Some four hundred explanations have been suggested for the fall of the Roman Empire, so one more will not matter. It may well be that the Empire fell and for hundreds of years kept on falling because the Romans were stupid. More precisely, the decline and fall was due to socio-economic imprudence compounded by a monumental measure of self-induced ignorance and was a grand example of applied stupidity—the reciprocity of ignorance and misguided power.

The Empire struck out because the Romans were insensitive to the social aspects of trade and finance—the twin underpinnings of their military juggernaut. They were simply unable to appreciate what they were doing to themselves and what kind of world they were creating. As their conquests spread, the lines of administration stretched to the point that even interpretation of dicta could not suffice to maintain both law and order. One of them had to go, so order was sacrificed for the sake of legal fictions, the image of invincibility and the fantasy of imperial propriety.

To put it simply, Rome could not survive its success. It became a case study of the neurotic paradox in action, with cravings for quick profits blinding those with naught but short-term gains on their minds to the social ills they were creating. Roman Senators and their cronies set the tone of legislators and their lackeys down through the ages as they skinned and fleeced their way through the lands surrounding the Mediterranean. Fertile land was tilled to the point of sterility, with nothing being done with fertilizers to rebuild it as the Chinese, at the very same time, were doing in their fields. Nor did Romans condescend to help the impoverished peasants of the lands they overran and ruined. Rome had no future because it had no concept of a future as anything but a continual adventure in exploitation.

Romans lived for the moment and thereby guaranteed that there would be, for them, no tomorrow. They enjoyed the good things in life—slavery, brutality and materialism. Consistent with their practical bent, their religions were blatantly commercial. Winning divine favor was considered a matter of paying value for value in an essentially economic religion, with the gods certainly owing the Romans something in return for the sacrifices made to them. It was in this spiritual void that Christianity took root and flourished by appealing to the many have-nots, who had nothing material to sacrifice.

The political empire of the Romans was replaced by the spiritual empire of the Catholic church. For some thousand years, this institution defined the schema and life of Western Civilization. By any standard except

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