Are We in Stage 6 or 7 of ‘The Eight Stages of the Rise and Fall of Civilizations’?

SEE: ‘The Eight Stages of the Rise and Fall of Civilizations‘: https://blog.adw.org/2016/10/eight-stages-rise-fall-civilizations/

There’s an expression I use loosely, sometimes sarcastically, other times to make a point, related to what is happening in the West in general: “The last days of Rome.”

Mind you, Rome, the empire (and as a civilization) did not fall in days, I know. I use the term more figuratively. Rome fell in 476 AD, a process that was long, drawn-out, and complex, with multiple factors contributing to its decline. Some of those negative factors can be compared to current events.

Meanwhile, Byzantium, the Eastern Roman Empire, endured for a long time after the fall of Rome, until the Muslim Ottoman Turks finally conquered the Christian city and the former capital of the Byzantine Empire, Constantinople, on May 29, 1453. It is interesting to note that the Turks and Turkic peoples of today are descended from the Seljuk Turks, who originated from the Oğuz Turkic tribes of Central Asia; they are not native to the Middle East or Europe. ¹

The blog post ‘The Eight Stages of the Rise and Fall of Civilizations‘ has a religious and Catholic spin to it, and that is fine. The webpage says:

“Sociologists and anthropologists have described the stages of the rise and fall of the world’s great civilizations. Scottish philosopher Alexander Tyler of the University of Edinburg noted eight stages that articulate well what history discloses. I first encountered these in in Ted Flynn’s book The Great Transformation. They provide a great deal of perspective to what we are currently experiencing.”

Many civilizations have come and gone throughout human history. It is a natural recurring process, but is it avoidable? And is the West in decline?

–RdM

1. The Seljuk Turks had a culture of conquest and warfare before their conversion to Islam. Islam and its concepts of Jihad, warfare and conquests, which allow for the taking of slaves, taking booty, etc, fit perfectly with what the Seljuk Turks were doing already. Islam offered them a religious duty and reward in the afterlife. At the same time, they could keep doing what they were doing already, except now under the banner of Islam and for Allah, with the bonus that if a Seljuk Turk warrior were killed in battle under the banner of Islam, he would be rewarded in the next life as a martyr. Christianity didn’t fit the Seljuk Turks’ culture and mentality. Culture eats strategy for breakfast. ↩︎