Quote - I know by now this is pointless nitpicking (in the eyes of some), but some very serious historians (actually, many) would argue the point of Rome's "fall," as well as the cause(s) thereof. Gibbon's "fall" of the Pax Romana has been largely discredited.

Too bad that no one was around to tell the Roman women that in 410 AD.  The Roman women who committed suicide rather than permit themselves to fall into the hands of the Visigoths.

Quote - All civilizations, including ours, have had periods in which they waxed and periods in which they waned, and often, depending on what one looks at and how one measures, both at the same time. Every civilization that no longer exists, by definition and in some limited sense at least, "fell," and there is no reason I can think of why one should expect any civilization, or any particular mainstream cultural point of view, to last indefinitely.

True, insofar as it goes.  But it remains that certain historical cultural trends can be reliably and consistently pointed to as indicative of the character of societies before they fell from within.

Quote - Greek culture transformed due largely to the failure of the Polis and the rise of Alexander and was eventually adopted and adapted by the Roman empire, and Roman civilization transformed or declined due largely to economic and military factors and gradually became the Byzantine Empire, the barbarian kingdoms of the West, the eventual dominance of European Catholicism, etc.. And there were many, many factors, and given that those successors adapted some of their institutions and officialdom from the Romans, and even in some cases considered themselves a natural evolution of the Roman Empire, there was not exactly a "fall."

Aspects of both Roman and Greek culture remain with us to this day.  But, indeed: their nations fell.  And violently so.  The fact that their "ruins" -- both figurative and literal -- remain to this day is merely evidence that the thing itself is gone.  Shadows remain, sure.  But the originators died.

Quote - "Transformation" versus "fall" -- I suppose it comes down to how one defines one's terms again ...

shrug  The city of Rome took on a different character after it was sacked.  The same thing goes for Thebes, Tyre, Carthage, Tenochtitlan, and Saigon.  Some to a greater extent: others to a lesser extent.  There have many, many such.

When the original owners are dead, and new owners move in to take over: then I suppose that one can call such an event a "transformation", if one wishes to do so.  Heh -- vestiges of the original owner's culture still cling to the areas, even when their nation died right along with the original owners centuries or millenia ago.

Quote - In any case, while my instinct is to agree that a civilization in which all, or large portions of the population, are only interested in carnal pleasure (the argument presumably being at the expense of more productive and civic-minded behavior) would very likely prove problematic, it is at least arguable how much of the "fall" of these civilizations had to do with people pleasuring themselves to death, and claims that some massive portion of our population are doing that in the present are at least somewhat questionable.

:biggrin:  I'd suggest reading late Roman history.  And then reading about the cultural history of Europe in the decades prior to WWII.  And then reading about the cultural history of the Western world over the last 40 years or so.

And then turning on the television set: and watching a little network TV.

Quote - What is factual is that there are now over 300 million people in the US, and over six billion people on the planet, and many of those people living in crowded, close proximity to one another. There are not only very many more people committing crimes and doing immoral things than in the past, there are also very many more people working, raising and taking care of their families, and living largely conventional lives of mostly conventional morality than in the past.

Fortunately and unfortunately.  But few would argue that the character of what's considered to be culturally acceptable, and what's not -- has not changed considerably over recent decades.  And not just in terms of the quantities involved.

Quote - But of course we only rarely see the behavior and activities of the latter folks made into major nightly news stories.

There's a lot of the other kind of event around to report on.  But it's true: the character of the reporting appeals to the cultural interests of the day.  Our day: our times.  And the culture which prevails in it.

Quote - What is also factual is that there has never before the last few decades been a civilization in which the everyman was being so thoroughly inundated -- through mass media, the internet, etc. -- with so much information about illegal and immoral goings on hundreds and thousands of miles away, much of which may have been happening (relative to per capita, of course) without our knowing it many years ago when information did not flow so freely, so far, so fully, or in such quantity.

What is possible is that many of us may not be adapting our attitudes to correctly interpret the meaning and significance of all this new information-rich reality.

And what is at least thinkable is that the perception that so many of us have that things are so terribly bad now might be at least partly due to the above factors.

Or, alternately, it could be due to the fact that things such as mass school shootings simply did not happen 50 years ago: at a time in which guns (including full-auto machine guns) were easy for anyone to obtain via mail order.  Or at a time when parents -- such as my own parents -- wouldn't give a second thought to their children taking off on their bicycles and being gone alone all day.

Something must have changed in the meantime.  Something more than just the ready availability of "information".  BTW - they had television, newspapers, and radio back then too.

Quote - Of course it is also possible that Xeno and Shonner are right, and the end is nigh, or nearly so.

Could be.  I'd suggest starting a betting pool, only it's not something that I'd like to collect on.

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