The god of mammon makes his appearance on the historical scene. Selfishness, greed and vanity uproot the virtues of dedication, sacrifice and duty that were the norm in past ages. The civilizational decline that occurs in the age of affluence is further hastened by an increasing preoccupation with welfare. At the peak of rome's affluence, for example, between the rule of emperor augustus and emperor claudius, nearly one in three citizens were on the dole.
“I see in you all the characteristic stigma of decay. I can prove to you that… your atheism and your pessimism and your cynicism, your immorality, your broken-down marriages…were characteristic marks of the dying ages of ancient States.” Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West Are we living in an age of civilizational collapse? In […]
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Will Civilization Collapse? first appeared on
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