Tag: Empire

On The Course of Empire (paintings and otherwise)

Cole Thomas The Course of Empire Destruction 1836.jpg

In reading Clive Thompson’s latest linkfest, I came across the above painting by Thomas Cole. It illustrates a section of his newsletter talking about how the collapse of empires can lead to benefits for those other than the 1%. I highly recommend not just that section, “3) 🌋 The upside of societal collapse”, but the entire newsletter.

I’d also recommend you check out all five paintings from this series:

  1. The Savage State, or The Commencement of Empire
  2. The Arcadian or Pastoral State
  3. The Consummation of Empire
  4. Destruction
  5. Desolation

Cole’s paintings imply an arc that goes from Commencement to Desolation, with Consumption being a peak. However based on the newsletter and the book it references to, “Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse” by Luke Kemp, it seems more likely that with Desolation comes an overlapping Pastoral State and that Consumption is bad for all but a privileged minority.

Check out the newsletter and the five paintings to see what I mean.

P.S. The Pastoral State, below, looks good to me. 🙂

Cole Thomas The Course of Empire The Arcadian or Pastoral State 1836.jpg

 

Vox does maps well

It’s a quirky feature of vox.com that explains things with diagrams versus “listicles”. I like it, and of the various posts that they’ve done, I got the most from this one: 40 maps that explain the Roman Empire

Should you share this with kids? It depends: one of the 40 items talks frankly about sex. If you are ok with that, then yes! for the overall piece is highly education. Kids or not, I highly recommend it to you.