It is sometimes said that when the Roman Empire fell, your everyday Roman had no clue that it was happening. Perhaps. They were too busy going on with life to notice such things. The Roman Empire had always been there and I am sure they thought it always would be. Even if they did know, they probably couldn’t have told you the reason. Heck, over a millennium and a half later we are still debating they whys.
There is another saying in the form of a philosophical inquiry. “If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound?”
This past weekend has been the weekend of doom and gloom. It seems that Europe may have finally awoken to the fact that the party is over. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard had an article ominously entitled “The week that Europe stopped pretending.” Likewise, Janet Daley speculates that the crisis in Spain portends the end of the Euro and Europe as we know it.
The aforementioned articles are full of phrases like “capital flight” and “monetary policy.” It is all very interesting and sobering at the same time and all completely besides the point.
I feel like a Roman at the end of the empire watching the whole thing going down and remarking simply, “Duh!”
Of all the articles I read this weekend on this topic, only one actually really explained…
