>start reading Cicero and Tacitus
>perk up during their great polemics, in which they bemoan the licentiousness, repaciousness, and general moral decline of their days
>wonder what they would've had to say about the present era, which is undoubtedly worse on all accounts
>feel myself becoming more suspicious of the modern world, and even my modern mind's ability to perceive it, as wracked with infidelity and pedantry as it is
What's happening? Am I becoming a conservative?
Possibly. Have you read Juvenal?
No but you're rejecting liberalism slowly. It's important to not replace an ideological cage with another and call it change tho
>which is undoubtedly worse on all accounts
...they watched people kill each other for fun.
Every generation thinks the world is falling. I don't think you can ever point to a moment in history and say that at that point everyone is society was behaving at peak moral capacity.
yeah but they had a totally non-consistent performance based moral system and they said they hated gays and women so they must be great
But we can pinpoint the moment after that everything went downhill.
1968.
I heard muslims have all the best family values, respect for patriarchal authority and disdain for plebs and so on. Maybe try islam?
>What's happening? Am I becoming a conservative?
Welcome, kamerad! Enjoy your stay.
>wonder what they would've had to say about the present era, which is undoubtedly worse on all accounts
Mmm Yes. Quite.
The fact that a man in Beijing can't walk down the sidewalk with his phone alerting him to a man in New York picking his nose has nothing to do with it.
Even as we're getting more prosperous and education, and crime is at an all time low, no no, humans are getting worse! The world is burning, and it has never been burning quite like this!
24/7 cable news tells me so.
> haha culture isn't getting worse I mean shit Africans are learning calculus and everyone has smartphones like what are you talking about
>read The Decline&Fall of the Roman Empire
>licentiousness
>rapaciousness
>licentiousness
>rapaciousness
>licentiousness
>rapaciousness
>all the way from Commodus to the end of the Empire
Nothing new here m8, it's a never ending cycle.
>which is undoubtedly worse on all accounts
Here's your problem.
Downhill in the sense that riding a go-cart downhill is fun, dragging it uphill is not.
I doubt you'd admire much of slave or plebeian culture in antiquity if you ever actually encountered it.
The difference is that most of what you perceive from history is "high" culture because it's what was preserved, whereas most of what you perceive in your own time is inevitably popular culture, being yourself the modern version of a pleb.
Wait until he reads Juvenal VI
m8 it is all about IX
You just admited that people have been saying it was better in the past and their generation has gone to shit since the earliest times.
Conservatives claim that it was better in the past and their generation has gone to shit.
You think you are becoming a conservative.
you just were born in le wrong generashun.
Now read Carlyle
oxford or penguin for juvenal?
>One of the gayest societies
>Hates gays
Sounds right, desu
>implying this didn't start its aggressive downturn in 146bc
Read Sallust you fags
The Romans were conflicted as fuck. On the one hand they treated gladiators like glorious champions. On the other, they fucking hated them for being entertainers who didn't fight for their country.
Sounds like every tv show, movie, and news article which you lap up with interest.
>the world was fine before jihadists and sjws ruined it
>these are genuine movements that came about without the support and incentive of outside forces who seek to use these people for political gain
>the best way to react is as if the threat were genuine and attack these groups of people
people really think this?
also,
underrated
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."
This has applied through all of history. Every point in existence has been simultaneously the best and worst of times.