How Every Empire Falls

On the radio yesterday, I heard the soulful song That’s How Every Empire Falls, written by RB Morris sometime before 2005, and performed at various times by Morris, John Prine, and Marianne Faithfull. I was charmed by how well it recruited strong emotional energy to the feeling that it is bad for empires to fall.  I’ve been mostly failing to get folks to feel the tragedy of our world civ falling over centuries, to be replaced by quite different ones, due to cultural drift. 

The song has 5 stanzas. Stanzas #1,3,4 tell stories of men (not women) who embody moral failings. The first just hurts himself, while the other two also hurt associates. Every stanza jarringly ends with “That’s how every empire falls”. This asserts that empires consistently fall due to key moral failings, raises the stakes of each personal failing by connecting it to bigger issues, and helps us to feel the tragedy of those big failings, via our more accessible feelings about particular failings. 

Stanzas #2,5 also end with “That’s how every empire falls”, but these describe larger moral failings, #2 of religious communities who lose their innocence, wonder, and vision, and #5 of communities who wait too long to ask why so many of them are prone to contagious conflict. 

Now I can’t much endorse his specific cases. He doesn’t say what the man runs from in #1, #3 faults a man for laudable accomplishments but not opening up his heart enough, and #4 faults an official who enforces eviction notices. (Why would anyone rent if they can’t evict?) And I while I see the value of some wonder and vision, I’m not sure we much fail to understand our sources of conflict. 

Even so, I suspect this is the way to motivate efforts to slow or prevent our civ’s decline, either piecemeal or more fundamentally by limiting cultural drift. We need essays, poems, songs, stories, etc. that help us to feel the moral blame due those who contribute to this decline, and the moral credit due those who reverse it. I'm doing a poll showing that >80% blame influential citizens, alive at the time, for their civ/empire’s decline.  

Maybe stories like A Canticle for Leibowitz, set in a post-decline world, remembering our lost wonders? Maybe make more credible lyrics for this particular song?