Economics & Growth | Other | Politics & Geopolitics
How Civilisations End
- By Bilal Hafeez
Obsessing over the next hour’s move in markets can make us lose sight of the big picture – and what bigger question is there than what ends a dominant civilisation? Historians have debated this for centuries. But to avoid getting bogged down in endless two-sided arguments, I find Arnold Toynbee’s view in his epic ‘A Study of History’ to be the most relevant for our times. His punchline, after 7,000 pages, is simple and striking:
‘Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.’
Toynbee saw civilisations as rising from a small creative minority – visionary leaders or thinkers who respond to challenges like invasions, environmental stress, or moral decay with innovation. Rome, he wrote, developed the institutions of the Republic in response to repeated invasions. Muhammad introduced a new religious framework to overcome tribalism and ethical collapse in Arabia. The Founding Fathers of the United States created a new political model to overcome internal fragmentation and British imperial domination.
But everything, according to Toynbee, moves in cycles. Eventually, the creative minority becomes a dominant minority. Rather than inspiring, it enforces conformity. Institutions grow rigid, innovation dries up, and cynicism takes hold.
In Rome, this shift began when economic inequality surged – small farmers were pushed off their land by elites. Under Augustus, this inequality was baked into the system.
Toynbee called this the emergence of the Universal State – a sprawling bureaucracy that imposed order without meaning. Republican virtue gave way to a cult of leadership, the army pledged loyalty to generals instead of the state, and the empire became increasingly authoritarian.
I will leave it to you to work out which stage we are in today – and whether we are led by a creative minority or a dominant minority.
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