Civilizational Collapse and the Brain

Via David

“The curse of every ancient civilization was that its men in the end became unable to fight. Materialism, luxury, safety, even sometimes an almost modern sentimentality, weakened the fibre of each civilized race in turn; each became in the end a nation of pacifists, and then each was trodden under foot by some ruder people that had kept the virile fighting power the lack of which makes all other virtues useless and sometimes even harmful.”
— President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

In this essay I will weave together three disparate and seemingly-unconnected things to paint a picture of what I see as the fundamental threat to Western Civilization.

THREAD ONE: THE CIVILIZATIONAL PULSE

I have watched, and re-watched, and re-re-watched, a fantastic lecture given by Bill Whittle: The Assault On Civilizational Structures (1 hour, 44 minutes).  He talks about many fascinating and intertwined topics but at about 53:02 he starts to discuss what he sees as critical issue facing our civilization, specifically the heartbeat of civilizations and the threat civilizations face from within – I agree!  He describes a pattern that happens time and again throughout humanity’s entire history.

Civilizations, he says, start small, rise slowly, accelerate, reach a peak where they are dominant and unstoppable… and then collapse.  More importantly, the collapse happens almost overnight – “It’s virtually like a strobe-light; it’s almost instantaneous” – and he adds that we in the West are in a “rather ripe place”, something with which I also agree (and I wish I didn’t).  Seconding this is the soon-to-be-released film The Fight of Our Lives – Defeating the Ideological War Against the West in which historian Niall Ferguson observes in the trailer:

“Civilizations, empires, great powers can fall apart very fast.  Collapse can come quickly, like a thief in the night.”