i can just imagine some Greek surveying burning Mycenae and thinking, well best start appraising ourselves and using our ingenuity to start all over as illiterate goatherds for a few centuries.

It begs many, many questions about the meaning of appropriate versus inappropriate, inappropriate for whom and for whose and what ends, and not only what constitutes tyranny but who gained and lost from it and why?

And also whether or not these phases were necessary to remove obstacles to deep meaningful reform. There’s continuity between what Napoleon did and some things the Bourbons had done, but not at all clear modern France would have emerged in a similar form without the revolution and Bonaparte.

Similarly, not convinced England of 1700 was possible without 1688, or that 1688 was possible without the 1640s.

To escape a trap, an animal chews its own leg off. To escape himself, a sinner repents. (By the way, repentance only works if it’s specific. You can’t repent from sin in the abstract.) To salvage a bad family, a bad family member must be thrown under the bus.

And sometimes you just have to let an entire system go to pieces in order to save yourself. A system that can only survive at your expense is not worth your loyalty.