I'm not a prude. I enjoy alcohol, food and sex. My freak level with sex would surprise anyone who knows me outside the bedroom, and anyone who knows me knows my appetites for food and alcohol. I kicked the drug habit thirty years ago, but there was a time that the only thing that stopped me  from trying any drug was if it went into a needle. As long as I could snort, smoke, lick or eat a drug, I would try anything. But those needles were the dividing line between me and someone with a drug problem. Warped thinking, huh?

I say this because over the last twenty years I have watched out society devolve slowly but surely. History repeats itself and it's also cyclical. I came to realize long ago that the reason history repeats itself is because people are people, no matter what race, nationality or religion they are, where they live, or in what era they lived. Human nature remains the same.

I posit this theory: we, as a society, are heading directly down the same paths that led to the collapse of the Roman Empire. At one time, Rome was the dominating political, social and religious power in the world. Not long ago, so was the United States. A few bad presidents, some terrible congressmen and senators, some failed economic plans and a general lack of care about the way things were heading led to where we are today. We are no longer respected on the world stage. We are barely even feared.

We demand instant gratification. We want money, power, authority, the big office, the nice car, the expensive house in the nouveau riche neighborhood, paying three grand a month on a $600,000 McMansion. We have children not to procreate but to complete the package of the successful middle-class consumer; they are marked off the checklist of what we need to prove success.

We have somehow blurred the lines of what constitutes sex, love and cheating. Young girls today believe that as long as they have anal sex and not vaginal sex, they are virgins. In the strictest sense of the word, yes, if the hymen is intact, they are vaginal virgins. But taking a dick in the ass hardly equates to purity in my book. Many younger people have no problem with having sex with someone other than their chosen partner. They have managed to differentiate between "sex" and "love." In other words, if they hook up with someone and fuck, there really isn't anything wrong with that because there are no emotions to tangle things up. I don't understand that. If I'm in a relationship with a woman and my dick is out of my pants when a woman other than my wife is in the room, I have cheated. People don't see it like that.

The Romans were famous for their unbridled, uninhibited sexual liaisons. From what I understand, they didn't concern themselves if a partner was male or female, and in many cases even human! If there was a hole that could be filled, fill it! Young, old, male, goat, female, cow...if it was receptive, take it. If not, take it anyway.

The Romans loved the carnage that took place at the Coliseum. Watching men battle each other to death was considered prime entertainment. When that wasn't enough, Caligula introduced lions and tigers...more blood....more gore...more exciting. Well, I remember when boxing was just two guys with gloves and mouth guards fighting under the scrutiny of a referee and a sanctioning body. Fights ended when there was a knockout or one of the fighters clearly could no longer defend himself and it became slaughter. Now we have "mixed martial arts." No longer happy with just punching someone's lights out, now we include martial arts - kickboxing, karate and tae kwan do to go along with the traditional fist fighting. Profuse bleeding is the only thing that stops the fight.

Where else can this go? Gluttony really isn't an issue...yet. People are so concerned about putting perfect foods into themselves that this might never rear its ugly head again. But I still maintain that we are steadily leaving civility behind and heading to a hedonistic, morally abject society that will eventually collapse on itself. Just like the Roman Empire did. Think about it.