I’ve become obsessed with Paul Cooper’s Fall of Civilizations podcast, but my wife is completely over hearing me describe fragments from this series. “I don’t need to hear it because it is the same story over and over again, men and their egos”, she says. If I keep suggesting that she try a sample she gets more graphic about male motivations and describes solutions usually reserved for male cats and dogs and farm animals. 

When I tried to share the podcast with my son he shook his head and showed me a meme he’d recently seen on TikTok. “If you’re a man, when you get to be 35 you face a choice. You’ll either get really into World War Two history or you’ll get really into smoking meats.”   

“I guess it is history for you, Dad” he said. My son is closer to 35 than I am, and this isn’t World War Two history, so what does he know?  As for me, I’ve got to share my enthusiasm with somebody.

Fall of Civilizations is a catchy title, but most of each podcast is devoted to describing the rise of an ancient civilization before its inevitable decline. 

Did you know that the Eastern Roman empire based in Constantinople lasted for 1000 years, that’s right, 1000 years after the fall of the Western Roman empire?

Or that the Nabateans who carved their city, Petra, into sandstone cliffs in what is now Jordan, fell on hard times partly because the rise of Christianity in Europe meant less trade in Frankincense and Myrrh used of pagan rituals?

Or that the ancient Han dynasty in China was ruled for decades by palace eunuchs and dowager princesses who kept arranging for children emperors so as to maintain their own power in the royal court?

But pointing out interesting trivia is not my reason for writing. After listening to this series, some common features of history started to jump out at me, things I never knew before about our human story. 

One surprising, to me at least, aspect of the downfall of these ancient civilizations is how often climate change seems to play a role. A second revelation is how often a complex water management infrastructure grew hand-in-hand with a complex and ultimately dominant civilization. Third and perhaps somewhat encouraging for our current circumstances, great civilizations do not simply rise and fall, but often rise to greatness, falter and then revive themselves to rise to even greater heights.

Tough as it is to admit, however, my wife is right. If you think Putin, Xi and Trump are some sort of anomalies, then you have history completely backward. The through line of the story of human civilization is, repeatedly, the story of a man coming to power over a city or region and consolidating his power until it is almost absolute (Xi), and then expanding his power by warring against his neighbors (Putin, attempting anyway) and either plundering their riches or, if he is a little more broad-minded and wants to build a truly huge empire, simply demanding tribute. 

As this man becomes more powerful he leaves behind, often etched in stone, claims about his greatness (Trump). The king says something like,  “On this spot, I (fill in the name) greatest ruler ever, like a mighty lion, vanquished my enemies until their bodies were too numerous to count and blood ran deep in the streets. God (pick a deity du’jour) is on my side and no mortal human could ever achieve what I have wrought.”

When Trump proclaims that he is a stable genius and the healthiest president in history and the only one who can set things right, these are not preposterous statements historically speaking. They are typical statements of most kings from the past. 

The American experiment burns brightly and casts heavy shadows over the modern world, but it is an experiment because over the long reach of human civilization, it is kings all the way back with only isolated flickers here and there from other types of governments. Apparently, we human beings have a strong affinity for absolute rule by a man. 

Even if the success of our country hasn’t changed human nature and many people still long for rule by a king, our power and dominance in the world has definitely called into question the wisdom of rule by monarchy as a form of government. With respect to challenging the other half of the historical record, rule by male, we’ve made less progress.  

There is one simple, non-partisan way to change this pattern; we could all vote for more women in power and men could put their egos aside and take up enjoyable hobbies like, I don’t know, studying history and smoking meats. Might not make things better, but then again it might. After all, democracy was considered preposterous when we tried it 245 years ago.  Now, if I could just get off my soapbox and clean up that old grill…