The Cycle of Collapse
The Cycle of Collapse is our theory on how governments descend from representation, to degeneracy, and finally to authoritarian control. How and why does this happen?
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All civilizations appear doomed to collapse. It seems to be a requirement of this world. The initial life, the decline, and then death. Just as humans live through it, so do our countries. Societies and their governments can only prolong this inevitability. Thus, the cycle of collapse.
We spoke on the story of nations here before. But let’s take it a step past that, shall we?
The story of nations details how independent nations collapse. Most notably, it speaks about democratic or republic-styled nations. A dictatorship, for example, is unlikely to lead to the dependency in the above charts assumptions.
Over time, if we look at most civilizations, they have destroyed themselves. A Study of History by Arnold Toynbee definitively showcased this. It is an art form, almost; How countries so different can commit the same type of societal suicide.
But there is a reason for it. It is because that is the exact design of our current governmental structures.
Why Do Societies Decline?
A civilization enters a period where it is a republic or some form of a democratic regime. A representative style of government.
Over time, this representative style encounters irreconcilable struggles. There are many ways it happens: whether through weak men, apathy, outside foreign influence, economic inequality, internal division, oligarchical control, et cetera. Representative styles of governments are weak. They are susceptible to external and internal forces. They do not look at the long-term goal of the country, instead opting for short-term gains in the political arena so the leaders can get re-elected. And they are not long-term viable.
Eventually, they decline. And when they do, the next on the block comes into play. This is usually some variant of neo-conservative nationstates or a welfare/social democracy. It is still a representative form in the traditional sense. Yet it is far from an actual representation of what the population wants. It is more of a representation of whoever holds the most power in society. Think of governments such as a declining socialism or regressive corrupt democracies.
These styles of governments do not last forever either. Eventually, they fail from a lack of economic foresight. They reject traditional money-making ventures. The most essential ventures that in the beginning of the representative stage we worship. This, combined with general mismanagement and societal unhappiness, eventually leads to economic decline.
What comes next is the authoritarian form. When representation and the economy fail, we take drastic measures. Extremism widens, more people choose far-flung ideals. These actions led to communism, fascism, military juntas, and so forth.
The ideal or philosophy itself is irrelevant. The government is. It is authoritarian control, regardless of left or right (communism or fascism).
Eventually, this government also destroys itself. People living underneath them desire freedom, or at least some semblance of it. So they break the chains.
And they select a representative style of government.
Which then degrades
Then turns into a degenerative, failing version of itself that everyone despises.
Which leaves it susceptible to authoritarian control
Until the right authoritarian group seizes it.
And then the people desire freedom.
They crowd together to fight to overthrow the authoritarian regime.
And then they select a representative style of government.
…
Repeat
The Cycle of Collapse
It is the cycle of collapse. It has happened in every region on every continent on this entire planet. Just the same as trees die in winter and are reborn in the spring. Or how you can continue to drive a car, but eventually you must completely rebuild the engine.
Sometimes, we are lucky. Sometimes we can see this in a fast-paced mode. Such as in Venezuela. It was a free, relatively rich country. Then the socialists took control. Then it became overtaken by authoritarian control due to the failing economy of the socialists. Now they are fighting for a representative government.
The same representative government that they themselves elected that lead to their own decline not that long ago.
We see this in places like China. That had a variant (culture-controlled) form of representative government that lead to authoritarian (Communism).
We have also seen this with the Roman Empire. Who had strong men; some of the world’s best. Then they lost their military might and became apathetic. The Romans slowly started allowing horrible, degenerative policies. These policies then lead to their downfall. A downfall where they were overtaken by rogue outside forces. Who then fought for representative forms of government yet again. And now Italy is slowly descending into degenerative hands once again.
It is a cycle that seems almost inescapable.
Even the German government itself (the only one caught red-handed, at least) has made plans for when Europe collapses. We all know it will happen. The question isn’t if—It is when. Which is saddening.
And it’s why the current forms of government do not work. It is a vicious cycle, one that can’t be escaped.
You cannot fix this with a new president. You can’t fix it through another round of authoritarian control. The tools of the past simply reinforce the cycle of collapse. They can do nothing to stop it.
We need something new. Everyone should see that we need something better. We need a new form of government entirely. One that is resistant to the cycle of collapse.
That’s why we’re building Enclavism.
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Question, I’ve been reading around on this blog (very great content by the way), do you have any kind of average of how much time each of the steps in the cycle take on average (for example, how long does it take on average for societies to go from spiritual faith to courage)?
Or is this different per civilization?
Thanks for the kind words.
Your question is somewhat challenging to answer. Sure, the easy answer is “it is different per civilization”. But, that is kind of the point of this entire website: figuring out that timeline and ways to stop/slow it.
The hard answer is more convoluted. We can notice certain trends throughout history of certain governmental/societal items that delay the cycle. An obvious example is a constitution. Nations without them are very obviously, no matter how you graph the data, much more short-term than constitution-driven nations (when looking at the rule by many forms specifically, this is not including dictatorships/oligarchies/such). Other things like a homogeneous culture, preservation of a middle class, “mixed” governance, and the like are also indicators that one rule by many nation will last longer than others. Generally, when these things that promote longevity dissipate or become centralized, tells us how fast the specific civilization facing the cycle will last.
So the average time depends less on the civilization per se, and more on the specifics of their governmental system. If they have more safeguards to delay/offset the cycle, they will on average last longer than those who don’t. Thus, the transitional stages (such as spiritual faith to degeneracy) will follow suit.
I’ve been pulling some relevant data to do some regression analysis on it to see if I can develop some averages, or at least some repeatable research to get to an average for civilizations with comparable certain traits, but I’m not quite there yet. But it is something I’m looking to do here.
Thanks for the insightful answer.
It’s clear.
Probably that explains why east Asian and Arab countries tend to still run pretty stable, although I feel like east Asia slowly starts adapting things like less marriage, more divorce, gay/trans (although mostly limited to major cities), more women to the workforce, more foreign immigration, worship of goods rather than worship of religion which are all already long normalized in the west.
And meanwhile the west is currently in a zombie state pretending to be alive and kicking.
One more question if you don’t mind:
It’s clear that once a nation collapses, the inhabitants will receive new citizenship of the new nation.
I guess it makes sense to assume that foreign nationals living in a collapsed nation will keep whatever citizenship they already had (as long as theirs didn’t collapse).
But if a national of that collapsed nation lives in a different nation that didn’t collapse yet, what happens to their citizenship?
I mean, citizenship of a country that no longer exists will not be recognized from that point on.
So will their citizenship to converted to the new nation that raises? Will they become stateless? Or will the country they currently live in make an offer?
I’ve been researching this, but I didn’t really get a clear answer.
I tried to take a look at Soviet Union since one of my parents is from there.
But the way Soviet Union worked back then is that as soon as you escaped the union, government immediately stripped you from your Soviet citizenship.
But the parent never fully explained what happened next, and is long dead by now.
Truthful observation. Give it time – Even countries like those in East Asia will face similarities. Of their own cultural equivalent, but the trend is still the same.
As for your question, I’d imagine it would be nation-dependent. But historically, usually people can claim citizenship from the prior, collapsed government at least until a new “transition” government forms in which they are a citizen of that new gov. So yes, converted. I assume there’d always be exceptions, however. But that’s the general trend.
If I remember right, while the Soviet Union did strip citizenship, the Russian (modern) government now offers return citizenship to those individuals whom previously where stripped of it. So it just took a bit of time for them to retract the prior citizenship revocation, thereby not rendering anyone stateless.
Sorry for taking so long, apparently I have to re-subscribe every time I make a new comment…
Thanks for the answer, I really appreciate the effort.
I recently bought books like “西洋の自死: 移民・アイデンティティ・イスラム” (suicide of the west: immigration, identity, islam) by Douglas Murray, and “西洋の没落” I and II (downfall of the west) by Oswald Spengler to study these civilization cycles.