Why the Roman Empire fell

The Roman Empire fell because it was founded and run by people. Institutions founded and run by people don't last, because people write fiction into their institutional myths, and fictions have shelf-lives.

The Romans created fictional narratives suggesting that people needed them as overlords, to get aqueducts, etc., that Romans were backed by powerful gods who had moved on from the Greeks, and that Romans were so great and smart that people should kneel before them and pay Roman taxes and praise the Roman Empire as the coolest progress ever.

Imagine if the Romans had just told the truth and left it at this: Everyone should work for Romans and exist on a lower rung or be killed.  That might have worked for a while, indeed it did work for a while, but eventually the military needs a break, and the Romans realized they required a narrative about something riveting- like greatness and glory and, well, philosophy- to keep things moving along (see writings of Yuval Harari for more on the importance of fiction in human society).

An institution based on fiction will eventually dissolve, as the Roman Empire did, because purposeful, manipulative fiction tends- unless ongoing energy is devoted to distraction and concealment- to become exposed as fiction.  That being the case, why do we use fictions to form our institutions?

Consider the institution of the United States of America.  We learn in elementary school that the U.S. was founded by remarkably good and wise men, The Founding Fathers, who were motivated by one idea: Everybody should be free to blossom into whatever flower they were meant to be.  Only near saints could devote a life to such a high ideal.  

Of course the sainthood is arguably fiction, considering that George Washington made his fortune trading an addictive drug (nicotine) for human slaves and wanted the president to be addressed as, "Your Supreme Exalted Majesty," while Thomas Jefferson wrote, in Notes to Virginia, that, "...just as the orangutan male is sexually attracted to the human female, but not the reverse, so a negro woman is attracted to a white male, but a white male is not attracted to a negro woman," (ironic considering that Jefferson fathered at least six children with his slave girl Sally Hemings). 

These biographical details don't support images of optimal role models, so we created fictions to make our social contract more attractive.

Let’s give the Founding Fathers credit for clever use of fictional narratives to create founding myths to support a constitution that has lasted hundreds of years- long enough at least for the initial plundering of the continent- before the stresses of history  could corrode it.

If we're at the corroded stage now, “we the people” should consider that, just as with your refrigerator, the warranty might be up on the Constitution when we need it most. Our response to the first sign of Constitutional obsolescence, concerning the 4th Amendment, has been to ignore it.  The 4th's protection against search and seizure without due process has stopped working since we learned that we're already a surveillance state with no reliable due-process provided, and that we have to be such a state because of terrorism. This was the logic endorsed by President Obama, under whose watch the surveillance state was unveiled.  Obama used to teach Constitutional law but seems oddly detached from the de facto death of the 4th Amendment.

Question for gun proponents: What good did your guns do when the 4th Amendment was cancelled?

Would the Constitution be stronger today if we had used less fiction and more truth in our Founding myths?  

A mocking voice in my head asks, "How would you even do that?"  

I respond, tentatively, that perhaps the Founders could have tried something like this in the Declaration of Independence:

Resolved: We, the business people of these United States, do hereby disassociate our corporate interests from Britain’s, so that we can keep all our money and not give Britain any of it.

This formulation makes no claim to nobility of purpose, to virtue, which is the point. The statement is clear in its intent.  No future lawyer could twist its meaning.  Its honesty gives it durability, contrasted with All men are created equal, which means anything and consequently nothing.

People around the world are reporting weaknesses in their most important institutions.  Most of the weaknesses derive from the fictions embedded in the institutions.  We may need to rewrite a few things in a hurry.  Reality is what it is, but the fewer fictions used, the longer the revised institutions will last.  You might even say, the longer they will deserve to last.