As each
civilization declines and disintegrates, a multitude of counselors
clamors for attention to a particular formula that will prove acceptable
and workable in the existing emergent circumstances.
_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.
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