judas69 said:Assuming civilization has parts like any other machine (those being technological, social, political etc) and steps or states like most other processes, what functional aspect(s) do you attribute to its decline and eventual failure? Surely all aspects of civilization can't be at fault, can they? If so, how?
In the same vein, assuming an inherant flaw in the system, I don't fully understand why you are lumping the whole of Civilization (that which incorporates a multitude of parts) as the sole contributor to its own eventual demise, instead of just targeting those individual components themselves.
Additionally, what is it about the barbarian way of life that superseeds this? Perhaps it's that they don't participate in any real ordered system to fail in the first place? And, does not participating in a system determined to fail mean it offers a better, more suitable way of life? Also, what do you feel is the defining drive for a society to want to become civilized in the first place? In otherwords, do you think you might be overlooking or taking for granted problems civilization might actually help solve, especially since it's always been the direction mankind has headed?
Btw, I like your signature; you have good taste for a barbarian.
Civilisation has parts and steps, yes, and the problem is that lessons are not learned from failed civilisations of the past, the same path is followed and eventually leads to a tail-spin decline which is too extreme to regain control of. It begins with human genius and ends in human folly. It is the most important problem confronting mankind (with the exception of the environment, which is linked to it).
People like Gibson, Spengler and Toynbee have given complex reasons for the decline of civilisations, but the foremost reason is also the simplest. Civilisations fall because of the least capable part of the population outbreeding the most capable. The altruistic drive, the "defining drive", which is essential to the building of a civilisation, if applied indiscriminately, leads to the unbuilding of the civilisation. (Although may be not in the case of the Mexican, Aztec, civilisation as they might have been polygamous).
The question is: is it an inevitable part of human nature that this will always happen, and that civilisation MUST be bad for us, or could humans potentially break from this model? If it is unavoidable, then that is the reason to lump the whole of civilisation as being predestined to fall.
The barbarian way of life, in the past, has been (as with savages - who are like barbarians in living close to nature, but are not as inventive nor usually as driven) subjected to survival of the fittest as far as not containing a mass as degenetate as civilisation breeds. Uncivilised people often have had ordered societies which are sometime inappropriately called "civilisations". Eg. supposed "Solutrean civilisation". As city life is key to a civilisation, these people did not have them.
Historically, civilisations have been invaded by people from a harsher uncivilised place - almost always northerners. The Aztec myth is of being founded by a white man - thus from the north - and they were occasionally attacked by waves of indian natives from the north of America, making them a fiercer people.
Archeology has been finding ever more evidence to support the observation of northern people have been founding (as well invading, which is less controversial) civilisations. It is years now since Kurgans were found in China, for example, containing mummies of white immigrants from the north, which cooincide with the earliest stage of Chinese civilisation. Such discoveries are always the cause of much politically correct hand wringing, and temporary cover-ups, which slow the pace of the accumulation of knowledge. This kind of reluctance to accept certain facts about civilisation until much later than should have been the case, is another reason for pessimism about humans getting their act together.
