If you were to read just Fukuyama’s Trust and his two books on Political Order you might have a better understanding of why the east held out longer than the rest. ANd it is pretty simple. If you hold a toll bridge on the only trade route from the eastern to the western mediterranean, and can hire others navies to help you (Venice) and can hire mercenaries (vikings as well as others) and can breed your own custom armies, you can hold out despite the fact that you have a low trust people who you cannot organize or modernize – particularly where all the wealth and cheap population is on your side of the bridge.
The fact is that they couldn’t hold out. That they didn’t. That they held out longer because the trade route was until the 19th century, the most valuable on earth. And they needed all of that wealth to compensate for their failure to form chinese levels of bureaucracy or western levels of militia. But while they lost, they did fail. yes they probably failed because of plague, just as the entire empire fell disproportionately due to plagues. But then end result was an inability to govern the poorer peoples.
Evidence is evidence and progress all but ceased under christianity, and all but exploded with the scientific revolution and scientific enlightenment, literacy, and the closure of the monasteries.
There is a reason the catholic countries are poorer, have higher corruption, and the protestant countries the opposite. There is a reason why the nordic peoples rescued us from the church’s ignorance. And there is a reason why those who were shortest under church administration are more prosperous.
Evidence is evidence. is evidence. Data is data is data. Just because a value is non zero doesn’t mean it is equal to a value Why did we have explosive growth in knowledge from the recovery of the bronze age collapse in 500bc to the abrahamic collapse in 300ad? Why did we have explosive expansion after the abrahamic collapse,
There is nothing good in christianity that was not there before it. and everything bad in christianity was intentionally added to it.
We cannot be free of the lies of the marxists and postmodernists without reforming our religion from a supernatural to a natural one.
Christianity is reducible first, to the extension of kinship love to non kin – which is the optimum game strategy for cooperation – and second to the requirement for individual service (in other words, doing that charity yourself). Everything else is just nonsense. We have a full history of people who are saints thru service, generals thru service, thinkers in the service of all, and even the occasional business person thru service – although I don’t think much of them.
Mass consists of a history lesson, a commentary on current events,an oath, and a feast. THere is no reason that the history lesson, commentary, oath, and feast cannot be (again) reformed so that we refer to literary analogy for the purpose of wisdom rather than supernatural authority for the purpose of obedience.
All groups need a ‘cult’ but it turns out that the best cult is ancestor worship, and the best form of mindfulness is self authoring (stoicism), and the best form of political teaching is forgiveness.
There is no reason we must behave as pre-literate pre-scientific pedlars of nonsense churches that continuously decline, rather than to modernize the church so that the propaganda of the abrahamists is removed, and replaced with our traditional (germanic) love of nature, and of man.