The Rise and Fall of Civilisation As We Know It.

[Alisoncc]

A while back we had a topic asking what times would we prefer to have lived in. I wrote that I was pretty happy with my current times. Born at the end of WWII and before WWIII.

Thinking back on the comments I made, born in the UK and grew up there, spent time in the Middle East in the mid '60's and extensive travel around Europe in the late '60's. Time in Africa in the early-mid '70's before it became a basket case. Seen and lived in most of Australia, with regular business trips to the Far East, had some good times. All of which I have experienced at their best.

I have always enjoyed exploring on foot. Wandered the Souks of Bahrain, Sharjah and Dubai alone yet no sense of unease. Same with the streets of Paris and Berlin at night, through to Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, etc.. Flown puddle-jumpers around PNG and Africa, with few qualms about my safety at destinations.

Yet now, eesh! I don't think it's due to increasing age, but could not see myself repeating so much that I have done in bygone years. I have a very real sense that civilisation as I know it has peaked, and is now well into it's decline.

With vast numbers of people on the move, people with minimal education or culture, then the barbarians are truly at the gates. And see little probability of civilisation ever returning. Does anyone see any future good to come out of where we are at, or is it all downhill now?

Alison

[OFSO]

It is all downhill in my opinion. However, writings by the older generation in ancient Rome expressed exactly the same sentiments about the future, so nothing changes.

[John Hill]

Yeabut, look what happened to the Roman Empire!!

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

The problem is not the barbarians at the gates, who are always there, but the people on the inside opening the gates.
I would say Gibbon's 'Decline and Fall..' is a very instructive read.
Now, given anyone can read it and the vast majority haven't, won't, and won't listen to those who have, then we are stuck with history repeating itself because human nature hasn't changed (sufficiently) enough for it not to.
However, as modern study of the so-called Dark Ages has shown, there can be pockets here and there where life can be even better than it was before the general collapse, and from which new civilisations arise (eventually).
Find yourself a pocket is the general advice. Many on this forum already seem to have done so.

[Capetonian]

The barbarians are not at the gates. If that were the case, we could keep them at bay or turn them back. They have breached the defences, feeble that those were, and they are inside, and more are on the way.

Sadly, I don't see a happy ending.

[Undried Plum]

Glubb Pasha wrote a rather good precis on the topic. He noted the oft-repeated charateristics and lifespans of Empires.



I found an online copy of his paper here.

Alternatively, or additionally, there is this much lengthier but very well researched documentary.

[OFSO]

Yea, but look what happened to the Roman Empire!!

Vanished. Looking at the great works of the Romans which stand today, and the poor quality of construction by the Italians - I won't mention a certain bridge, oh, whoops I just did - it's obvious that they didn't bequeath much to their descendants in the way of quality control. But they existed for centuries, didn't they ?

That's a fascinating table, Señor Plum, Thank you for posting it.

[Boac]

Plum - was it co-incidence that the table may have been written in 1950 or did he think that some event of 1950 triggered the end? I suppose Corbyn may have been born then................. I can see the development of the hydrogen bomb and the start of the Korean War, but not much else (apart from the 'birth' of Dan Dare in the Eagle comic)

[Undried Plum]

As was pointed out in the film which I posted, empires don't usually have a precise start and end date.

If I were to pick a date for the end of the British Empire, I'd say it was the fall of Singapore, though I recognise that the lowering of the Union Flag in India in '47 was probably a firmer marker that the long run was over.

For the collapse of the greatest Empire the world has ever known, perhaps that photo of the helicopter leaving the rooftop in Saigon especially when combined with the earlier photo of the little girl who'd been napalmed running along a road towards the camera, will become the equivalent marker. Until then, The Empire had never lost a war. Since then, they've never won one.

[Cacophonix]

Plum - was it co-incidence that the table may have been written in 1950 or did he think that some event of 1950 triggered the end? I suppose Corbyn may have been born then................. I can see the development of the hydrogen bomb and the start of the Korean War, but not much else (apart from the 'birth' of Dan Dare in the Eagle comic)

Forget the birthday of the vacuous suit with a beard or even canned sunlight and remember that to look upon the awesome power of the Mekon is to fully understand the epoch ending nature of his Galactic Highness.

The Mekon.jpg (13.2 KiB) Viewed 766 times

Caco

[larsssnowpharter]

I'm not sure how useful Glubb Pasha's table is in that it ignores some basic facts:

1. According to Gibbon, the Roman Empire fell in 1453. Before it became an Empire it existed for around 400 years as a republic.

2. The Greek empire can be thought of as continuing until 1453 as part of the Greco Roman Empire.

3. He ignores the Chinese Empire which, despite invasions and imposed changes, continues to this day.

4. The Brahmin Hindu Empire has morphed into the India we see today.

Things change.

To say these changes are the 'end of civilization' are inconsistent with any logical definition of what civilization is.

[OFSO]

I circulated the excellent Glub Pasha's table to young student friends of mine, and to retired Professors in other fields. We agreed that what would be useful would be comments on what caused each empire to terminate. Some are easy. Alexander the Great's untimely death at the age of 26, for example. But others ?

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

One functional definition of civilization is that specialization is beneficial. That is, one can earn/acquire/add more value to one's life by specializing in one thing and employing others to do the rest. This is the primary impetus for cities.
My experience is that this stopped somewhere between 10 and 20 years ago. I can now have a better quality of life by not working at what I am best at, and spending my time building my own property and growing my own food. Now I am fortunate that I really like doing these things, and it is also true that the things I am best at are no longer the professions they once were, either in quality of enjoyment or relative remuneration. It's also true that I need a baseline income from savings to make this work pleasurably, and that none of the above may apply to others. But, the fact is I save more per hour doing my own work than I used to earn per hour as a senior teacher/Head of Department. It no longer makes sense for me to work for others, and whilst I gain society loses, in that there is one less good science teacher to prepare the next generation and in a subject which is both highly valuable and has a desperate shortage worldwide. The reason for this is bureaucracy. I am inefficiently restricted (and indeed sometimes forced to do the wrong thing) within my former profession by bureaucracy, for which I was taxed an excessive amount; and the same applies to those who would build my property. Inefficient bureaucracy which forces people to do the wrong thing is a common element in the collapse of empires. Passports for Ducks, as Tom Holland points out in his analysis of the Persian Empire. The King's roads were restricted for official use, on pain of death. Ducks were a sacred animal. Ducks crossed the roads. Kill the Ducks, or what? The Persian bureacracy's solution was to issue all ducks with official permits, tied to their necks. You can guess how well that worked, and the cost of attempting it.


I agree that Glubb's durations are fudged to fit the theme, especially with regard to Rome, and feel that Gibbon is a lot closer to pointing out at least some of what causes empires to collapse.

[Seenenough]

One has to look no further than Johannesburg.I was born there and grew up there.I used to walk to school when I was 10 years old without fear or worry.I rode all over the neighborhood as I chose on my bicycle.

We used to go into Hillbrow on the No 2 Dunkeld bus on Saturday afternoons to watch movies also without fear or worry.

Unfortunately like much of the world these things all seemed change in the mid to late nineties.

I was in LA a few weeks ago and it is quite a sobering sight to see the used syringes and needles lying on the sidewalks and gutters in amongst the Bentleys and Porches.

[BenThere]

The Mayans of Yucatan, Quintana Roo, Mexico, and extending South into Guatemala and Belize, built their cities and temples around 1,000 years ago. Mayan astronomers and engineers designed and built Chichen Itza, a magnificent display of their knowledge and talent. Using rudimentary tools they laid stone structures that are intact today. The main temple at Chichen Itza is famous for aligning itself to exactly capture the moment of the solstices. In the same ancient city they built an athletic field with a thick stone wall several meters high. Today, you can stand at the end of it and look along its length of 150 meters or so and observe that the wall remains absolutely plumb along its entire length. To me, that's remarkable.

The Mayan empire was not conquered by the Spanish. It dissipated from disease, and the people ultimately abandoned their treasures of their own accord. The descendants of the Mayans still populate the Yucatan, and they form the happiest, friendliest culture I can think of. They tend to be relatively small in physical stature, males averaging just over 5 feet tall, but they are huge in heart.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Joseph Tainter wrote a book called The Collapse of Complex Societies in 1988. The reason basically boiling down to inefficiency. The pdf is here
http://www.wtf.tw/ref/tainter.pdf
It includes studies on both the Roman and Mayan empires.

[ian16th]

(apart from the 'birth' of Dan Dare in the Eagle comic)

An event I remember!

On the day of publication I sent off my application to join the Eagle Club, I think it was 1/- or maybe 1/6 to join.

There were prizes for the 1st 25 members for each of several parts of the UK. Foe N.E. England it was a trip to the Headingly Test Match.

When my much iantisipated membership card arrived, I was member number 100,008.

[ian16th]

Inefficient bureaucracy which forces people to do the wrong thing is a common element in the collapse of empires.

Doesn't bode well for the EU then.

[Woody]

Someone had to post this

[Capetonian]

In South Africa the age of civilization was from 1948 to 1994.