Posted by SlimPack:
Posted by BlueSeats:
Not every variant from the norm is a PERVERSION. That's a highly subjective term.
And while culture may be able to play a role in what some persons experiment with, I don't think you need to fear it converting populations en masse. I suspect most who are gay are so because they just are, innately - NOT because they succumb to outer forces.
Ours isn't the first liberal culture. I'm thinking of the ancient Greeks and Romans, who's cultures were possibly more sexually tolerant than ours. They were also quite powerful, affluent, creative and inventive, and I'd be very surprised if their eventual downfall had anything to do with homosexuality. If anything I'd rather suspect it gave cause to their earlier rise and attainment of power.
[Edited by - BlueSeats on 02-15-2007 2:13 PM]
why did the roman empire fall?
There is no singular answer, in fact scholars don't even agree on what defeat constitutes the ultimate end of the empire.
But like everything, societies have ebbs, flows, ascensions and declines... essentially, life-cycles. The largest and best known societies probably ascend first through wealth and invention, which creates jobs and affluence that spurs growth. Then, after a certain critical mass is obtained and the colony needs to expand, it growths through conquest. They obtain lands, which typically include resources like agriculture, water, gold, and often slave labor. Through land grabs and pillaging they increase their wealth, and the conquests become a self-perpetuating necessity. Sometimes you need a new conquest just to pay for and justify your standing army.
With wealth often comes art and invention. These are often the artifacts by which we know and understand such cultures. What would we care of the ancient Greeks if not for their grand edifices, inventions, culture (art, sport, food, dress, lifestyle, etc) and philosophies? (FWIW, what do we care of our own society beyond that?) But the grander that the everyday means become, the more upkeep they require and the more income needed just to maintain the machine.
Eventually they become greedy and overextend themselves. They're fighting too many battles on too many fronts, and monies that might best be used for essentials like infrastructure, medicine, education, law enforcement, etc, are sent to the fringes of the empire and the military machine. Declines in standards of living become routine, then general discontent sets in, political corruption runs rampant, and before you know it, you have a government under attack from the outside and within.
Internal (civil) wars, racial and ethnic conflicts, external attacks from marauders and barbarians, inflation, mutinies, lawlessness and anarchy, etc, all take their toll on the empire and chip it away, bit by bit, until it can't sustain itself and is overrun.
In the case of the Romans, some go so far as to speculate that the rise of Christianity also played a part in the decline by fomenting pacifism and diverting funds to the building of churches that might have otherwise gone to the military, or other aspects of a society already in decline.
2/15/2007 11:20 PM
