Timeless rules… They can be applied generally to large organisations, and serve as an excellent summary of symptoms of elite blindness
croemer · 2h ago
Interesting that all nouns are capitalized, like in modern German and unlike in most other modern languages that use the Latin alphabet.
Telemakhos · 2h ago
Satire, Piece, and Virtues are the first Nouns that I find not capitalized. They occur within the first few Sentences, and I trust that my Observation and Diligence in this Matter might not go without Recognition.
alexchamberlain · 1h ago
Those are part of the modern day commentary, rather than the historic document that starts later in the article. The historic document itself seems to use capitalised nouns fairly consistently, though I haven't tried to find exceptions.
linguae · 2h ago
The Declaration of Independence and the original US Constitution (the main portion plus the Bill of Rights) are also written in this style, though not all nouns are consistently capitalized.
analog31 · 2h ago
I was curious, so in case anybody else was, the first printed versions of these documents also retain this style. It wasn't just a habit of handwriting.
wging · 2h ago
It’s not uncommon for the time. E.g. “in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…”
Jap2-0 · 1h ago
Decreasingly so, but even in stuff written in the last hundred years or so you'll sometimes find words capitalized for emphasis or similar.
tempestn · 48m ago
Most communication from the highest office in the land is indeed now In this Exalted STYLE.
burnt-resistor · 2h ago
Now, we can't even get people to capitalize proper nouns to disambiguate soil from a planet.
shikon7 · 1h ago
In a some sense that goes back to the roots, as you can't distinguish these in German either ("Erde" is always capitalized)
prpl · 2h ago
or engineers from Engineers
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hellojimbo · 2h ago
Is this like the prince or art of war where we are supposed to draw some lesson from very specific critiques and extrapolate it to every scenario.
shermantanktop · 31m ago
I dunno about every scenario. But it’s a pretty obvious lesson for Pax Americana, which has been based on both hard and soft power, both of which are in the hands of someone who doesn’t seem to share the premise that they should be used at all the way they have been in the past.
tomlockwood · 7m ago
Also I reckon it reads as a good lesson for managers too!
analog31 · 1h ago
This reads almost like a precursor to the Declaration of Independence, which lists many of the same offenses of King George.
skybrian · 1h ago
Yeah, historical analogies are good mostly for suggesting possibilities you hadn't thought of. They don't prove anything.
bigDinosaur · 1h ago
Empires having a rise and fall or increase/decrease in power/land is probably the most evidence supported grand narrative of history there is, although the specifics are always going to be different the general problems are perhaps universal (see also: The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph A. Tainter)
skybrian · 28m ago
Maybe I'm missing what you're saying, but I think that by itself, the bare statement that "sometimes empires get larger and sometimes they get smaller" is about as useless as saying that stock markets fluctuate? But the reasons why it happened in various cases are often worth reading about. That's why we read history.
tonyhart7 · 58m ago
except china, china for some reason always unite despite many civil war and unrest
like imagine at some point roman empire and china is co-exist together and 2000 years later only 1 survive
didibus · 46m ago
It's true, China went through a ton of unification -> division -> reunification phases in history. There's even a famous quote for this: "what is long divided must unite, what is long united must divide"
I think one possible reason is that the Qin Dynasty really managed to assimilate everyone into the same shared values, religion, language, writing, and so on. Other empires didn't succeed to that level, and the people in them always had strong differences, language, values, religion, beliefs, writing, philosophy, and so on.
jjmarr · 32m ago
In Western tradition, an "empire" is definitionally unassimilated in that there are multiple groups/territories ruled centrally from a metropole. A state would no longer be an empire once it assimilates disparate territories.
joeblubaugh · 32m ago
Chinese continuity is overstated for the purposes of modern nation-building. The Qing and Ming are as different from each other and modern CCP China as the kingdom of Prussia is from modern Germany.
andsoitis · 40m ago
in the grand scheme of humanity, do you consider a single civilization largely persisting in key aspects over 2000 years a feature? Or a bug?
msgodel · 37m ago
If it's my civilization it's a feature, if it's your civilization it's a bug.
It sounds like a joke but that is exactly how it works and many people have forgotten it.
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like imagine at some point roman empire and china is co-exist together and 2000 years later only 1 survive
I think one possible reason is that the Qin Dynasty really managed to assimilate everyone into the same shared values, religion, language, writing, and so on. Other empires didn't succeed to that level, and the people in them always had strong differences, language, values, religion, beliefs, writing, philosophy, and so on.
It sounds like a joke but that is exactly how it works and many people have forgotten it.