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I recognize your examples (Napoleon, Stalin, Mao), but China remains officially irreligious, and several eastern European countries remain mostly irreligious while renouncing communism. They don't seem to suffer a personality cult anymore.
2. check on temporal rulers;
The issue with that is the tendency by ambitious political or religious figures to fuse church and state, sometimes as an express command, e.g. the totalitarian doctrine of Islam (which Muslims call "a complete system" because it fuses mosque and state).
Rome survived much longer than US Existed with the Anona in place. And a similar one in Constantinople The Anona was necessary because slaves took the jobs freemen used to do, esp. after Pompey Magnus and Caesar flooded the Slave Markets from their big conquests in Asia and Gaul. Eventually, slaves took all the farms, as wealthy landlords dispossessed the Roman Yeomanry and turned them into grazing lands for sheep, forcing the Legions to rely increasingly on Barbarian troops instead of the lesser sons of stout Roman Peasants, and Italy dependent on Grain Imports.
Reality saysThe French tried to abolish religion itself during the French Revolution. They quickly had to come find a replacement, first "Church of Reason" then personality cult.
Agreed.
The French Revolution is the model for Leftist Utopians, hence "Jacobin Magazine".
I recognize your examples (Napoleon, Stalin, Mao), but China remains officially irreligious, and several eastern European countries remain mostly irreligious while renouncing communism. They don't seem to suffer a personality cult anymore.
You guys just ignore the role of the low clergy in the French revolution, including in starting the revolution in the general states of 1789.
The French revolution maybe included some anti-religious elements but was never built against religion the way communism was. It's totally absurd to claim the French lost their religion, stopped being Catholics and started adoring Napoleon instead.
This entire narrative is just a lame republican rewriting of history to justify an irrational need for religion, just like claiming the nazis were collectivists.
These are bad, bad, simplistic ideas.
And btw, this could be an interesting thread on history but thoroughly irrelevant to this thread. I suggest you move to your own.
You're right. It doesn't make any sense. Reality is just rationalizing that we need religion.
The real reality is that no one has ever suffered from being too rational - and certainly not from being rational enough to reject religion.
The French Revolution was a pre-run of the latter communist revolutions (starting in 1848). Existing religious establishments were targeted due to the wealth and asset amassed by them. The Cult of Reason ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_Reason ) took place at the height of the French Revolution, before Robespierre's Cult of Supreme Being (himself as the high priest) and long before Napoleon. Your high school history may not have covered that aspect of French Revolution.
These ideals are very close to those carried by the American revolution.
These ideals are very close to those carried by the American revolution.
And yes, the French Revolution was a bloody affair. This is what happens when you remove the central authority , and a vengeful crowd rules the streets. Napoleon ended this in 1 day by shooting with canons on that crowd, and reestablishing the central authority. (Take that libertarians).
Napoleon ended this in 1 day by shooting with canons on that crowd
Interestingly, he labeled such tactics “The Last Argument of Kings.”
When I can't get a house in the country and have my next neighbor over a mile away, then I'll believe in overpopulation.
Which in exponential growth, is likely to happen in the last minute before you are overwhelmed with too many people.
Combined with a decline in marriage and birthrates across the US, we are going the opposite direction.
Factor in immigration though.
The US added like... 50 millions people since 2000.
Aligning S curves into an exponential is unlikely to work as the speed of progress should continue to increase until no S curve has the time to happen, and then until no human brain can cope with the fire hose of new information.
Total BS. The French revolution was inspired by the American revolution, coming right after it. It was a revolt against monarchy, with ideas like equality and freedom of men, that included the freedom of religion. Can you read?: Déclaration des Droits de l'Homme et du Citoyen de 1789 .Heraclitusstudent says
And yes, the French Revolution was a bloody affair. This is what happens when you remove the central authority , and a vengeful crowd rules the streets. Napoleon ended this in 1 day by shooting with canons on that crowd, and reestablishing the central authority. (Take that libertarians).
July 1789: Duke of Orleans paid for a mob to attack and occupy lightly guarded Bastille ordinance depot;
1794: Cult of Supreme Being (personality cult of Robespirre), execution of Danton (former close ally of Robespirre.) which so alarmed all deputies that they arrested and executed Robespirre. mass execution burning itself out;
Commerce, market and the division of labor they produce can pack a huge number of people into a small space like the Venetian Republic for 1100 years (eventually ended by Napoleon's invasion) . . . whereas collectivism and academic ideological rigidity (most revolutionaries were intellectuals) even with the best of intentions like "Bill of Rights of Men" written in the 2nd month of the French Revolution would lead to mass genocide as "solution" to the "over-population" problem created by the lack of creativity and growing expectations of a copy-happy population (i.e. a society where advancement was through education, not the market). Robespirre himself was a law student, and president of student body welcoming the King when Louise XVI inspected Paris University, which was the largest and most prestigious university in the world.
It's idiotic to think a revolution could be started by paying a crowd. This is not like renting a crowd to protest for women health issue is SF. People attacking the Bastille were attacking a monarchy that stood for 800yrs and could easily kill them.
The King was totally out of touch with the country (and even with the basis of its own power). His court was throwing lavish parties while many people didn't have enough to eat. The King was seen as impotent and unable to control his Austrian wife - let alone France.
The deputies of the "tiers etat", together with some deputies of the clergy and nobility met in "Jeu de Paume" instead, and swore not to disband until they had crafted a constitution (aiming for a constitutional monarchy).
The revolution never led to a stable regime. It was a vortex of chaos that charismatic men like Robespierre briefly influenced before being themselves consumed by it. Robespierre had no reason to kill Danton, except in this situation, Danton could kill him first, so Robespierre had to act first, but to no avail. It was the rule of paranoia and fear on all sides.
The French revolution was never built against religion.
- "academic ideological rigidity" is an expression that doesn't make sense: science is the opposite of dogma and ideology. It is subject to constant change. Some philosophers like Voltaire and Marx produce ideology. The question is: is this ideology based on defending human freedom and rights, or is it based on imposing some organization. Voltaire the former, Marx the later.
- development: commerce etc... can lead to feeding wider population, which is exactly the problem we started the thread with. i.e the human species escape its ecological niche and is an "outbreak" in biological terms.
Your instinct is for bottom up organization. I get that. But you fail to recognize when top-down organization is needed. Capitalism is made of many companies emerging from individuals bottom up, however each company is itself a top-down organization, or at least include some top-down parts. There is no such thing as a purely self-organizing company or society for that matter.
I find your beliefs themselves are VERY ideological and rigid.
take the crown from Louise XVI
Do you not realize individual workers can quit the company and seek employment elsewhere at any time? It's nothing like a nation-state or even a slave plantation. The so-called "top-down" organization in a company is voluntary association; i.e. still a bottom-up organization. The owner of the company simply owns the passive capital stock of the company (therefore at a disadvantage and have to be protected by property rights), not the individuals. That is very different from a top-down nation-state (where membership is mandatory), which inevitably comes down to slavery of one shade or another, centralization of power and all the leaders killing each other to grab that power, with the worst scum eventually floating to the top!
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Plus 1 billion per decade.
When a culture of protozoa hits the size of the Petri dish, they drown in their own waste or run out of nutrient, or both.
Do you think we are different from protozoa?
Do you think we're special?
I'm not sure why so little attention seems to be paid to these questions, but here's 1 talk about it:
https://www.ted.com/talks/charles_c_mann_how_will_we_survive_when_the_population_hits_10_billion#t-697701