Causes of Polarization: Civilizational Decline

Several big picture thinkers including Arnold Toynbee, Sir John Bagot Glubb, Jim Penman and William Ophuls, have argued that civilizations and empires rise and fall in predictable and recurring cycles. Those writers are all in agreement that polarization is one of the major symptoms of civilizational decline.

Decay for an empire begins after it has reached its goals and enjoys a period of success, wealth and leisure at which time it begins to overshoot. The culture tends to want to do more and more of what it has already sufficiently succeeded in—becoming narrower and more entrenched in its pursuits. In the case of the West this overreach can be clearly seen today in the areas of technology, bureaucracy, and social activism, which can create alienation and conflict.

As a country’s success and prosperity reduce the level of challenge and struggle needed to develop resilience (and satisfy peoples’ need for meaning) they induce petty, narrow ideological and overly intellectual debates and pursuits to make up for that dearth of purpose. Then a culture slides increasingly into decadence and a bureaucratic morass, replacing real problems with fake alarms exploited by vested interests.

According to such theories of civilizational rise and fall, we are currently in the midst of a precipitous decline where overreach and an obsession with rhetoric and debate over action, among other factors, create extreme politics and fragmentation.

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Read our next post in the series: Causes of Polarization: The Rise of Left Brain Thinking.