Fredrick had no children and was succeeded by a nephew, not that it mattered who succeeded him. Hereditary succession was the problem, and it tends to be the problem with all absolutist governments.

For it to work as a brand new political philosophy, at least a couple of problems would have to be solved.

First, we would need to come up with a new way to choose leaders from a pool of potentials that have been trained from birth in a competitive environment designed to provide leadership qualities like that of a Fredrick, Marcus Aurelius, or the 4 previous "good" emperors.

Second, people feel the need and probably deserve to be somehow represented. Perhaps those representatives could be chosen from the same leadership pool or from localized pools trained in the same way.

I like the idea of individualism as much as anyone Jody but future individualism like you have in mind will not be possible on this planet.

My grandsons will see a population of 15-20 billion, if we are spared an apocalypse. Hopefully, the individualism we long for will be available somewhere off of this rock.

Incidentally, in the PBS series mentioned, China lost their headway for world hegemony when a new emperor decided to abandon exploration and destroyed their fleet.

This is eerily similar to our cancellation of the Apollo program and future manned space missions. This is about the time that the world Tom remembers started to go sideways.

I realize that my ideas may be more fantasy than reality but it is not fantasy that we are in danger of spiraling down to 3rd world status if we don't think creatively in the next few decades.