Wrestling with the Decline and Fall (of Western Civilization)

Isaac Asimov's Foundation was one of the books that shaped my childhood. It is probably Asimov's most celebrated work, a collection of short stories inspired by reflections on the fall of the Roman Empire. The book is underpinned by two very simple and intriguing questions: how can we detect a civilization's decline, and what can we do about it? Foundation is set thousands of years from now, when one man - Hari Seldon - has pioneered a science - "psychohistory" - that allows him to predict the future. To his horror he learns that his galactic empire is destined for a calmitous fall. In order to shorten the dark ages he realizes will inevitably follow, Seldon launches an outpost - appropriately named the Foundation - composed of his society's leading academics. In a far corner of the galaxy they craft an encylopedia to preserve society's accumulated knowledge, ultimately developing into a political power that in due time blossoms into another galactic empire.

Asimov was a scientist, so it is not surprising that he often expressed the decline of his imaginary civilization in technocratic terms. Older starships were more powerful, for example, and again Asimov's interest in the fall of Rome is obvious: classical ships were indeed more capable than those of the early medieval world (even if they required more time and capital to build). But there are other paralells - one far more immediate. A few weeks ago I was in Leiden - a town near Amsterdam - speaking to an engineer for the European Space Agency. I was told that the ESA has been having so many problems which its launch vehicles that Russian Soyuz rockets using technology some fifty years old were now routinely employed to hoist satellites into orbit. Even NASA's best rockets - for all their advanced technology - are not nearly as reliable as a hand-crafted Soyuz. For half a century our scientists, institutions and governments have been unable to improve that most basic aspect of modern civilization: the reliable control of large amounts of energy, in this case for the purpose of transportation.

As I was riding the train back to Amsterdam I couldn't stop thinking about that conversation, especially pertinent in the midst of our current economic downturn. Sure, we're cutting margins: cars are far more efficient; jets use less fuel; trains are much quicker. But where is the next great breakthrough? Where are the space elevators? Where is the Mars colony? Where are all those fantastic sci-fi vistas, so common in those old books? Is our failure to improve on old technology a symptom of the gradual decline and fall of Western civilization?

My career has taught me to think a certain way; perhaps most fundamentally it has granted me an appreciation for complexity and semantics. The first questions I consider are consequently grounded in the techniques of my discipline. What do we mean by a word as vague as "decline"? Once we get past that issue, there are others: can decline be relative, or must it be absolute? How can we measure its beginning? What elements of a society can or must it incorporate? One could, of course, write volumes on the notion of the "decline" in historiography, not to mention the phenomenon itself. Since this is just a think piece in a pretentious blog, I won't delve into much depth, but some definitions are necessary for this topic to have any meaning at all.

A friend of mine once claimed that "decadence is the penultimate stage of degeneration," whatever that means. I'll say this: for me a civilization's decline, to be termed such, must be absolute and not just relative to the rise of other states (of course there is considerable debate among historians about this point). It is a long-term movement, even if it typically becomes glaringly obvious through short-term events (the fall of the Berlin wall comes to mind, for example, but it was merely the exclamation point at the end of a gradual rotting of Soviet power). The term "decline" is so difficult to define or measure that it is tempting to stick to more quantifiable realms - that of economics, for example - but to me a civilization's decline must incorporate multiple elements of a society's existence, all of which are related through the process sometimes referred to as co-evolution. For example economic weakness, even if long-term, therefore cannot be considered a symptom and/or reason for decline unless accompanied by a combination of stagnation in scientific development, political calcification, some form of cultural "de-vitalization" or malaise, environmental degradation, or a selection of these and additional factors.

All of these are difficult if not impossible to quantify, but then society or history or almost anything worth thinking about is nearly impossible to define and describe (of course the very term "West" is deeply problematic, but I'm avoiding that here). A more convincing argument against the notion of "decline" itself lies in its history: in the West especially the concept was often used by radicals on the left or right to attack democratic systems, particularly in the leadup to the Second World War. To me that has always been ironic, for I consider the rise of radicalism a function of, at the very least, the perception of decline - and probably a catalyst for it.

Definitions of a civilization's deterioration and a look at the idea's historical context all lead back to this (long) entry's basic question: are our Western civilizations (let us say America in particular) really in terminal decline? It is difficult to say, but from a brief look at the term's historical context it is obvious that the perception of decline has always been a part of our societies, from the literate few who predicted the end of days in the medieval period, to romantics who lamented the rise of industrialization, to communists and fascists who called for a new world order. Once again, the popular perception of decline - perhaps one form of cultural malaise - is certainly not a clearcut sign of decline in the first place.

Ultimately I think America today is increasingly marked less by decline -relative or absolute - than fragmentation. Academic disciplines - history, for example - are fragmented to the point of being difficult to define. Parties are hardly cohesive, and fringe movements combine with special interest groups at the political periphery. Multinational corporations form alternate poles of power; the internet vastly increases the diffusion of views while decreasing their quality (look at this blog, for example). Tremendous breakthroughs are made in computing or biotechnology; other fields languish. Whiggish views of progress through technological development have floundered on the shoals of environmental devastation, but the narrative of eliminating global warming through "green" technology gathers steam.

A final question: could one not argue that this fragmentation is a symptom of American - indeed Western, for the phenomenon is perhaps even more acute in Europe - society's decline? Maybe, but then the history of western civilization after Rome's fall in particular has been one of continual rise and fall, of constant regeneration and recreation, of enduring and fruitful fragmentation. Not surprisingly to the historian, what our generation sees as new might just be more of the same.