| The Meaning Of Decline For A Civilization by Philip Atkinson |
A civilization is a shared understanding, and the decline of a civilization is the decay of this communal understanding from sensible to senseless. A community maintains its understanding by passing it from generation to generation. That is, each generation is charged with rearing its progeny as dutiful (unselfish) citizens who revere the morality, hence the manners, customs and traditions, of their parents. When this process fails and most citizens no longer revere their parents' morality but the morality of convenience (selfishness), then the community stops improving its manners, customs and traditions and starts discarding them. And the rot progresses a generation at a time, with each succeeding wave of offspring discarding more manners, customs and traditions, which in turn means showing less restraint, and thus less understanding, than the last generation.
As previous restraints are discarded, citizens find themselves less able to resist their private impulses. With a reduced need to control their urges they become more susceptible to the temptations of conceit, vanity, envy, sloth, rage, lust, greed and fear; losing not only the ability to control their actions but their thoughts. Hence with each successive generation the character of the citizens becomes increasing uncontrolled, irresolute and silly.
Or as the ancient Roman poet Horace (BC 65-8) said:
| "Our parents, worse than our grandparents, gave birth to us who are worse than they, and we shall in our turn bear offspring still more evil." |
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