participant-3927, 10:05 PM, January 17
You can scale no problem as a constitutional republic. An empire is better than a civil war, but it’s not better than the Roman Republic pre 1st century BC.
participant-3927, 10:07 PM, January 17
What was so bad about Roman Empire? If you want some measure, the emperors in the empire were one worse than the other (marrying horses), with an exception of one or two, like Marcus Aurelius. The empire also destroyed Judaea, creating the “Jewish problem”.
participant-4603, 10:08 PM, January 17
Because I’m not sure the USA would be as great as it is today had the Confederate States triumphed or left for good. At the same time, though, the balance of power shifted from the states to the federal government after 1865.
participant-3927, 10:08 PM, January 17
And remember – the Roman Empire fell. It fell due to statism (of which inflation was part of, inability to cope with two plagues, was another). Incessant murder of emperors by their own guard, in the 3rd century CE.
participant-4603, 10:09 PM, January 17
Yes, they did, and I suppose you could make the case that later on, when they adopted Christianity, that was another blunder, no?
participant-3927, 10:09 PM, January 17
Adopting Christianity (theocracy) by Rome is what Iran did in 1979, by bringing Islam into the government.
participant-4603, 10:12 PM, January 17
Okay, from what I read, the reason for the adoption of Christianity had more to do with rampant corruption. People in the empire started trusting bishops to resolve disputes more than Roman magistrates.
And that this led to the rise of Christianity over time. And that its adoption was in part about saving face and trying to restore confidence in the system.
Christianity itself also became more Roman too after it became official.
participant-3927, 10:13 PM, January 17
Christianity was a unifying ideological force for the whole region, which was divided accross various cults and religions, and traditions. It absorbed into itself the cult of Serapis which was widespread. Christianity also welcomed women as equals, while no other cult did. So, it was definitely an improvement. But Constantine (and I think the emperor before him) really brought it into the government. That was the big mistake. And it started with the Council of Nicea, in which it became a political issue to justify the Trinity.
participant-4603, 10:19 PM, January 17
Right, because Christianity on paper is multiracial. It can be interpreted as teaching people not to question authority, which is helpful for rulers.
participant-3927, 10:21 PM, January 17
Ayn Rand wrote in favour of one aspect of early Christianity, she thought it brought more individualism into religion. You had now a personal relationship with god, not with the main temple via your ethnic collective .
participant-4603, 10:30 PM, January 17
Later that happens in Islam too, at least on paper, but not so much in practice. Christianity is far more multicultural and variegated. But for sure, both emphasize a personal relationship with the deity. Judaism does too, for sure, but sometimes I do wonder if that’s more of a reaction to the advent of Christianity.
participant-3927, 12:28 AM, January 18
Judaism was quite different in the past, before it became rabbinic. It was centred around the temple and the priests.
participant-3927, 1:02 AM, January 18
Welcome Natalia @participant-6060
participant-3927, 1:03 AM, January 18
I was surprised to learn that Natalia lived in New York for 15 years. Any other New Yorkers among you ? I lived there for a few years
participant-3927, 5:19 AM, January 18
Here’s what a Hugo site looks like in terms of files. All the content is in Markdown .md files, and it gets weaved together into a full wesbite, with a single build command. And during development, it’s continually rebuilt and refreshed in the browser. Each of the Markdown files has a head section as YAML (called “front matter”), and then basic text follows. Not shown in this list is the theme subdirectory of theme “Ananke” which is installed as a Git submodule. Hugo is developed by lovers of the Go programming language, and has the same kind of less is more approach.
config.toml
content/en/_index.md
content/en/article/_index.md
content/en/article/godot.md
content/en/article/immigration.md
content/en/article/libertarianism-vs-anthemism.md
…
content/en/landing/anthem.md
content/en/landing/boris.md
content/en/telegram/_index.md
content/ru/_index.md
content/ru/article/_index.md
content/ru/article/immigration.md
content/ru/article/libertarianism-vs-anthemism.md
…
content/ru/landing/anthem.md
content/ru/landing/boris.md
content/ru/telegram/_index.md
i18n/en.yaml
i18n/ru.toml
layouts/article/list.html
layouts/article/summary.html
layouts/index.html
layouts/partials/head-additions.html
layouts/partials/i18nlist.html
layouts/partials/landing.html
layouts/shortcodes/author-info.html
layouts/shortcodes/rawhtml.html
participant-4603, 7:57 AM, January 18
Welcome @participant-6060 !
participant-4603, 7:59 AM, January 18
Yes, and I think what is often not understood is that even the Talmud itself didn’t quite get codified until at least the time the New Testament did.
While the two are not connected, I often wonder about the impact of Christianity on Judaism.
participant-3927, 9:14 AM, January 18
Preview of the idea I have.
participant-3927, 9:15 AM, January 18
Each name, when clicked, expands to a write-up about this person.
participant-4603, 9:15 AM, January 18
Big undertaking.
participant-3927, 9:19 AM, January 18
Here are the historcial characters:
Abraham Lincoln
Alma Deutscher
Aristotle
Ayn Rand
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Chaim Weizmann
Edwin Land
Ignaz Semmelweis
Isaac Newton
J.K. Rowling
Michael Jordan
Natan Sharansky
Nikola Tesla
Nikolai Vavilov
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Steve Jobs
The Wright Brothers
Theodor Herzl
Thomas Edison
Viktor Belenko
Walt Disney
Yeonmi Park
Winston Churchill
Ludwig Boltzmann
and here are fictional heroic characters:
Cinderella
d’Artagnan
Dagny Taggart
Daniel Deronda
Frodo Baggins
Howard Roark
Jean Valjean
Odysseus
Quasimodo
Sherlock Holmes
Equality 7-2521 (Prometheus)
Kira Argounova
participant-3927, 9:20 AM, January 18
If you want to do some of these, let me know.
participant-3927, 9:20 AM, January 18
We want to show how everyone was against each person, but he ignored the public opinion and did it anyway
participant-4603, 9:26 AM, January 18
What, no William Tell? No, but in all sincerity, Howard Roark is such an archetype of the ideal stoic, principled man.
“I don’t design and build countries to have clients. I have clients in order to design and build countries!”
participant-3927, 9:26 AM, January 18
We can add more names to this list
participant-3927, 7:39 PM, January 18
I am not big on sports, and I don’t know anyone like Michael Jordan who persevered against criticism. Can you make another recommendation? Maybe Terry Fox, but I’m not sure if it fits exactly. Did people say he shouldn’t even try?
participant-3927, 7:41 PM, January 18
I broke it down by topic
participant-3927, 8:05 PM, January 18
About William Tell, I don’t know enough about it, and I’d like to err on the safe side — don’t want to be misinterpreted that I advocate violence.
participant-4603, 9:19 PM, January 19
Fair enough, although he is regarded as almost akin to a mythological Swiss founding father.
He might be too obscure of an example nowadays.
I doubt many people outside of Central Europe know much about him.
participant-3927, 10:05 PM, January 19
I know his name from “80
Days Around the World”
