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Welcome back, podcast listeners. Thanks so much for being here on The Overlap.

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It is your co-host, Joshua, and with me is my co-host, William. William, say hello.

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Hello.

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Hello. Well, we are going to be touching base about what we talked about last time.

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We're going to be finishing out our Civilization Decline episode today.

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So last time, Will and I kind of established that Rome didn't recover, right?

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Like they failed ultimately.

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It was a civilization that clung to its complex inflationary and norm shredding system until it absolutely broke in half.

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Now we're going to transition to kind of clear away popular myths about collapse before exploring cases of societal recovery.

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So before we get to the how to fix it part, we kind of have to take out the trash, the popular myths, the cautionary tales that, as one paper puts it, are often poorly focused, simplistic, and unhelpful.

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I mean, we start with the classic Maya.

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Yes.

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The Maya.

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Yeah.

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So these are, you know, this is one of the civilizations that's, these popular stories are meant to, these sort of just so stories about civilization collapse, where, you know, it's not clear if the researchers went in with an agenda or what their background was, but they basically have a nice tidy story about how they overreached or they did this to harm the environment or they started wars.

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It's really the reality is not that simple as we'll discover today.

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Yeah.

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So the Maya built those those giant pyramids in the jungle in what is now central and central and South America.

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Some of those were Incans, but the Maya, they studied the stars.

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They created a wonderful calendar.

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As soon as it ended, the world went into turmoil and we now live in a dystopia.

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You know, the Mayans, right?

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Then out of nowhere, with no particular reason that anyone can find, they just disappeared.

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Well, they didn't actually disappear.

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And there's really not a great mystery here, which is important to understand.

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Unfortunately, the real story is not as exciting as the myth, perhaps.

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But the first and most important fact is that the Maya people in their culture continued elsewhere with vigor.

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They were still, in fact, there.

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They were still a lively and thriving group of people, just not in the places where they congregated before.

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Okay. Okay.

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I get it.

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So not like a total disappear.

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But the big cities, you have Tikal, Palenque, they were abandoned.

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That's kind of a collapse, right?

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Well, it was the end of a specific political system in one specific region.

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What ended, but somewhere between the 8th and 10th centuries, was specifically the end of the city-states in the Maya lowlands.

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So a particular region of their empire.

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And it was the end of the system of divine kingship.

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In fact, anthropologists Charles Golden and Andrew Shearer argue that collapse is entirely the wrong way to describe what happened.

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They look at those popular theories, you know, like I said, sudden surges in warfare, catastrophic drought, overpopulation.

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And they find the evidence of any of those things scant to non-existent.

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For instance, their analysis shows that the Maya had a diverse diet, including root crops like sweet potatoes.

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And they would have buffered, they would have buffered against them, I'm sorry, would have buffered them against a drought.

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Well, of course, all of the things that we know are delicious come from Mayan and Incan civilizations.

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So if it wasn't war and it wasn't drought, what was it?

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Well, it was a boring old governance failure.

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Classic.

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Yeah, a tainter-esque failure, if you will.

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Golden and Shearer argued that the Mayan dynasties were, quote, victims of their own success.

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As their kingdoms expanded, they became loosely and inefficiently governed.

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Right. So the ties to the central government decreased.

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They had to rely on lower level.

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Right. As these things tend to happen.

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Lower level lords and nobles who had their own agendas began to be the backbone of the society.

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And the complex state simply atomized back into a failed state of atomized communities.

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Okay. So not a magic, mystical disappearance, just a political simplification.

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The central model became kind of too complex, too expensive.

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And people just walked away.

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Back to the tainter model.

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Exactly.

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It turns out that, you know, again, it's not surprising, like you said, but when the complexity, the drawbacks or the cost of complexity exceeds the benefits of the centralization and those efficiencies that can happen at that scale.

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Once the tradeoff is no longer reasonable, people just default to going back to what they know, going back home and living in their own cities and living their own lives without the oversight of this complicated governance structure.

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But now it's time for our other great morality tale.

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You know, can you guess which one that is?

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Of course.

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The one that everyone knows, the Rapa Nui on Easter Island.

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That's right.

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The one Jared Diamond made famous in his book, Collapse.

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So the Rapa Nui in their ridiculous statue obsessed hubris cut down every tree, a lot like Iceland.

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And this ecocide led to soil erosion, starvation and a downward spiral of warfare, cannibalism and population decline.

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It's kind of a perfect self-contained story for our environmental stupidity, right?

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It is.

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It is so perfect, in fact, that like every perfect story, it's almost certainly false based on a large body of new research.

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Researchers like Robert DiNapoli and Carl Lippo have shown that the real story of the Rapa Nui is actually one of resilience, not collapse.

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They're not a cautionary tale.

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They reconstructed the population levels after the Great Decline and no evidence of a population collapse before European contact in 1722.

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If anything, the population was small, stable and possibly even growing until they encountered the Europeans.

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I just want to point that out.

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Yeah, I want to I want to sort of stress that before European contact.

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Like most major societies, Europeans ruined everything.

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But the trees, they cut down all the trees.

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Yes.

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There was a prolonged period of deforestation, but surprisingly, it didn't lead to catastrophic erosion or starvation.

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Why?

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And this is key because the Rapa Nui adapted.

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They were brilliant engineers.

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And once the trees were gone, they built rock gardens.

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They mulched the ground with stones, which protected the soil, reduced evaporation.

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And as the volcanic rocks broke down, supplied minerals to the soil.

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So they created a new complex agricultural system that actually increased productivity.

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So they basically solved the problem.

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They solved the problem.

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Exactly.

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And their population was likely never the 25,000 that some have claimed.

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It was probably closer to three or four thousand.

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Which is perfectly sustainable in that area, in that region, right?

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The collapse, the warfare, the disease, all that happened after 1722 when the Europeans arrived.

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So, in a way, we're basically just protecting our own climate guilt into a pre-modern, resilient people.

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We kind of want them to have failed because it makes for a better cautionary tale.

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Exactly.

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The alarmist literature that we've read about economic collapse or environmental collapse is simplistic and unhelpful because it blinds us to the real lessons.

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Which brings us to the big question.

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If Rome and the Maya are examples of failure, what does recovery look like?

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Is it even possible?

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My answer is no, probably not.

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But for the purposes of this podcast, our answer is yes.

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It is technically possible.

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History gives us actually three very clear, very radical examples.

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Right.

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So, I'll remind our audience that the question is, can a state or a civilization pull out of the tainture-esque nosedive?

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Fair, fair.

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A hypothetical system.

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And to that, we answer yes.

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It can be done.

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Can it happen in our society?

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Well, we may find out that we're missing one of the key ingredients here.

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But let's see what we figure out.

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Our first case study is the other half of the Roman Empire, which did survive, as you mentioned before, a broken half under the tension of all those horrific governance issues.

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But it divided in half.

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And a lot of people forget that from the West.

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If you're from the West, you think about the Roman Empire as the one based in Rome, understandably, right?

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But we forget that after Constantine, the empire was already divided in half.

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And the Eastern or Byzantine Empire did not collapse in the same way that the Roman Empire did.

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In fact, the Byzantines survived the fall of the West in the 5th century.

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But by the 7th century, we're in their own terminal crisis.

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They had lost Egypt and the Levant to the Arab Caliphate.

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And we're facing the Slavs and they have ours from the north.

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And they were poorer than it had ever been.

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And like their Western counterparts on the blink of distress.

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So what did they do?

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Just print more copper filled coins?

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Of course, because why not, right?

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No, they did the exact opposite of Honorius' Rome.

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They didn't cling to the old complex bloated system.

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Instead, they implemented a radical change called the theme system, which was a radical simplification and decentralization of the state.

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Imagine that, that the state realizes it's failing.

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It realizes the threats that are there.

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And instead of fighting to preserve the failing status quo, they said, let's go the opposite direction.

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The old complex centrally paid Roman army, the one that the West couldn't afford, was abolished.

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And instead, the emperors divided their entire empire into new military districts called themes.

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Ugh, themes.

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This sounds like, I don't know, dystopian libertarianism?

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It sounds overly bureaucratic at the local level.

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Well, in that case, it's probably poorly named because it was the opposite of bureaucracy.

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The central government essentially told the soldiers in each theme, we're not going to pay you from the central treasury.

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Instead, we're going to give you land.

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You'll use your own agricultural resources to equip and pay yourselves.

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Coastal themes are responsible for their own navy, et cetera, et cetera.

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This may start to sound more familiar as the period that was being heralded by this activity.

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So a decentralized warrior class given land in exchange for military service, right?

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Local to a local lord.

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That sounds a lot like...

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Feudalism.

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You guessed it.

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Yeah.

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That's right.

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Feudalism.

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You might liken it to what we call feudalism, and that is a radical change.

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And that's actually what allowed that society to recover.

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So to survive, the Roman Empire had to stop being.

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The Roman Empire.

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Precisely.

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They had to abandon the complex, centralized, bureaucratic model and become something new, something leaner.

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But it worked.

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It made the state resilient.

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The decentralized system allowed Byzantium to weather the storm and survive another 800 years.

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So, path to recovery number one, the Byzantine simplification.

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You choose to let go of the glorious, complex past.

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You accept a less glamorous, more functional, decentralized model.

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You choose simplification instead of having it forced on you by collapse.

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Right.

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So you don't make Rome great again by returning to the complexity of the past and trying to do what you did best, what worked in the previous centuries.

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Instead, you abandon this executive aggrandizement that we see in the U.S.

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And we see a chosen or deliberate loss of sociopolitical complexity.

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Now, that's one example, one way to survive a decline or pull out of a nosedive.

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The second one, for my money, and the most stunning and relevant event in modern history, is the Meiji restoration in Japan in 1868.

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Does the iPhone exist at this point?

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It does not.

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Unfortunately, no selfies from this time period.

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Got it.

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But let's set the stage.

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So we're in mid-19th century Japan, right?

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So this is when the civil war is going on in the U.S., right?

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Don't forget, listeners, 18th century, 1800s.

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Yes.

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Thank you for that clarification.

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It's easy to get confused with that.

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So Japan at this point is a militarily weak country, primarily agricultural and little technological development, right?

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It's a feudal society.

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So it's in the state that Rome was in when it pulled out of its collapse, but now we're talking about a thousand years later, right?

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It's a feudal society isolated for 200 years, suddenly opened at gunpoint by U.S. Commodore Matthew Perry.

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Matt Perry, always screwing stuff up.

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R.I.P.

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They're facing foreign encroachment and a very real threat of colonization, which is what they saw happen in nearby China.

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So this is it, right?

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This feudal serfdom society staring down the barrel of an industrial imperial cannon, literally.

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By all of the tainter's metrics, they're screwed.

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Yeah.

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They had a cannon to the head, so to speak.

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They were doomed.

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And a group of young samurai, primarily from the outer domains, looked at their rotting, complex, inefficient feudal system, or the Bakufu government, and decided that it was the problem.

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Not the U.S. Commodore with the battleship.

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It was actually the government that was the problem.

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And in less than a generation, they staged a coup, overthrew a 700-year-old military government of the Shogun, and forced the most radical changes inimaginable.

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This list is kind of long and very impressive.

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They abolished the feudal system and all feudal class privileges.

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They terminated administrative localism and divided the country into prefectures.

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They created a highly centralized bureaucratic government model on the West, so a new form of centralized bureaucracy.

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They formed a powerful army and navy based on universal male conscription.

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They adopted universal education, and they built a well-developed transport and communication system.

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All during this period.

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Yeah.

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Go ahead.

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Go back.

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You said young samurai led this revolution.

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I saw that movie with Tom Cruise.

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We're talking about, like, the warrior elite, right?

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Yes.

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And here's the single most radical, most unbelievable part of the whole story.

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In this process, they eliminated distinct social classes, including the samurai classes they were part of.

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Tom Cruise is screaming, no!

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Well, you know, the ruling elite, the samurai, they actually led the revolution to abolish themselves.

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That's okay.

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They outlawed their own privileges.

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They gave up their right to carry swords.

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They surrendered their feudal class privileges.

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And they basically voted their own class out of existence.

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Okay, why?

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At a short point.

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00:15:06,320 --> 00:15:06,700
Well, because...

231
00:15:06,700 --> 00:15:17,940
Why would anybody who has power, who has the ability to wield it, and the ability to defend it, choose to vote themselves out of existence?

232
00:15:18,520 --> 00:15:21,340
Because they were patriots in their minds, right?

233
00:15:21,420 --> 00:15:23,360
They were motivated by the threat of foreign encroachment.

234
00:15:23,360 --> 00:15:28,140
They actually saw Japan as something greater than the government that was in place at the time.

235
00:15:28,280 --> 00:15:31,460
They saw it as something more, right?

236
00:15:31,580 --> 00:15:37,640
And their existential threat of colonization that was coming was a far greater evil than the loss of personal privilege, right?

237
00:15:38,220 --> 00:15:44,720
So, you know, what did your title mean if you're conscripted or, you know, captured by a foreign army and sold into essentially slavery?

238
00:15:46,200 --> 00:15:49,160
They saw that as the worst of the two options, understandably.

239
00:15:49,960 --> 00:15:59,680
Their slogan, their driving goal was, and I'm going to butcher this pronunciation, but it was Fukoku Kyohei, which means enrich the country, strengthen the army.

240
00:15:59,880 --> 00:16:01,420
Not enrich ourselves and build a bunker.

241
00:16:02,620 --> 00:16:02,960
In New Zealand.

242
00:16:03,220 --> 00:16:03,720
Right, exactly.

243
00:16:04,040 --> 00:16:09,840
They didn't carve out a safe place for themselves and wait for their country to be taken over by others and fight to the last man.

244
00:16:10,480 --> 00:16:20,640
Instead, what they decided to do was to bring the power back to the people, local powers, local government, and then that through strengthening the country that way, they would survive the threat of colonization.

245
00:16:21,200 --> 00:16:22,000
And you know what?

246
00:16:22,340 --> 00:16:23,080
It worked.

247
00:16:24,040 --> 00:16:34,340
In just over a generation, Japan went from a militarily weak federal, sorry, feudal backwater to a global industrial power that would go on to defeat a major European power, Russia, in a war.

248
00:16:35,000 --> 00:16:38,780
It is the single most successful and most brutal recovery from decline in history.

249
00:16:39,400 --> 00:16:43,220
So, path to recovery, rule number two, the Miyeji suicide.

250
00:16:44,060 --> 00:16:51,080
The ruling class must voluntarily commit class suicide for the good of the nation state.

251
00:16:52,400 --> 00:16:58,380
So, Will, let's contrast this with the United States, the country we do live in.

252
00:16:58,880 --> 00:17:06,640
The historical precedent for recovery is for the ruling class to sacrifice itself for the good of the country.

253
00:17:07,640 --> 00:17:13,460
What we see in the U.S. is actually what an expert in the field, Peter Turchin, calls the elite overproduction.

254
00:17:14,380 --> 00:17:17,000
Society is producing too many elite people.

255
00:17:17,820 --> 00:17:21,660
A mass managerial and professional elite, all competing for a fixed number of power positions.

256
00:17:22,660 --> 00:17:27,840
And of course, this creates very frustrated elite wannabes.

257
00:17:28,880 --> 00:17:32,740
Turchin identifies Donald Trump actually as a perfect example.

258
00:17:33,260 --> 00:17:46,660
He describes a wealthy individual who, frustrated by the established GOP elites, becomes a counter-elite, harnessing popular resentment to overturn the established order.

259
00:17:46,660 --> 00:17:49,240
Which is the opposite of the Japanese mob.

260
00:17:49,440 --> 00:17:50,880
This is elite infighting.

261
00:17:51,320 --> 00:17:52,560
This is the Roman model.

262
00:17:52,660 --> 00:17:56,580
Instead of sacrificing, our elites are in grab-everything-you-can mode.

263
00:17:56,920 --> 00:17:57,080
Right?

264
00:17:57,720 --> 00:18:05,040
Like, this is basically trying to scoop up all the valuables on the Titanic and get to an escape boat, or escape rescue boat, you know.

265
00:18:05,180 --> 00:18:05,680
Lifeboat.

266
00:18:05,820 --> 00:18:06,040
Sorry.

267
00:18:06,260 --> 00:18:06,980
Didn't get the word there.

268
00:18:07,460 --> 00:18:14,080
They're spending their billions of dollars on self-sustaining and fully stocked Dr. Evil lairs in New Zealand, like you mentioned before.

269
00:18:14,580 --> 00:18:17,700
Planning to wield power as a warlord over the smoking remains.

270
00:18:18,540 --> 00:18:19,840
So, let's be honest.

271
00:18:20,320 --> 00:18:22,600
The Miéji path seems unlikely.

272
00:18:23,300 --> 00:18:24,720
Maybe there's a path number three?

273
00:18:25,880 --> 00:18:27,080
There is a third model.

274
00:18:27,480 --> 00:18:29,760
It's not a single event, but it's a process.

275
00:18:30,580 --> 00:18:32,600
A system designed for collapse and recovery.

276
00:18:33,260 --> 00:18:35,200
And it's called the Chinese dynastic cycle.

277
00:18:36,160 --> 00:18:40,600
China is, after all, a civilization that has collapsed and revived and transformed multiple times.

278
00:18:41,500 --> 00:18:41,980
Yeah.

279
00:18:42,700 --> 00:18:44,520
The dynastic cycle.

280
00:18:45,080 --> 00:18:46,320
One dynasty rises.

281
00:18:46,720 --> 00:18:47,780
It gets corrupt.

282
00:18:48,200 --> 00:18:49,020
It falls.

283
00:18:49,400 --> 00:18:51,480
A new one rises from the ashes.

284
00:18:52,800 --> 00:18:53,280
Correct.

285
00:18:53,780 --> 00:19:05,200
But the radical change is the philosophy behind it, which is what the Chinese call the mandate of heaven, which is a political and religious doctrine that institutionalizes the entire theory that Tanner put forward.

286
00:19:06,340 --> 00:19:11,940
So, let's look at how the cycle works in a little bit more detail than you just gave with that very theatric description.

287
00:19:12,680 --> 00:19:14,600
So, you begin with a new dynasty, right?

288
00:19:14,680 --> 00:19:15,820
This is the recovery period.

289
00:19:16,300 --> 00:19:18,180
A new family overthrows the old corrupt one.

290
00:19:18,180 --> 00:19:19,380
takes the mandate of heaven.

291
00:19:19,380 --> 00:19:21,660
To prove that they have the mandate, they were good.

292
00:19:22,000 --> 00:19:29,100
They implement specific recovery policies, which means giving land to peasants, reducing taxes, reducing corruption, right?

293
00:19:29,280 --> 00:19:29,880
Clean slate.

294
00:19:30,460 --> 00:19:33,080
Start over with the people working with the people to enrich the country.

295
00:19:34,260 --> 00:19:35,260
Then the new dynasty becomes an old dynasty.

296
00:19:35,260 --> 00:19:36,280
Then the new dynasty becomes an old dynasty.

297
00:19:36,780 --> 00:19:38,720
Over generations, the emperor becomes disconnected.

298
00:19:39,140 --> 00:19:40,380
Corruption starts to creep in.

299
00:19:40,540 --> 00:19:45,240
Taxes inevitably rise, which leads us to the third phase, which is a collapse trigger.

300
00:19:45,960 --> 00:19:47,160
And this is the classic decline, right?

301
00:19:47,160 --> 00:19:49,620
The state becomes bloated and extractive.

302
00:19:49,700 --> 00:19:54,580
Then there's a major natural disaster or something like that happens or an incursion from foreigners.

303
00:19:55,280 --> 00:19:57,740
The corrupt, inefficient state can't handle it.

304
00:19:57,880 --> 00:20:01,120
And we hit stage four, which is the collapse or the reset button.

305
00:20:01,700 --> 00:20:03,240
This was the proof.

306
00:20:03,800 --> 00:20:09,580
The natural disaster was a sign that the dynasty had lost the mandate of heaven, which gives the people an excuse to overthrow them.

307
00:20:10,080 --> 00:20:13,680
So the, sorry, I'm having trouble saying this without gagging.

308
00:20:14,040 --> 00:20:20,540
The mandate of heaven is just a cultural permission slip for the tainter model.

309
00:20:21,000 --> 00:20:24,720
It expects complexity to lead to corruption.

310
00:20:24,720 --> 00:20:37,580
It expects the state to fail and it builds in the radical change, the revolution and the redistribution to the peasants as the necessary and righteous start of the next cycle.

311
00:20:38,760 --> 00:20:40,940
Right. Essentially, it institutionalizes the reset.

312
00:20:41,140 --> 00:20:43,940
The collapse of the dynasty is what allows the civilization to recover.

313
00:20:44,180 --> 00:20:45,300
Right. This is a death spiral.

314
00:20:45,400 --> 00:20:55,560
It's like a natural death, life and death sequence that allows the popular misery and elite infighting to lead to a total breakdown, which is followed by a violent reset.

315
00:20:56,280 --> 00:20:59,920
Okay. So three paths to recovery.

316
00:21:00,240 --> 00:21:06,120
One, the Byzantine path, which is a chosen decentralized simplification.

317
00:21:07,020 --> 00:21:13,920
Number two, the Miyeji path, which is the elites basically fall upon their own sword for the good of the nation.

318
00:21:13,920 --> 00:21:16,560
And three, the Chinese dynastic path.

319
00:21:16,660 --> 00:21:22,920
The system burns to the ground and is forced to restart from a simpler, more equal base.

320
00:21:23,340 --> 00:21:25,240
Those seem to be the historical options.

321
00:21:26,240 --> 00:21:29,100
So now, the part I've been dreading.

322
00:21:29,780 --> 00:21:31,820
Let's look at us.

323
00:21:32,620 --> 00:21:33,880
So let's apply the models.

324
00:21:34,500 --> 00:21:35,080
Where are we?

325
00:21:35,460 --> 00:21:39,460
Our 21st century, first century global civilization on Tanner's scorecard.

326
00:21:40,300 --> 00:21:43,460
Are we seeing declining marginal returns on complexity?

327
00:21:44,300 --> 00:21:45,480
Let's be specific.

328
00:21:46,240 --> 00:21:48,600
Tanner warned that knowledge production would be a key area.

329
00:21:48,720 --> 00:21:52,680
He argued that you'd spend exponentially more money to sustain existing growth levels.

330
00:21:53,300 --> 00:21:54,500
That sounds familiar.

331
00:21:55,320 --> 00:21:59,940
Right. Well, there's an article from the Niskanen Center applying Tanner's theory to right now.

332
00:22:00,200 --> 00:22:05,000
It notes that our R&D, which is the engine of our progress, has grown progressively bureaucratized.

333
00:22:05,800 --> 00:22:09,400
Why? Because it depends on a huge national and international pools of public funding.

334
00:22:09,800 --> 00:22:12,720
I try to accomplish anything without a few millions and you'll see.

335
00:22:13,200 --> 00:22:14,840
Yeah. Let's see here.

336
00:22:14,840 --> 00:22:28,980
As a result, researchers spend more and more time on administrative paperwork and less and less time actually advancing the frontiers of knowledge.

337
00:22:29,480 --> 00:22:30,040
So.

338
00:22:30,200 --> 00:22:30,860
Sounds about right.

339
00:22:31,740 --> 00:22:34,440
Yeah. All for steadily declining returns on that funding.

340
00:22:34,800 --> 00:22:36,080
I mean, grant writers, anybody?

341
00:22:36,340 --> 00:22:38,420
Our social order feels bloated and stagnant.

342
00:22:38,540 --> 00:22:42,000
Its institutions extended beyond their prime use cases and flagging accordingly.

343
00:22:42,000 --> 00:22:42,140
Yeah.

344
00:22:42,140 --> 00:22:46,340
So this is basically Tainter's diagnosis confirmed.

345
00:22:47,200 --> 00:22:53,540
We're so busy filling out the forms for the world-saving invention that we don't have time to invent the damn thing.

346
00:22:53,980 --> 00:22:58,800
This is a pretty scathing indictment of our civilization.

347
00:22:59,840 --> 00:23:01,200
So diagnosis, yes.

348
00:23:01,860 --> 00:23:03,660
Now the second question is elite failure.

349
00:23:03,820 --> 00:23:05,980
Are our elites on the Roman path or the Meiji path?

350
00:23:06,420 --> 00:23:07,620
Yeah, we've already talked about this.

351
00:23:07,620 --> 00:23:09,580
We are definitely on the Roman path.

352
00:23:10,160 --> 00:23:11,760
The path of the republic's collapse.

353
00:23:13,000 --> 00:23:13,000
Indeed.

354
00:23:13,260 --> 00:23:25,820
The Carnegie Endowment for an International Peace in a 2025 paper analyzed the Trump administration's political project, which conforms perfectly to the global model of democratic backsliding, which political scientists call executive aggrandizement.

355
00:23:26,820 --> 00:23:28,700
Well, at least explain what it means.

356
00:23:29,100 --> 00:23:29,660
Yeah.

357
00:23:29,660 --> 00:23:39,620
It means elected leaders with anti-democratic intent incrementally dismantling democracy through a steady centralization of power and undercutting of checks and balances.

358
00:23:40,220 --> 00:23:43,100
Paper finds the Trump administration is doing this at three levels.

359
00:23:44,180 --> 00:23:48,920
First level, establishing the president as supreme within the executive branch, urging perceived opponents.

360
00:23:49,520 --> 00:23:54,520
Two, making the executive dominant over other parts of government, including the judiciary, Congress, and states.

361
00:23:54,660 --> 00:24:00,260
And three, weakening societal constraints on executive power by attacking independent media and undermining voting rights.

362
00:24:00,760 --> 00:24:06,480
Yeah, and all of this is being done with alarming speed and efficiency.

363
00:24:06,720 --> 00:24:14,280
Basically seeking to centralize power with greater momentum and rapidity than in other backsliding countries.

364
00:24:14,520 --> 00:24:17,740
This is the Project 2025, right?

365
00:24:17,820 --> 00:24:28,500
This is the chaos, neglect, and diplomatic failures and the admiration for displays of strength that has defined this era we're currently living in.

366
00:24:29,380 --> 00:24:39,980
Yeah, some researchers like Dr. Luke Kemp, even more blunt than that, he basically warns the threat is from leaders who are walking versions of the dark triad, which if you're not familiar with the dark triad is narcissism.

367
00:24:40,520 --> 00:24:41,000
Check.

368
00:24:41,820 --> 00:24:42,260
Psychopathy.

369
00:24:42,720 --> 00:24:42,980
Check.

370
00:24:43,080 --> 00:24:44,040
And Machiavellianism.

371
00:24:44,680 --> 00:24:44,980
Check.

372
00:24:45,980 --> 00:24:46,420
Yeah.

373
00:24:46,420 --> 00:24:59,040
So with that, as our current leadership, we're back to the central modern debate, perfectly framed by two people by the name of Jeremy Lent and Jim Bendel.

374
00:24:59,540 --> 00:25:03,600
On one side, you have Professor Jim Bendel on his concept of deep adaptation.

375
00:25:04,600 --> 00:25:09,380
His argument is that societal collapse driven primarily by climate change is new, inevitable, unfolding.

376
00:25:09,820 --> 00:25:10,300
Unfolding.

377
00:25:10,700 --> 00:25:12,440
Or is now, sorry, is now inevitable and unfolding.

378
00:25:13,000 --> 00:25:15,340
So he's basically predicting that there's no escape.

379
00:25:16,140 --> 00:25:16,320
Right.

380
00:25:16,320 --> 00:25:17,440
So game over.

381
00:25:17,840 --> 00:25:21,340
He says that once you accept this climate tragedy, you find a radical hope.

382
00:25:22,080 --> 00:25:23,480
Or you can find a radical hope, actually.

383
00:25:24,120 --> 00:25:25,540
His radical change is psychological.

384
00:25:26,060 --> 00:25:31,020
We have to prepare for a climate-induced collapse by letting go of the current system and focusing on resilience and community.

385
00:25:32,080 --> 00:25:35,280
On the other side, you have Jeremy Lent, who argues for a great transformation.

386
00:25:36,440 --> 00:25:43,080
Lent says that calling collapse inevitable is dangerous, self-fulfilling prophecy, and denies transformation a chance.

387
00:25:43,080 --> 00:25:49,200
He argues that a life-affirming transformation is possible if we make the radical choice to transform the basis of our civilization.

388
00:25:49,840 --> 00:25:51,000
So that's it.

389
00:25:51,000 --> 00:25:52,100
That's the whole podcast.

390
00:25:52,840 --> 00:25:53,540
What do you mean?

391
00:25:54,660 --> 00:25:55,860
It's the two paths, right?

392
00:25:55,860 --> 00:26:02,320
Jim Bendel is arguing for the Byzantine path, a deep adaptation, a chosen simplification.

393
00:26:03,120 --> 00:26:09,360
Let the complex industrial consumer society die so we can survive in a simpler, more resilient way.

394
00:26:09,920 --> 00:26:19,780
And then you've got Jeremy Lent arguing for the Meiji path, the great transformation, a total, radical, top-to-bottom restructuring of our entire civilization.

395
00:26:19,960 --> 00:26:20,140
Done.

396
00:26:21,100 --> 00:26:23,760
But as we've seen, the path the United States is currently on is neither.

397
00:26:24,260 --> 00:26:32,920
It's on the Roman path, with elite infighting, a demagogue harnessing popular frustration, and a systematic centralization of power, all while refusing to simplify our sacrifice.

398
00:26:33,740 --> 00:26:37,380
Well, even our intelligence agencies agree.

399
00:26:37,520 --> 00:26:44,940
The U.S. National Intelligence Council's Global Trends 2040 report says its most likely scenario for the future.

400
00:26:45,100 --> 00:26:51,200
It says that future is a world that is, quote, directionless, chaotic, and volatile.

401
00:26:51,740 --> 00:27:01,080
A world played by, quote, slower economic growth, widening societal divisions, and political paralysis, end quote.

402
00:27:01,520 --> 00:27:02,560
That's not a forecast.

403
00:27:02,820 --> 00:27:07,060
That's a perfect clinical description of Tainer's declining marginal returns on political complexity.

404
00:27:07,500 --> 00:27:09,900
And it's a description of literally right now.

405
00:27:10,380 --> 00:27:14,240
So, to get back to answering our original question, can civilizations in decline recover?

406
00:27:15,020 --> 00:27:15,520
Yes.

407
00:27:15,860 --> 00:27:18,320
History gives us three and only three yes answers.

408
00:27:19,020 --> 00:27:30,620
Byzantine path, as we talked about, the deep adaptation model, choosing simplification, the Meiji path, which is basically bureaucratic suicide, the good of the people, and then the Chinese path, which is the reset.

409
00:27:31,480 --> 00:27:31,600
Yeah.

410
00:27:31,600 --> 00:27:41,060
So, given our current political reality, path two, which is the Meiji suicide, seems to be the opposite of what's actually going on.

411
00:27:41,400 --> 00:27:47,300
We're seeing elite overproduction and executive aggrandizement, not sacrifice.

412
00:27:48,240 --> 00:27:48,320
Okay.

413
00:27:48,360 --> 00:27:50,260
And path three is really not recovery.

414
00:27:50,460 --> 00:27:54,560
It's a phase shift that involves a total systemic and likely violent breakdown.

415
00:27:54,820 --> 00:27:57,500
So, that just leaves us with path one, the Byzantine hunker down.

416
00:27:58,680 --> 00:28:03,440
Although, there is one final perspective, one last radical change, and it's the most scathing of all.

417
00:28:04,120 --> 00:28:04,560
Go on.

418
00:28:05,740 --> 00:28:08,900
It's from Dr. Luke Kemp at the Center for the Study of Existential Risk.

419
00:28:09,020 --> 00:28:11,420
He warns that our current trajectory is self-termination.

420
00:28:11,960 --> 00:28:17,020
But his most brutal point, the one that reframs the entire discussion, is his critique of the very word we've been using all along.

421
00:28:17,640 --> 00:28:21,700
He argues that the word civilization itself is propaganda by rulers.

422
00:28:22,520 --> 00:28:23,060
Tell me more.

423
00:28:24,240 --> 00:28:27,780
Kemp says these Goliaths, these first kingdoms and empires, arose.

424
00:28:28,020 --> 00:28:30,200
You don't see civilized conduct, right?

425
00:28:30,240 --> 00:28:30,780
It's brutal.

426
00:28:31,180 --> 00:28:32,140
It's by force.

427
00:28:32,300 --> 00:28:34,340
They arise by force.

428
00:28:35,020 --> 00:28:43,560
He calls it evolutionary backsliding from the more egalitarian and mobile hunter-gatherer societies that came before to a totally different type of organization.

429
00:28:44,120 --> 00:28:56,760
Okay, so if civilization is the problem, if it's the hierarchy and the extraction and the complexity that Tainter was talking about earlier, what is the solution?

430
00:28:57,180 --> 00:28:59,680
What's the radical change we need?

431
00:29:00,920 --> 00:29:05,560
Well, Dr. Kemp's advice for saving the world based on 5,000 years of data is not a new policy.

432
00:29:06,000 --> 00:29:08,220
It's actually personal, moral instruction.

433
00:29:09,060 --> 00:29:16,580
He says, if you want to see the world, if you want to, sorry, if you want to save the world, then the first step is to stop destroying it.

434
00:29:16,920 --> 00:29:20,160
Don't work for big tech, arms manufacturers, or the fossil fuel industry.

435
00:29:20,640 --> 00:29:25,500
Don't accept relationships based on domination and wear power and share power wherever you can.

436
00:29:26,380 --> 00:29:38,760
So the ultimate radical change, the rejection of the systems of complexity and domination that Tainter and Kemp actually identify as the problem, right?

437
00:29:38,760 --> 00:29:45,240
That brings up a handful of ways that we've been talking about internally.

438
00:29:46,040 --> 00:29:51,280
You know, we've probably each been looking at differently, Will and I, and also hopefully you.

439
00:29:51,540 --> 00:29:58,020
And I've talked to a listener or two of ours who is trying to do these things, right?

440
00:29:58,120 --> 00:30:04,560
What are everyday ways that we can help to bring about this system of radical change?

441
00:30:04,560 --> 00:30:14,260
You have organizations like 5051, the People's Union, who are actively boycotting organizations like Amazon, right?

442
00:30:14,320 --> 00:30:20,260
Who treat workers poorly, who are trying to build a path in space for wealthy people.

443
00:30:20,420 --> 00:30:22,400
You can stop ordering from Amazon.

444
00:30:22,680 --> 00:30:26,620
You can stop using AI to your own peril, no doubt.

445
00:30:26,840 --> 00:30:32,860
But all of these things are ways that we can say, no, we're not going to do that.

446
00:30:33,060 --> 00:30:35,140
We cannot take jobs from big tech.

447
00:30:35,880 --> 00:30:37,320
You know, it's hard.

448
00:30:37,560 --> 00:30:39,940
It's hard to do these things, right?

449
00:30:40,000 --> 00:30:48,460
To not work in the fossil fuel industry in Oklahoma, where the majority of the jobs here are still based on oil and gas drilling.

450
00:30:49,460 --> 00:30:56,120
Or health care to support those people who get hurt or are negatively affected by oil and gas drilling.

451
00:30:56,640 --> 00:30:59,380
Same thing for Louisiana, where both Will and I come from.

452
00:30:59,880 --> 00:31:15,520
Will, what are some ways that you personally are boycotting or trying to make a change within your own life that hopefully resonates with others and is a way to sort of feed into that radical change sort of a system?

453
00:31:16,680 --> 00:31:18,480
My focus is more on education.

454
00:31:19,300 --> 00:31:21,040
This podcast is one way that I'm doing it.

455
00:31:21,820 --> 00:31:29,500
I'm also working with my kids to have them see the world a different way and understand what power really is and how the elites work and how they sustain themselves.

456
00:31:29,680 --> 00:31:31,360
Things like that, my primary approach.

457
00:31:32,040 --> 00:31:34,000
Yeah, I think those things are important.

458
00:31:34,200 --> 00:31:39,800
And hopefully this podcast, you know, is a way that we're out there reaching people and talking to people.

459
00:31:40,160 --> 00:31:45,720
We're trying to bring to light these issues so that people are aware of them.

460
00:31:45,720 --> 00:31:50,920
I watched a movie over the past week called Good Fortune.

461
00:31:51,260 --> 00:32:04,520
Now, we're not really a movie review podcast, but it was basically a scathing look at the gig worker economy and how poorly paid these people are and how we do have a responsibility to one another.

462
00:32:04,520 --> 00:32:18,080
You know, and the overarching theme of that movie was that only through joining together and deciding to make a change can we be successful in that change.

463
00:32:18,080 --> 00:32:21,980
Now, if you do watch the movie, I'm not going to spoil it for you.

464
00:32:22,020 --> 00:32:22,520
No spoilers.

465
00:32:22,880 --> 00:32:29,360
But it doesn't really necessarily arrive to a realistic ending or a realistic conclusion.

466
00:32:30,040 --> 00:32:38,080
But the theme is not is not lost on me and hopefully not lost on you either, is that we need to unionize in our own ways.

467
00:32:38,080 --> 00:32:40,320
That doesn't mean go out and join a union.

468
00:32:40,320 --> 00:32:43,960
If you want to do and unions do wonderful things for people.

469
00:32:44,260 --> 00:32:52,720
They're actively working to to change the systems, sometimes within the framework of our current system and sometimes in a complete rejection of our current framework.

470
00:32:53,280 --> 00:33:04,960
There are several organizations that that are having these mutual aid fairs and creating mutual aid organizations that is literally just by people for other people with no incentive whatsoever.

471
00:33:05,220 --> 00:33:10,320
We have a wonderful pantry program in the town that I live in, in the city that I live in.

472
00:33:10,780 --> 00:33:21,980
And there are, I think, 11 11 community pantries where people just when they have extra food, they go and put sometimes plates, sometimes, you know, canned goods, sometimes eggs, things like that.

473
00:33:22,060 --> 00:33:23,560
What people have extra.

474
00:33:23,560 --> 00:33:26,300
You go and put in those things to share with our neighbors.

475
00:33:27,120 --> 00:33:41,440
Those are those are all ways that we can reject these arms manufacturers and big tech because the more we rely upon each other, the less we rely upon these these gigantic corporations.

476
00:33:42,220 --> 00:33:46,020
And I think I think that is kind of the point of this whole podcast.

477
00:33:46,020 --> 00:33:46,480
Right.

478
00:33:46,540 --> 00:33:47,940
I mean, that's how we started.

479
00:33:47,940 --> 00:33:56,980
If you go back and listen to our first couple of episodes, they're not they're not the easiest to listen to because we were just kind of free flow thinking about what we wanted to do and why.

480
00:33:57,440 --> 00:34:11,480
But our goal was to get the word out there so that we could start doing things maybe apart, but together, apart, separated by geography, maybe separated by our physical limitations.

481
00:34:11,940 --> 00:34:23,060
But united in our in our in our choices, united in our in our in our resolve.

482
00:34:23,440 --> 00:34:24,200
Absolutely.

483
00:34:24,860 --> 00:34:30,200
That being said, I think it's probably time to to bring this this podcast to a close.

484
00:34:30,200 --> 00:34:34,000
So can civilizations that are currently in decline?

485
00:34:35,100 --> 00:34:35,960
Make it out.

486
00:34:36,880 --> 00:34:38,640
Yes, we've shown that.

487
00:34:39,220 --> 00:34:40,440
Will we make it out?

488
00:34:40,840 --> 00:34:42,620
Well, that's up to us.

489
00:34:42,880 --> 00:34:43,140
Right.

490
00:34:43,260 --> 00:34:43,920
It's up to you.

491
00:34:44,040 --> 00:34:44,720
It's up to me.

492
00:34:44,820 --> 00:34:45,440
It's up to will.

493
00:34:46,000 --> 00:34:48,080
It's up to whoever listens to this podcast.

494
00:34:48,400 --> 00:35:01,280
If you have a person in mind that you think would be a fantastic person to show this to or show this podcast to let them listen to what we're about and what we're standing for and what we're trying to put out there in the world.

495
00:35:01,460 --> 00:35:03,120
Please share a link with them.

496
00:35:03,520 --> 00:35:05,380
You can visit us on Blue Sky.

497
00:35:05,500 --> 00:35:07,380
You can visit us on Mastodon.

498
00:35:07,380 --> 00:35:13,380
You can also go to our website, HTTPS colon slash slash F.O.F. dot foundation.

499
00:35:13,840 --> 00:35:18,320
Make sure you subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you listen to your podcasts.

500
00:35:18,460 --> 00:35:31,380
I think we're currently doing a small boycott of Spotify on the grander social justice scale, but I'm not going to judge you if you're listening to this through Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

501
00:35:31,380 --> 00:35:35,200
Make sure to give us a like as well and rate us five stars.

502
00:35:35,440 --> 00:35:51,100
If there's something that you think that would be a good podcast topic or you have questions about something that we've said before in this podcast or in others, go over to our website and you can access our email where you can shoot us an email or send us a private message.

503
00:35:51,580 --> 00:35:53,260
Will, thanks so much for being here with me today.

504
00:35:54,200 --> 00:35:54,600
Thank you, Joshua.

505
00:35:54,680 --> 00:35:55,760
It's been a pleasure as always.

506
00:35:56,360 --> 00:35:58,040
And thank you, listeners, for being here with us.

507
00:35:58,120 --> 00:35:58,920
We appreciate it.

508
00:35:59,100 --> 00:36:05,980
As we go into the end of the year, we wish everyone a fantastic, fantastic holiday season.

509
00:36:06,700 --> 00:36:09,780
Just a reminder, we are going to be out for Thanksgiving.

510
00:36:10,000 --> 00:36:11,560
There will not be a Thanksgiving episode.

511
00:36:11,860 --> 00:36:18,060
We will be posting this episode before Thanksgiving and we will not be releasing one on Thanksgiving Day.

512
00:36:18,180 --> 00:36:19,640
We'll take a break to be with our families.

513
00:36:20,060 --> 00:36:22,500
Thanks so much and we'll see you later.

514
00:36:22,500 --> 00:36:52,480
We'll see you later.