Civilisation Kenneth Clark on why the roman empire fell.

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Күн бұрын

Excerpt from the first episode of the BBC series Civilisation where the enemies of civilisation are discussed. Fear, boredom and lack of confidence in the peoples mental powers.

Пікірлер: 61

@user-yo4ze7rv3n 2 ай бұрын

I'm South African my first experience of Sir Kenneth Clark was when I was a cleaner at the University of Cape Town in 1978. Cleaners and other none academics were allowed to sit in classes and watch films.

@darbyheavey406 2 жыл бұрын

This resonates in 2022.

@SuperGreatSphinx 7 жыл бұрын

Kenneth McKenzie Clark, Baron Clark, OM, CH, KCB, FBA (13 July 1903 - 21 May 1983) was a British author, museum director, broadcaster, and one of the best-known art historians and aesthetes of his generation, writing a series of books that appealed to a wide public, while remaining a serious scholar. In 1969, he achieved international fame as the writer, producer and presenter of the BBC Television series Civilisation, which pioneered television documentary series combining expert personalized narration with lavish photography on location.

@horationelson57 8 жыл бұрын

I say, only 464 views since May, 2014. While, no doubt over at the female mud-wrestling/ Rap channels there has been many, many millions. How about that for a barometer for Barbarism. Thank you for sharing.

@AntPDC 6 жыл бұрын

...and cats. Depressing.

@looselatigo 6 жыл бұрын

Part of the bread and circuses thing.

@wholeNwon 6 жыл бұрын

I was about to expound upon your comments, but then I thought, "why bother?". Ennui? Resignation? Enough said.

@markofsaltburn 3 жыл бұрын

It is possible to like naked-gangsta-mud-wrestling AND Borodin.

@markofsaltburn 3 жыл бұрын

Particularly at the same time.

@oobrocks Жыл бұрын

Clark was brilliant to focus on intangibles 🎉

@spaghettiking7312 Ай бұрын

He's describing why we're falling apart.

@footballmanagercc8138 Жыл бұрын

Good speech.

@MrJm323 4 жыл бұрын

Constantine Cavafy's poem: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/d9CpaJiH2a3Gqo0.html . (Constantine Cavafy: born 1863 in Alexandria and died there in 1933.)

@Alvaro1992C 2 жыл бұрын

Qué sabias palabras

@user-qg9hf2ip2u 2 ай бұрын

Well we're toast then.

@HerbertDuckshort 3 жыл бұрын

Pearls before swine.

@saletebrandao7688 Жыл бұрын

Vim por Brasil Paralelo

@kevinbyrne4538 6 жыл бұрын

Why did the Roman Empire fall? (1) The generals learned that they could become rulers of the Empire via coup d'etats. So there were constant military rebellions, which drained the energies of the Empire. (2) Rome had a stupid policy of trying to domestic the sons of barbarian chieftains by raising them in Rome. Attila the Hun was one such son. They learned how to defeat the Romans, and then they did so. (3) The Empire wasn't quite as strong as people imagine: it was defeated by the Celts (387 BC), the Carthaginians (218-201 BC), and finally the German barbarians. This doesn't include the civil wars or the rebellions. (4) The Empire wasn't really economically viable: it sucked wealth from the regions around the Mediterranean in order to support its luxurious capital, but neither Rome nor the provincial cities that the Romans founded (basically military bases) produced more than they consumed. Towards the end, as income declined (due to the barbarian invasions, rebellions, losses of territory, etc.) and expenses rose (due to the costs of opposing those invasions and rebellions), the Empire ran out of money to sustain itself. (5) The Empire wasn't very creative: the Romans wrote literature and some histories (of themselves), but anything that required brains -- science, mathematics, philosophy, etc. -- they left to foreigners (Greeks, Syrians, etc.). Their art was Greek, and their architecture was derived from the Greeks and Etruscans. But unlike the Greeks, the Romans weren't curious about the world.

@markofsaltburn 4 жыл бұрын

Curiosity is the wellspring of humanity, not intelligence: an appetite for experience and knowledge which is gratuitous, which serves our senses and our capacity for feeling rather then the needs of our selfish genes. The first Homo sapiens to migrate to the unpredictable North were conceivably more intelligent than us, but they remained culturally static because their cognition was utilitarian. Something happened that made us wonder, that made us say “why”? The weak survived to teach us how to feel, to spread the genes that made us ask more than we needed to.

@HandleGF 3 жыл бұрын

Fit Constantinople into your theory.

@kevinbyrne4538 3 жыл бұрын

@@HandleGF -- Constantinople was at the crossroads of trade routes from the East, the West, and the North. If anyone in the Mediterranean wanted Chinese silks or Indian spices or Baltic amber, they had to trade at Constantinople. Hence Constantinople was attacked by the Arabs the Vikings and the Turks. Furthermore, for most of its existence, it was just the rump of an empire -- Constantinople and western Turkey.

@HandleGF 3 жыл бұрын

@@kevinbyrne4538 You should have read up on key factors such as plagues, population decline, soil exhaustion, the failure of plantation slavery in the West, the unimportance of slavery in the East, the invention of Greek fire, the industrial espionage (by monks) that led to silk manufacturing in Constantinople ... before telling me (& others) why Rome became a backwater and Constantinople kept going as much more than a "rump" in "western Turkey" as you term it. (There is no shortage of KZfaq videos displaying the shifting borders of Byzantium over the many centuries and the true extent of its power for very long periods (e.g. under the Macedonian dynasty, AD 867-1056) ... Here's one of those videos (it's only 4m 17 secs) ... kzfaq.info/get/bejne/sNGEjdycxKnRqYE.html

@kevinbyrne4538 3 жыл бұрын

@@HandleGF -- I knew all of those reasons that are given for the survival of the Eastern Empire and the decline of the Western Empire. However, I think that the Eastern Empire survived mainly because it was located at the junction of trade routes from China, Central Asia, the Baltic, the Mediterranean, east Africa, and India. The eastern end of the Mediterranean and the surrounding lands were therefore wealthy and cosmopolitan. That's why the Assyrians, the Persians, Alexander the Great, the Romans, the Arabs, the Turks, ... conquered the region. And that's why the region survived repeated conquests. No one was interested in conquering northern Europe or the Sahara -- there was no wealth there. I'll watch the video that you recommended.

@HandleGF 3 жыл бұрын

The awkward resilience of the Eastern half & Constantinople blows this 'exhausted' guff out of the water. The East had more money and more squaddies.

@heyheythrowaway 2 жыл бұрын

Christianity and multiculturalism destroyed Rome. "Fear, boredom and lack of confidence" could be argued to be factors, but when you go to explain why, you run into Christianity and multiculturalism as the real causes of those outlooks. Clark is sadly blinded by his Christianity and can't look at history objectively.

@LOUI2054 2 ай бұрын

Christianity and multiculturalism. 🫠

@achantus1 2 ай бұрын

I would rather say a deformed, secularised form of Christiany, a secular humanism or what is sometimes called humitarism. A real, Christian society with real Christian people would never accept to be conquered by Islam.

@robin231176 5 жыл бұрын

Similar situation to Brexit Britain, which sadly is collapsing all around us.

@Falangist 4 жыл бұрын

lol no

@markofsaltburn 4 жыл бұрын

Falangist As of August, 2020, lol yes. Anglo-Saxonism, Protestant modernity are, in Clark’s words, exhausted. That’s why the US and UK are in free fall, desperate for a scapegoat, blinded by binary partisanship, scrabbling through the relics of the past for a way out, morally bankrupt, nostalgic, entitled, fragile, lost to themselves - the real pandemic is one of self-deception.

@MrJm323 4 жыл бұрын

@@markofsaltburn .....LOL....No.

@blackrabbit212 3 жыл бұрын

@@markofsaltburn Well, you hit the nail on the head there!

@markofsaltburn 3 жыл бұрын

@@MrJm323 LOL, WTF and, indeed, OMG yes, and I think Clark, a socialist, would agree, given his evident disdain for what he called “heroic materialism”.