The Long Revenge

The Long Revenge .
Andre Willers
24 Aug 2012
Synopsis :
A society that exports the most ethical and smartest of it’s members eventually self-destructs . A Disease of Empire .

Discussion :
Ethics and Empire are an explosive mixture.
Ethics is another name for fairness , which is hardwired in all organisms with a neural-network .

1.Britain and India :
After the Indian Mutiny of 1857 , the British took a leaf out of the most successful long-term empire at the time (China) and instituted an extremely rigorous set of examinations to find the smartest and most ethical in their population to rule India . To be exact , 1000 of them . This was the Imperial Indian Civil Service . The most effective Civil Service ever known .
While smart people are a dime a dozen , ethical people are scarcer . So , the final selections were made on the basis of Ethical Character . The British cleverly exported the most ethical persons , leaving the scoundrels at home . These stay-at-homes were just as smart , but had fewer scruples . This lasted from 1846 -1942 . Leaching out morals .
These remainders went into the British Civil Service (hence the term “Mandarins”) .
It gets worse . Those not quite making the grade made nice careers in lesser parts of the empire (like South Africa , Canada , Australia , etc) , depleting the ethical pool in Britain even more .
Of course , ethical men teach their children to be ethical .
Eventually , the scoundrels ruled at home and the good men were scattered at the peripheries .
The lack of ethical leadership at the top in Britain cost them their empire .

2.The Roman Empire .
The same thing happened , with an added twist . Competent , ethical persons got assigned to the peripheries in engineered wars . Cheaper and better than civil wars .
3.China .
Here it happened over and over again . A corrupt center that uses the Mandarin examinations to identify highly ethical individuals and pulse them out . They , or their descendants eventually return and take over the center . The pattern then repeats . A little unintended consequence of Confucianism .
And so it goes .

4.USA Empire
A wannabe repeat of the Chinese Dynasties , only not as smart . Having correctly identified the class of ethical persons (roughly the Reserve Officers Training Corps ROTC ) , and lacking the expertise to identify the really ethical elements among them , manufactured wars in distant , small places was judged sufficient (in typical short-term basis) to distract them . This is about to explode in their faces . Something like Constantine the Great . See (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_the_Great)
And of course , social media and Ostrum principles (like Christianity) will be right there . We can only hope that the Battle of Milvern Bridge is not nuclear this time around .
5. Meso-American Empires .
The Mayans had no long-range animals , so their empires were small and concentrated . Their ethical elements could not be sent far-away , so they were in constant state of turmoil . Reserves could not be built up , so when prolonged droughts hit , most died and the survivors fled to the forest , were they still live . Decivilization .
Troubles not exported , come home to roost .
Andre
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx