Seems like one of the dangers of empire is that losing it, which is inevitable, leads to a hard-to-shake condition of feeling like a has-been society. It makes it hard to just be a good nation, a good place to live.

I fear the same thing is coming for the USA as it, inevitably, loses its standing as the world's sole great superpower (which it only had for maybe 20 years at most!). We could easily get stuck in a permanent cycle of demagogue after demagogue promising to, well, make us "great again."

You see it in individuals too. The root of the word celebrity is celebrate. Make someone a celebrity and put them on a pedestal, and it often ruins them forever. It's a fickle thing. When they inevitably go back to being just a regular person, the effect is often to leave the person permanently feeling like a has-been. They flail around for the rest of their lives trying to recapture something that is fleeting instead of enjoying the fact that (1) they achieved something few people achieve and (2) they have the rest of their lives ahead of them.

Success is more psychologically dangerous than failure.

There's a saying: "whom god wishes to destroy, he first makes mad." I think a better version is "whom god wishes to destroy, he first raises up."

> The root of the word celebrity is celebrate.

Actually, that's not quite right. The root of both "celebrate" and "celebrity" is a Latin word whose original meaning is something to do with crowdedness. Celebrity (in the older sense of "being famous") means being someone that people crowd around. The original meaning of "celebrate" was to hold a religious service, attended by crowds of people. Later "celebrity" evolved to also mean a person who has the quality of celebrity-in-the-old-sense, and "celebrate" evolved to also mean to hold some other kind of event that attracts crowds. But "celebrity" didn't ever primarily mean "person who is admired", it was always "person who attracts attention".

(It is still true that people who are famous and then not famous can find it hard to adapt to the change, of course.)

> Seems like one of the dangers of empire is that losing it, which is inevitable, leads to a hard-to-shake condition of feeling like a has-been society. It makes it hard to just be a good nation, a good place to live.

I think you are right, but I also think it afflicts the ruling class a lot more. In particular, politicians, who are power seekers by nature, feel the loss more than ordinary people do. IN their minds, not being a super power equates to declined, even if life improves for ordinary people (which it did).

England is a has-been society because 1) they are old and have more vacation. You've got less people working less hours. REAL GDP per work hour is up >50% since the early 80s - what people seem to think of as some golden era - and is more than double since the 60s, another golden era according to others - even real GDP PPP adjusted, you're still >50% since the 60s.

2) They decided they wanted to punish hard workers and productive investment and aggressively reward capitalists that "park money" in non-productive assets (like real estate).

England could easily reverse these decisions and aggressively reward hard work and investment in productive assets, open the doors to intellectuals, and the hard, smart working people and investment would come pouring in.

But, they'll never do that, because boomers.

The problem with England is the problem elsewhere. The amount your society needs to improve to let ~1% more people not work every year for ~30 years is incredible. The entire west has done it. But the benefits are going almost exclusively to the retiree class.

In the not too far future, if trends continue <50% of adults will be working with very high standards of living. This is absolutely UNHEARD of. At the same time, you'll see basically no benefit at all for the people who actually do the work.

This doesn't seem like the best way to distribute productivity gains to society, but it's the way we've chosen, and as long as old people have a say, you better bet they're gonna vote for the status quo or even bigger pension payouts in the future.