The modern West is replicating the late Roman collapse through a shared abandonment of material and strategic foundations in favor of self-referential ideology and symbolic governance.
Key parallels include: prioritizing internal ideological consensus over confronting material threats (like outsourced production and energy fragility); replacing true engineering with bureaucratic compliance; and financializing sovereign capability into a mercenary economy. The West has retreated from tangible frontiers into a digital and cultural simulation, enforcing intellectual monocultures that stifle disruptive innovation. Like Rome issuing the Price Edict, current leaders legislate symbols—such as net-zero targets—while degrading the underlying systems they claim to protect.
This path mirrors Rome’s fatal divergence from reality. Meanwhile, pragmatic Eastern models (for example Singapore) operate like Byzantium—adopting useful technology while rejecting destabilizing dogma, focusing relentlessly on system stability, material capacity, and demographic vitality.
The conclusion is stark: this is not a prelude to decline but the decline itself. The current intellectual frenzy is the fever dream of a civilization consuming its own foundations. Systems that substitute ideology for reality do not adapt; they are adapted upon by those who kept their footing in the material world. The Reboot will be brutal.