SUB URBAN CHAPTER 2 | 2008-03-06
Chapter 1 was a false start in that I had to do it to think out what I was trying to say.
Our entire world view, derived from history, is based on that provided by Gibbon.
Gibbon history was written for his drawing room readership. So Gibbon provided a world view which was perfect for the drawing room set and today's Mommy Professor. It said that they were the basis of all true progress and civilization. Gibbon provided a history which consisted of a look back to the heights of 1790 Britain, back across a total swamp to the Fall of a similar society, the Roman Empire, Rome, about 400 AD.
As Mommy Professor and the drawing room crowd looked back over Gibbering History, they saw that behind Rome there was another swamp, across which one could see Ancient Athens. That was a tiny peak, but behind that was another millennial swamp and behind THAT was the mountain of Ancient Egypt, rising serenely under its Scribes and Priests to the height of Ancient Rome and Mommy Professor.
You can see a perfect exposition of this in Asimov's Foundation Series. As a very young man, he took it for granted that you had to have a giant bureaucracy and state run by intellectuals for anything to be CREATED. Creation, he said, came at the height of Gibbon's Empire Phase of History, like the British Empire Gibbon lived in.
This nonsense underlies our entire world view. As I pointed out in Chapter 1, NOTHING was invented by Egypt. And it is no accident that Gibbon talked only about the Decline and Fall, not the "RISE and Fall of Rome." He declared that Rome was a height of history that sprung up like Topsy. He had no idea how things BEGAN. He dedicated his discussion to how glorious and perfect Mommy Professor Societies could fall.