The average person in the Roman Empire didn't comprehend the collapse

This is correct. Little by little you will just notice your quality of life going to shite. Like the British empire over the past 100 years.

quote:

---

Just look at videos of cities 75 years ago. The obesity rate.

---

Europeans laughed at 'Fat Americans' 30 years ago. Then about ten years ago they noticed that they caught our disease. It just took a little longer for American fast food chains to catch on over there.

I'm not immortal, so I really don't give a shite.

quote:

---

I'm not immortal, so I really don't give a shite.

---

That's the All-American spirit we know and love!

quote:

---

It just took a little longer for American fast food chains to catch on over there.

---

I don’t think fast food is the cause. It’s a sedentary lifestyle.

WWII and the subsequent “guest workers” in countries like Germany and France sure seem to have accelerated that process from the 20s to today.

quote:

---

It has been argued that the quality of ingredients in food here have contributed to the issues. Ex - HFCS replacing real sugar, using a lot of chemically altered grains and flours in everyday items, etc.

---

It really is the corn syrup. My ex-mother-in-law quit corn syrup (just switched sodas and snacks, didn’t reduce how much she consumed) and dropped 20 lbs. I did the same about a year and a half ago and lost almost 20 so far and still dropping.

I’m not eating significantly less or better, I work a sedentary office job, and I rarely exercise. I lost so much weight the last couple years that my doctor started screening me for cancer.

VIDEO LINK: Will Durant On Why Rome Fell….



….The fall of Rome, like her rise, had not one cause but many, and was not an event but a process spread over 300 years. A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within. The essential cause of Rome’s decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars.

….Political anarchy accelerated economic disintegration and economic decline promoted moral decay; each was the cause and effect of the other. Barbarian inroads and centuries of mining the richer veins had doubtless lowered Rome’s supply of precious metals. In Southern Italy, erosion and the neglect irrigation canals by a diminishing peasantry and a disordered government had left Italy poorer than before. The cause, however, was no inherent exhaustion of the soil, no change in climate, but the negligence and sterility of harassed and discouraged men.

….What caused this fall of population? Above all, family limitation. Practiced at first by the educated classes, it had now seeped down to the proletariat classes named for it’s fertility; by A.D. 100, it had reached the agricultural classes.

….Moral decay contributed to the dissolution. Sexual excesses may have reduced human fertility while the avoidance or deferment of marriage had a like effect; the making of eunuchs increased as Oriental customs flowed into the West.

….The virile character that had been formed by arduous simplicities and a supporting faith relaxed in the sunshine of wealth and the freedom of unbelief; men had now — especially in the upper and middle classes — the means to yield to temptation and only expediency to restrain them.

….Urban congestion multiplied contacts and immigration brought together hundreds of cultures whose differences rubbed themselves into indifference. Moral and esthetic standards were lowered by the magnetism of the mass: sex ran riot in freedom while political Liberty decayed.

….If Rome had not engulfed so many men of alien blood in so brief a time, if she had passed all these newcomers through her schools instead of her slums, if she had treated them as men with a hundred potential excellences, if she had occasionally closed her gates to let assimilation catch up with infiltration, she might have gained new racial and literary vitality from the infusion, and might have remained a Roman Rome, the voice and citadel of the West.

Romans ran into a lot of problems after Trajan and by Constantine, it was recognized that the Western half was a basket case.

It was not as simple as demographics. Starting around 350 the pressures on people North of the Danube by the created an almost toxic situation. You had an invasion across the Danube by the Visigoths and Ostrogoths an invasion prompted by the Huns.

In the East the Byzantines in the late 500's were dealing with plague and a Persian Empire that was well organized militarily wit some really competent commanders and King of Kings who was a pretty shrewd politician . Also the Romans were busy having civil wars, and killing emperors. It was crazy and The empire almost collapsed then Persians invading, Avars coming in from the North and internal strife. Emerors killed by their generals, ne ineffective emperors who get deposed by another general. For about 10 years there was almost constant civil war.

It wasn't until Heraclius shows up after 600 that things start to change and it almost collapsed again if not for some bold moves against the Persians and buying off the Avars....and drowning them in a naval battle. He stabilizes the empire, only to be overrun by the thing they did not see coming......the Arabs.

The people of the empire, outside of the Capitol were not necessarily upset to rid themselves of the Romans / Byzantines. Lots of intrigue and convoluted deals. But also petty religious squabblesTthere were the monophosites and the Arians vs the Orthodoxy and periodically state sactioned violence against the heretics