“Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder,” according to 20th-century historian Arnold Toynbee.
He claimed every great culture collapses internally due to a divergence in values between the ruling class and the common people…🧵
Toynbee was an English historian and expert on international affairs who published the 12 volume work “A Study of History,” which traced the life cycle of about two dozen world civilizations.
Through his work he developed a model of how cultures develop and finally die…
Toynbee argued that civilizations are born primitive societies as a response to unique challenges—pressures from other cultures, difficult terrain or “hard country,” or warfare.
Toynbee writes:
“Civilizations, I believe, come to birth and proceed to grow by successfully responding to successive challenges.”
But each challenge must be a “golden mean” between excessive difficulty, which will crush a culture, and ease, which will allow it to stagnate.
He believed civilizations continued to grow so long as they meet and solve new challenges, one after the other, in a cycle he calls “Challenge and Response.”
Thus, each civilization develops differently because each confronts and overcomes different challenges.
But societies do not respond to challenges as a whole; rather, it's a unique class of elites within a society that are the problem solvers.
He calls them the "creative minorities" who find solutions to challenges, and inspire—rather than force—others to follow their lead.
The masses follow the solutions of the creative minorities by 'mimesis' or imitation, solutions they would have otherwise been incapable of discovering on their own.
This synchronicity between the creative minorities and the masses brings civilization to its height.
Toynbee did not attribute the breakdown of civilizations to environmental forces or external attacks by other civilizations. Rather, it is the decline of the creative minority that leads to a culture’s downfall.
Through moral decay or material prosperity, the creative minority degenerates. They are no longer the great men who solve society’s problems but are simply a ruling class intent on preserving their power.
They become what Toynbee calls the “dominant minority.”
Toynbee points to a kind of self worship that takes hold of the dominant minority.
They become prideful about their positions of authority yet are wholly inadequate to deal with the culture’s new challenges.
Ultimately the dominant minority, incapable of solving their culture’s actual problems, form a “universal state” in a gambit to shore up their power, but it stifles creativity and subjugates the proletariat (common people). Toynbee used the Roman Empire as a classic example.
Toynbee writes:
"First the Dominant Minority attempts to hold by force—against all right and reason—a position of inherited privilege which it has ceased to merit; and then the Proletariat repays injustice with resentment, fear with hate, and violence with violence.”
As society deteriorates, four sentiments exist within the proletariat:
Archaism - idealization of the past
Futurism - idealization of the future
Detachment - removal of oneself from a decaying world
Transcendence - confronting the decaying world with a new worldview
From the disunity between the dominant minority and the proletariat, and between the different proletariat dispositions, a unified culture is impossible, and the civilization eventually ends.
Toynbee sums up the three aspects of failing cultures:
“...a failure of creative power in the minority, an answering withdrawal of mimesis (imitation) on the part of the majority, and a consequent loss of social unity in the society as a whole.”
It’s interesting to observe Toynbee’s formulation in light of the West’s current struggles.
What do you think—was Toynbee observing universal patterns of civilizational development that might shed light on our culture today?
If you enjoyed this thread and would like to join the mission of promoting western tradition, kindly repost the first post (linked below) and consider following: @thinkingwest
All empires repeat the same cycle, says 20th-century historian John Glubb.
He observed that for the past 3000 years every civilization has followed the same 6 stages before decline—what are they?🧵
Sir John Bagot Glubb was a British soldier and author who served as the commanding general for Transjordan's Arab Legion from 1939 to 1956.
In his later years he wrote about geopolitics and world history, and penned a succinct description of how civilizations rise and fall…
Glubb’s 1978 work, “The Fate of Empires and the Search for Survival,” is an idea-dense essay that argues all great empires follow an eerily similar pattern.
From observing 11 distinct cultures, Glubb draws some intriguing conclusions that have implications for modern society.
The East India Company was the most powerful corporation of all time.
It had an army larger than Great Britain's, and its influence shaped the borders of nations.
So how did a company become stronger than most countries?🧵
The East India Company's origins started with famed explorer Francis Drake.
His voyage in 1577 opened the world to the East Indies, and when he returned to England in 1580, he brought exotic spices from the Spice Islands that investors believed could be a lucrative venture.
Soon after, the Queen granted a charter to a group of wealthy merchants and explorers for the region. The new corporation was called “Governor and Company of Merchants of London trading into the East Indies” or more commonly the “East India Company.”
Alexander the Great’s tomb has been missing for centuries. Over 140 official attempts have been made to locate it. All have failed.
But one rogue historian thinks he’s finally found it.
He claims everyone's been looking in the wrong place…🧵
Alexander’s body wasn’t always missing. We know that figures like Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, and Augustus visited his tomb in Alexandria during the 1st century BC.
But somewhere along the way it disappears from the record…
By the time St. John Chrysostom visited Alexandria in 400 AD, he was unable to locate the tomb and said of Alexander "his tomb even his own people know not.”
There are a few mentions of the tomb afterward, but nothing reliable, and as of today no one knows where it is.
At least, that’s according to 18th-century historian Alexander Tytler.
He claimed democracies always follow a predictable pattern and are doomed to end in servitude…🧵
Tytler was a Scottish judge, writer, and Professor of Universal History as well as Greek and Roman Antiquities at the University of Edinburgh.
After studying dozens of civilizations, he noticed some intriguing patterns…
He believed that democracies naturally evolved from initial virtue to eventual corruption and decline.
In ancient Greece, for example, he argued that "the patriotic spirit and love of ingenious freedom...became gradually corrupted as the nation advanced in power and splendor."