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Do you really want me to go digging up examples on Twitter? Very well.
https://x.com/ashukla09/status/1513940563917041664?s=20
https://x.com/MarkOrmrod/status/1941804527914537373?s=20
https://x.com/AntonKreil/status/1969104105894183202?s=20
https://x.com/romanhelmetguy/status/1684935042554843137?s=20 (Spartan glazing, in the context of an ACOUP post)
https://x.com/infantrydort/status/2023174525714645445?s=20 (More Sparta glazing)
https://x.com/demos_network/status/2019499416156098933?s=20 (It's even got a gif from 300!)
https://x.com/bitcoinzay/status/1488910846063484930?s=20 (Bruh)
Happy? You want more of this slop? My point was that it exists in the wild.
If you collapse the course of a civilization into "hard times" and "good times" then I would interested to see how you didn't get a cycle out of it.
You acknowledge that the "cycle" is variable, and grossly so depending on context. Great, does that offer any predictive value? Can you pinpoint the threshold of "decadence" where the odds of collapse skyrocket, or the degree of character-building hardship that ensures a society moves onto the good stuff?
If you can't, then the theory is borderline useless. It only beats one alternative, which is that literally nothing ever happens.
That is a phase shift, it should preserve the overall pattern.
Corporations are not nations. More importantly, you have omitted what I think is most necessary to have this actually be a supportive argument: that corporations or companies that go through bad times tend to emerge stronger, and that that bad times breed better companies. It's good that you don't say that, because it's not true. A far more common result is that they go bust too. Unfortunately that means you're selectively paying attention to one side of the argument.
How do any of those tweets reference military victory at all? They don't.
ok...
ok...
ok...
Has nothing to do with the good times / hard times meme at all
Also has nothing to do with the good times / hard times meme at all
This is the closest you get, but this tweet would work equally well with any gif of a badass looking guy
This uses the meme, but it has no connection between strong/weak men and military victory.
So it seems like your collection of slop tweets exactly proves my point. Ain't nobody saying that because they think "weak men" can't swing a sword, shoot a gun, or push a button just as well as "strong men".
I never said it was a particularly useful or thought provoking theory, just one that's quite a bit more useful than the strawman you make it out to be.
It actually beats a quite significant theory though, that is: "the winners keep winning, forever." Simple models, such as those in chess, 4x games, etc, show that once one side has a decisive advantage, it's already game over. But civilizations in real life don't follow the same pattern.
In some sense you might say it's stating the obvious. But why is that a problem? Tons of memes state the obvious, that's what makes them accessible. That doesn't make them wrong.
My intent was to demonstrate examples of the phrase in the wild, the connotations seem clear to me, even when they're not strictly military.
Huh? Did you miss:
There are two implication is that the Great Depression was a hard time, which created the strong men who fought in WW2. Alternatively, both count as hard times, and created a generation of strong men who produced the good times from the 1940s to 1970. Since it references a literal world war, what else do you want?I can only apologize for the poor quality tweets, but Ywitter's indexing sucks. I went to the bother of finding at least one robust example:
https://x.com/OrdainedPrepper/status/2018394819597660297?s=20
Please try and guess the context first. It's a reply toa woman complaining about working 9-5s .
I'm sure there are more out there, but I'm calling it a night.
It's hardly my fault that the tweets are slop when the topic is slop and the search functionality is trash. I think it's rather clear that unironic admiration of the Spartans as superlative warriors is relevant to the thesis, though they used spears rather than swords for the most part. It'll have to do for now.
I disagree that you have demonstrated this.
Is anyone making that claim? Very well, your approach beats the two maximally degenerate models.
The obvious is the Motte. The bailey is all the additional extensions heapened on it. Devereaux does not contest that nations rise and fall, because that is obviously true. Neither do I. We both claim that the version he specified is immensely useless. The more you steelman the idea, the more it becomes something mundane. Add enough caveats, and you're describing standard history.
I also note that you haven't addressed my point about corporations, as of the time of this edit.
Both of these tweets unambiguously point to the war itself as being the bad times. And the good times are built by the strong men that came out of it.
None of the tweets make any connection with strong men = winning wars. That's exactly the insane strawman you and acoup guy are trying to make.
I disagree that you have demonstrated this.
Certainly acoup guy's interpretation of the meme is useless. But exactly what I'm saying is that it's a strawman.
If you can give me some actual examples where people claim that hard times -> strong men = military prowess, then I will be inclined to believe that it's not a strawman.
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