Civil Longevity

(c) 2022 by Vernon Miles Kerr and VernonMilesKerr.com

Considering that the life expectancy of a human in the ancient world was around 30 years, how were those ancient architectural wonders, like The Great Pyramids, the Greek Pantheon and the Roman Colosseum, ever completed? It obviously took multiple generations to complete the job. The Great Wall of China took Over 2,300 Years, during more than nine Dynasties, to complete. All of these ancient wonders took a multi-generational effort, which implies a civic stability that is nowhere evident in our modern world.

Our own country, a mere 250 years old, started out with a great flurry of civic pride, judging by the ponderous neo-classical government buildings in Washington, DC. But, where are our multi-generational projects that have spanned even that measily quarter-millenium? Long before the Declaration of Independence, Europe had already completed its multi-genreational Cathedral projects, which are recent enough to theorize about how the worker’s shovel was passed, like a relay baton, from father to son: Catholicism. Does it take Empire, either religious or secular, to impose the needed longevity on a civilization?

But even China, autocratic as it is, and even though the country that built that prime example of multi-generational projects, has, since the mid-twentieth century,