Episode 144- The Rise and Fall of Civilizations: Today vs Antiquity. With Dr. Richard Enos.

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Brian Kruger

And welcome to The Common Bridge. I'm Brian Kruger, the producer of the show. Today we have an interesting interview that was recorded two weeks ago. Rich had invited his friend, Dr. Richard Enos, a professor emeritus of rhetoric and composition at Texas Christian University and an associate dean for academic affairs at Carnegie Mellon - among other impressive positions - to talk about societal collapse in antiquity, and more specifically in ancient Greece and Athens. Dr. Enos currently has a column in this month's Common Bridge newsletter, The Interval, and you can see that by subscribing to the Common Bridge on Substack. Now, I'm putting this all into context because on the day this was recorded, two weeks ago, Vladimir Putin had invaded the Ukraine. So Rich starts this conversation with those events unfolding at that time, so we join Rich and Dr. Enos in conversation.

Richard Helppie

Welcome to The Common Bridge. I'm sure as we go through this very difficult period in history, we have to wonder has this ever happened before? Today our guest, Dr. Richard Leo Enos, is going to explain some things to us from the ancient world. Dr. Enos, are there parallels between what's happening in the world today and other times in history?

Dr. Richard Enos

Well Rich, first, thank you for having me on. And I want to say an emphatic, yes. In fact, as I watched the news unfold today, I was struck by the issues that we're facing, and the similarities of the things that I study, and hopefully in our discussion today, the lessons we can learn from those past studies.

Richard Helppie

Let's get into that and some of your past studies. Now our audience likes to know a little bit about our guests on the show. So tell us where did you grow up and what were your early days like? You've got a very deep academic background; your entire bio is on our website, RichardHelppie.com and at The Common Bridge on Substack. So please, listeners, viewers, readers, join us there. But tell us a little bit - you grew up in the Bay area of California, I believe?

Dr. Richard Enos

Yes, I did, Rich. I grew up in Oakland, California. And inside Oakland there is an Italian district called the Temescal district. My grandparents came from Italy at the turn of the 20th century and the northern Italians settled in that area. I grew up with my parents and grandmother in her house. We were a working family. My father was a welder. In fact, I was the first one ever to go to college in our family. I was brought up in a very strict Roman Catholic religion. But at the same time, I also learned - especially [from] my mother, my father passed when he was very young - an appreciation for all different religions and an understanding of different ways to use religion to help us. I was able to go to college at what was then called Cal State [in] Hayward - Cal State University East Bay - and then I went to graduate school at Indiana University in Bloomington. I taught at the University of Michigan. Then I went to Carnegie Mellon University for several years. I was offered an endowed chair at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth and I accepted that. I formally retired from 46 years of teaching in 2019. But I still like to keep active in my research and through this miracle of Zoom, I'm able to give lectures at different universities from time to time.

Richard Helppie

And what's been your area of specialty through your academic preparation and your study?

Dr. Richard Enos

Well, I started off with - and maybe this is because of my family background - I started off with a general interest in communication. I know this will sound odd and it's a phenomenon [that] may never happen again, but when my mother - who was born in America - went to school she couldn't speak English, she could only speak Italian. And I became very interested in communication. But then I became very interested in the history of language in the area of rhetoric and how people are influenced. So as I went on through school I had graduate minors in history and classics. I studied the relationship between how people think and how they express those thoughts through history and those ideas transfer, I think, very well. So for many years, both at Carnegie Mellon, especially in TCU, I taught courses in propaganda analysis, because many of the theories have their origin back in antiquity; although there's been a tremendous body of current research, of course. But I tried to bring those two things together for my students when I teach propaganda analysis, and try to help them - obviously what's in the title of the course - to analyze discourse, but also ultimately, to help them make what they feel are good judgments about the discourse that they hear.

Richard Helppie

That is so appropriate to our times [with] the amount of language and communications flying around on all of these different platforms. And so today, I hope that we can cover in 40 minutes or so, empires that rise, empires fall, history repeating itself. And I know you'll be educating the readers of The Common Bridge with a column that you've written for our first newsletter that comes out on March 7. On the show, we've made parallels with the United States Civil War, as we seem to be pushed into this red and blue camp or [are] being dragged there. We need to look at the parallels with the United States and failed empires. I know there are some markers that you look for, like the devaluation of currency. So to the extent that we can try to fit a graduate level course, or from introduction to grad level, [both chuckling] about the Greek and the Roman and the British Empires, and especially their rise and fall, let's dive into talking about some of the greatest empires of all time. How do we define the greatest empires?

Dr. Richard Enos

I was thinking a great deal about this. I think often, and maybe always, behind every great empire there is a powerful figure, sometimes they are called "dynasts", they are these larger than life personalities. Their impact does a great deal toward facilitating and extending, in some cases, empires. Now this could be used, this could be abused. We all know that individuals...such as Adolf Hitler [who] was a very powerful individual, in fact, even formally, in Germany, as I tell my students, the power that he received to become the Fuehrer - which meant he was both in charge as equivalent of a prime minister and in charge of all the military - was freely given by the Germans. He didn't take it. He didn't...it wasn't forced upon [them]. That illustrates the dynamics of his capacity, but of course, that capacity can be abused. One of the things we need to ask very fundamental questions about is, can we actually teach responsible leadership? Can we teach people to become leaders? There was a great deal of interest in this, of course, after World War II, and since then, but really, it's an historical question. Some people are surprised to learn that universities such as Oxford and Cambridge were founded, not to provide their students with jobs, their universities were founded to create the leaders of the British Empire; these would be the people who would guide the Empire. There was an effort to try to do that. And we know great leaders can have great impact. The examples are obvious - Winston Churchill could unite a people against tyranny; Martin Luther King, Jr. could try to have a peaceful nonviolent resolution; two very strong social issues. Of course, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Martin Luther King, Jr. was, for his efforts. But my point is that we can look at powerful individuals and see how they can influence people, even to the extent of empires.

Richard Helppie

So when we look at empires, I think about the Greek Empire and the Roman Empire. In preparing for this talk today, looking up the greatest empires of all time, I'm surprised they weren't in the top 20. There's more about the Mongol and the Russian Empire, the Persian Empire, and the concept of empires like Greece and India hadn't happened yet. When you think, as a someone with your deep background, [of] the greatest empires of all time, what do they have in common? [What] about the commonality of their rise and what about the elements of decline? Any examples that you can share with us would be great as well.

Dr. Richard Enos

I think one of the things that will obviously beg the question [that] I get in classes is, well, what do we mean by great? Is it just an emotive term, we're saying we should strongly approve of it, we strongly like it, can it be unpacked? Can it be defined in some ways? And of course, if we look at large empires that were militarily oriented and coercive and judge their greatness by the amount of land they were able to conquer, the number of people they were able to control, we can look at it that way. What we have to do is take a step back and to say, are there any other measurements, any other determinants of greatness? Now to take one of the examples, Rich, that you mentioned. When I studied in Greece, I had the opportunity to actually go to the site of Marathon where principally - there were a few other city states that helped - but principally it was the citizens of the city of Athens versus the Persian Empire's army. There is absolutely no way that you would think that the Athenians could have won, but Herodotus, the great historian, teaches us a valuable lesson. He said, the reason why the Athenians won is that they had a collective sense, a communal sense, of what the best way to fight the Persians was. Their collective genius enabled this small - insignificant in the eyes of the Persians - city-state, kind of a backwater city in the view of the Persians, to actually conquer the Persians. And there's a great lesson there, Herodotus says, and he argues the value of democracy, the collective wisdom, is better than the tyranny of a single person. And doing just the will of the king, or the emperor, or the fuehrer, is not as good as having an environment where the best ideas take precedent, not just who says the idea.

Richard Helppie

That's fascinating, because...and I've spent just a few days in Russia. Of course, I got out and talked to as many people as I could being that's just what I do when I go. It was a time when Russia was a little bit rudderless. I drew the impression that they liked having a strong leader. So it's, and of course, we're recording this on the morning that Russia invaded the Ukraine, and with a person at the helm of Russia, Vladimir Putin, who's been there since 1999; including re-working their constitutional processes in order to remain in power that long. If I heard you correctly, empires sometimes have a very strong personality leading but that ultimately becomes their Achilles heel. Does the Russian Empire embody that or do they stand out as something different?