Irish language?

Confab wrote: »

No change there. Cultures will always move on or evaporate. The American culture is an artificial construct, so are most monarchies (they were all brought back to give the citizens of Spain/UK/Sweden/Belgium etc etc something to be proud of.)

One could argue all cultures are artificial constructs.

What's so scary about the Chinese taking over? The Caucasians took over 2000 years ago and now it's time to move on. None of us will be around to see the complete integration of Chinese cultures into our own but rest assured it will happen.

Possible, though I doubt it. If history is anything to go by, they'll move out for a while and then go back. People forget that while China has one helluva long and extremely vibrant culture, it was mired in medieval feudal times around 150 years ago, when it first opened to the west to any great degree. The culture they have now is more western than chinese. Yes they have adapted it locally, but its very western. More than it was even 40 years ago. Western style dress and TV and music and film and business tweaked locally. Economically and socially they're quite vulnerable too. It could happen, but I cant see the rest of the world becoming culturally Chinese any time soon. Hey even with religion, Christianity is making big inroads into paces like china and though originally a middle east religion at source is actually more a European construct.

In summary, 'culture' is a tenuous thing and will collapse and reform at will. The next culture to collapse will be the American variant and then Europe will go next. For feck's sake even our religion is virtually brand new and it's already in the dust. Sometimes I think people assume that there were no cultures before the 1500s.

Again I do agree with you.These things ebb and flow. Cultures that last tend to be monumental, unchanging with limited enough empires(China, ancient Egypt which stood for 1000's of years) or very dynamic ones that move with the times.

As a species we've been around for 200,000 years. How many cultures have risen and fallen in that time? Tens of thousands. The Caucasians will fall too.

Its how they fall thats interesting. They follow certain patterns. Over expansion etc, but the biggest is complexity and lack of social movement within that complexity. Rome didnt fall cos of the barbarians at the gates, it fell cos Romans werent that pushed on being romans anymore and the interrelated complexity of their society made it very vulnerable. All modern cultures have that problem at this moment. Very little would push them over the edge. The black death didnt stop europe even with the loss of a third of its people. It was a simple society and because of that more resistant to such a pressure. If the balck death happened today? Game over.

Funny on the language front... the Roman empire didnt fall in the 5th century. The western empire did. The eastern empire kept going for a lot longer. It became more socially mobile and simpler and it changed its language to Greek and left Latin behind. So maybe if the crapola hits the fan we may be looking to peeps like dlofnep for our salvation