Growth and Decay

The Lessons of History, Chapter XII

By:  Will & Ariel Durant

Overview

Civilization “… is an intricate and precarious web of human relationships, laboriously built and readily destroyed.”  History is littered with the ruins of civilizations that ultimately failed.  History tends to repeats itself in general imperfect ways.  No two histories are exactly the same.  But we can learn much from what has gone on before, including where we might be heading. 

The primary reason history repeats itself is that human nature changes very slowly, if at all.  But, although new civilizations will rise as existing ones crumble, there is “… no certainty that the future will repeat the past.”  There is nothing inevitable about history.  The course of history can be changed through greater knowledge and wisdom among the people.  There is still hope that we can avoid the mistakes of the past, by learning from them.

Highlights

“History repeats itself, but only in outline …” We can expect that new civilizations will rise while existing ones will crumble as they have in the past.  The primary reason history repeats itself is that human nature changes at a glacial pace.  

“On one point all are agreed:  civilizations begin, flourish, decline and disappear—or linger on as stagnant pools left by once life-giving streams.” 

“No student takes seriously the seventeenth-century notion that states arose out of a ‘social contract’ among individuals or between the people and a ruler.”  Most took form by the conquest of one group by another.

Growth comes from challenges that are met by initiative and creative individuals with the intelligence to respond in new ways.  Successful responses raise the strength and ability of a nation. 

But what causes decay?  Is it the running down of the life force of society as if it were a real entity?  A group (society) is no organism.  It has no brain or feelings.  When a civilization declines “… it is through the failure of its political or intellectual leaders to meet the challenges of change.”  Challenges might include drought, technological advances, “taxes that discourage capital investment and productive stimulus”, foreign competition, concentration of the people in cities, expanding poverty, race or class war, or world war. 

“In antiquity and modernity alike, analytical thought dissolved the religion that had buttressed the moral code….” Caught in the relaxing interval between one moral code and the next, an unmoored generation surrenders itself to luxury, corruption, and a restless disorder of family and morals, in all but a remnant clinging desperately to old restraints and ways ….” At the end, war or a barbarian invasion may join the barbarism that has taken hold from within to bring the civilization to a close.

No one and no state has any claim on eternal life.  Death is natural, but civilizations don’t die.  They live on in the memory and heritage of succeeding generations.  Greece is gone, but not the influence of its culture.

Lesson

Civilizations come and go and there is no reason why ours will be any different.  If we as a people make bad choices, our society will decline and eventually be replaced by stronger, more dynamic or more ruthless ones.  But as the Durants concluded, there is “… no certainty that the future will repeat the past.”

The world has changed.  The technological revolution we are experiencing provides an unprecedented opportunity for educating the people of the world in ways never before possible.  It also creates the risk of more thorough oppression of people by tyrannical governments who will can to track everything everyone does.  There is no longer any need for informers. 

Whether our technology enslaves us or frees us will depend upon the choices the people of the world make today.  If they choose material equality and government security as their holy grail, unprecedented tyranny, suppression, and economic stagnation will follow.  If they understand the consequences of their choices and choose instead freedom and an economic system that prohibits coercion, the cycle of history will be broken and prosperity will increase at least until we forget again those lessons of history. 

 (See:  Hope for the Future)