“The Roman elite fiddled while Rome burned. Our elites live-streamed the fire and monetized the smoke”—Rutger Bregman #ReithLectures 🔥️
“To grasp the depths of our current misery, it helps to start with a classic story of collapse. When the great historian Edward Gibbon described the decline of Rome, he didn't speak in vague abstractions. He gave us names, dates, and details, page after page of cowardice and corruption. Reading the decline and fall of the Roman Empire is like watching a civilization rot in slow motion. Sadistic emperors on gilded thrones, generals who sold out their own armies, and senators who cared more for spectacle than statecraft.
And yet what shocks you most when you read Gibbon today isn't the depravity, it's the familiarity. Gibbon wrote about politicians who lacked seriousness. Elites who lacked virtue, and societies that mistook decadence for progress. 2000 years later, we live in an age where billionaires dodge their taxes, politicians perform instead of govern, and media barons profit from lies and hatred. The Roman elite fiddled while Rome burned. Our elites live-streamed the fire and monetized the smoke. Immorality and unseriousness. Those are the two defining traits of our leaders today. And they're not accidental flaws, but the logical outcome of what I call the survival of the shameless. Today, it's not the most capable who rise, but the least scrupulous. Not the most virtuous, but most brazen” --Rutger Bregman
Quoted from The Reith Lectures 2025: Moral Revolution Part 1 of 4: A Time of Monsters downloads.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2025/Reith_1_R4_2025_Transcript.pdf
Rutger Bregman (born 1988) is a Dutch popular historian and best-selling author. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutger_Bregman
CC BY-SA portrait of Rutger Bregman by Maartje ter Horst on Wikimedia Commons w.wiki/GVyL
“The Roman elite fiddled while Rome burned. Our elites live-streamed the fire and monetized the smoke”—Rutger Bregman #ReithLectures 🔥️
“To grasp the depths of our current misery, it helps to start with a classic story of collapse. When the great historian Edward Gibbon described the decline of Rome, he didn't speak in vague abstractions. He gave us names, dates, and details, page after page of cowardice and corruption. Reading the decline and fall of the Roman Empire is like watching a civilization rot in slow motion. Sadistic emperors on gilded thrones, generals who sold out their own armies, and senators who cared more for spectacle than statecraft.
And yet what shocks you most when you read Gibbon today isn't the depravity, it's the familiarity. Gibbon wrote about politicians who lacked seriousness. Elites who lacked virtue, and societies that mistook decadence for progress. 2000 years later, we live in an age where billionaires dodge their taxes, politicians perform instead of govern, and media barons profit from lies and hatred. The Roman elite fiddled while Rome burned. Our elites live-streamed the fire and monetized the smoke. Immorality and unseriousness. Those are the two defining traits of our leaders today. And they're not accidental flaws, but the logical outcome of what I call the survival of the shameless. Today, it's not the most capable who rise, but the least scrupulous. Not the most virtuous, but most brazen” --Rutger Bregman
Quoted from The Reith Lectures 2025: Moral Revolution Part 1 of 4: A Time of Monsters downloads.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2025/Reith_1_R4_2025_Transcript.pdf
Rutger Bregman (born 1988) is a Dutch popular historian and best-selling author. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutger_Bregman
CC BY-SA portrait of Rutger Bregman by Maartje ter Horst on Wikimedia Commons w.wiki/GVyL