Why Civilizations Collapse: Glubb Pasha’s Stages Explained

Are we currently experiencing civilizational collapse? To answer this, it's crucial to examine the factors that led to the downfall of past civilizations. As Niccolò Machiavelli noted, "whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; for human events ever resemble those of preceding times."

External vs. Internal Causes of Collapse

Historians and social scientists differentiate between external and internal causes when explaining civilizational collapse.

External Causes

External causes are forces or phenomena that overwhelm a civilization's capacity to cope. These include:

• Invasions: Foreign enemies conquering a civilization. Examples include the alleged invasion of Teotihuacan by northern barbarians and the well-documented role of Germanic barbarians in the fall of the Roman Empire.
• Acts of God: Epidemics or natural disasters. Some historians suggest a volcanic eruption caused the collapse of Minoan civilization, while others propose malaria as a major factor in Rome's decline.

However, external cause theories alone are often insufficient. Great civilizations typically withstand natural disasters, epidemics, and attacks. Their decline and fall usually occur when they lose the internal strength, resilience, and adaptive capacities to deal with these external crises.

Internal Causes

As Will Durant stated, "A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within." Therefore, understanding internal causes—what weakens a civilization from the inside out—is essential. These internal weaknesses eventually make a civilization vulnerable to an external crisis, which then becomes the "proverbial straw that breaks its back."

Glubb Pasha's Stages of Civilizational Lifespan

Sir John Bagot Glubb (Glubb Pasha), in his essay "The Fate of Empires and the Search for Survival," proposed that civilizations, like biological organisms, have a natural lifespan marked by growth, decline, and eventual death. He observed recurring patterns across diverse civilizations over four thousand years, suggesting a predictable progression of stages.

Glubb noted that a great civilization "commences with a violent, and usually unforeseen, outburst of energy, and ends in a lowering of moral standards, cynicism, pessimism and frivolity."

1. The Age of Pioneers

This initial stage is characterized by a small, determined population of innovators, warriors, and explorers. They establish the foundations of a new civilization, often in challenging environments. Glubb described them as "Poor, hardy, often half-starved and ill-clad, they abound in courage, energy and initiative, overcome every obstacle and always seem to be in control of the situation."

2. The Age of Commerce

After establishing settlements and harnessing natural resources, the focus shifts to manufacturing, production, and trade. This leads to the construction of larger cities, public infrastructure, and significant wealth. This wealth funds the arts and the creation of monuments, palaces, museums, and other cultural edifices. This period represents the "High Noon of prosperity"—the civilization's peak of wealth and glory.

3. The Age of Affluence

Despite the magnificence of the Age of Commerce, the seeds of collapse are sown during the "High Noon of prosperity." The immense wealth begins to corrupt the civilization.

• Moral Decay: Selfishness, greed, and vanity replace virtues like dedication, sacrifice, and duty. Money becomes an end in itself, rather than a byproduct of hard work. As the Arab moralist Ghazali observed, people seek qualifications for wealth, not learning or virtue.
• Softening of Society: Abundant luxuries, pleasures, and comforts make people incapable of enduring hardship. As William Ophuls noted, "A spoiled society begins to rot from within." Edward Gibbon, referring to Rome, stated, "Prosperity ripened the principle of decay."
• Rise of the Welfare State: With no shortage of wealth, there's a growing demand for the state to provide medical care, education, housing, social insurance, and handouts. This fosters a sense of entitlement and a loss of personal responsibility. At Rome's peak affluence, nearly one in three citizens were on the dole, receiving free wheat. Glubb questioned whether the welfare state is a mark of attainment or "one more regular milestone in the life-story of an ageing and decrepit empire."

4. The Age of Intellect

With the safety net of welfare and abundant wealth, people no longer need to dedicate most of their time to securing necessities. Many turn to intellectual pursuits. While intellectual endeavors offer immense benefits, an excessive, one-sided rationalistic approach can saturate the civilization.

• Tyranny of Reason: Rationality becomes the sole means of truth, leading to the discarding of symbolic, moral, and often irrational truths embedded in myth and religion. Nietzsche viewed the extreme rationality of Plato and Socrates as a "symptom of degeneration" and argued that "Without myth…every culture loses its healthy creative natural power."
• Decline of Faith: Will and Ariel Durant emphasized that "The soul of a civilization is its religion, and it dies with its faith."
• Rise of Critical Intellectuals: This age sees the emergence of highly rational and critical intellectuals who dissect and dismantle dominant belief systems. Edward Gibbon noted that in Rome's Age of Intellect, "A crowd of critics, of compilers, of commentators, darkened the face of learning, and the decline of genius was soon followed by the corruption of taste."
• Moral Relativism and Nihilism: Critical theories lead to moral relativism, replacing faith in life's meaning with existential nihilism. People come to believe there is no objective truth, no inherent morality or value, and no meaning to life or history. Ophuls states that the society becomes "value free"—no longer believing in much or taking anything seriously, losing its "original élan, the moral core, and the guiding ideal."

5. The Age of Decadence

This is the terminal stage. Without a guiding ideal or moral core, widespread disorientation, confusion, and moral decay set in.

• Empty Lives and Escapism: Masses live meaningless lives, seeking relief in base pleasures, addictions, and escapism.
• Loss of Discernment: People struggle to distinguish between true and false, good and bad, right and wrong, often choosing what is harmful.
• Rejection of Beauty and Virtue: Beauty and genius are replaced by banality, ugliness, and vulgarity. Virtues are seen as vices, and vices as virtues.
• Apathetic Conformity: The pursuit of individual greatness is abandoned for apathy and conformity, leading to widespread mental illness.
• Rotten to the Core: As Ophuls concludes, "The society’s original vigor, virtue, and morale have been entirely effaced. Rotten to the core, the society awaits collapse, with only the date remaining to be determined."

Livy, reflecting on Rome's decadence, observed that it "corrupted, it spoiled, it rotted itself by all the vices; so, little by little, we have been brought into the present condition in which we are able neither to endure the evils from which we suffer, nor the remedies we need to cure them."

Inevitability of Decline?

Glubb Pasha, along with many other historians, suggests that these progressive stages of a civilization's lifespan are inescapable due to human nature. Each generation modifies itself predictably based on the conditions created by previous generations. This leads to the "unpalatable" conclusion, as William Ophuls puts it, that "civilization is effectively hardwired for self-destruction."

Beyond these internal stages, the ruling or political classes, through mismanagement and corruption, also play a significant role in the decline and fall of civilizations. As Ophuls summarizes, "This is the tragedy of civilization: its very 'greatness'—its panoply of wealth and power—turns against it and brings it down."