Is our society really collapsing? What are the stages of collapse?
By: Jenny Andersson
Tags: Civilisation, Systems Thinking, Change, Collapse

Part 2: the stages of collapse

So. Is our civilisation collapsing?

The actual collapse of a civilisation is much like the bankruptcy of an organisation of individual. It happens very gradually over a long period of time, and then suddenly, it folds. Eminent historian and anthropologist Sir John Glubb wrote The Fall of Empires in 1976 and said this:

“The life expectation of a great nation, it appears, commences with a violent, and usually unforeseen, outburst of energy, and ends in a lowering of moral standards, cynicism, pessimism and frivolity.”

Sir John Glubb lists the six ages of a civilisation’s growth and collapse as follows below. He found remarkable similarities between the 13 different empires he studied. Most have lasted 10 generations or so, around 250 years. We can see correlations that cannot be just coincidences in the passage of time. We can see our own relentless march towards the abyss we are now facing.

The Age of Pioneers : In the Age of Pioneers, we encounter courageous individuals with great passion and vision who set out to conquer new territories, often taking over existing civilisations which are in decline. Their mentality is expansive, experimental; they are the prototypers of their generation. They are action-takers, have strong values, often great devotion to duty, a sense of honour, a shared purpose and a strict moral code. The decaying empire they overthrow is often wealthy but defensive and contracting in its vision, but history shows us this is not always the case.

We can think of pioneers like Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Francis Drake John Cabot, David Livingstone, James Cook as great individual examples. Interestingly modern history has not shone such positive lights on these ancient heroes, being inevitably associated with the growth of empire and the submission and exploitation of other cultures as they are inevitably followed by the Age of Conquest.

2. The Age of Conquest : Conquerors bring with them their military might and often their own religious culture. Think of the Spanish Inquisition following the conquistadores into South America, or the Jesuit movement landing in strength and depth in Asia. They sometimes adopt the military ways of the empire they have concurred, and are always more disciplined, professional and organised in their military campaigns than the civilisation they are conquering. There are some few exceptions and surprises and the odd reversal of fortune during a period of conquest, such as the Battle of Isandlwana during the Anglo-Zulu war, but in general the conquering civilisation wins and proceeds to destroy all of the conquered people’s cultural icons and norms. This is always the challenge of the historian and anthropologist; history is always written by the victor so it is a painstaking effort to reconstruct and discover ‘truth’.

3. The Age of Commerce: The power of the military, supported by the public, guards and controls the new territory so that commerce can flourish. I know if you are a business reader, your ears will prick up here because it’s tempting to think we are in the middle of the Age of Commerce. Let’s remember that civilisations collapse over hundreds of years so the Age of Commerce for us probably began somewhere in the middle ages.

In the first stages of this Age, there is still some sense of personal honour as the new civilisation searches for new forms of wealth. But as wealth pours in — whether that is on the treasure ships of the Spanish in the middle ages, or into the bank accounts of billionaires from Silicon Valley — values such as honour, glory of country soon disappear. In this age, the wealthy business community spends some of its wealth on splendid buildings and palaces — think of the Pyramids of Egypt, the glory of Athens at its height, the Colosseum of Rome, the complexes of the Aztecs or Angkor Wat. They construct communications networks such as roads, hotels, and railways or map the high seas; think of the Burma Railway, the wagon trails across the West of America, the Silk Road from China to the Middle East.

4. The Age of Affluence According to Sir John, it is in the Age of Affluence that our virtues and morals are gradually silenced. The aspirations of generations change from honour and glory to greed, selfishness and monetary gain rather than, and often at the expense of, spiritual wealth. Education changes from learning to qualifications for high salaried jobs. At the end of the eleventh century, as Arab power was declining, the moralist Ghazali complained “Students no longer attend college to acquire learning and virtue, but to obtain those qualifications which will enable them to grow rich”. The growing wealth of the civilisation is magnetic to other cultures who attempt to copy and adopt the values they see as foundation to such wealth. From Hollywood to Bollywood and Coco Chanel to Coca Cola is a short step in human evolution.

5. The Age of Intellect In the Age of Intellect, three key trends emerge that precede the final age and in which are laid the irreversible foundations of collapse. The mighty merchant princes from the Age of Affluence endow the arts and education systems. Think Bill Gates moving from merchant prince to philanthropist with his Gates Foundation. Think Miuccia Prada’s investment in the Venice Biennale and the Prada Foundation. Many of the scientific, philosophical and literary triumphs of a civilisation appear in this period. This could easily be said to correspond to the great scientific breakthroughs prior to the Industrial Revolution or the flourishing of the Renaissance period. The natural sciences advance.

In the ninth century, Arabs measured the circumference of the earth 700 years before eminent scholars such as Galileo in the West could agree that the earth was not yet flat. In Renaissance Europe, Isaac Newton published Principia, whilst in MesoAmerica, Mayan civilisation was already collapsing. Writing systems appeared in Minoan and Egypt civilisation between 3000–1500BC, in China 1200BC but in medieval Europe from 500–1500BC, only the elite aristocracy and merchants learned to read and write. From action to intellect.

This period can also experience a proliferation of intellectual chatter which leads to endless theorising, talking and pontificating as a veritable Babel of discussion erupts. Whilst this adds positively to human learning, meanwhile the credibility of the state and its supporting systems, erodes for lack of action. Mental agility trumps emotion and intuition. Thinking is elevated to a status beyond feeling and sensing; emotional intelligence is superseded by intellectual smarts. Altruism and morality creep further to the edges of society. Strategy and planning becomes the art form of the day, way ahead of morality and philosophy. Civil dissension and division increases. Political factions become more and more polarised. Factional rivalry becomes more important that saving the nation that is collapsing all around. Does that remind you of anything?

As the Byzantine empire was collapsing, they Byzantines spent the last 50 years of their empire on in-fighting in repeated civil wars until the Ottomans stepped in and finished them off. Sound familiar? Think Brexit. Whilst the Conservative and Labour parties are at odds with each other and trapped in the political paradigms of the past, they are potentially at risk of a thumping from emergent political groups — whether that be a resurgence of the Liberal Democrats, a fresh explosion of nationalism or an altogether new and unexpected form of political will in Extinction Rebellion. At the same time, pressure is put upon the civil structures of the day as other peoples are increasingly attracted to the wealth established in the Age of Affluence. As the diversity increases in a population so the original founding values become increasingly watered down as one civilisation seeks to absorb other incomers.

6. The Age of Decadence After a long period of wealth and power, Sir John established that all empires decline in this pattern. “Frivolity, aestheticism, hedonism, cynicism, pessimism, narcissism, consumerism, materialism, nihilism, fatalism, fanatics and other negative behaviours and attitudes suffuse the population. Politics is increasingly corrupt, life increasingly unjust. A cabal of insiders accrues wealth and power at the expense of the citizens, fostering a fatal opposition of interests between haves and have nots. The majority lives for bread and circuses (panem et circusem); they worship celebrities instead of divinities…. throw off social and moral restraints — especially sexuality; shirk duties but insist on entitlements.”

Wealthy leaders come to believe they will go eternally unchallenged, always be on the top of the pile, and begin to spend more time on leisure, amusement and sport. The Chinese saying, often translated into Western business thinking: “ 1st generation makes it. 2nd generation maintains it. 3rd generation blows it.” Declining nations have celebrity cultures: athletes, singers, actors.

When I read about the decline of Baghdad in 861CE in Sir John Glubb’s essay and he described the extraordinary influence of pop singers over young people where ‘much obscene sexual language came increasingly into use’, I couldn’t help but think of some of the more subversive output in contemporary music culture. When he spoke about the writing of contemporary historians which are still available, they deplored the degeneracy of the times, the indifference to religion and virtues, the increasing materialism, the corruption of officials, the lax sexual morals and the prevalence of politicians acquiring vast wealth through public office — I felt as if they were describing any contemporary Western culture, the British Parliament and the White House.

Perhaps we don’t need to know any of this to know and recognise that climate change is a real threat and act on climate change. I feel however that we have known that climate change is a threat for a long time and still been unable to act as fast and as decisively as we could be doing. There must therefore be other factors we are not taking into account, about which the study of the collapse of civilisations may have something to say. And that may be about the greater decline that is as much spiritual as it is about the degradation of our natural habitat.

With grateful thanks to the works of the writers listed below.

Further reading (if you’re not all collapsed out by this long post)

Joseph Tainter: Collapse of Complex Societies

Sir John Glubb: The Fate of Empires and the Search for Survival

Jared Diamond: Collapse

Margaret Wheatley: Who Do We Choose To Be