Comments by "buddermonger2000" (@buddermonger2000) on "A Study of Decadence(When Societies Commit Suicide)." video.

Do you think you could elaborate and give examples on how?
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The Roman Republic fell into decadence and stopped being functional at which point a military dictator took power and started the imperial phase where they pulled it out of decadence but at the cost of all other pillars of society which is why once the system ran into child emperors it finally fell. The Senate may have survived, but its legitimate power clearly did not after the republican period. And to point out the other part: the wars of religion were a period of barbarism caused by unchecked power and vigor of the population where they had loyalty to God and their communities. They were willing to die for their countries. This is why we saw it on the rise. The doctrinal differences were often part of political disputes more than anything else (which is why we saw catholic France team up with the protestants in the numerous coalition wars), and the nobility were still very much using everything they could for the purpose of gaining power and influence. During that period, it was determined through control and military prowess. Even the wars of religion were very rarely purely about religion, but even then, it's about teachings and the afterlife that do not impinge upon your ability to see the world as it is. Usually, you kind of have to when you're getting invaded every 10 years.
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@Laotzu.Goldbug Chinese communist China effectively runs on the same grounds as dynastic China with its central bureaucracy and control of the population. Realistically the difference between dynastic China and communist China is the difference between Burbon France and Republican France. Nowhere near as huge a change as you're attempting to say it is. The British Raj ruled India through its historical ways of local princedoms and local power which was the same way India had been run forever. On top of that, biggest thing which changed India was the abolition of the caste system. It's an incredibly large charge which can't be discussed enough as it removed one of the central pillars holding back Indian society. However India has always had a strong society and so democracy simply fit as the next logical form of government. Also the delay or restart of that which happened in the west still look millions of lives in the case of the black death and finding of the new world. And realistically this idea that it's inevitable is complicit in the decline.
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@innosam123 Yeah honestly a lot of the initial expansion wasn't initially that profitable either. Kind of just started exploring and then went "Oh let's just see what else is here" and then found something profitable. And many many people are willing to take significant financial losses to do this as well as the fact that it requires significant investment to further bring down the cost. Realistically, the limiting factor here is that there will be no real gain for a long time and so the only way to pursue it is via a childhood dream basically.
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@Laotzu.Goldbug Literally just said when. Or did you not catch "century of humiliation" (China) and "century of foreign rule which also had a fundamental restructuring of society" (India who afterward abolished the caste system)
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@Laotzu.Goldbug Well no it can be reversed. It just requires a very large cultural shock to do so such as a "century of humiliation" or century of foreign rule that fundamentally restructured your society afterward.
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@OLDGREGG315 Better than the alternative it seems. Barbarism vs decadence if you will. As it's still a stronger society.
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Well the point is that Europe doesn't. And realistically, in terms of global economy if it's impressive that the US has maintained a stable quarter that kind of just supports his point. They've ceded their power in comparison as they haven't been dynamic enough and so China has largely taken their place. On top of that, since their reconstruction where they dominated 36% of the global economy they should've been in an even BETTER place to move things in their favor than the US. But instead have moved lower. And on top of that those places mentioned just never really started as civilizations in the first place. There was never barbarism, civilization, and then decadence. They haven't even started on that train and so honestly their counter-point is in being a counter-point to the model in the first place. Also if anything you can argue that the middle east is in a state of barbarism tbh and that turkey can lead it to civilization.
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If you don't get the word out you can't get something to change. Also worth noting that he is working toward that in other ways with friends if I remember correctly.
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@Faustiangemerald Well that's not what he's discussing
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I think my only issue with this comment is that put in context I'm wholly confused to if your initial statement is simply a part of using the same format in a counter-point or a real position you hold.
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Yeah not sure what you mean here
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@sinoroman Yeah that's an interesting one. To be fair though, new Qing historiography largely does support this view as they didn't have much of a foreign policy and on top of they only attempted to modernize AFTER losing a war even if they did also use guns.
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@moritamikamikara3879 Why would that be prohibited in Britain? And honestly if that's the case with regard for the military it really does sound like there's little hope for it
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To be fair, probably has to be normalized for population as those barbarian invasions failed with none of the population, and then on top of that, when those invasions were repelled were when Rome was less urbanized.
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Well sadly the issue is that the left is actually going around and killing people (often beating people to death), and in a few times were armed with guns. On top of that, the right is a mostly unrelated Coalition that hold a lot of the older values which allowed our Society to function for so long so in terms of overall social impact they're less important. As an overall social impact, they're also in many ways less in power. The ideas of social justice have spread to all sectors of the elite (even business) as the counterculture of the 60s won out and became the mainstream culture in many ways. These all tie much closer to the left wing being the greater danger. The right has little institutional power so for as bad as many of their extremist movements are, they have little overall impact thus they really don't deserve the same scrutiny in the context of macro shifts in society. Also the right tends to purge their extreme wings MUCH more. Most of the right doesn't associate and condemns such actions and in many ways is forced due to not having institutional control as they'd otherwise be purged (when you have values, practices, and ideas most people can agree on you will likely exist even when institutional power doesn't necessarily like you as normal people then start to notice due to no longer having the popular support to purge them). Compared to the left which realistically only has its extreme in the mainstream due to tacit agreement and factional institutional control thus not necessitating such purges.
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Also while correct about MLK, he was explicitly a socialist and on top of that what did survive were the things that most people could agree on. Also he was martyred.Thus what survived in history was the agreeable while the disagreeable fell to the wayside.
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@JellyAntz Yes increase the industrial production and crash the cost which decrease standard of living.
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@innosam123 Yeah fur trade and lumber took a fair amount of time to be profitable and needed a fair amount of people to start being profitable. Also, even worse, initially the colonies weren't self-sustaining despite the fact that the environment could sustain a population for the most part. It was that bad in the early days and they needed outside support to stay alive. When they didn't well they resorted to cannibalism.
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That's true. But most of those are usually the descendants of actual material elites, and on top of that much of it. On top of that, it's still the lefty elites who are voting for that war as it's become a court-like scenario with fake manners and fake virtues. Also that local sociology professor usually votes to make said utility more expensive which hurts the poor.
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@sebastianprimomija8375 Okay then you've lost an entire portion of communication because people don't know what is or isn't a restaurant by your definition.
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@sebastianprimomija8375 You know the fire nation was Japan right? Also the Song kind of had a reason to fall having lost to the manchu banner armies of the Later Jin. AAAAND squashed their nascent industrial revolution. But otherwise you're correct it could've industrialized first.
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@sebastianprimomija8375 Well yeah but they're French and this is in English so that thought doesn't translate without an explanation. Also realize it came off a bit weird overall but my point was just to explain since most people don't understand that to be restaurants.
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@sebastianprimomija8375 I mean I'm not doubting it... my point was if the American view of restaurant is what's taken shape, then you need to explain what the French and establishment view of it is and go from there.
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@sebastianprimomija8375 Just a clarification of what counts as a restaurant in this context??
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Yeah a little bit bit at the same time the overall consensus is that this video is kind of stupid. He has a tendency to have good points and bad ones in the same video but on a closer look this one is just kind of bad. You can see the ideological throughline through his videos with this being yet another point on there, but this one is just kind of filled mostly with empty platitudes. He has some points in the fact that the bedrock of society in the west (which has been outlined in other videos and include but are not limited to nationalism, Christianity, and belief in your own people) is actually to some degree being uprooted by social justice (via strict secularization and pushing against any sort of national identity while simultaneously pushing the idea that whites are inherently racist among other aspects), but then throws in ideas of rural vs urban which just miss the mark in any historical sense, end up completely misrepresenting China and India (trying to fight nomadic horse archers without guns was incredibly difficult and fighting strategic geniuses always is difficult), and other such failures of scrutiny. Frankly the biggest failures he has is confirmation bias and a failure to read history outside of Europe after the fall of Rome besides popular knowledge as he tends to rely on that a lot and here it bit him squarely in the ass as they became lynchpins for his argument. I think it's just the fact that in many ways people who are paying attention kind of feel it to be true so many people who agree wholeheartedly do so. However, upon scrutiny, his arguments fall flat when attempting to draw evidence outside of the classical period since he clearly just doesn't know it.
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@christiandauz3742 ???
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@haldanebdoyle How do we know that and where have you pulled that from? What is your evidence here?
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@Thecognoscenti_1 Do you think you can point me to that essay or possibly copy paste into here?
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@Thecognoscenti_1 Okay so there's only two things on here I'll address: sadly the Chinese did not invent the first grenades or the first breech-loading firearms (unless the Zi Mu Chong, slightly earlier than the similar Che Dian Chong, is not what is being referenced here). This is slightly more suspect but apparently Henry VIII had one and he died in 1547. This is important since that gun was apparently created in the latter half of the 16th century but hey for a difference of max 40 years half of the world away, little difference at that point. In terms of repeating firearms the first was Kalthoff repeater in 1630. And on grenades, the Byzantines used grenades (and possibly personal flame throwers) about 200 years before the Song Dynasty was established. Other than that, I thank you for pasting that comment for me and am happy to have read more about this interesting part of history less popular in the west. Chinese history is so dense it's hard to get into and the whole history community had a hard on for the world wars with the furthest back usually being the 18th century in Europe.
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@Thecognoscenti_1 Absolutely. Nothing here is refuted and Chinese gunpowder was incredibly important. Sadly no-one had yet figured out guns by the time the Mongols showed up.
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@louisazraels7072 So how did 3% remain 24%?
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