Stages of Life Cycle

Each stage helps to lead to the next as the values of the people change over time as influenced by military, political, economic, and religious developments.

To generalize, the adventuresome manly values of the warrior propel an empire to power as it expands its territory by conquest in the first two ages. Later, the (inevitably) materialistic and increasingly prudent, risk-averse values of businessmen take over at the highest levels of society during the ages of commerce and affluence. Their societies downplay the values of the solider normally not "from motives of conscience, but rather because of the weakening of a sense of duty in citizens, and the increase in selfishness, manifested in the desire for wealth and ease," as Glubb Pasha maintains. Instead of taking more land (i.e., staying on the offensive), empires at this stage build walls (i.e., defensive barriers) instead, such as the Roman Emperor Hadrian’s wall near the Scottish border, the Great Wall of China, even the Maginot line of twentieth-century France. Then the wealth acquired by conquest and (later) business investment promoted by the political unity provided by the empire (such as how the brutal Mongol Empire later promoted the caravan trade across Eurasia) is later spent to establish educational institutions such as universities and secondary schools. During the age of intellect, these may produce intellectuals (such as the medieval Muslim philosophers Avicenna and Averoes, who drank deeply from the waters of Greek philosophy) who are skeptical of at least some of the values and religious beliefs of the founders and developers of their empire.

Alternatively, these intellectuals may administer educational institutions that educate the elite or part of the masses in subjects either impractical (i.e., rhetoric in the Rome of the Caesars, when persuading assemblies emotionally was no longer of political value) or mostly oriented towards financial success (e.g., today, the M.B.A), not character development and virtue, as in the early Roman Republic. As both the elites and masses discard the self-confident, self-disciplined values that created the empire because of affluence’s corrosive effects, moral decay and decadence set in.

Eventually, the empire collapses from (say) an outside power (e.g., the barbarians in Rome’s case) or an energetic internal force (e.g., the communists in Czarist Russia’s case). Likewise, God warned Israel against departing from worshipping him when they became materially satisfied after entering the Promised Land (Deuteronomy 8:11-15, 17-18; 31:20). In short, as the growth of wealth and comfort undermine the values of character that led to the given empire’s creation through self-sacrifice and discipline in its initial stages, an empire increasingly grows weak and subject to destruction to forces arising inside or outside of it.

The Latter Phase of America's Power?

Has the United States entered the latter phases of the empire life cycle despite only having been independent from Britain a little over 225 years, despite still being a "young nation"? Does America today have the same values or cultural developments that past empires such as Rome had before they fell? For example, who are the nation’s heroes, and what does their selection indicate about the values of its people? Today, in America people admire and pursue avidly news (i.e., gossip) on celebrities such as sports stars, singers, actors, and musicians. Now Glubb Pasha notes that the heroes of an empire’s leaders and people change over time as their values do. Soldiers, builders, pioneers, and explorers are admired in the initial stages of the empire life cycle. Successful businessmen and entrepreneurs are held up for admiration during the ages of commerce and affluence (cf. the values of prudence, saving, and foresight found in the Horatio Alger stories promoted by late nineteenth-century middle class Americans). The intellectuals and academics are also increasingly admired during the age of intellect.

During the last stages of decadence and decline, an empire’s people often admire and emulate the athletes, musicians, and actors generally regardless of how corrupt their private lives are. Remarkably, Glubb Pasha found in tenth-century Baghdad, during the Arab Abbasid Empire’s decline, writers complained about the corrupting influence of singers of erotic songs on the young people! How different is the America of recent decades, whether the target of conservatives was Elvis, the Beatles, Ozzy Osbourne, or Marilyn Manson? The immense attachment people have to the (rock) music they love, regardless of its often spiritually rotten lyrical content (including sometimes even positive Satanic allusions), encourages them to esteem people whose lifestyle is truly degenerate because of frequent drug use and casual sex.

Features of a Declining Empire

More generally, what are some common features of an empire’s culture in its declining period? Glubb Pasha and Bernard Goetz in "When the Empire Strikes Out" (which usefully summarizes the former’s work) describe developments such as the following:

Now a sharp-eyed skeptical critic may ask about why it’s legitimate to cite evidence of family disintegration or of other societal decline in Rome centuries before it fell. Did the Christianization of the Empire after Constantine proclaimed the Edict of Milan granting Christianity toleration (313 A.D.) help improve Rome’s family life or reform the values of its governing officials?

True, the small minority that was Catholic Christian (perhaps 10% of the Roman population when the Peace of the Church came) had to be a largely dedicated lot because of the waves of persecution that periodically struck the Church. But in the mass conversions that came in the fourth and fifth centuries, many of these people were far less committed; they changed their personal behavior little if any at all. One Christian priest in the mid-fifth century, Salvian, complained about people who were Christian in name only, such as the carousing members of the elite whose behavior hardly differed from that found at the court of Nero some four centuries earlier: "Something still remained to them of their property, but nothing of their character. They reclined at feasts, forgetful of their honor, forgetting justice, forgetting their faith and the name they bore. There were the leaders of the state, gorged with food, dissolute from winebibbing, wild with shouting, giddy with revelry, completely out of their senses, or rather, since this was their usual condition, precisely in their senses."

In short, the superficial Christianization (which, incidentally, included the Church compromising by adopting various pagan beliefs and practices) of the Roman Empire before its collapse didn’t seriously improve the moral condition of Rome’s leaders and masses, thus leaving the pre-existing ominous cultural trends in place.

Decadence and Decline?

When we examine this list of indicators of an empire’s cultural and moral decline, does anybody really think the United States hasn’t entered the stages of decadence and decline? True, in the past decade or so, the tidal wave of social and cultural decline unleashed by the 1960’s in America has ebbed some, as the rates of abortion, divorce, illegitimate births, drug abuse, welfare dependency, and violent crime either have declined or have gone up much more slowly. Furthermore, some of indicators of decline aren’t all bad. Some immigration is good, for often it amounts to a "brain drain" from Third World countries that benefits the United States economically. And, indeed, the United States historically is a melting pot nation of immigrants.

Nevertheless, the present influx of immigrants, legal or illegal, equal in impact to the wave that arrived at America’s shores at the turn of the previous century, are far more apt to be a divisive force because the intelligentsia has adopted multiculturalism as an ideal, not assimilation as it was a hundred years ago. Today, multiculturalism is the ideology underlying a potentially ultimate political Balkanization (cf., the liberal historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.’s "The Disuniting of America"), such as if and when a Spanish-speaking majority inhabits the American southwest. Then, of course, many women with young children, or older ones without any children at home, have to work full-time because ex-husbands (or ex-boyfriends) dump them in order to escape the burdens of fatherhood or to trade in their old wife for a younger model. And it’s clearly better for young single women or even older widows who haven’t reached retirement age to work outside the home rather than be dependent on handouts from their families or the government. But although the traditional sexual division of labor, of men working outside the home and women working inside it, may appear to be rather arbitrary, discarding it or reversing it simply won’t work for most of society in the long run because of the innately different personalities of men and women.

In a process that he has dubbed "sexual suicide," the sociologist George Gilder in "Men and Marriage" describes how the feminist values presently enshrined in our culture lead to demographic decline. For as women increasingly feel the need to both bring home the bacon and to fry it up in a pan, the men correspondingly feel useless and feel free to neglect more their family and work responsibilities.

Given the historical knowledge of Sir John Glubb Pasha’s "The Fate of Empires" and how its insights can be applied to America (and other English-speaking nations, including Britain), how should true Christians react?

We have to redouble our efforts to warn the world’s nations (Matthew 24:14), especially those largely inhabited by the descendants of the tribe of Joseph (cf. Ezekiel 33:1-9), about their fate if they don’t repent. We ourselves have to avoid letting our own sense of loyalty to our nations blind us to how much displeasure God has in our nations’ sins and how they will be punished in years to come. By knowing history better, we can project our likely national futures better, which fits the observation of the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill:

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