What on earth could men's fashion, ancient Roman conquest, the fact that I speak English, and global climate change possibly all have in common?

I want to go on a whirlwind tour of about two thousand years of human history, focusing primarily on events on the continent of Europe, but also their larger, and more wide-spread ramifications across the entire planet. As I've written about before, I love to ask "why" a lot - about pretty much everything. That has led me to explore a huge range of social, political, and cultural phenomena. I also have a deep love for patterns - ways in which similarity can appear, even in contexts that are extremely different. The combination of these factors creates a non-stop drive in my brain to find connected causes of very disparate phenomena.

In other words, this is a trip through time, where I want to point out a particular set of patterns of human behavior that are very rarely recognized as being intertwined. I want to share why (and how) I have come to the opinion that an enormous number of contemporary issues in our world boil down to people feeling insecure, and then creating larger and larger social and cultural patterns in reaction to that. This is a history of the very concept of "whiteness" and how it has affected the entire world, through a specific emotional lens.

When In Rome

Let's start at a time just over two thousand years from now. I'm writing this in 2024, of what would generally be referred to as the "Common Era" or C.E. Of course, 2100 years ago, this way of counting years didn't exist yet. The reason the calendar we use in most white-dominated (aka "western") societies comes down to the Roman Empire. The so-called "Gregorian" calendar (according to which it is the year 2024) was introduced by a Catholic Pope in the late 1500s, as a revision of the prior Julian calendar - named after none other than Julius Caesar. Yep - that Julius Caesar, generally known for his role in the ending of the Roman Republic and the creation of the Roman Empire.

After the assassination of Julius, his primary rival, Octavian, ended up coming out on top of a number of civil wars within Rome, and consolidating his power as the first de facto Emperor of Rome. Within 150 years, the Empire hit its peak - a sprawling, enormous political machine, with control over the bulk of the European continent, and extending to the northern edges of the African continent, across large swaths of what we'd now call the "Midde East," and even well into the British Isles. A large portion of this territory was in fact inherited from the Empire's predecessor, the Roman Republic, which had operated for about 500 years prior.

The beginnings and evolution of the Roman Republic are, in fact, where we will pick up the thread of insecurity. Way back in the beginning - over 2500 years ago - the political reach of "Rome" was actually quite a tiny slice of the Italian peninsula, ruled by a series of kings. At the tail end of this Roman Kingdom, there were a series of local wars that basically cemented Rome as the most influential and powerful city in the region. The "last king" of the Roman Kingdom was, by all accounts, not a great dude; his actions created such a scandal that he was overthrown and exiled, giving way to the creation of the Republic in 509 B.C.E. It's been noted that the term "rex" - the very word for "king" in Latin - carried a negative connotation for almost a thousand years afterwards.

From my perspective, I think this sets up a very important start to the unfolding of events throughout Europe ever since. First of all, it creates a well-known and popularly-understood record of the idea that people in power can be "bad" to such an extent that they can sully the name of their position for many generations; it's not hard to imagine that any political ruler in Rome, after the dissolution of the Roman Kingdom, took care not to fall to such a low. In other words, reputation began to matter, in a potent way, for those who wielded political authority.

Secondly, the Roman Republic inherited a specific relationship with neighboring political entities - one driven by, above almost any other immediate concern, a desire to hold on to a degree of "superiority." The almost insatiable need to demonstrate superiority became a central aspect not just of Roman politics but of Roman culture. Even the function of gender roles in Roman society became organized around a complex social hierarchy, defined by who was "allowed" to penetrate other people - both in the sexual sense, and the sense of weapons imposing physical violence.

As a result, Roman "manhood" became deeply entangled with the emotional need to maintain a certain status within this social hierarchy - again, defined heavily in terms of interpersonal violence and coercion. To be "superior," then, became defined in terms of ability to enact violence (physical, sexual, or otherwise). To enact violence on someone proved them lesser, fuelling the expansionistic policies of Rome in the Republic era. Any kind of vulnerability, on a personal level, was potential cause for a loss of social status, political influence, and even one's life. To be a man, in Rome, was to exist in a lifelong state of insecurity, afraid for one's status at every turn, constantly driven to push down others in order to maintain one's own station.

Keep in mind that to be a "king" was considered a bad thing, in this cultural setting; the dictators of the Roman Republic were elected, in times of dire emergency, largely based on charisma and influence among the oligarchy of families that controlled the actual workings of the Republic. Everyone knew what happened to the last Roman king, so there was extraordinary pressure on anyone appointed as a dictator - the way Julius Caesar was. Of course, that stigma only applied to the title, and not necessarily the actual existence of dominant positions of power to begin with. After all, domination was culturally equated with value and worth! The very concept of "virtue" within Roman society was itself deeply connected to this notion of "who's supposed to do violence to whom." As a result, this tension created an ideal environment for the rise of the notion of the "benevolent dictator."

Throughout the span of the Roman Republic's history, a great deal of conquest was done - recall that the bulk of the Roman Empire's territory was in fact inherited from the Republic. This geographic sprawl represented both a significant economic base of wealth, as well as a cultural assertion of Rome's "superiority" - after all, only The Best could have conquered such a swath of the world! Unfortunately, it came with complicated logisitical challenges. The edges of Roman territory were hard to maintain under centralized control, and it turned out that a large number of Europe's citizens didn't actually agree that Rome was all that great. This led to a constant series of uprisings, resistances, and ongoing battles on the borders of Roman influence, spanning nearly the entire millenium of Rome, both in the Republic and the later Empire.

Given the cultural pressure of Roman political and military leaders to not annoy their citizens - lest they be violently deposed - Rome became a crucible for the development of mass-population-control techniques. In its infancy, Roman culture had actually appropriated and adjusted a number of religious practices from the Ancient Greeks, including their pantheon of deities. As various Roman conquests crept across the landmass of Europe, they routinely encountered smaller populations with very different sets of beliefs and cultural traditions. So one of the more common (and devastatingly effective) tricks of Roman suppression was to actually assimilate local traditions.

The playbook was relatively simple: Rome would show up, conquer an area by military force, and then set about eroding the cultural resistance to their presence and domination. To do this, they would make minor adjustments to the local beliefs, rename some deities to "line up" with members of the pre-existing Roman pantheon, and then basically say "it's cool for you to keep practicing your traditions, you just need to use these new names for your gods or whatever." This had the dual effect of defusing cultural tension in newly-subjugated populations, and setting the stage for gradually eroding the original culture, until it vanished (usually after a few generations) into the homogeneity of Roman society. To add incentive to this process, Rome would confer status, material benefits, and other gestures of good-will onto those who "willingly" aligned with Rome, while also withholding violence - both carrot and stick. It proved astoundingly successful, but it wasn't perfect.

In fact, by the end of the Republic, fractures, infighting, and civil unrest were quite common throughout Rome. After trying (and largely failing) to extend their hegemony into Germanic territories in the northern parts of Europe, Rome was in trouble - under assault from within as well as without. It was in this context that Julius Caesar was assassinated, and his succesor, Octavian, officially created the Roman Empire. The solidification of military power became a paramount concern for Roman authority, out of a desperate need to maintain the sense of superiority over their conquered territories and peoples.

Personally, I think that the emotional situation here is crucial to understanding the patterns being established in European history. Weakness and vulnerability have become unforgivable for someone in the role of Emperor; totalitarian control is the only option available for an Emperor who didn't want to just get killed and replaced. Perfectionism becomes a key facet not just of how Roman policy is created, but of how people decide who needs to get deposed and replaced. The pressure is unthinkably intense, and just as impossible to escape as it is to truly overcome. Indeed, a series of Roman Emperors comes and goes, beset by a string of murders, assassinations, scandals, disgraces, and other turbulence, inlcuding a single year (spanning 68 and 69 C.E., just after the suicide of Nero) in which no less than four different Emperors rose and fell.

In a word, Roman power during the Empire was marked by nothing more intensely than insecurity.

From this context, we arrive at the next, pivotal event - one that would prove to impact the remaining history of Rome itself, ripple out into Europe, and indeed spread into virtually every corner of the world as we know it today: the rule of the Emperor Constantine the Great.

Keeping People Happy

When Constantine arrives on the scene, around the year 306 C.E., it's amidst a pretty typical bit of Roman political upheaval: no less than five other competitors emerged, struggling for dominance and control over the Roman Empire. Constantine winds up as Caesar after a year of messy conflict and political intrigue. After the dust settles, Constantine is in an interesting position; he's inherited a measure of economic and social stability within Rome, thanks to moves made by his predecessor Diocletian. But he's got a mess on his hands as well - the proliferation of so-called "Christian" belief systems.

At this point, it is crucial to understand three things about the history of Christianity, as it had been playing out in Rome. First, the vast majority of the actual history has been carefully manipulated and sculpted to suit particular political narratives, as we'll see shortly; as a result, the full story is rarely told in one place, outside of specialized academic research. Secondly, up until Constantine, there was no single, defined thing known as "Christianity" - in fact, there were hundreds of counter-cultural and political uprisings, many of which used common cultural tropes as parts of their own narratives and patterns of doing things. The lack of a single, unified "Christian identity" was actually a major reason why it proved so hard to defeat. Thirdly, and most importantly, there were many pockets of anti-Roman sentiment that didn't necessarily have anything much in common with the family of "Christian" groups that had spread across Rome.

And this is where Constantine makes an incredibly fateful move. Rather than attempting to keep stamping out all these variegated, wildly disparate counter-cultural movements - which, again, are really only unified by their distate for Roman control and subjugation - he decides to pull back out a classic Roman cultural play. He openly "converts" to Christianity, and then names it as the official state religion of the Roman Empire. He puts a stop to over two centuries of violent persecution and punishment of anti-Roman organizations and affinity groups, and instead states that they're now the friends of the Empire itself.

Except there's one serious wrinkle: even among groups that used a "Christ-figure" as part of their own rallying cries and organizing beliefs, there was massive variation in what people actually believed and wanted. In a very real sense, Christianity itself was a fabrication by Constantine and his Imperial regime, using the same basic techniques as Rome had used for hundreds of years in successfully assimilating various offshoots of Pagan and Celtic cultures that had dotted Europe until Rome came along. By inventing Christianity as a Roman construct, Constantine simulatenously defused a huge mass of the anti-Imperial sentiment within Rome, and set up the social and political realities of Rome to erode the actual core of the anti-Imperial, revolutionary sentiment that had given rise to all the unrest in the first place.

Stated another way, throughout its history, Rome created tremendous desire among the people it subjugated to get free. From this desire for liberation from Rome, constant resistance and dissent bubbled up within Rome (both as a Republic and later as an Empire); and indeed one of the defining accomplishments of many Roman rulers was their ability to suppress this liberatory urge within their own borders. Even the so-called "Pax Romana" or "Roman Peace" was actually a period of ruthlessly efficient military domination, in which virtually any attempt at resisting Roman oppression was met with swift and generally fatal retribution. But after the better part of a millenium of actively pissing off the general population of Europe with their political and military antics, Rome had to do a lot of extra work to placate its own population. The most effective techniques for this included peer pressure as a form of societal control (neighbors discouraging dissent to avoid Roman punishment), distracting people away from their causes for unrest in the first place (the infamous "bread and circuses" concept has its roots here), and of course, assimilation.

And no assimilation in the history of Roman hegemony was ever quite as powerful as Constantine's move to assimilate the Christians.

Dating way back to just after the dissolution of the Roman Kingdom and the formation of the Republic, Rome had a traditional political role called the Pontifex Maximus - the highest religious authority of the land. Originally, this office was responsible for selecting the religious workers and leaders of Roman society, and overseeing the most important logistical aspects of religious life. It was this title that became transferred to the newly-forged office of Pope, as Constantine's moves set up Europe for the creation of the Roman Catholic Church.

The true motives for all of Constantine's decisions are unknown, but analysis of the political realities of his rule generally makes it obvious that he was, at least in large part, motivated by a desire to prevent his Empire from totally shattering. From an emotional standpoint, Constantine's legacy is one of a calculated - and, ultimately, deviously brilliant - move to avoid the pain of his own insecurity.

Regardless of what was going on in his head or heart, Constantine's decisions necessitated the creation of a large chunk of bureacratic and political machinery. Most of this, like the concept of Pontifex, was directly carried over from pre-existing Roman traditions. This had the two-fold benefit of seeming to be pretty much aligned with loyalty to Rome, which kept his detractors and critics from being too upset at him; and simultaneously, it offered an air of legitimization and respite to a set of people who had been beset by Roman violence and persecution for a couple of centuries. The "Christians" felt like they'd won, and the Romans didn't (on balance) feel like their Emperor was a traitor.

For this to work, though, there had to be consistent structure and even a fairly well-defined notion of what "Christianity" even meant. Up until that point, there had been dozens of active groups, across all of Rome, that referred to a Christ figure as some central part of their beliefs. There had been hundreds of other cults and minor affinity groups - a genuine pop-culture phenomenon known as "apocalyptic" cults - who had combined various bits of traditional mythology and symbolism to "predict" the downfall of Rome and offer hope of ultimate freedom from Roman oppression. A particularly popular combination involved concepts like virgin births, sons of various gods, death and miraculous resurrections as proof of deific power - all variations on cultural ideas that resonated with people subjugated under Roman authority, ranging from ancient Egyptian traditions to various bits of Celtic lore, and other even more obscure religious and spiritual minorities within Rome itself.

It was no accident that Constantine's invention of the Roman Catholic Church cherry-picked many of those same ideas in their formulation of what "official" Christianity meant under Roman Imperial rule. In fact, this specifically had the effect of reaching the maximum possible audience of groups that had, until then, been dissenting against Rome as mostly isolated (and sometimes bitterly opposed) factions. Rome actually created a manufactured Christian unity as part of the move to assimilate the influence of anti-Roman sentiment into pro-Roman consolidation.

Of course, it couldn't reach everybody, and so no sooner had Catholic (meaning "universal") Christianity been dreamed up, than the Roman oppression machine went to work eradicating any competing notions of what Christian beliefs even were. This homogenization was crucial for the Roman political ploy to even work, and as it would turn out, it had lasting implications that vastly outlived the Roman Empire itself.

And so it was that the insecurity of powerful Roman men became the foundation for the political, religious, and even cultural fabric of all of Europen society ever since; but that will be an exploration for next time.