Amicus Dei

Now that we’re accustomed to serial crises — bank failures, oil prices, food contamination, and so on — I thought I’d roll all this together into one post about the collapse of society as we know it.  Which actually makes for some thought-provoking reading.  If you’re interested in how this might play out in the 21st century, read Joseph Tainter’s The Collapse of Complex Societies.

Tainter is head of the Department of Environment and Society at Utah State University, and writes for an archaeological crowd.  The Collapse of Complex Societies is not a pop culture book, but a textbook (which explains both the price and Cambridge Press as publisher).  Be forewarned that this is not easy slogging, but Tainter meticulously outlines the reasons for the study of societal collapse (we’re all interested in why other societies failed so we can avoid the same fate), and debunks the common easy explanations of societal collapse, such as resource depletion, catastrophes, insufficient response to circumstances, intruders, social dysfunction, and so forth.

Collapse of a society, according to Tainter, is the result of diminishing returns of social complexity.  This is seen primarily in the amount of energy required to maintain a society at its current level of complexity.  Collapse occurs when a society simplifies its complexity, which can be dramatic or mundane.

Tainter spends a lot of time focused on ancient Rome because we have extant records in great detail.  A spiral of rising taxes, territorial expansion, governmental crackdown, and imperial capriciousness continues until of its own weight (inability to maintain its complexity) the Western Roman Empire collapses for good.  Of course, with a little help from the barbarian hoards, but Tainter contends collapse would have occurred anyway.

Follow up Tainter with Strauss and Howe’s book, The Fourth Turning.    Strauss and Howe contend that the Millennial generation will face “the fourth turning” as a natural part of a cultural cycle here in the United States.  This fourth turning is a crisis of great proportion and will challenge the Millennials to become a new version of “the greatest generation.”  Makes for fascinating reading in light of Tainter’s argument about the diminishing returns of maintaining increasing complexity in a society.

Throw Kuntsler’s book, The Long Emergency, and Zakaria’s book, The Post American World, into the mix and a case can be made for an impending societal “adjustment” here in the US that will transform the future of this nation.  What implications will these converging theories have for communities of faith in the future?  That’s another interesting question that I don’t see anyone addressing?  - Amicus Dei