Musings on College Life and the Decline of a Superpower
A much-needed departure from the depressing grind of analyzing current events
My style of writing requires combing through reams of media. Even opinions in opposition to mine are helpful as I attempt to separate fact from fiction. The “process” I have, for lack of a better term, includes pouring over economic data, political opinion pieces, research on governmental policy, and, lately, the text of criminal indictments.
Once I settle on my thesis, I distill the information I've gathered into what I hope is a cogent analysis. More often than not, the result points to a deficiency in our democracy. Since migrating from writing about the capital markets to essays on American culture and racism, the end product is sometimes genuinely depressing.
So now and then I decide to write about something other than the grind of news and politics. In those cases, the result is a somewhat rambling mixture of random thoughts which, in case you haven’t gathered already, is what you’re currently reading.
Oh, Academia
Earlier this week, my wife and I moved our daughter into an apartment near the University of North Carolina in nearby Wilmington. In a few days, she’ll begin her junior year in pursuit of a bachelor's degree in fine arts. I’m proud to say that unlike myself, she has turned out to be an exemplary student.
Any parent who has gone through the inevitable process (and trauma) of separating from their child knows it is a wonderful yet heartbreaking experience. Pondering our daughter's education and how it will impact her future, I couldn't help but compare her experience to my lackluster attempt at higher learning several decades earlier.
As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I attended college but never obtained a degree. Mind you, I took plenty of college classes. Unfortunately, the aspect of collegiate life I neglected was the aspect that results in a college degree.
I could offer any number of excuses for my unfinished education, but if I’m being honest, I was a lot more interested in attending collegiate sporting events, joining a fraternity, and, of course, college coeds than in attending the classes required to receive a diploma.
Fortunately, I got lucky. I came along at a time when resumes were optional, and hustle was more important than degrees. Since today's odds of one with my dearth of education running quantitative trading desks on Wall Street are comparable to winning a lottery. I suppose I should consider myself somewhat of an anomaly.
The fall of the first Superpower
Despite my lackadaisical approach to a college education, history always came easy. Western civilization, which I managed to breeze through with little effort, was one of the few highlights of my otherwise unremarkable stint at the University of Arkansas.
Decades later, one way I satisfy my interest in the past is by listening to the Hardcore History podcast by
. A wonderful storyteller, Carlin recounts historical events ranging from The Great Wars to the rise of Genghis Khan’s Mongol Empire.Earlier this summer, I revisited Carlin’s marathon Kings of Kings series, the third episode of which covers the rise and fall of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Listening to this epic series while bike riding across the North Carolina island I call home, I was struck by how much the trajectory of this ancient civilization mirrors our own.
Ahasuerus (ə-HAZ-ew-EER-əs) is a name applied in the Hebrew Bible to three rulers and to a Babylonian official (or Median king) in the Book of Tobit. It is a transliteration of either Xerxes or Artaxerxes; both are names of multiple Achaemenid dynasty Persian kings.
By almost any definition, Persia (present-day Iran) was history's first great superpower. Based in Western Asia, the empire that began with Cyrus the Great, began its decline (arguably) with the reign of Xerxes, and ultimately fell to Alexander the Great was the largest the world had ever seen.
The sprawling and complex empire was the first to incorporate, albeit through force, peoples of different cultures, ethnicities, and religions under one nation. The result was a vast, multicultural autocracy extending from the Balkans and Egypt eastward to the Indus Valley.
To drive home the historical paradigm shift the Persian Empire represented, Carlin references historian J.M. Roberts, as quoted by Afshin Molavi in his book Persian Pilgrimages, Journeys Across Iran (emphasis mine):
I flipped through my notes on Cyrus, the breeze flapping the pages of my pad. I came across a passage I had copied from J. M. Roberts, the eminent British historian, who argued that the Persian Empire gave rise to the first outlines of world civilization. He says of the era:
"We can mark an epoch. Right across the Old World, Persia suddenly pulled peoples into a common experience. Indians, Medes, Babylonians, Lydians, Greeks, Jews, Phoenicians, Egyptians were for the first time governed by one empire whose eclecticism showed how far civilization had already come. The era of civilization embodied in distinct historical entities was over in the Near East. Too much had been shared, too much diffused for the direct successors of the first civilizations to be any longer the building blocks of world history. ... The base of a future world civilization was in the making."
Carlin’s podcast, which clocks in at around five hours, also references Will Durant’s The Complete Story of Civilization: Our Oriental Heritage, Life of Greece. The book's colonialist nomenclature notwithstanding, Durant details the descent of the Persian autocracy into corruption and gluttony and the empire's similarities to the fall of the Roman Empire. In historical terms, the Persian Empire’s decline was rapid (emphasis mine):
The empire of Darius lasted hardly a century. The moral, as well as the physical backbone of Persia, was broken by [the battles of] Marathon, Salamis, and Plataea; the emperors exchanged Mars for Venus, and the nation descended into corruption and apathy. The decline of Persia anticipated almost in detail the decline of Rome: immorality and degeneration among the people accompanied violence and negligence on the throne. The Persians, like the Medes before them, passed from stoicism to epicureanism in a few generations. Eating became the principal occupation of the aristocracy: these men who had once made it a rule to eat but once a day now interpreted the rule to allow them one meal—prolonged from noon to night; they stocked their larders with a thousand delicacies, and often served entire animals to their guests; they stuffed themselves with rich rare meats, and spent their genius upon new sauces and desserts. A corrupt and corrupting multitude of menials filled the houses of the wealthy, while drunkenness became the common vice of every class. Cyrus and Darius created Persia, Xerxes inherited it, his successors destroyed it.
Xerxes is often blamed for the decline of the Persian Empire. Historically, he is portrayed as a prideful, foolhardy ruler, led astray by his own hubris. The fascination with Sparta, especially the Battle of Thermopylae, has led to numerous portrayals of Xerxes in popular culture, such as in the 2007 film 300.
There are interesting parallels between the ascent and relatively rapid descent of Persia and our country’s history. Like Persia, America rose to prominence through the merger of cultures, races, and ethnicities—often by force.
Just as Cyrus and Darius set Persia on a path of hegemony previously unseen, the Founding Fathers laid the groundwork for America’s rise to global dominance. That said, America faces many of the same issues that led to Persia’s demise.
Given the country's massive inequality, the far right's rejection of our multicultural roots, and most disturbing, its flirtation with authoritarianism, I often wonder if America is yet another once-great empire doomed to repeat Persia’s fate.
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