EugenR: “ Patrice, I agree 100%, emotions are the prime reasons driving the human acts and also human history. And since human emotions are unpredictable and uncontrollable …
I do agree that human emotions have been, mostly unpredictable, to this day. However, the whole interest of studying Systems of Moods is that emotions follow systems and thus are much more predictable than has been asserted in the past.
For example, after I saw Obama associate with the miscreants from the Clinton era (Summers, Clinton plutocratic ex-chief of staff, Eskerine, or whatever his name is, etc.), hyper plutocrats (Buffet), banksters (Dimon), and go work at an hedge fund, November 5, 2008, I had an ominous feeling.
That feeling got ever more ominous, considering particular family events that happened after that. At that point I got depressed, and was depressed for two years. Now I am grim. I will bear witness to that period, hopefully. Perhaps, like Plutarch, it’s my version of events that will enlighten the future about the present reign.
The amusing thing about Greco-Roman history is that few writings and authors were preserved. Perhaps 95% of Aristotle was lost.
Tiberius is described as a monster by the few surviving Roman authors. Yet, careful analysis of the facts reveal otherwise: although he may have done horrible things (as alleged), we have very few hard facts justifying this.
On the facts strictly, it’s hard to attribute to Tiberius a single fully unwarranted execution (although his son Drusus was poisoned by conspirators, and it took seven years for this to be revealed. Maybe, much earlier, his other very popular son Germanicus, also the topmost general, was also poisoned, by the same assassins, with a very determined agenda of self-aggrandizement).
Compare with the assassin in chief. The one who selects civilians to kill by drone, worldwide, on tiny grainy pixelated screens. Naïve, ignorant, unwise, poorly advised creature, soon to be excoriated as a debris of history (see above).
Why was Tiberius so hated by later thinkers, that they dragged everything about him in the mud, even accusing him of private torture sessions in his Capri villa?
Probably because, after Augustus died, nobody knew what the status of the state was. Tiberius was the top general and heir apparent. But heir to what? Nobody knew.
The Senate waited, Tiberius waited, Rome waited. It lasted months. At this point, Tiberius could have cleared his throat, and declared that one would try to make the Res Publica more democratic.
Instead, when finally the Senate begged him to take action, Tiberius progressively, insensibly, stepped in Augustus’ shoes. Thus definitively not solving the problem of the non-defined nature of the Roman state, and of the problem of succession of the Princeps (technically just the “first” in the Senate).
Tiberius made a stealthy coup, in ever slower motion… To avoid any adverse emotion, that could have precipitated a confrontation between him and the partisans of a return to a full and real Republic. Tiberius was a cancer of the soul, slowly smothering democracy.
Emotions everywhere.
We do not know what the future is made of. But the present tells us what the future could be made of. By deciding not to re-establish the Republic’s government, Tiberius veered to dictatorship. The first republic to be re-established would be Venice, about 750 years later, under the protection of Roman emperor Carlus Magnus (“Charlemagne”). So, yes, it could be done.
That was all the more meritorious, as Venice had a huge fleet, a low hanging fruit.
Venice was soon followed by several other republics, and countless de facto independent cities or counties, often under local democratic government (Genova, Firenze, and other Italian republics, but also Dauphine’, Escartons, Toulouse, the Swiss Cantons, etc.).
When Obama decided to kill apparent civilians by his personal fiat, and drone, all around the world, he set the conditions for the sort of future depicted in the movies “Terminator”. Hopefully, history will remember him as an incomparably worst monster than Tiberius.
Obama crossed a moral Rubicon that Tiberius was careful never to be even seen to approach.
I say: “Hopefully”, because, otherwise, the abominable state of affairs we have presently when an autocrat, Obama his name, go kill civilians around the world, and everybody respects him, will endure, and that’s the gate to the worst emotional hell.
Pontius Pilatus did not know if Jesus was innocent or not. He just allowed a judicial process to proceed. We all do know that these people in that wedding were all innocent. And we know who ordered their assassination.
Tiberius did not try to bring back the Republic, Obama does his best to lose it. This is the emotion of the thing. Comparisons are not always flattering.
***
Eugen R: the break-out of WWI. Nobody predicted it and there was no rational reason to start it.
Quite the opposite. I have described in excruciating details, that the attack of World War One had been planned officially (yet, highly secretly), from December 10, 1912. See my “Plot Against France 1912-2013”. In it you find:
Here is the report from Admiral Georg Alexander von Müller (the chief of naval operations):
“His Majesty Kaiser Wilhelm II said: …if we attack France, England will come to France’s aid, for England cannot tolerate a disturbance in the European balance of power. His Majesty welcomed this message as providing the desired clarification for all those who have been lulled into a false sense of security by the recently friendly English press.
His Majesty painted the following picture:
‘Austria must deal firmly with the Slavs living outside its borders (the Serbs) if it does not want to lose control over the Slavs under the Austrian monarchy. If Russia were to support the Serbs, which she is apparently already doing…war would be inevitable for us. But there is hope that Bulgaria, Romania, and Albania—and perhaps even Turkey—will take our side. …If these powers ally themselves with Austria, it will free us up to throw our full weight behind a war against France. According to His Majesty, the fleet will naturally have to prepare for war against England…’
As I explained, the German plutocracy was stuck between Russia (democratizing and modernizing fast, thanks to French help and capital), France (a democracy, republic, and world empire, whose economy was improving by leaps and bounds) and the German Socialist Party (SPD), which dominated the German Reichstag, and wanted out with the plutocracy.
In June 1, 1914, the envoy of the president of the USA, himself, Colonel House, proposed a satanic alliance…against France (!)
Thus the attack of 1914 was not irrational. The plutocrats knew it would neutralize the socialists. And it did. It worked, as anticipated. Oh, OK, it’s the American based plutocrats who mostly profited. Well, big crocs eat little crocs.
Now, a century later, the French republic, has lost her empire, but has won… Europe. Germany is a sister republic governed by the … SPD.
The attack of 1914 was perfectly rational for the monsters who ordered it, just as killing innocent civilians by robots is perfectly suitable to enact the climate of worldwide terror those who order it wants.
However, the emotions that guided those monsters were, and are, all wrong. That’s why, history did, and will, hopefully, vomit them, again and again.
Patrice Aymé
Patrice Ayme's Thoughts 