The Arc of Earthling Civilizations

I've identified six stages - no, wait - five stages. Five. Hold on. 

Okay. I've identified four stages (I counted two of them twice, because they broke onto two lines) in the rising and collapsing of all Earthling civilizations. They go like this:

1. Our Forefathers Who Built This Great Nation

This mostly involves killing all the natives, who obviously don't appreciate how good they've got it.

2. My Great Great Grandfather Came Here With Nothing And Built This Company With His Bare Hands and/or From The Ground Up

This inv- well, it's self explanatory.

3. When I Was Your Age

An era when they didn't have to work as hard as the Forefathers, but at least they knew how to work, god damn it.

4. These Kids These Days with Their Long Hair and Crazy Music

Surely the end of this once great nation.

3 and 4 are the longest periods as they circle back on each other in a long downward spiral which ends in the Earthlings becoming natives and new Forefathers moving in.

When they look at where they went wrong, Earthlings always get hung up on blaming These Kids These Days, when it's pretty obvious that the real problem is with the Forefathers. They are work hogs. They use up all the hard work so there's none left by the time they get to Stage Four.

What they need is lazier forefathers. Look at it. By the time Abraham Lincoln died they'd already done all the building log cabins and reading by candlelight there was to do. So they had to go to electric lights and prefabs.

Each generation strip mines all the work, leaving none for the next generation. They think it will last forever. So These Kids These Days are left with rocking out and growing hair. It's the only hard work left. (I've done these two. They aren't that hard.)

Here's a partial list of all the hard work that's gone extinct:

Intercontinental Railway

Plowing The Back Forty

Crushing The Carthaginians

Boldly Going

Putting A Man On The Moon, For Christ Sake

The Alphabet

Making This Marriage Work

Interbreeding with the Neanderthals

Securing The Blessings Of Liberty

Turning Back The Nazi Tide/Defeating The Red Menace

Splitting The Atom

Evolving From Single Celled Organisms

Pizza Delivery In 30 Minutes Or Less

They are really going to have a hard time of it, if they don't get on top of this.

Observer003 - Earthlings