I watched an old movie this week-end. One I've seen some 30 years ago: Quest for fire.
If you haven't seen it. I highly recommand it to you. You can watch it by following this link.
Don'worry about the language. There is none all along the movie. It is the story of a cave men clan that is been attacked by a horde of other... cave men or monkeys... And they have been stolen their fire. So they send a party of their best warriors to a journey to find fire (they have not found how to make fire yet).
The movie is very interesting on several levels. But there is one that stroke me. At one point they encounter a clan. You can see that it is a more advanced clan: they know how to make fire. Thus they can allocate their time on other endeavour. For instance, they know how to build huts (while the "hero" ' s clan live in a cave). They dance, they paint. They surrounded their village with an intricate network of quicksand. So they don't get anoided by invaders...
So this accumulation of wealth and power over the other tribes brings them more leasure time. And I wondered. Is this all it is? Wealth and power brings leasure? That's it?
Well it looks like it. When you watch most of the empires that have risen. Wealth and power have brouth more leasure to its population. But then I asked myself. So why is it that a significantly advanced civilizaion always end up declining and desapear?
That is when it struck me. Any empire get destructed by the very thing that wealth and power brings! It gets more powerful and wealthier. This brings more leasure to its population. Then abundant leasure brings boredom, lasiness, idleness and procrastination. And then slowly the empire gets cracked and at one point, it breaks appart. We tend to think that its this horde of civilization A that brought down the empire B. Or the nation of C that overcame empire D. But in fact they were all able to destroy the empire after it was weaken from within.
That is what happened to the Roman empire. That is what happened to the British empire. And that is what we see happeneing to the American empire right now.
If you haven't seen it. I highly recommand it to you. You can watch it by following this link.
Don'worry about the language. There is none all along the movie. It is the story of a cave men clan that is been attacked by a horde of other... cave men or monkeys... And they have been stolen their fire. So they send a party of their best warriors to a journey to find fire (they have not found how to make fire yet).
The movie is very interesting on several levels. But there is one that stroke me. At one point they encounter a clan. You can see that it is a more advanced clan: they know how to make fire. Thus they can allocate their time on other endeavour. For instance, they know how to build huts (while the "hero" ' s clan live in a cave). They dance, they paint. They surrounded their village with an intricate network of quicksand. So they don't get anoided by invaders...
So this accumulation of wealth and power over the other tribes brings them more leasure time. And I wondered. Is this all it is? Wealth and power brings leasure? That's it?
Well it looks like it. When you watch most of the empires that have risen. Wealth and power have brouth more leasure to its population. But then I asked myself. So why is it that a significantly advanced civilizaion always end up declining and desapear?
That is when it struck me. Any empire get destructed by the very thing that wealth and power brings! It gets more powerful and wealthier. This brings more leasure to its population. Then abundant leasure brings boredom, lasiness, idleness and procrastination. And then slowly the empire gets cracked and at one point, it breaks appart. We tend to think that its this horde of civilization A that brought down the empire B. Or the nation of C that overcame empire D. But in fact they were all able to destroy the empire after it was weaken from within.
That is what happened to the Roman empire. That is what happened to the British empire. And that is what we see happeneing to the American empire right now.
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