"Growth continues so long as the minority retains its creative vitality and inspires collective effort."
True. Yet may we define 'growth' as neither economic nor technological dominance but rather conscious human evolution toward wellness, sovereignty and peace?
We can also think of the decline as growing old and dying, like any living system. Stanley Salthe writes about this. As a complex system grows old, it calcifies and becomes reactive trying to preserve its state rather than to adapt.
So, are we all in agreement that the US government can't be reformed and needs to be rebooted to the Constitution?
Steve Bannon is a highly successful investment banker and has operated at the highest levels of business and government, dealing with most all the tech giants the the one you met with, had an interesting take. He said that the tech oligarchs, no matter their competence in their field, were like little children when it came to topics outside of that area for the most part. So, the fact that this industrial giant you met with was imminently successful, he may not have any idea of what you and the good dr. know about as a matter of course. This might explain their near total insouciance about the collapse we see all around us, because they live in a bubble, where everyone is exactly like them and their wealth and station keeps the anarcho-communists/islamists/criminal element far from themselves and their wives and children.
They are like the Bourbons in pre-revolution France: they forgot nothing, and they learned nothing.
"John Bunyan's Pilgrim’s Progress is a classic of spiritual and psychological insight. It tells of the adventures of Christian, who leaves everything behind to set out on the perilous journey to the Celestial City. He encounters weird people whose names match their characters, like Superstition, the hypocritical Talkative, and the terrifying Giant Despair. He runs into the Hill of Difficulty, Valley of Humiliation, and County of Conceit. But the brave pilgrim makes progress. Little by little, obstacles fall behind. Despite fears and failures, he perseveres until he reaches the Celestial City. The difficulties and dangers represent negative psychological conditions within Christian himself.
Each of us must, as cosmic pilgrims, boldly set forth, conquer inner negatives, and so advance to inner light. While pausing at a riverbank, Christian and his companion, Hopeful, are downcast. The way has been rough. They yearn for an easier path. Looking around, they see a trail parallel to a meadow. Liking its looks, Christian tries to persuade Hopeful to join him in taking it. Hopeful, worriedly wonders whether it might lead them astray, but Christian confidently predicts all will be well. Easy at first, the path becomes increasingly severe because it was the wrong one. Losing their way in a storm, they stumble about until they find shelter where they fall asleep. Next morning, more grief. They are captured by the Giant Despair and imprisoned in Doubting Castle. Here, they stop to think things over. Christian admits his foolishness at leaving the true path for what appeared to be an easy way. But now he resolves to make things right by escaping from his own folly. Finding within his clothing a key named Promise, Christian unlocks the dungeon door. Once more, he and Hopeful set their faces toward the Celestial City." N. L. - V.H.
America is absolutely committing "suicide". Over 90% of Americans have metabolic dysfunction and 77% of 18-24 year olds are unfit for military service because of obesity. Our leaders are dragging us into never ending and unwinnable wars just to take the focus off their illegal escapades (Epstein) and enrich their military industrial complex buddies. How can we survive?
The Western Empire suffered a series of epidemics during the reign of Marcus Aurelius. Some think it was the first entry of measles into Europe. This was followed by declining agricultural output - possibly due in part to a worsening climate - and a declining birth rate. The migration of peoples then produced a series of invasions, increasing a demand for soldiers from a smaller reservoir.
The short of it is that the Western Empire fell mostly due to a coincidence of external calamities.
Human failings didn't help. But it's all too easy to inject cosmic moralism into events by assigning disasters to human failings. Doing so is a way of giving meaning to human life and suffering. False meaning.
The days of the Eastern Empire were numbered after it lost the 12th Century Battle of Manzikert to the Turks. Admittedly, in that case, the general of the infantry betrayed the Byzantine Army. He marched his troops off the field to service political ambition. Even so, the Byzantine cavalry alone almost won.
In any case, it was again an external event that brought eventual downfall. And let's not forget the geopolitical imbecility of the 4th Crusade.
You've become something of a millenarian of late, John. Everywhere blaming human failure for a supposed coming apocalyptic transformation.
More irrelevant word salad from one of the resident Zionists here. Ignoring the elephant in the room: Zionist control of the U.S. government (i.e. control of the malignant narcissist, Don Tzu) in the service of ethnosupremicism and “Greater Israel” from the Nile to the Euphrates).
Frank never loses an opportunity to be a hasbara-spewing ethnosupremicist Zionist hack. You bet I’m a partisan against Zionist genocide. Imagine that —- Frank thinks that “partisan” is a derogatory term. Thus, Frank would disparage the anti-Nazi Czech PARTISANS in WW2. Frank is an elderly Zionist living comfortably in the U.S., completely in Zionist tow, with no objection to ZioNazi behavior.
There has been a pattern, though, of the rise and fall of empires. I agree that we cannot attribute internal corruption as an all-cause explanation. However, it may be key among a confluence of factors or not. The reality of random events is terrifying, so humans attempt to sustain a sense of control by attaching meaning where none exists. However, reflecting on the elements under our control that went awry is a constructive exercise, I think.
Agreed that learning from past mistakes is always constructive. One might think of calamities more as the result of an unpredictable but deterministic chaos, rather than just random.
Society's only recourse is to build resilience. Defend and recover. Fortunately today, we have much more knowledge, power, and experience to bring to bear than did our ancestors.
But you're right - there's not much room to lose focus and mess around.
And more specifically, in the US, we have ceased to govern and behave according to the Christian principles upon which our nation was founded. George Barna found that only 4% of American adults currently possess a Christian world view. Without Christian principles as a guiding force, human beings will all do "what's right in their own eyes." Hence, an amoral society which rots from within.
My mother, rest her soul, had a saying that my wife and I inject almost daily into our conversations about the world and the people we deal with: "If you can't be told, you can be shown."
This saying used to be good enough back before 24x7 propaganda and the decline of western thought across the entirety of our world. However, I think as her son I am allowed, if not obligated, to update the truism to something more apropos to the zeitgeist: "People simply cannot be told. They have to be shown."
I can understand Arnold Toynbee’s theory and it does seem to apply. However, there is "new creative minority" showing through the current madness. I am seeing creative ways to clean our food, water, our thinking, etc., that will remove the poisons for all to see truth, and allow all to live peaceful and joyful lives.
In my work Taming the Wolf: Peace through Faith (and in other writings) I point out the most common driver of conflict: the destructive hidden influence. This is the "off stage" player who operates covertly.
The hidden influence drives conflict between other parties. In many cases, the parties remain unaware of the covert influence and the conflict persists, seeming intractable.
The intention of the destructive hidden influence is to diminish or ruin other parties. Fear is often the driver of their destructive mindset. I have witnessed this in most of the conflicts I mediated in the courts, in church settings, in schools, and elsewhere.
What Toynbee may have assumed were collective suicidal impulses may not have been the cause of a collapse. Rather, the societal collapse may have come about because of the activity of destructive hidden influences undermining the society or culture.
We see this today to a huge degree. We find covert operators with significant power in key institutions driving conflict. (DOJ, Courts, Media, etc)
When the culture becomes successful, there is a tendency for people to take their attention off threats and an environment develops that is not attuned to deception and covert operations. We become tolerant of viewpoints that wreak havoc. We fail to root out the hidden influences tearing at the fabric of life.
Religion was once an institution that spoke to evil intentions, evil purposes, and demonic forces. But as the churches became "tolerant" they failed to perform their role in fueling the conversation regarding laudable intentions and evil intentions. They failed to lift the gaze of the culture off the legalistic to the ethical and moral. They failed to maintain a cultural awareness of intentions... and those with destructive hidden intentions.
So cultures collapsed not so much from a suicidal mindset as a failure to constantly monitor conflict created by destructive hidden influences.
David Stockman: “Orange Jesus,The Dual SOH Blockade And The Stagflation Ahead
DAVID STOCKMAN
APR 13, 2026
When it comes to economics, the Donald is truly a knucklehead. So he is now preparing to monkey-hammer the entire $105 trillion global economy by putting a US naval blockade on top of the Iranian blockade.”
On the other hand, he ignores other factors that affected both civilizations and the Soviet Union to a degree:
Loss of Religious and Cultural Faith & Morality.
Social Breakdown, ideological revisionism that systematically dismantling the achievements and historical foundations of Western civilization.
Breakdown of the Traditional Family; Cultural Relativism and Moral Confusion is a shift away from clear standards of right and wrong toward a relativism;
Then Mass Migration and Multiculturalism with the abandonment of assimilation that is erasing Western identity. Finally
Educational and Institutional Decline, the spread of "academic elitism" and the abandonment of core classical education in favor of political ideology in universities and local schools.
"Growth continues so long as the minority retains its creative vitality and inspires collective effort."
True. Yet may we define 'growth' as neither economic nor technological dominance but rather conscious human evolution toward wellness, sovereignty and peace?
How about striving for "better" instead of "more, more, more"?
That is a simple concept that could change the world!
"Fortunate Son" jumped into my mind when I wrote "more, more, more"!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qV4Q-RSQCq0
We can also think of the decline as growing old and dying, like any living system. Stanley Salthe writes about this. As a complex system grows old, it calcifies and becomes reactive trying to preserve its state rather than to adapt.
So, are we all in agreement that the US government can't be reformed and needs to be rebooted to the Constitution?
The decline personified by the malignant narcissism of Donald Trump…
https://www.youtube.com/live/C4XjdkWNzDo?si=Spo9Ix-GZ7NJ7jO9
Steve Bannon is a highly successful investment banker and has operated at the highest levels of business and government, dealing with most all the tech giants the the one you met with, had an interesting take. He said that the tech oligarchs, no matter their competence in their field, were like little children when it came to topics outside of that area for the most part. So, the fact that this industrial giant you met with was imminently successful, he may not have any idea of what you and the good dr. know about as a matter of course. This might explain their near total insouciance about the collapse we see all around us, because they live in a bubble, where everyone is exactly like them and their wealth and station keeps the anarcho-communists/islamists/criminal element far from themselves and their wives and children.
They are like the Bourbons in pre-revolution France: they forgot nothing, and they learned nothing.
Huckabee, I think you are hypoxic and hypercapnic in your bubble.
"John Bunyan's Pilgrim’s Progress is a classic of spiritual and psychological insight. It tells of the adventures of Christian, who leaves everything behind to set out on the perilous journey to the Celestial City. He encounters weird people whose names match their characters, like Superstition, the hypocritical Talkative, and the terrifying Giant Despair. He runs into the Hill of Difficulty, Valley of Humiliation, and County of Conceit. But the brave pilgrim makes progress. Little by little, obstacles fall behind. Despite fears and failures, he perseveres until he reaches the Celestial City. The difficulties and dangers represent negative psychological conditions within Christian himself.
Each of us must, as cosmic pilgrims, boldly set forth, conquer inner negatives, and so advance to inner light. While pausing at a riverbank, Christian and his companion, Hopeful, are downcast. The way has been rough. They yearn for an easier path. Looking around, they see a trail parallel to a meadow. Liking its looks, Christian tries to persuade Hopeful to join him in taking it. Hopeful, worriedly wonders whether it might lead them astray, but Christian confidently predicts all will be well. Easy at first, the path becomes increasingly severe because it was the wrong one. Losing their way in a storm, they stumble about until they find shelter where they fall asleep. Next morning, more grief. They are captured by the Giant Despair and imprisoned in Doubting Castle. Here, they stop to think things over. Christian admits his foolishness at leaving the true path for what appeared to be an easy way. But now he resolves to make things right by escaping from his own folly. Finding within his clothing a key named Promise, Christian unlocks the dungeon door. Once more, he and Hopeful set their faces toward the Celestial City." N. L. - V.H.
America is absolutely committing "suicide". Over 90% of Americans have metabolic dysfunction and 77% of 18-24 year olds are unfit for military service because of obesity. Our leaders are dragging us into never ending and unwinnable wars just to take the focus off their illegal escapades (Epstein) and enrich their military industrial complex buddies. How can we survive?
You might trying reading Arthur Boak, "Manpower Shortage and the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West."
https://press.umich.edu/Books/M/Manpower-Shortage-and-the-Fall-of-the-Roman-Empire-in-the-West
The Western Empire suffered a series of epidemics during the reign of Marcus Aurelius. Some think it was the first entry of measles into Europe. This was followed by declining agricultural output - possibly due in part to a worsening climate - and a declining birth rate. The migration of peoples then produced a series of invasions, increasing a demand for soldiers from a smaller reservoir.
The short of it is that the Western Empire fell mostly due to a coincidence of external calamities.
Human failings didn't help. But it's all too easy to inject cosmic moralism into events by assigning disasters to human failings. Doing so is a way of giving meaning to human life and suffering. False meaning.
The days of the Eastern Empire were numbered after it lost the 12th Century Battle of Manzikert to the Turks. Admittedly, in that case, the general of the infantry betrayed the Byzantine Army. He marched his troops off the field to service political ambition. Even so, the Byzantine cavalry alone almost won.
In any case, it was again an external event that brought eventual downfall. And let's not forget the geopolitical imbecility of the 4th Crusade.
You've become something of a millenarian of late, John. Everywhere blaming human failure for a supposed coming apocalyptic transformation.
More irrelevant word salad from one of the resident Zionists here. Ignoring the elephant in the room: Zionist control of the U.S. government (i.e. control of the malignant narcissist, Don Tzu) in the service of ethnosupremicism and “Greater Israel” from the Nile to the Euphrates).
You never lose an opportunity to demonstrate the personal tragedy of a mindless partisan.
Frank never loses an opportunity to be a hasbara-spewing ethnosupremicist Zionist hack. You bet I’m a partisan against Zionist genocide. Imagine that —- Frank thinks that “partisan” is a derogatory term. Thus, Frank would disparage the anti-Nazi Czech PARTISANS in WW2. Frank is an elderly Zionist living comfortably in the U.S., completely in Zionist tow, with no objection to ZioNazi behavior.
Thank-you for a crude expostulatory nothing, Dan. It's all you've ever produced here.
All a thoughtful person need do, to decide to disregard your view, is to read your description of it.
Frank, your consistent projection and delusional ideation is evident.
There has been a pattern, though, of the rise and fall of empires. I agree that we cannot attribute internal corruption as an all-cause explanation. However, it may be key among a confluence of factors or not. The reality of random events is terrifying, so humans attempt to sustain a sense of control by attaching meaning where none exists. However, reflecting on the elements under our control that went awry is a constructive exercise, I think.
Agreed that learning from past mistakes is always constructive. One might think of calamities more as the result of an unpredictable but deterministic chaos, rather than just random.
Society's only recourse is to build resilience. Defend and recover. Fortunately today, we have much more knowledge, power, and experience to bring to bear than did our ancestors.
But you're right - there's not much room to lose focus and mess around.
And more specifically, in the US, we have ceased to govern and behave according to the Christian principles upon which our nation was founded. George Barna found that only 4% of American adults currently possess a Christian world view. Without Christian principles as a guiding force, human beings will all do "what's right in their own eyes." Hence, an amoral society which rots from within.
My mother, rest her soul, had a saying that my wife and I inject almost daily into our conversations about the world and the people we deal with: "If you can't be told, you can be shown."
This saying used to be good enough back before 24x7 propaganda and the decline of western thought across the entirety of our world. However, I think as her son I am allowed, if not obligated, to update the truism to something more apropos to the zeitgeist: "People simply cannot be told. They have to be shown."
I can understand Arnold Toynbee’s theory and it does seem to apply. However, there is "new creative minority" showing through the current madness. I am seeing creative ways to clean our food, water, our thinking, etc., that will remove the poisons for all to see truth, and allow all to live peaceful and joyful lives.
In my work Taming the Wolf: Peace through Faith (and in other writings) I point out the most common driver of conflict: the destructive hidden influence. This is the "off stage" player who operates covertly.
The hidden influence drives conflict between other parties. In many cases, the parties remain unaware of the covert influence and the conflict persists, seeming intractable.
The intention of the destructive hidden influence is to diminish or ruin other parties. Fear is often the driver of their destructive mindset. I have witnessed this in most of the conflicts I mediated in the courts, in church settings, in schools, and elsewhere.
What Toynbee may have assumed were collective suicidal impulses may not have been the cause of a collapse. Rather, the societal collapse may have come about because of the activity of destructive hidden influences undermining the society or culture.
We see this today to a huge degree. We find covert operators with significant power in key institutions driving conflict. (DOJ, Courts, Media, etc)
When the culture becomes successful, there is a tendency for people to take their attention off threats and an environment develops that is not attuned to deception and covert operations. We become tolerant of viewpoints that wreak havoc. We fail to root out the hidden influences tearing at the fabric of life.
Religion was once an institution that spoke to evil intentions, evil purposes, and demonic forces. But as the churches became "tolerant" they failed to perform their role in fueling the conversation regarding laudable intentions and evil intentions. They failed to lift the gaze of the culture off the legalistic to the ethical and moral. They failed to maintain a cultural awareness of intentions... and those with destructive hidden intentions.
So cultures collapsed not so much from a suicidal mindset as a failure to constantly monitor conflict created by destructive hidden influences.
And this suïcide is committed by the elite leaders of the civilization. Not on themselves of course, but on the people they were supposed to lead.
“We have guaranteed that they (Iran) will build the bomb…”
https://www.youtube.com/live/ywxTOWhdRxo?si=q8C9Uv0iMU41TdNl
David Stockman: “Orange Jesus,The Dual SOH Blockade And The Stagflation Ahead
DAVID STOCKMAN
APR 13, 2026
When it comes to economics, the Donald is truly a knucklehead. So he is now preparing to monkey-hammer the entire $105 trillion global economy by putting a US naval blockade on top of the Iranian blockade.”
On the other hand, he ignores other factors that affected both civilizations and the Soviet Union to a degree:
Loss of Religious and Cultural Faith & Morality.
Social Breakdown, ideological revisionism that systematically dismantling the achievements and historical foundations of Western civilization.
Breakdown of the Traditional Family; Cultural Relativism and Moral Confusion is a shift away from clear standards of right and wrong toward a relativism;
Then Mass Migration and Multiculturalism with the abandonment of assimilation that is erasing Western identity. Finally
Educational and Institutional Decline, the spread of "academic elitism" and the abandonment of core classical education in favor of political ideology in universities and local schools.
https://www.youtube.com/live/oIcBoZUoX7M?si=cjvhvbExLmBLHQ4m
“The fantasy of Donald Trump having total control over the world.”