Many of the authors and thinkers who tackle the subject of why civilizations fall all have their views of the stages that all civilizations go through — from start to fall — and will explain the what, why and how of these stages in their thesis.
So far, I have read works by Patrick (William) Ophuls, Sir John Bagot Glubb, and Arthur John Hubbard. On my bookshelf (well, on my physical bookshelf and my Kindle eBookshelf) are works by Thomas Homer-Dixon, Joseph A. Tainter, Nicholas Hagger, and Anne Glyn-Jones. So as of this post I will present the stages as presented by Ophuls, Glubb and Hubbard.
Arthur John Hubbard
Let’s begin with the viewpoint of Arthur John Hubbard. Hubbard was educated at University College School in North London and at Durham University & qualified as a medical practitioner with the degree of Doctor of Medicine. He was brought up as an agnostic but in young adulthood became a Christian after reading John’s Gospel. He travelled fairly extensively to the Balkans and to Iceland.
Hubbard is not concerned in as much with the process of rise and fall or civilizations, but more focused on the processes that are necessary for a civilization to maintain its stability. You will see further in the post how Sir John Bagot Glubb focused on the stages of civilizations and William Ophuls focuses on the components of the actual fall of a civilization. Hubbard’s thesis goes through four phases, each dependent of the previous phase, and is based more on humankind as an individual rather than on the actual collective and ideal of a civilization. His steps are:
- Reflex Action (the power of involuntary response to an entirely external stimulus)
- Reflex Action plus Instinct
- Reflex Action plus Instinct plus Reason
- Reflex Action plus Instinct plus Reason plus Religious Motive
He then defines society as “an organism with…the same expectation of life as the average individual.” So the four steps of the individual are now the foundation for a society. Addressing the needs of the individual
It is clear that his entire thesis is based on the religion foundation. Maybe ironic for a man that was an atheist, but his ‘born again” nature finds him clinging to his new found belief system and he concludes by stating that “a true and stable civilization can never be more than a byproduct of Religion.”
Sir John Bagot Glubb
Next is the piece of work by Sir John Bagot Glubb (the first thing I read regarding the subject of civilization decline) titled “The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival.” Glubb was known as Glubb Pasha, was a British soldier, scholar, and author, who led and trained Transjordan’s Arab Legion between 1939 and 1956 as its commanding general.
His thesis basically states that the experiences of the human race have been recorded, in more or less detail, for some four thousand years. If we attempt to study such a period of time in as many countries as possible, we seem to discover the same patterns constantly repeated under widely differing conditions of climate, culture and religion.
That being said, if we desire to ascertain the laws which govern the rise and fall of empires, the obvious course is to investigate the imperial experiments recorded in history. In spite of the accidents of fortune, and the apparent circumstances of the human race at different epochs, the periods of duration of different empires at varied epochs show a remarkable similarity.
Glubb presents seven stages, beginning with the rise of the nation through the stages to it’s ultimate demise. Those stages are:
- Age of Pioneers (Outburst)
- Age of Conquests (Commercial Expansion)
- The Age of Commerce
- The Age of Affluence
- The Age of Intellect
- The Age of Decadence
- The Age of Decline & Collapse
The process follows as such:
Normally poor, hardy and enterprising and above all aggressive people become motivated enough to conquer an area and people. They then establish widespread commerce, begin to gain wealth and in the process, squelch the voice of duty over status. Money replaces honor and adventure as the objective of the best young men. The object of the young and the ambitious is no longer fame, honor or service, but cash.
The ambition of the young, now turns to the acquisition of academic honors. Intellectualism leads to discussion, debate and argument, such as is typical of the Western nations today. But this constant dedication to discussion seems to destroy the power of action. The cultivation of the human intellect seems to be a magnificent ideal, but only on condition that it does not weaken unselfishness and human dedication to service. Yet this, judging by historical precedent, seems to be exactly what it does do.
As the nation declines in power and wealth, a universal pessimism gradually pervades the people, and itself hastens the decline. True to the normal course followed by nations in decline, internal differences are not reconciled in an attempt to save the nation. On the contrary, internal rivalries become more acute, as the nation becomes weaker.
Finally, the toll of decadence, moral decay along with the already selfish nature of the civilization leads to a weak, idle, uncaring, and corrupted society that eventually implodes and is destroyed from within.
Patrick (William) Ophuls
Lastly, there is Patrick Ophuls, who uses the pen name William Ophuls. Ophuls is an American political scientist, ecologist, independent scholar and author. He is known for his pioneering role in the modern environmental movement. His work focuses on some of the ecological, social, and political implications of modern industrial civilization.
In his work, Immoderate Greatness: Why Civilizations Fail, Ophuls points out six stages a little differently than Hubbard or Glubb. His six stages don’t begin with the rise of the nation but instead includes portions of various stages from rise to fall in each stage that, as a whole, reflect the why and how of the actual decline and then failure.
His stages are:
- Ecological exhaustion
- Exponential growth
- Expedited entropy
- Excessive complexity
- Moral decay
- Practical failure.
Ophuls thesis is that a civilization’s very magnitude conspires against it to cause its downfall. Civilizations are hard-wired for self-destruction and that the city is an ecological parasite. He states that,
Biological evolution is driven by the tendency of all organisms to expand their habitat and exploit available resources — just as bacteria in a Petri dish grow until they have consumed all the nutrients and then die in a toxic soup of their own waste.
With exponential growth the civilization is now too big, too complex and too hard to manage. This expedites entropy (non-reversible matter-energy transformations), regardless of the ideal that technology can save us from entropy (all it does is expedites entropy). Unfortunately, at the complex stage, the civilization is beset by numerous problems and most attempts at reform will either fail, or even worse, make matters worse.
One statement Ophuls makes, that I find interesting and something that I might address in a future post is as follows:
This would lead us to see that the proper (and only) way to “manage” civilization is by not allowing it to become to complex-in fact, deliberately designing in restraints, redundancy and resiliency, even if the price is less power, freedom, efficiency, or profit that we might otherwise gain through greater complexity.
Finally, Ophuls states that moral decay sets in. He takes notes from Glubb and presents Glubbs views on moral decay as being the death knell of the civilization. “…the moral core of the society steadily erode until vigor and virtue have been entirely displaced by decadence and decay.”
Finally, the end. A shocking testament to the modern world is Ophuls statement that,
“The civilization’s elite may understand that the system is dysfunctional, but fundamental reform would require major sacrifice on their part, so they fight to preserve their privilege and power instead.”
Leaders double their efforts doing what no longer works, society unravels, everyone (including some members of the elite) loose faith in the system and leaders. The leaders resort to stupidity, doing what has never worked in the past, having no other recourse to take, regardless of its impact on the present and even if it damns the future.
Ultimately, Ophuls states that “a civilization declines when it has exhausted its physical and moral capital.” The only glimmer of hope is that “Humanity will undoubtedly survive. Civilizations as we know it will not.”