The story of civilization (Comments and quotes)

The decline of a wealthy civilization is always generated by the decline of fertility. Why a wealthy and powerful civilization can never solve the problem of low fertility, then and now?

A wealthy society is a highly integrated, highly regulated society. In such a society, prestige and wealth depend mostly on political power. Who are more likely to become upper class?  On average, those with fewer or no children can spend less effort rearing children and more effort advancing their career. As a group, people with less children are politically more powerful. Therefore, laws and regulations, which are designed by and designed for powerful people, generally favour people with less children. This is despite many children friendly legislations to give an appearance of pro fertility atmosphere in an aging society. Over time, less and less people are willing to and able to have more children. With declining fertility and aging population, the decline of a wealthy civilization becomes inevitable, then and now.

The following are some quotes from the book series. They gave more details and flavours.

1. Our Oriental Heritage (1935)

“For barbarism is always around civilization, amid it and beneath it, ready to engulf it by arms, or mass migration, or unchecked fertility. Barbarism is like the jungle; it never admits its defeat; it waits patiently for centuries to recover the territory it has lost.” (page 265)

On the fall of India to the Moguls: “The bitter lesson that may be drawn from this tragedy is that eternal vigilance is the price of civilization. A nation must love peace, but keep its powder dry.” (page 463)

On China in 1935: “No victory of arms, or tyranny of alien finance, can long suppress a nation so rich in resources and vitality. The invader will lose funds or patience before the loins of China will lose virility; within a century China will have absorbed and civilized her conquerors, and will have learned all the technique of what transiently bears the name of modern industry; roads and communications will give her unity, economy and thrift will give her funds, and a strong government will give her order and peace.” (page 823)

Comment: Loins of China has lost virility.

II. The Life of Greece (1939)

"The realization of self-government was something new in the world; life without kings had not yet been dared by any great society. Out of this proud sense of independence, individual and collective, came a powerful stimulus to every enterprise of the Greeks; it was their liberty that inspired them to incredible accomplishments in arts and letters, in science and philosophy." (p. 233)

”We have tried to show that the essential cause of the Roman conquest of Greece was the disintegration of Greek civilization from within. No great nation is ever conquered until it has destroyed itself.” (p. 659)

III. Caesar and Christ (1944)

”The new generation, having inherited world mastery, had no time or inclination to defend it; that readiness for war which had characterized the Roman landowner disappeared now that ownership was concentrated in a few families and a proletariat without stake in the country filled the slums of Rome.” (p. 90)

”Children were now luxuries which only the poor could afford.” (p. 134)

”If Rome had not engulfed so many men of alien blood in so brief a time, if she had passed all these newcomers through her schools instead of her slums, if she had treated them as men with a hundred potential excellences, if she had occasionally closed her gates to let assimilation catch up with infiltration, she might have gained new racial and literary vitality from the infusion, and might have remained a Roman Rome, the voice and citadel of the West.” (p. 366)

”Rome was not destroyed by Christianity, any more than by barbarian invasion; it was an empty shell when Christianity rose to influence and invasion came.” (p.667-668)

IV.  The Age of Faith (1950)

"Historically, the conquest destroyed the outward form of what had already inwardly decayed; it cleared away with regrettable brutality and thoroughness a system of life which, with all its gifts of order, culture, and law, had worn itself into senile debility, and had lost the powers of regeneration and growth." (p. 43)

V.   The Renaissance (1953)

“But it took more than a revival of antiquity to make the Renaissance. And first of all it took money—smelly bourgeois money: ... of careful calculations, investments and loans, of interest and dividends accumulated until surplus could be spared from the pleasures of the flesh, from the purchase of senates, signories, and mistresses, to pay a Michelangelo or a Titian to transmute wealth into beauty, and perfume a fortune with the breath of art. Money is the root of all civilization.” (p. 67-68)

He was not handsome; like most great men, he was spared this distracting handicap." (p. 185)

VI.  The Reformation (1957)

”People then, as now, were judged more by their manners than by their morals; the world forgave more readily the sins that were committed with the least vulgarity and the greatest grace. ” (p. 766)