Aiden, The young believe capitalism is the reason the Earth is being destroyed. They believe all resources should be managed by the State, including people. That there should no ownership of property that it belongs to the State, and is managed by the State.

Josephus,
Have you any evidence for those outlandish claims?

Aidan,
Josephus is right or don't you look outside your home during the week ?

ttbn,

Just a bit of fisking:

+"You think that the list (not my list BTW)"

I know that. My very first line on the thread was "When I saw that list a few days ago I thought it was rubbish.". I probably first saw it where you did.

+"less convincing than using examples of what has happened in the past to similar civilisations "

Perhaps. But the point is the examples given were basically wrong and were concocted to demonstrate claims about the current world rather than the ancient world.

+ " You merely make unfounded assertions."

I offered several examples where the list was faulty. I could have gone on but didn't want to embarrass you any further.
Your claim about me making unfounded assertions is unfounded. :)

The real problem here is that you misunderstand the nature of a civilisation. The fall of the Western Roman Empire didn't signal the end of Western Civilisation. It continued because the conquers of Rome adopted that essences of 'The West'. Just as, having conquered Greece, Rome adopted much of the Greek thinking, (the old adage that Rome conquered Athens and then Athens conquered Rome), the Franks, Vandals, Visgoths etc were so inured in Roman thought that it persisted despite the death of Romulus Augustus.
'The West', invented in the Greek polis, survived the fall of Hellas to Macedon, the fall of the various Hellene empires to Rome, and the fall of Rome. It was saved a Tours, was reinvigorated by Venice, and then Protestantism, and then by the English. Empires rose and fell but 'the West' persisted.

Sometimes the fall of empires does cause the fall of civilisations eg Carthage, Egypt after Augustus, Persia after Darius III, the Incas, the Aztecs. But the fall of Rome as an imperial project was merely part of a continuum.

Aidan,

Re the walls in Denmark. I'm not having a go here - just genuinely interested to see if you have some information that I haven't come across before.

I'm wondering whether you're talking about the Limes Germanicus or was there a wall further north than that?

Two major factors in the fall of the Roman Western Empire have not
been mentioned.
The first is the onset of the cold period between the Roman warming
and the Medieval warming.
The second cause was the depredations of the of the Arab pirates/slavetraders.
Their attacks on Roman shipping forced their trade onto more
expensive road transport.
The Arab slavers captured approximately one million Europeans even as
far away as the south coast of Britain and Iceland on one occasion.
Blondes had a premium price in Arab markets.