/lit/ - Literature

None

>>17164268
He refutes himself. A schizo lunatic autist like Ted is not to be trusted.

It's a movement destined to fail just like any other movement that thinks it can change a global system (see communism/socialism). The only way out the system is by running it until it fails. Think of how few people have actually even read Ted's manifesto and how few of that number would actually do anything. It's a movement predicated on romanticism. It knows it will fail.

>>17164287
>He refutes himself
If you make a claim, at least prove it.

>>17164268
Ted supposes that things got bad with the Industrial Revolution, but it really started when that fucking microbe crawled out of the primordial soup in four-billion BC.

>>17164348
BASED BASED BASED

>>17164348
/thread

>>17164348
This.

>>17164348
>Ted supposes that things got bad with the Industrial Revolution
I wouldn't say that, just that they got a lot worse. He isn't some utopian and did a whole piece criticizing anprims who think hunter-gatherer/primitive life was some cushy cask walk.

>>17164298
Exactly this

>>17164268
Thoreau’s walk in the woods did much more for his soul than for the woods themselves, and my move into the countryside has done nothing but harm the environment. I’ve gone from being a relatively parsimonious urban energy user to emitting massive amounts of carbon. While my compact urban living space could be easily warmed, it takes hundreds of gallons of fuel oil to heat my drafty home over a New England winter. My modest attempts to reduce energy use have led my mother to accuse me of trying to freeze my children. I call it building character. What with lights and air conditioning and appliances, my electricity bill has tripled. Of course, like most of nonurban America, I’ve also become dependent on the car, burning roughly a gallon of gas every time I go to a full-size grocery store. It all seems pretty absurd to someone who, city-born, didn’t learn how to drive until he was in graduate school.
My story, like Thoreau’s, makes a fundamental point: Cities are much better for the environment than leafy living. Residing in a forest might seem to be a good way of showing one’s love of nature, but living in a concrete jungle is actually far more ecologically friendly. We humans are a destructive species, even when, like Thoreau, we’re not trying to be. We burn forests and oil and inevitably hurt the landscape that surrounds us. If you love nature, stay away from it.
In the 1970s, Jane Jacobs argued that we could minimize our damage to the environment by clustering together in high-rises and walking to work, and this point has been eloquently argued by David Owen in his book Green Metropolis. We maximize our damage when we insist on living surrounded by greensward. Lower densities inevitably mean more travel, and that requires energy. While larger living spaces certainly do have their advantages, large suburban homes also consume much more energy.

>>17164388
what insufferable faggot wrote this horseshit

>>17164348
Cringe

>>17164388
Surely cities are only necessary to support a population which has outgrown its natural limits. A small village of 2000 people will have much less effect on the surrounding environment than a city of 10,000,000. This seems more like a papering-over of our problems, suggesting that we have to just put up with the fact that our population has expanded exponentially and that the only recourse now is to make everyone's lives collectively miserable, rather than reducing the global population so that everyone can be collectively happier. It's the same deal with COVID. Quantity-of-life over quality-of-life. Fuck whoever wrote that.

>>17164388
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Glaeser

>>17164322
>it is my personal duty to refute every claim made by someone with schizophrenia
sorry bud, schizos aren't reliable sources. It is best to ignore everything they say unless corroborated by evidence and a healthy non-schizo mind.

>>17164388
>His work with David Cutler of Harvard identified harmful effects of segregation on black youth in terms of wages, joblessness, education attainment, and likelihood of teen pregnancy. They found that the effect of segregation was so harmful to blacks that if black youth lived in perfectly integrated metropolitan areas, their success would be no different from white youth on three of four measures and only slightly different on the fourth.
COMMIE BLOCKS FOR ALL!

swag

>>17164427
>economist whose mother worked for big oil
not surprised

>>17164298
Ouch

>>17164448
>Although his most recent book, Triumph of the City (2011),[4] celebrates the city, he moved with his wife and children to the suburbs around 2006 because of "home interest deduction, highway infrastructure and local school systems".

>>17164496
>Glaeser admired many aspects of the work of Jane Jacobs; they both argue that "cities are good for the environment."[9] He disagreed with her on densification through height. He advocates for higher buildings in cities while Jacobs deplored the 1950s and 1960s public housing projects inspired by Le Corbusier. The austere, dehumanizing New York high rises eventually became the "projects" straying far from their original intent. She believed in preserving West Greenwich Village's smaller historical buildings for personal, economic and aesthetic reasons. Glaeser grew up in a high rise and believes that higher buildings provide more affordable housing. He calls for elimination or lessening of height limitation restrictions, preservationist statutes and other zoning laws.

>>17164503
>Despite the seeming disparateness of the topics he has examined, most of Glaeser's work can be said to apply economic theory (and especially price theory and game theory) to explain human economic and social behavior. Glaeser develops models using these tools and then evaluates them with real world data, so as to verify their applicability. A number of his papers in applied economics are co-written with his Harvard colleague, Andrei Shleifer.

ted has swag, technophiles has none

>>17164445
With every other part of the body, be it arm or a leg or an eye, We are capable of distinguishing health from sickness. How may we distinguish the healthy mind from the schizophrenic mind?

The criticism is that people cannot compete with the machines. And you can't rebel against the machines without tools made by machines or something. So in the end in order to rebel successfully you have to abandon your ideals

>>17164268
Boomer grandparents ruin children. Children don't understand why they can watch YouTube bullshit at gigis but not at home. I can't tedpill my 4 year old.

>>17164348
Nope, it was the Cognitive Revolution that led to agriculture.
Agriculture means cities, which means bureaucracy and military.

>>17165033
Yes you can. They're "anti-racist" pilling literal babies now. Parents used to tell stories that ended with kids getting eaten to teach a moral.
Just study up on fairytales, fables, folklore, mythology etc. and write your own kids story about how too much technology makes you a slave.

>>17164445
>>17164287
Have you even read his book

>>17164388
Imagine being this much of a fucking faggot.

>>17164268
That if man is not unique among animals for having a soul and a special destiny bestowed by God, then the inevitable conclusion of neuroscience is that free-will, consciousness, the mind, and the individual self are all illusions (or more properly, delusions) produced by the brain as a byproduct of evolution. In this case, the fate of mankind, or of anything else in the universe, doesn't matter. Man is one more miserable animal destined only to die. An unhappy animal is not really different from a happy one, and happiness can be induced by neurochemical stimulation anyway. Advanced brain surgery could brute-force Uncle Ted's catecholamines and suddenly the industrial revolution and its consequences wouldn't seem so bad.

>>17165075
My child gets plenty of the original stories and fables. I read to her nightly and we avoid screens. It's her boomer grandparents that give her anything she wants. They're ignorant of the world Trump supporting idiots.

Am I the only one unimpressed by Ted? His reputation of being very persuasive, rigorous and logically irrefutable is what got me interested and I had high expectations for him. But all his writings are either incomprehensible schizo babbles or just trite and unremarkable ideas that were better articulated by other thinkers.

>>17165131
>Advanced brain surgery could brute-force Uncle Ted's catecholamines and suddenly the industrial revolution and its consequences wouldn't seem so bad.

That would reinforce Ted's point about technology, not refute it.

>>17164268

Imagine giving your young child technology.

>>17165134
Go read Ellul, who inspired Ted's writing a great deal, and make your own connections.

>>17164298
>The only way out the system is by running it until it fails

It will, and soon

>>17164268
his arguments are not about technology, but about the abuse/misuse of technology which is inevitable in its early development (where we are now). but the endgame of a literal utopia is only possible with technology, we just need to get past some rocky road before getting there

in other words, his mistake is not so much with his diagnosis of the problem as with the solution he gives, which is going back instead of buckling up and keep going forward

>>17164348
Come on man he needed cigarettes

>>17164419
>rather than reducing the global population so that everyone can be collectively happier
so you actually suggest that it would be a good thing that most humans die?

>>17164388
>surely living as a teeming, consuming mass of bugpeople is less resource-intense
>cities acquire their heat and light and food and shelter through magic
I hate bugmen.

>>17165133
You have to what I'm doing, you must take extreme measures. When my son turned six I locked him in a furnished garage with a toilet and shower (no hot water), power cage, bench, weight set, and treadmill, and no reading material except Plutarch's Lives (in Koine ofc). I insert one meal a day of food produced on a small farm in Alberta, uphill and far away from any industrial contaminants, through a cat door, and cleaning supplies once a month. I will not let him out until he can physically force the door open and kick the living shit out of me. He refuses to talk to me through the door but sometimes I can hear enraged screaming, and vile curses in Greek. That means it's working.

>>17165195
Yes. You'd have to be delusionally optimistic to say our current population growth is even within spitting distance of sustainable.

>>17165133
Lol then tedpill your parents incessantly and anchor the message in family values. They've been left docile by mainstream media

>>17165131
>rape of brain-meat and suppression of soul could make the unpalatable palatable
Ted talks about this at length. Read the manifesto before posting again.

>>17165211
it's not sustainable as we are going now, but it's very likely that we will master technology enough and soon enough that we can stabilize, and get a system much, much better than any traditional alternative. also with less death and suffering in the road than what you propose, which by the way wouldn't be a stable situation either because it would return back to where we are now sooner or later

>>17165202
I kek'd at the ecological argument.
>roads fall from the sky
>they find the steel they use for skyscrapers just lying around
>sewers don't exist
>food teleports to stores and restaurants
>the light that obscures the stars every night is just the way things are, it has no power source
> rural communities haven't become a hotspot for clean energy construction in the form of wind and solar energy, they're all too racist

>>17164287
Prove it pseud

>>17165243

I find it hard to believe there will be any major and qualitative difference in new tech that will reverse the path towards collapse we are heading down. So far nothing has been that and I don't think anything will be that.

>>17165202
>hurr I'm retarded
If you need the same quantity of resources, but don't need to distribute it as much what does that mean?

>>17165338
It means a more efficient use of resources.
If you need significantly more resources to live worse than you're a fucking idiot

>>17165243
Like what? I always think that those who long for new technology know nothing about it. What technology are we on the verge of discovering? Quantum computers, which have limited cryptographic applications at best and are impossible to apply to anything at worst? Space exploration, with rocket technologies that were invented by Soviet scientists in the 50’s?
We’re at the end of history buddy. Apart from gene editing (which I have not had the time to look into in detail), it seems to me as though we’re virtually at a dead end in technological progress. I don’t mean to say that some brilliant physicist won’t discover the Grand Theory, but don’t expect technology to be affecting your daily life in the future, save possibly gene editing.

>>17164554
there's an entire medical field dedicated to this. stop getting all philosophical, philosophy is only useful for questions we can't answer with actual evidence.
>>17165082
no, why would I want to read the ramblings of a schizo? "But it's super convincing" just makes me want to read it less. Without evidence, it's just convincing nonsense.

>>17165223
It is either the case that there is a God with a special plan for humanity, in which case it's all going to be okay, or it's the case that human suffering doesn't matter. If man is just more biomass then it doesn't matter whether he suffers or not, whether he's living in an environment for which he is evolutionarily compatible or not. I know he "talks [read: rants] about this at length," the fact of the matter is he's just a mentally unstable dude with a lot of feelings who was exposed to a little too much hazardous information for his unstable emotions. At the end of the day this dude's only conclusion from all his philosophizing is that he has to engage in low-tier acts of IRL fedposting. It all turned into an excuse to rationalize his fucked up violent impulses, there was no strategy to his targeting, with the practical knowledge he developed he could have done a lot more to further his "cause." An angry man writes a book ranting about his problems with the world, and raises some very good points in doing so, but comes to no conclusion except that he must sperg out an murder people who have only the most tenuous connection to the issue allegedly causing his grievance... am I describing Ted K or Elliot Rodger?

>>17165203
based.

>>17164268
Ted mistakes capital with technology

>>17164268
he was retroactively refuted by plato
ted was a total pseud brainlet

>>17165410
the medical field concludes that he is not in fact schizophrenic.

>>17165410
>convincing nonsense

are you perhaps a little slow?

>>17165203
Lmao. Based

>>17164388
Why are you getting mad at this? Hes got a point
This just shows that over population is the biggest problem and it has made living in nature unsustainable

>>17165410
>philosophy is only useful for questions we can't answer with actual evidence
Then it is the most important discipline, perhaps even the only one worth nourishing, for we must first ask, what is actual evidence?

>>17164348
gay
>>17165203
based
>>17165559
How so?

>>17165596
>
are you perhaps from reddit?

>>17165559
was anyone not?

>>17165627
Haha yes, exactly! You get it -- science has made your area of interest mostly obsolete, so now in an attempt to stay relevant, you try to claim you are necessary for that. Fucking lol, dude. You know what evidence is. The "muh what even is reality" schtick got old about 500 years ago.

>>17164268
BREEDERS BTFO

>>17165559
>retroactively
>but it happened before
wew

>>17165649
Sauce?

>>17165662
Those are men, anon

>>17165667
And?

>>17165647
yes, and?

>>17165647
Scientifically demonstrate what mankind should strive for in the coming years. I'm sure the question of 'what are we alive for?' is within the purview of Science.

>>17165693
TO BREED AND FUCK AND DRINK AND MAKE GENETICS GO WROOM WROOM HAHA ARE YOU DUMB? SCIENCE, BITCHES!

>>17165647
>>17165693
>>17165704
Scientism fags get the rope

>>17164388
WHO WROTE THIS PLEEEASE I NEED TO CRITIQUEEE

Im fine with the idea that an argument can be made some technologies shouldn't exist.

Like there's a democratic process to decide whether to press a button that turns everyone's eyeballs into acid in their heads.

Should that tech exist? Does it matter if it's democratically controlled?

And there's varying degrees from that extreme example to something less dramatic.

>>17165704
Of course, and we find it essential to be alive to participate in these activities because...? Also, I'm expecting peer reviewed studies for all your later replies, otherwise it isn't the Scientific Method.

>>17164408
He’s right though. Ted just hates to be around people and doesn’t understand a lot about them.

>>17165685
well you're not relevant, no matter how much you try to be. Science has most replaced philosophy, and doesn't need philosophy.
>>17165693
That's a great area where philosophy is still relevant. "What even /is/ evidence, man" is not.

>>17165728
>still beliving in democracy
God you are an imbecile

>>17165704
>>17165647
An opinion, as it turns out, not shared by the most esteemed scientists of all time.

>>17165729
>can't even identify when the person he's replying to has changed based on their manner of speaking
ngmi
>>17165748
>all the scientists from a long time ago when philosophy was still necessary think philosophy is necessary
>all the scientists from right now when philosophy is barely necessary think philosophy is unnecessary
wow, what do you know, it's almost like it's supporting my point!

>>17165748
>The universe is made up of tiny ideas —Heisenberg
Hahaha.
Einstein is right, but some people take their Platonism into the sciences

>>17165748
Thats kind of Cherry picked though, one side comes from journals/personal musings, the other is obviously pulled from live interviews or broadcasts.

>>17165767
>all the scientists from a long time ago when philosophy was still necessary think philosophy is necessary
has to be b8

>>17165767
Yeah, but see, all the figures on the right are cringe and gay, so your point is invalid.

>>17165744
>That's a great area where philosophy is still relevant. "What even /is/ evidence, man" is not
You can only say that if there was another discipline which could answer what is evidence. As it stands, however, only philosophy can aswer what is evidence.

>>17164388
You have a good point but I rather support small urban villages than Cities.

>>17164419
Yes this we need to greatly decrease the global population. But the first step in protecting the environment and securing human happiness is abolishing capitalism

>>17165796
well, yeh, because they were cherrypicked to be so lol. Find me a modern scientist who gives a shit about philosophy.
>>17165815
literally anyone can. It would actually make a lot more sense for each discipline to decide for itself what constitutes evidence -- you know, like they currently do through journals and the publishing process

>>17164298
>It's a movement destined to fail

Post-industrial society or Ted's?

>>17165830
You know why anyone can? The same way that anyone can cure a disease or fix a car; they consult a professional, be it a doctor, mechanic or - philosopher.

>>17164348
>but it really started when that fucking microbe crawled out of the primordial soup in four-billion BC.

I thought it all started when God said 'Be' and it was so.

>>17165830
All the persons on the left are modern scientists lol.

>>17165845
The thing is, amateur philosophy (aka just thinking and experiencing the world) gets pretty much as good of results as the "professional philosopher" (how can you keep a straight face typing that?)

>>17165854
sorry, "contemporary"

>>17165830
>Find me a modern scientist who gives a shit about philosophy.
Pretty much every single one whether they realize it or not bruh, the entirety of the scientific method was molded from fundamental philosophical principles

>>17165855
Retroactively btfo'ed by the socratic dialogues. Is this even a literature board?

>>17165873
Yes, it came from philosophical principles, back when "philosophy" just meant "studying things" and included all kinds of things, including "science", primitive as it was at the time.

Today, the term "philosophy" means something much more narrow, and much more useless. Yet by your definition, seemingly any thought one could have would qualify as philosophy.

95% of all cases of depression in young men can be explained by a syncretic reading of Ted's Power Process and BAP's Owned Space.

>>17165904
No, quite literally and directly. The Hypothesis format that the scientific method is built upon comes from modus ponens, an argument structure defined by philosophers in ancient Greece lok

>>17164268
I always found his arguments rather lacking, and his behaviour very hypocritical.
>Claims industrial revolution saps people of meaning
>Wants everyone to go back to monke to find it
>So he goes live in the woods
>Gets bored
>Decides to mail bomb people for no reason

>>This is peak /lit/ phisolophy

I don't think so

>>17166027
Yes. These philosophers were the equivalent of general academics. There were no scientists. There were no mathematicians. Philosopher just meant person who studied things.

>>17165163

You hope. Marx thought capitalism was in its end stage when he wrote the manifesto.

>>17165167
How can anything good come of an evil system? If you start a war and killed half the world's population, you could make a great deal of prosperity happen, but would that be a good world? Amoral means cannot lead to a moral end.

Who were the first farmers? Ask yourself that. In that jump from Stone Age to Iron Age, who tilled those fields?

>>17166384
>Amoral means cannot lead to a moral end.
Absolute non-sense, life itself is amoral. Each and every civilization that exists today, which you might dare call moral in anyway, had its beginnings in complete amorality

>>17164268
>child repeats things he hears
>we should bomb universities
Yeah ok

>>17166418
There are no civilizations that are moral. Every civilization, even the least of them, predicates themselves on the exploitation of someone else. Civilizations cannot exist without slavery in some form.

>>17166058
read more or leave

>>17166432
Indeed, this is why I support Slavery and Genocide

>>17166454
Why is Slavery and Genocide a good thing?

>>17166428
> Child obviously calls mother Alexa
>everything is fine and normal, consume more, eat the fake meat, learn to own nothing

>>17166463
Without it we wouldn't progress spiritually, or technologically. We would be stuck in time, with no reason to improve things.

>>17166487
Progress towards what? What spiritual good has slavery and genocide given?

>>17165133
she will grow up to become a whore. Teach her to aim for the richest simp she can get.

>>17166058
I've read so many books, I'm tired of stories that make sense. I just want to shut my brain off and not understand what's going on.

>>17166463
It's not good, it's just how we decide winners and losers

He never offered a solution. Just predictions.

>>17166501
>Progress towards what? What spiritual good has slavery and genocide given?
Each and everything you'd consider spiritually good, since the foundation of life itself is devouring each other. There are no noble lifeforms.

>>17166506
Seek traditionalism, and balance your psyche with some physical grounding. It'll help you not lose your mind to insanity.

>>17166510
Where's the virtue in being a winner or loser?
>>17166533
So then you admit that civilization is evil.

>>17166553
>So then you admit that civilization is evil.
Yes, and that's a good thing

>>17166575
Why is it a good thing? Do you actually have an answer, or are you just hiding your nihilism? One can be a nihilist if they want, Anon, but it's not very compelling.

>>17166553
I just said it's not good dipshit. There's no virtue to it that's just the way it is.
We decide winners and losers because we like organization

>>17166596
I already told you why, it just didn't satisfy you. Progress requires death and suffering, I like progress because it makes humans more complex overtime and capable of greater knowledge and power over their environment.

There's nothing nihilistic about it either, at least not for me.

>>17165301
>>17165399
it's not about getting new groudbreaking tech, it's about tech progressively allowing us to understand ourselves better (both at the individual and at the societal level) and giving us the ability to live better

this is the main and essential point, although of course new tech like fusion, space mining etc will come very handy

>>17165748
didnt "cosmic coon" get #metoo'd?

>>17166609
Then you're a nihilist with no principles. Why LARP as someone with actual beliefs? Sad.
>>17166612
You like progress because you feel it enriches and empowers humans. Which humans are made more complex? What knowledge and power is ultimately needed to exert greater control over the environment? You don't know the answers to these questions.

>>17166615
Incorrect.
Physical tech won't increase our internal quality of life if we don't upgrade our political and moral technologies to keep up with it.
You can come up with cheap, clean, sustainable energy but that won't stop Globohomo from killing you and rationing the energy at higher price than fossil fuels in order to limit people stepping out of line.

>>17166643
>Which humans are made more complex?
The ones that survive
> What knowledge and power is ultimately needed to exert greater control over the environment?
The one you are using to speak and communicate with be over continents
>You don't know the answers to these questions.
You are denying reality because you are scared of death

>>17166643
Not a nihilist, more a stoic.
Nice discourse fuckwad. The word LARP is not a cheat code to being right.

>>17166647
>Physical tech won't increase our internal quality of life if we don't upgrade our political and moral technologies to keep up with it.
my point is the only way of doing all that is using tech as a tool, therefore we should strive to keep improving it and (specially) improving our use of it. to reject it is to condemn us

reality

>>17166658
For a stoic you're awfully mad.
>>17166653
Your argument has no coherence. How are the humans that survive more complex? If progress is a function of evolution, it doesn't arbitrate. Do you mean to say that the internet is the ultimate tool that will control the environment? Seems a non sequitur to me.

As for your last point, it has no bearing on the conversation. Civilization is brutal, ferocious, and amoral, that is a fact. Exalt it if you want, but don't pretend you're not evil.

>>17166704
>Civilization is brutal, ferocious, and amoral, that is a fact. Exalt it if you want, but don't pretend you're not evil.
I never claimed not to be, I just find your moralistic struggle pathetic since there is no other way life could be, and if you truly believed yourself then you'd anhero instead of benefiting from civilization build on death and suffering while bitching about it.

You remind me of all those Socialists that bitch about Capitalism while selling you books about it. How are you any more virtuous?

>>17165134
that reputation comes from tedfags who incessantly worship the man over the internet, in their urban domiciles, heated by an HVAC system, drinking tap water before opening up steam and playing vidya

>>17166727
I never claimed to be virtuous either.
>>17165167
This was the post that had started the discussion. The position that the end game is a "literal utopia" is foolish if the goal is the happiness and prosperity of the human race. If that is not the goal, then what is? You say complexity, knowledge, and domination, but what complexity, what knowledge, and how is that domination achieved?

You don't have the answer to these questions, nobody does. The human race is without precedent in its proceedings.

I'm just preaching the truth, anon. If the truth bothers you, then the issue lies in yourself and dressing me up as your perceived enemy won't help you.

>>17166748
One of ted's points are that people don't have a choice in being in those environments. This is why you need to read, otherwise you end up arguing for the thing you disagree with.

>>17164268
Just browsed through that subreddit out of curiosity... really teaches not to get married if you are poor, and to work on communication skills. Holy Smokes, how hard is it to show a tiny bit of consideration for your partner (on both sides)

>>17166615
Fusion and space mining aint happening my guy

>>17167038
why not? in next 100 it's very likely i think, even though they may mean nothing compared to who knows what else

>>17166540
good advice, but I was actually just making fun of people who read this trash

>>17166528
So you never read him? What faggot do you have to be to call yourself out like that?

>>17164298
>thinks it can change a global system (see communism/socialism)
Ted talks about this in detail in Technological Slavery. He isn't trying to "change" the techno-industrial system, he's trying to bring it down. There are many examples through history where enormous systems fell(Roman Empire, the French revolution, the Russian revolution, etc.)

>The only way out the system is by running it until it fails
He talks about this as well. Basically, once the system fails, it brings nature down with it. By that time earth will be so polluted that human life will be impossible to sustain.

>Think of how few people have actually even read Ted's manifesto and how few of that number would actually do anything.
He doesn't want a big following. According to Ted, all that is needed is a small and passionate group of people who are willing to do anything to destroy the system. He gives the example of the Bolsheviks in Russia and how few they were in comparison to the party they were against.

>It's a movement predicated on romanticism. It knows it will fail.
If Ted's anything, he's an anti-romantic. He acknowledges the hardships of what he proposes, and even goes into detail on how difficult the hunter and gatherer life is.

All these points you make are characteristic of someone who knows the truth about the techno-industrial system but is too scares/lazy to be willing to seriously think about it. "Dude, it'll just, like, fail or something like that by its own" Absolute slave mentality.

>>17167467
>There are many examples through history where enormous systems fell(Roman Empire, the French revolution, the Russian revolution, etc.)
Comparing political institutions to technological stagnation or regression is asinine unless the infrastructure necessary to perpetuate these technologies is contingent on the political institutions in question - when Rome fell they didn't go back to using bronze swords because they could no longer make iron and when the house of Capet was deposed the factories didn't start turning out crossbows instead of muskets