The study of collapse
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Hellenic civilization suffered the degradation of the 'Greek type'; in Rome, a material revolution broke down ' . . . the organic constitution of society' ; European civilization is currently weak because it ' . . . no longer possesses vital rhythm and balance' (Dawson 1956: 56, 59-60, 63-4, 66). Writing during imprisonment in Ahmadnagar Fort in 1944, Jawaharlal Nehru proposed that India's decline had been due to internal decay, that in the twelfth century ' . . . India was drying up and losing her creative genius and vitality' ( 1 959: 125). Franz Borkenau was a contemporary of Spengler and Toynbee, and like them believed that civilizations rise and falL He sided with Toynbee in regard to the precedence of spiritual and religious over material factors in history, but demurred from Toynbee's view that some wickedness or sin causes civilizations to fall (pointing out that terrible crimes repeatedly occur among developing civilizations) (Borkenau 1 98 1 ) . Civilizations, to Paul Valery, are inherently fragile ( 1 962 : 23). Moral qualities are intrinsically related to this. He likened Europe after World War I, with its intellectual and moral confusion, to the ages of Trajan or the Ptolemies. The global domination of Europe was accounted for by superior characteristics of the European population (which he identified as drive, curiosity, logic, skepticism, and mysticism) . Yet the seeds of destruction are contained in this imbalance . Mass production today makes commodities universally available, so that in the future population and geographical size win become the major determinants of power, and Europe will consequently suffer. The third of the major twentieth-century theorists of rise and decline was Alfred Kroeber ( 1 944, 1957) . Kroeber had a definite attitude about cultural phenomena. He wrote of 'higher cultural values and forms' ( 1 944: 8), and of 'climaxes.' Egyptian civilization rose and fell four times ' . . . before it exhausted itself' ( 1 944: 663). It further had ' . . . a fairly high idea-system' ( 1 944: 700). Cultural patterns can be of 'high value' or of 'lower-grade' ( 1 944: 763) . Within the context of such evaluations, Kroeber analyzed cycles of creativity in such areas as art, science, and philosophy. All seem to show a common pattern: centuries of rising development, then long ages of repetition, imitation, and decline. Two anthropologists following in Kroeber's tradition were Coulborn ( 1 954, 1966) and Gray ( 1 958). Coulborn extended Kroeber's concept of exhaustion in art and philosophy to any activity. The rise and fall of a civilization is characterized by a process of rise, elaboration, and exhaustion of a pattern. After the Roman collapse, ' . . . the entire culture fell very low' (Coulborn 1954: 2 1 3) . Any society passes through the cycle of an Age of Faith, an Age of Reason, and finally an Age of Fulfillment. In this latter state there may be decline ' . . . from the very special excellence reached in every civil society' (Coulborn 1966 : 4 1 5 ) . Religion may be the source of decline, for a society maintains its strength while its religion is vigorous, and loses it when religious commitment weakens ( 1 966 : 430) . Charles Gray ( 1958) saw Classical history as a series of superimposed cycles. The major cycle is Formative, Developed, Florescent, and Degenerate. Each of these