Re: (TFT) Empire or Transition

[Richard Walters <rick.walters@yahoo.com>]

Interesting, but personally I hold the view that societies follow a figure 8
pattern depending on the distribution of power.

:: See attached diagram ::
Stage 1: Many Local Powers, people ruled mostly by fear, enslavement of
enemies

Stage 2. Empire, one local power dominates larger area, enslavement
of cultures

Stage 3. Representative Rule, laws apply to the leadership,
capitalism dominates, slavery abolished

Stage 4. Volontary Slavery, people
surrender control to centralized system 

So, with these categories, we might
see:

Stage 1 moves to Stage 2 and then back to Stage 1.  But then it moves to
Stage 2 and conditions are right this time to move to Stage 3.  Eventually the
society rejects Stage 3 in favor of Stage 4 and soon there-after finds itself
back in Stage 2.

It's easy to see it happening.  The feudal state of robber
barons is conquered by one group strong enough to maintain order and impose
law.  The larger kingdom or empire does well for a while until it comes time
for a new leader and the people disagree over their choices.  At this
point the state either it goes back to a broken status, stays an empire, or
graduates to a representative collective.  If the people gain control, they
quickly scramble for money and influence in a capitalistic free-for-all.  But,
after a while the people tire of the impersonal competitiveness of capitalism
and surrender their freedom to a central authority that will equitably
distribute resources and wealth.  If this is successful, then the people
become "volontary slaves" to their own system.  Before long the system itself
becomes corrupt and a leader emerges with enough popularity to restore the
system, but the system never returns to the socialistic collective,
 instead it becomes an empire.

Good Fortune,
Richard 


----- Original
Message ----
From: David Michael Grouchy II
<david_michael_grouchy_ii@hotmail.com>
To: mailing list <tft@brainiac.com>
Sent: Monday, May 11, 2009 2:25:57 PM
Subject: (TFT) Empire or Transition

>
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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