Why, indeed. If you have ever dragged yourself through the bloody history of mankind you may have asked yourself why civilization X or empire Y has risen to lofty heights. Of course, we are no longer in the dark, underfunded times of the dead white males, and instead in the time of light, when the women and slaves run things. They have been busy rewriting history, but there is so much of it that these, our new rulers, have not had the time to set aside from African dance and going goo goo over Whoopi Goldbergs’ glowing endorsement of a different brand of tampon to quite finish taking the tar brush to the Luna marble of the past.

The glorious Tang dynasty. It rose, it produced culture, then it fell. Cultures rise and fall. Check out the Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms of Egypt; each punctuated with ‘intermediate periods’. Cultures rise and fall. With hindsight, we can point at things like technology (gunpowder, longboats, compasses, crossbows, howitzers, or helicopter gunships), like disasters (clouds of volcanic ash, tsunami, reactor cook offs). You should choke back your bile and face the fact that you just might be living in the high point of the Tang period, and that the pathway ahead is not up, but down.

A time when fathers bury their sons. Such a sad image. But the real question is, what did the fathers screw up so much that their sons failed, and died? Was Dad a baby boomer? Smoke too much pot to be a viable male role model? Was Dad his friend, not his father? Dad was off getting an abortion for his dusky mistress instead of teaching the kid how to check in hockey? Now the kid is dead. Such a sad image. But, something you could see coming. Maybe you opened your yap about it, but got slapped down? Hmmm. And you will feel conflicted at the funeral. Dad all weepy with his queer friends from work; all using a bankable funeral day before the six weeks of paid mourning. The mistresses are there; Mom is back from Cuba (there might be a scene between Mom and Mistress Number 3, as they were once lesbian lovers). Such is the present day experiences of those that live in the declining period of civilizations. And just because you can see the way to keep the rise on the rise does not mean that those around you do as well. And if they do not, in sufficient numbers, it means you are in the decline of the Tang, and not the rise. Horde your tea pots. Cherish the crockery; the Mongols are going to break it for sport.

Too many around me still believe in Global Warming. These are people that think Honorius would be a better leader than Stilicho. Power plants provide power; roads are for armies, and those armies need engineers, not social workers. Or does the gang at work see differently? More moths, and toads, less plutonium, and no sawdust? This majority opinion is the viewpoint of a declining civilization. You are not them; and they are the living dead. You will weep as the hippie fathers bury their sons; the sons who held their fire because they saw too many episodes of the Beachcombers, and not enough of Combat!; the daughters raped and butchered by the human looking apes that looked so sexy in the music videos. And do not kid yourself that the generation that started the decline of the Tang dynasty would not sacrifice their children to protect their pensions, when they sacrificed the country of their parents and grandparents for those very pensions. And do not think that their eunuch children will not be vengeful and cruel at being sold into slavery. The generation that brings the fall of the Tang will find fingers at their throat, and those fingers will be those of their eunuchs. Such a sad image. Such an experience. Better to watch than to share.

Maybe you prefer the spiritual to the logical. Incense to Thomas Paine. The tinkle of the wind chime to the cash register. Your spiritual advisors, your models, what are they? Do you not think that those around you who decorate their back yards with Aztec corn goddesses should look at the iceberg beneath? What of Xipe Totec? So cute, those corn dolls. But with the corn doll comes smoky mirror. Are they followers of astrology? Healing and comfort and stuff? They open the door to gentle transits of Venus, and talk of the Sun in exaltation; when they are also letting in Mars the War God, Saturn not so jolly, and the Moon goddess known as the Destroyer of Cities? Ho ho ho. Even the feel good religions of the doomed generation of the fall of Tang speak of self-delusion and a bloody end.

History repeats itself. Yes, it would be better to be cheering Trajan on his return from Dacia, but it might just be your lot to be cheering Elgabalus. Those cheering around you: they are marked for sport for some known and documented evil: spitting up blood with the plague, spilt brains from some hip hop barbarian, or wasting skeletons from a diet of tofu and peanut and nutrition free state mush. I have no comforting words other than I hope those you care for are awake and aware and more likely to survive; in the times of the decline, this is the way it is. So, why bother to do anything but what worked before?

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 15th, 2011 at 2:36 am and is filed under Fenris, Financial Meltdown. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.