I saw an article or something recently, what was it, that suggested that Rome would be a good model, or more precise, the fall of Rome would be a good model for what is going on in the world today. Some of these apocalypticists find Rome to be a good comparison to the USA.
And I can see some similarities, although it takes me a minute to conjure them up. But I quickly switched my focus to Greece, again to be more precise, Athens. This intellectual city of freedom and democracy was the earliest attempt to provide a space for men to live free in large numbers. As messed up as it was, it was an amazing experiment if you will to offer a new way of living upon the earth. It did not last as long as the USA has, perhaps we have learned a thing or two from the Greeks. That’s debatable of course.
The simple point for me is that Rome was an extension of the more tyrannical rule that came before Greece with its new political attempts to self govern in its culture. Rome does not offer the same starting ground for a comparison to the USA. It has simply been more dramatized. And it seems more of a forgone conclusion that when America does die, it will die like Rome did at the hands of invading barbarians. This simplistic and often misunderstood theory is not serving us well. It should not be a foregone conclusion that we will do ourselves in as Rome did nor should it be concluded that Rome would so weaken herself as to invite the invasion that took place.
At this point, I feel like speaking out of both sides of my mouth because we do seem to be allowing an invasion at our southern border, don’t we? Will this be the end of the US as we have known it? Quite possibly. Can America recover from this massive inflow and even prosper from it? I don’t know. I have yet to hear a cogent argument that it can. It seems like there are people that want this inflow to take place but keep quiet about it as long as it is happening. In order to maintain or even accelerate it, they seem to do little more than deny that it is even taking place.
What troubles me is another theory I have and that is that we often gaze in the wrong direction. Greece did not destroy itself because it allowed mass invasion. It would be invaded no doubt, Persians and eventually by Romans or Italians.
It is the period that led up to that which concerns me the most and that is the self warring among Greeks themselves. While we look to our borders in other words we take our eyes of our own issues and difficulties. What Greece failed to teach its citizens was how to get along with those that don’t think like you or agree with you. The same is true for us today.
If you watch what is happening to our city states as it were, we too are tribalizing and moving to the ones we agree with. A large movement back and forth across the country is taking place and it is an attempt to find social and cultural peace, even financial peace in the new space. The numbers say that people are moving to Texas and Florida and leaving California and New York. Instead of engendering policies that help us to live in peace in those places, we are creating policies that continue to divide us along our polemical lines of thought.
This was the same failure of Greece, the purest form of democracy at the time. As good as things were there for the citizens, they took up sides and eventually went to war with each other, giving up on internal discourse and conviviality.
No the tyrannical government of Rome may teach us some things about our future, but it is a poor model for what we face today. I’m not saying don’t look for lessons there, I’m suggesting that there are more important lessons elsewhere and I don’t see many looking there.
I’ve resisted the urge to use the Bible as a source of peaceful living for several reasons. You would think as a pastor and chaplain for almost 40 years I would be all over that source of wisdom. More on that later I suspect. How we use the Word of God today is quite another topic and so very rich with possibilities that I will not ignore it forever. For now though. I look to our own tribalism and look to push back on it as a means of making our lives better. It will not. Separating ourselves into warring factions has never proven to be a way to build a better society.