(TFT) Empire or Transition

[David Michael Grouchy II <david_michael_grouchy_ii@hotmail.com>]

> From: maou_tsaou1@netzero.net


>



> So is Machiavelli correct, and empire is the sign of a healthy state,

> or was Plato correct in asserting that it is a sign of corruption?
> I think those questions are for the GM to decide for themselves.



  I guess this depends on how much one knows about history.  I find the five
great empires to be just a transition state for humanity from one level to the
next.  Empires are the gap between civilized cultures, as they take down and
dismantle the old system and install the next one.  Sparta flairs up, takes
down Persia, then they go down.  Greece spends a long time "remembering"
Sparta.  Rome goes down and Europe spends thousands of years remembering them.
Babylon went down and people spent thousands of years remembering them.



But actual civilization exists in the aftermath and in learning.  Machiavelli
is a book designed to get ambitious men to believe in themselves and their
right to be famous for great virtue.  These are usually among the best men of
their generation save one prerequired flaw.  They do not love learning.  A
scholar will never fall for Macavelli.  The reason all empires fall is that
they are brief transition periods between civilizations.



Like a relay race there is a brief moment when the runner hands the baton to
the next runner.  an empire is that brief quater of a second moment when both
runners are connected by the baton.  The fools who follow the prince believe
that they are ruling over all of reality and for all time.  When they are no
more than a fly who has buzzed into relay race only to be struck down by the
very baton they would dream of landing on to rule as it is passed from one
hand to the next.



Of course the fly does achieve some small measure of immortality as the
runners ask each other.  "Did you see that freakin fly?"  But I have yet to
see the "Library of Alexander" be built in their life time.  And most of these
self styled "prince's" don't even rate a library.  Library of Ceasar anyone?
Of Napoleon?  No those men have sacrificed their own souls to history.  We do
not see them again after their flare out.



David Michael Grouchy II





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