (but Greece, Rome, and Britain some how do)

>>1655560
Confirmation Bias

>>1655560
Well no, since he unironically talks about "decadence". It's bullshit.

>>1656984
It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, really.