Words To Live By : Improvise, Adapt, Overcome

[rideforever]

 

[Marblehead]

Well, what can I say.  That's the way it was.  Don't know about now.

 

You look for a few good men and all you see is women.

 

Little wonder women demand the same respect as men get.

 

[rideforever]

In the past I would have said that mankind had been clever enough to make material comforts and then had nothing else to do, and entered an era of corruption.
But is this true ?
The same pattern seemed to be in the Fall of the Roman Empire, however their material possessions were far below ours, at least outwardly.
And perhaps in the collapse of even more ancient civilizations they believed they had all material possessions - even though by today's standards they were very little.

So what is the real reason for decay ?
Is it that people start believing that they have everything they could ever want (even if those things are different in every era) .... and this belief leads them to not having anything to do ?
Is it that if the material growth is too fast, then it is like a branch of tree that had grown too big for the root system, and collapses?
They sort of overshoot their foundation.
Is it that mankind cannot take the next step in evolution into the spiritual world ?

Perhaps if we strip away these different cultures, strip them off outward material appearances, what we would find is the rise and fall of honour-spirit-self-contact ?   And it is the rise and fall of that, that is the determining factor ?

Or is it that mankind, being asleep, is at the mercy of unconscious cosmic forces and to comprehend the state of a culture we might just chart the position of the planets ?

I am not sure.

[Marblehead]

3 minutes ago, rideforever said:

I am not sure.

Well, I'm not sure either but a long time ago, when I was a college student I decided that the fall of the Roman Empire was the fault of the government.  The biggest thing in my conclusion was the Roman Empire using aliens (non-Romans) in their military.

 

I see the USA using women in our military as equal to what the Romans did.

 

I won't say right or wrong but being an old-fashioned man I think the combat arms of all the military services should be manned by men.  That, in the USA today, would require re-activating the draft.  And I think it is now too late for that to happen.

 

The Roman society allowed its members to become lazy.  They didn't want to do the work so they let aliens into the society to do the work for them.  Sound familiar?

 

 

[Lost in Translation]

I see change as an inevitable, inexorable process. Change is. We see this everywhere at all times. A society is no different. Societies ebb and flow. Empires rise and fall. That is the way of it.

 

Knowing this, a wise people value what makes them great and eschews what makes them weak. Unfortunately this requires taking a stand, holding an opinion and making enemies. Too many people want simply to get along, to be liked, or to indulge their own pleasures with little regard for others. Such is the slippery slope of decline.

[thelerner]

On 8/11/2018 at 4:40 PM, Lost in Translation said:

I see change as an inevitable, inexorable process. Change is. We see this everywhere at all times. A society is no different. Societies ebb and flow. Empires rise and fall. That is the way of it.

 

Knowing this, a wise people value what makes them great and eschews what makes them weak. Unfortunately this requires taking a stand, holding an opinion and making enemies. Too many people want simply to get along, to be liked, or to indulge their own pleasures with little regard for others. Such is the slippery slope of decline.

I don't know about greatness, but there is survivability in not taking a stand, not getting hung up on opinions and adhering to live and let live, so that one doesn't have enemies.  Sometimes its simply better to recognize change and harmonize or get out of the way.  That may not hold up at the extremes, but for the other 99% it tends to work nicely.

 

There's no way like Wu Wei-

 

Edited August 13, 2018 by thelerner