Part III
Civilization Is Becoming Obsolete
CHAPTER TEN
WORLDWIDE REVOLUTION DISRUPTS CIVILIZATION
Every organism, mechanism or social construct reaches a point in its life cycle at which its existing apparatus must be repaired, renovated and updated or scrapped, redesigned and replaced. Today western civilization in its totality faces that dilemma.
The culture pattern variously known as European, western or modern civilization, dating from the Crusades, has existed for about a thousand years, and spread across the planet. During that millennium western civilization has passed through a life cycle similar to that of its predecessors. According to Oswald Spengler's historical perspective, a civilization passes through its life cycle in about a thousand years. If the Spenglerian assumption is in line with the course of history, western civilization should be in an advanced stage of decline and should eventually disappear as a decisive factor in world affairs.
Spengler's argument is fully and floridly presented in The Decline of the West. The author offers a theory of history based on the existence of an arbitrary and rather mechanical life cycle. It includes a period of gestation, rise and expansion, a period of maturity and stability and a final period of decline and dissolution. Spengler believed that western civilization is in the grip of an irreversable decline.
The Spenglerian perspective is based on the assumption of a normal pattern in the growth and decline of civilizations. The normalcy on which Spengler based his assumption was disrupted around 1750 when a series of new dynamic factors entered the stream of modern social history:
I. Mankind gained access to immense stores of energy which supplemented human energy, the energies of domesticated animals and a miniscule use of water power and air power. To these traditional energy sources the revolution in science and technology has added steam, electricity, and the energy stored in the atom.
II. These new sources of energy were harnessed and directed through mechanical and chemical agencies that greatly extended human capacity to convert nature's stored wealth into goods and services available for human consumption, and to develop a surplus of wealth and a release of manpower sufficient to build up a backlog of capital which, in its turn, produced goods and services with economic surpluses convertible into additional capital.