/lit/ - Literature

Yeah, classical historian here, that kind of stuff as you envision it rarely actually happens outside of literal apocalypse scenarios.

>>19016141
Cope.

City of God by St Augustine is the closest you will get to a contemporary perspective of the fall of the Western Empire

>>19016557

Not really because what Augustin does there is trying to provide an explanation for why Rome fell, to justify that it was all in God's grand plan and that in the broader picture, it's all going to be alright.

>>19016647
>I’m interested in seeing how people coped and lived with the reality that the world as they understood it was ending
That's literally how they coped anon. Its all God's plan. Whattya want from me?

>>19016088
just read fiction and imagine yourself in it.

>>19016647
Oh, you want the clinical psychopath's analysis of the situation?

>>19016088

>>19016730

No, but I mean OP won't get what he seeks from reading that either, he might as well just read contemproary history.

>>19016088
staywell away from what u dont know jeue.
>ib4hardlinepr0nography

Just go on Pol and watch an unregulated view into the human psyche as the greatest empire to exist slowly crumbles. Nothing else can come close to that level of sincerity

>>19016647
Augustine lived an incredibly privileged and influential life and was comically disconnected from the affairs of his day, he's not really what OP wants.

If you want Rome, The Final Pagan Generation is a good one. It goes over the final generation before Constantine converted the Empire (the last actual practitioners of Greek Polytheism got converted to Islam shortly before the fall of Constantinople). Another good one is Roman Aristocrats in Barbarian Gaul, which covers how the Romans coped with an actual collapse of their entire society (tl;dr they invented the Catholic Church as we know it and then imported it to Rome). I highly recommend this latter one as it's not an instantaneous "poof, everything is now broken" like the USSR, nor is it a planned dismantling like with the Ottomemes, Byzantium, or China. Rather, it's a slow collapse of and subsequent rebuilding of order.

Thanks everyone.

>>19018156
Thanks anon.

You brought up a good point, I just wanted to clarify: I get that Rome wasn’t destroyed in a day and anyone writing at the time probably didn’t interpret what was going on through the type of historical narrative that we would today. But those guys had to understand that things moving forward would be pretty different. I’m wondering if there’s a Tacitus type guy who was writing toward the end and conscious of the changes that were happening.

>>19018146
>as the greatest empire to exist
That was the British Empire, not the soft network of alliances the Americans have

>>19018146
Yeah I’m actually sort of looking to see if there’s a historical parallel lol. I think there’s a sense today that the empire is falling apart, but I wonder if that’s a modern/contemporary interpretation based on a shared historical perspective or something. I might be wrong but isn’t Revelations sort of addressing this in symbolic language?

I’m really interested in thoughtful primary sources talking about what was happening. Things are changing pretty radically right now, but we’re not the first people to go through something like that.

>>19018156
>Augustine lived an incredibly privileged and influential life and was comically disconnected from the affairs of his day, he's not really what OP wants.
Arent pretty much all of our first hand sources like that though? you dont get many joe shmoe full on enditorials from the 4th-5th centuries about societal colapse.
>The Final Pagan Generation
>Roman Aristocrats in Barbarian Gaul
have not read, but these seems like modern scholarly/enthusiast insights into what it might have been like rather than what OP specifically said
>from the people who were actually there?

>the last actual practitioners of Greek Polytheism got converted to Islam shortly before the fall of Constantinople
Whats this about? was there a sizable pop of greek polytheism around 1400 ish? Or was it more one of those mysticism essoteric groups.

>>19018269
Yeah Pol is more of what the mostly uneducated masses are feeling and perceiving and while funny and entertaining and harrowing it can become too much sometimes.

If you want an intellectual take on whats currently going on I think Nick land and Mark fisher have some pretty good interpretations.

>>19018327
Thanks anon. I’ve gone pretty deep down the social commentary rabbit hole as it is and am starting to flesh out my thoughts on everything.

I guess to give more background: I just finished reading a Roger Scruton book and he talks about how a sense of continuity with the past and future is important for people in navigating the social order in which they find themelves. I think that sense of continuity has been disrupted for a lot of people living in the West today, regardless of whether they believe it to be because of something like climate change or whatever /pol/ thinks. But we aren’t the first people in history to go through a major transformation of the world as we know it, you know? People in Rome in 376 were probably acutely aware of what was happening, and they probably had a lot of thoughts about it.

>>19018455
Continuity being disrupted is interesting because even within our time there is no continuity between one person and their neighbor. Where we receive our news and views is so different from one person to the next no one can even agree one a certain angle or narrative. Even worldviews are wildly different based on the media you consume. A generation ago everyone would just watch the same TV channels and shows but now people all seem to have their own niches on the internet and even though social media connects us more than ever in one way it divides our thoughts and views in another way. People in Rome probably had a similar narrative to what was going on but if you ask a random person on the street today whats wrong you wont get the same answer twice.

Froude's Bow of Ulysses
qckrndw:
>it's Victorian Africa Addio

Is there evidence we’re collapsing? America and u.k. specifically? Or is it just that Redditors emphasise the success of trends and free markets and 4chan emphasises the lack of Christian morals and ethics.