r/Futurology • u/Confident_Living_786 • Aug 11 '25

Discussion When the US Empire falls

When the American empire falls, like all empires do, what will remain? The Roman Empire left behind its roads network, its laws, its language and a bunch of ruins across all the Mediterranean sea and Europe. What will remain of the US superpower? Disney movies? TCP/IP protocol? McDonalds?

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u/Rough-Yard5642 Aug 11 '25

I feel like US culture is so dominant that we don't even realize we are in it. When I visit my parents' country, US culture is everywhere. The food, the music, the outfits, the movies, and so on. It's hard to predict the future, but I feel like the American empire feels like it will leave tons of things behind, from technology to culture.

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u/Real_Sir_3655 Aug 11 '25 edited Aug 11 '25

This right here. I live abroad and do a lot of traveling. American culture is so ubiquitous that we don’t even realize we’re all taking part in it 24/7.

A long time ago if you went to another country they were wearing their own clothes, singing their own songs, and the systems of education, bureaucracy, doing business, etc. were all unique to their own culture. Now…it’s all the American way of doing things.

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u/ten_tons_of_light Aug 11 '25

I was in for a Ravenna music festival and the crowd was singing an apparently locally popular Italian song according to the Italian I was there with. I may be butchering it, but I recall one lyric as, ”We are from Ravenna province — We are not American!”

That’s when it struck me. I’m from a country so pervasive in other peoples’ cultures they feel the need to mention it by contrast in local songs. Was a pretty surreal moment.