Essays, Analyses and Meditations


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The Barbarians

  • A civilization tends to call "barbaric" the civilization that is about to overthrow it.
  • When the civilized world was Egypt and Mesopotamia, the new civilization was born in Greece, that at the time was hardly considered civilized and whose inhabitants were rather inept at the "civilized" rituals of the civilized world.
  • When the civilized world was centered upon Greece and Achaemenian Persia, the new civilization was born in Rome, that was hardly civilized compared with Athens and Persepolis.
  • When the civilized world was centered upon Rome and Sassanid Persia, the barbarians came from Arabia.
  • Rome was destroyed by the Goths, that went on to build the Western European powers (Spain, France, Germany)
  • The Arabs and Song China were overthrown by a people of the Steppes, the Mongols.
  • The continental European powers (Spain, France, the Holy Roman Empire) were eventually defeated by the least civilized of them, Britain.
  • The British Empire and Germany (and, in general, Western Europe) were replaced by the USA (that many Europeans still consider as the barbarians of the contemporary world)
  • New civilizations are born "at the edge of the world"; not at the edge of chaos but at the edge of order.
  • Great civilizations are those that do not learn from the mistakes of past civilizations.