There is a deep human need to fulfill various ends and aims as they come up in one's life. Where there is energy, resources, and social power available to achieve an end - whether it is a house, a car, a feast, or a national or international empire - and there is enough power in that socially or culturally inculcated aim, it will be marshalled for that cause. Otherwise it will be sought out in an intention as the aim temporarily goes dormant, which can outlast all kinds of calamity and disruption.
It is how an empire can take so long and tortuous a path to unwind itself. For that matter, it is how the seeds of empire can scatter after a collapse and produce new fledgling empires in due time. Or consider the bafflement of neoliberal anti-insurgency administrators as they watch the incentive seed funds pumped into their colonies produce runaway sectarian conflicts.
Empires initially tend to think throwing around their abundant resources and energy will unconditionally spread more copies of themselves, when what really happens is that old and long-running societies - which may have been torn asunder by various traumas or the empire itself - are reanimated with their own interests, aims, and ends, and then use the resources to attempt to rebind themselves in their own images, antagonistic to their benefactors.
This long-suffering human need can produce great beauty, and great suffering, and everything in between, depending on the aim and the circumstances surrounding it.
