I have a mind of my own, thank you.

Sorry for not having posted much between Christmas and this weekend. I was in Prague for the entire month of February, making up for lost time... I've never really been one for smalltalk. Indeed, I don't do it very well. In Prague I needed to be a master at it. Everywhere I turned, new people to be introduced to, but invariably the same conversation and Q&A pattern: Where are you from? What do you do? How long are you here for? Where are you living? Blablabla... Which was OK, as this is standard when you're meeting new people. But when talking about nothing in particular is a common theme amongst people you see more often, it becomes a little irritating... After a while, it makes no sense to spend longer than you should around them. Another group that irritates me is (for want of a better word) sheeple. Sheeple are those who don't really do anything alone because they need approval for their actions, and that can be manifested through others wanting to join in. But then, sheeple attract other sheeple until the entire place is full of baa-ing humans. There was one place, for me a living hell, which was full of nothing except latte-swilling expats and oversized t-shirts containing the sort of person who needs a map to find the bathroom in the morning. Its main selling point was its bagels, and boy if that was its selling point, you can guess what type of place it was. Tourist guides stopped there with huge groups of sheeple who were force-fed muffins, cheesecake or brownies. Just 50 metres away, there is a glorious café selling Viennese and Parisian-style cakes and proffering proper coffee out of a Gaggia without pretentious names like "flat white" and "frappuccino" and in sizes so disproportionate to the coffee content, a microphysicist would find it hard to find many atoms of the said bean. The establishment in question also had its own ticket booth selling nights out to some "authentic" Prague shows. The same authentic ones you can find in the West End or on Broadway. You came all the way to Prague to take in a show you could see in any other city. Groovy. Prague has innumerable amounts of interesting places to go to in the evening, and caters for all ages. Why sequester yourself in a place meeting other people you could see in any other city, talking about the same stuff, asking the same questions, and going to the same shows? Could you imagine a conversation between two of these people? "I saw Cats in Munich last week, but it wasn't as good as the Cats they put on in Budapest." "It was the opposite for me. I found the ornate theatre setting in Budapest too disturbing for the eyes. If they want to put on musicals, they need somewhere without gold-leaf around the edge of the stage and those awful cherubs in the frescoes." Begone, foul sheeple! But then there's the most irritating group of all: the bubble. These are people who, no matter where they are, no matter what huge range of options lie before them, will go out in their group, the same group, night after night after night. Prague is full of them, as is every other city. These über-sheeple seem to think there's nothing else outside their group. They walk around large cities talking to each other and fail to notice little details that make the place they are in special. They take photos of themselves eating in a restaurant, mainly when the plates are already empty, and they must be caught smiling in a photo hugging a statue or with the fingers and faces contorted in front of a monument or building. They rarely speak to locals (usually only shop assistants who speak their language) and eat at famous burger joints because they don't really understand local food and have a slight distrust. And there may be someone in the group with dietary requirements (doesn't like cheese, can't stand the smell of beer, gets bouts of Tourette's after eating spicy food) who makes it almost impossible to find an alternative place to eat, so they end up in the same place all the time. I think the worst case of sheeple syndrome I encountered whilst in Prague was on the final Thursday of the month. About six of us had got tickets to a concert in the glorious setting of the newly-renovated Malostranská Beseda, a palace built solely for public entertainment. One gave up his ticket for someone who when the tickets were booked didn't want to go and now did. Just under two hours before the concert, we agreed to meet at the metro station. Ten minutes later, I got a text saying they all wanted to grab something to eat first and would meet me there. I went to the station, one person there so we went together. My flatmate who was not in Prague when we bought the tickets but was interested also came along in case there were spare tickets. We got into the concert hall about ten minutes before the band started - no sign of the others. My flatmate could not get in, so he waited in the bar upstairs until he could. Forty minutes into the concert, I received a text message from the others saying they had only just sat down to order some food. In a pizzeria. In Prague. On the night they had concert tickets. Halfway through the act. They arrived, no joke, in time for the final two songs of the encore. I wouldn't have minded so much, if one of the group hadn't sacrificed his ticket and hadn't come, which could have gone to my flatmate, who was on time, and was getting bored on his own upstairs. See? Sheeple. One is hungry, so the others follow. Satellites around the one currently having the issue. And to think, my flatmate could have bargained a ticket off one of the others. So it came as a huge relief that I was able to hang around with a few people who wanted more than swapping clichés, hanging round in tourist trap cafés, eating in pizzerias and missing concerts. We had so much fun night after night that we almost flunked the course we were on. But that was by-the-by. We would never have done anything to jeopardise our prospects of passing it, especially a whole month-long course. That would have been reckless. Nevertheless, there was too much to do than just sit in a restaurant as a group and just... chat. Despite them, I have a huge set of new memories I never thought I would have, after what can only be described as the best time of my life. I thought the days of fun were over when I left London in 2000, but I was given a month reprise in February in my favourite city, Prague, the place I like to call my second home town. She is still as alluring and enticing as she was twenty years ago when I first fell in love with her. But if I were only going to be there for the one month of my life, why on earth would I want to ignore her by hanging around the same people in my little bubble? That is an insult to the host city. I see it as a badge of honour that I only squeaked a pass but had enormous fun and didn't spend day after day working on projects in the hope of getting a higher grade (which made no difference to how you would be seen) with little or no contact with the real Prague.

Is the West about to make itself obsolete?

People never learn. The reason why they never learn is because they don't live long enough to be able to learn from the mistakes of youth, which will be repeated over and over again everywhere forever until someone somewhere finds a three-thousand-year-old sage who will become master/mistress of the universe.

So it is of no surprise to note that there are some surprising similarities between the fall of the Roman Empire and the West's impending doom. But this time, at ten times the speed.

Firstly, the Roman Empire fell because of the sheer inability of those in charge to make any kind of decisions. The place had grown too big for its own good. Rome did not really fall - it declined over a period of centuries although the Eastern Roman Empire did not officially end until the invasion of Constantinople in the 15th century. So, one thing we can say is, if you want to survive, don't grow too big. Not necessarily geographically, but certainly in terms of what you can handle.

Secondly, Rome had been feeling good about itself, so good in fact that it chose to party all year long. This caused the place to split into two, with the richer Eastern Empire being more pragmatically run. So, another thing: don't allow your inhabitants to feel everything is going well, just for the whole place to fall apart.


Thirdly, and I think the thing which seals the deal, is the shrinking of the qualities and items that made Rome mighty: its political regionalisation into various administrative capitals (Ravenna, Treveris, Mediolanum, etc.) which marginalised various areas of the Empire and the slow deterioration of the once-mighty fortifications which allowed the invading Visigoths a much easier job of overtaking the Roman heartlands.

There were various related problems for the Romans:

The Barbarians had started to understand and even imitate Roman military manoeuvres, structures and disciplines to the extent that they did them better.


There was a decline in morals and public decency, which gave way to breathtaking decadence and immorality to the extent that little shocked the general public any more. There was alcoholism, public indecency and widespread sexual deviance.

The Plebeians, or the lower classes, had a lot less manual work to do, causing them great hardships and dissatisfaction, even mistrust, of their leaders.

The back-scratching and pocket-lining of politicians and the Praetorian Guard meant that as long as you kept the military happy, they would let you do what you wanted. And whilst politicians kept doing favours for each other, it became easier to "fix" the outcome of certain political questions.


The continual obsession with war (to keep the military occupied and to expand the glory of the Empire) was another prerequisite of the Roman Empire. Swaggering arrogantly over its territory and neighbouring lands, the leaders of the glorious empire tried their best to show the rest what they had and that they were better than the rest. That they may have been, in terms of technological advancement, art, people power and even governmental benevolence, but those things do not necessarily mean others will aspire to them. It means others will find it easier to destroy because there is less need for an iron fist ruler. So the dictatorships and barbarisms outside of the Roman sphere of influence found it so much easier to destroy it, simply because it was so enlightened.

Any bells ringing? Well yes, in fact, but the major difference with then and now is that we in the West are trying hard to accommodate the "Barbarians", buying and selling material from them. The threats facing us today are very similar, but far, far greater than those the Romans faced. Rising indebtedness, an overstretched military, encroaching government and commercial paranoia through the ability to keep every movement made by telephone and online on record and use it against the people, and falling educational standards. You may see Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford, MIT and the LSE at the top of the University league tables, but how much of that is a marketing fabrication? The similarities between the fall of Rome and now are startling, but this time the fall will be so much greater. There are several scenarios:


Scenario 1:
The West spends itself out of relevance

This could happen. It is a very probable scenario. Imagine all the banks, blissfully spending our cash on the markets, blowing fortunes they don't have, and spending imaginary money to get more of it. Oh, that already happened, did it? Imagine some countries who believe they are safe from economic meltdown because they hid their debts well and joined a monetary union believing they would be saved from bankruptcy by all the others. Oh that happened too, you say? Imagine a sinister, ruthless and unsentimental dictatorship worse than the Barbarians with a monthly income equivalent to that of the entire debt in the aforementioned fictionally indebted country offering to purchase all its outstanding arrears. In other words, virtually buying the country's emancipation from debt. What would happen to that newly debt-cleared country? Why sack Rome when you can buy the place?

Scenario 2:
The West is invaded

This is less obvious, but there is no reason why it should not happen. Too many Western powers are reducing military strength to save money. The UK, for example, is scrapping everything except essentials. It sees the need for nuclear weaponry, but not for a strong military. If an invader is going to come, it will want to have something to get, and the country being invaded doesn't want to destroy itself, so it is not going to do any good nuking the place. Keeping such a large amount of nuclear weapons is not going to save anyone. It would be so much easier to leave the large nukes to the big boys, and go in for having a huge army, navy and air force. Unfortunately, there are too many people in governments who think possession = prestige. Rubbish. I'd rather live in a modest house and have a burglar-proof property than have everything open but if an intruder comes, it all collapses into dust. For that reason, we leave ourselves open to attack at any time.


Scenario 3:

Governmental weakness, indecision and bad advice

This is almost a fait accompli in the West. Many of today's governmental figures are pretty weak, especially in the EU. I think this is due to the EU as well. National governments are becoming increasingly obsolete as decisions are made at EU level. Of course, these are made by the Council of Ministers, that is all the leaders of the EU together, but it means that if one EU leader loses the election, the EU agenda will be taken up by the next leader, and it no longer really matters who the head of state is.

What does this say about democracy in the 21st century? There really is not too much of it around, really. But meanwhile, most EU governments are just following the crowd. Coupled with national debt and an indecent reputation, politicians are an increasingly unpopular and lonely group, totally out of touch with what ordinary people want and need: stability and assuredness. Nothing else. We would give up a lot of material wealth and commercial activities just to guarantee our social welfare, health, happiness and continued employment.

Quite frankly, shallow materialism and self-indulgence is thankfully coming to an end. If it doesn't, the human character of failing to learn from past mistakes could lead to another Roman Empire falling.