Fall of civilizations. There have been many explanations put forward for the collapse of civilization. Some focus on historical examples, and others on general theory. Gibbons has a well known and detailed analysis of the fall of the Roman civilization. He suggested that the final act of the collapse of Rome was the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 CE. For Gibbons, the decline of Rome was a natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle decay; the cause of the destruction multiplied with the extent of conquests, and as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports.The heavy fabric yeilded to the pressure of its own weight.The story of the ruin is simple and obvious as with our own ruin, and unstead of enquiring why the Roman Empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted for so long.(Gibbon, E. 1909. The decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.) Mommsen suggested Rome collapsed with the collapse of the Wester Roman Empire in 476 CE and he also tended towards a biological analogy og genesis, growth, senescence, collapse, and decay. Gradually, older institutions grew incapable of effectively meeting new and challenging circumstances, of performing the required civic tasks. The sovereignty of the comitia (peoples assembly) became only a fiction, which was exploited by demagogues for their own purposes. In the Senate, the old aristocratic oligarchy began to become corrupted by the enormous wealth derived from military conquest and its aftermath; it no longer served well its functional purpose, it failed to meet new demands placed on Rome, and its members would selfishly seek to preserve inherited prerogatives against legitimate challenge and transition. Puts me in mind of our own 0ne per cent of oligarchs and capitalists. (Mommsen, T. 1854. History of Roman Mommsen) Spengler claimed that there had only been eight mature civilizations. Growing cultures he argued, tend to develop into imperialistic civilizations which expand and ultimately collapse, with democratic forms of government ushering in plutocracy and ultimately land grab. According to the theory, the Western world is actually ending and we are witnessing the last season; winter time , of the Faustian civilization. In Spenglers depiction, Western Man is a proud, Patriarchal, self gratified - but a tragic figure because, while he strives for domination, he secretly knows the actual goal will never be reached. We can see today that our dominant elite regime of capitalism has falsified itself as Karl Marx predicted.. (Spengler, O. 1922. Decline of the West.) Toynbee suggested there were many more civilizations, and they all tended to go through a cycle identified by Mommsen. The fall of a civilization always occurred when a cultural elite became a parasitic elite, leading to the rise of internal and external austerity/poverty. (Toynbee, A. J. A Study of History. Worked for the intelligence department of the British Foreign Office in 1915.) Tainter suggested that there were diminishing returns to complexity, due to which as states achieved a maximum permissable complexity, and now this is getting rather interesting - they would decline when further increases actually produced a negative return. He claims that Rome achieved this figure in the 2nd century C.E. When a society confronts a shortage of energy, or difficulty in gaining access to it, it tends to create new layers of bureaucracy, infrastructure, or social class to address the challenge. Tainter, who first identifies seventeen examples of rapid collapse of societies, applies his model to three case studies: The Western Roman Empire, the Maya civilization, and the Chaco culture. For example, as Roman agricultural output slowly declined and population increased, per-capita energy availability dropped. The Romans solved this problem by conquering their neighbours to appropriate their energy surpluses just like we have. However, as the Empire grew/grows the cost of maintaining the military machine grew /grows with it. Eventually, this cost grew/has grown so great that any new challenges such as invasions and crop failures could not be solved by the acquisition of more territory. Tainter is not entirely apocalyptic:, he claims that when some new input to an economic system is brought on line, whether a technical innovation or an energy subsidy, it will often have the potential at least temporarily to raise marginal productivity. Thus, barring continual wars and land grabs, which is always subject to diminishing returns. Hence, our continuous wars have to be stopped now. (Tainter, J. 1988-2003. The Collapse of Complex Societies). Diamond suggests five major reasons for the collapse of 41 studied cultures; environmental damage, such as de-forestation, and soil erosion; climate change; dependence upon log distance trade (globalization) for needed resources; oncreased levels of external and internal violence, such as war, and societal responses to what is viewed to be internal and environmental disorder. Tim Flannery gave (Diamond, J. 1988. Collapse: How do Societies choose to Fail or Suceed ) the highest praise in Science, writing: ...the fact that one of the worlds most original thinkers has chosen to pen this mammoth work when his career is at his apogee is itself a persuasive argument that Collapse... must be taken seriously. It is probably the most important book you will ever read. Turchin claims along with Korotayey et al - that there are a number of mathematical models describing the collapse of agrarian civilizations, and I assume this is why Venezuela is preparing many small communes for proof of sustainability. The basic logic of Turchins fiscal demographic model is: During the initial phase, we see relatively high levels of per capita production and consumption; remember the stock piles of the 80s, which leads not only to relatively high population growth rates, but also to relatively high rates of surplus production. As a result, during this phase the population can afford to pay taxes, they are easily collectible, and the population growth is accompanied by a growth of state revenues. During the intermediate phase, the increasing over-population leads to the decrease of per capita production and consumption levels, it becomes more difficult to collect taxes, and state revenues stop growing, whereas the state expenditures growmdue to the growth of the population controlled by the state. As a result during this phase the state starts experiencing considerable fiscal problems. During the final pre-collapse phases the overpopulation leads to further decrease of per capita production, the surplus production further decreases, state revenues shrink, but the state needs more and more resources to control the growing poulation (however, at now lower rates of growth). Eventually this leads to famines, epidemics, state breakdown, and demographic and civilization collapse.(Turchin, P. 2003. Historical Dynamics) Civilizations do not end for moral reasons, but centuries of contact with barbarian MAN across the frontiers has generated his nemisis by making himself a more dangerous and violently smart game player in an office - as much that he now controls the taking of land and resources rather than facing his own death in the field. The fact that Rome had to generate ever greater revenues to equip and re-equip armies that were for the first time repeatedly defeated in the field, led to the dismemberment of the empire, and today the elite mans game will do the same.This is not only specific to Rome, it can be applied to the Asiatic Empire of the Egypt, to the Hang and Tang dynasties of China, to the Muslim Abbasid Caliphate, and others. Perkins shows the real horrors associated with the collapse of a civilization for the people and their children who suffer its effects, unlike many revisionist historians who downplay this. The collapse of complex society meant that even basic plumbing disappeared from the continent for 1,000 years. Similar dark age collapses are seen with the late Bronze age collapse in the Eastern Mediterranean, the collapse of the Maya, Easter Island and elsewhere (Perkins, B.W. 2005: The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization. Oxford: Oxford University Press). Demorest argues, using a holistic perspective to the most recent evidence from archeology, paleoecology, and epigraphy, that no one explanation is sufficient, but a series of erratic, complex events, including loss of soil fertility, drought and rising levels of internal and external violence led to the disintigration of Mayan Kingdoms, which began a spiral of decline and decay. Most importantly as one has explained here, he argues that the collapse of the Maya and any other civilization has lessons for civilization today. Arthur Demorest holds the endowed chair of Ingram Professor of Anthropology and heads up the Institute of Mesoamerican Archaeology. (Ancient Maya. 2004) Jeffrey A. McNeely, Chair of Ecoagriculture Partners; and Senior Scientist, World Conservation Union has more recently suggested that a review of historical evidence shows that past civilizations have tended to over exploit their forests, and that such abuse of important resources has been a significant factor in the decline of the over-exploiting society. Thomas Homer Dixon who is Chair at the Centre for International Governance Innovation and Chair of Global Systems at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, considers that the fall in the energy return on investment, and the energy expended to energy yield ratio, is central to limiting the survival of our civilization. The degree of social complexity is associated strongly with the amount of disposable energy, and what environmental, economic and technological systems allow because of it. When this amount decreases civilizations either have to access new energy sources or they will collapse. There are solutions. Antonia.(No edit, Im tired)
Posted on: Thu, 02 Oct 2014 08:05:06 +0000
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