The degradation of the modern American culture, including its 2008 financial and economic crisis, and the modern rejuvenation of Asian cultures are best understood within the context of 4,000 years of human history. Such are the consequences of the dynamics of cultural change, responding to societal variables of wealth, energy, and human values. This work provides a unique and formidable science-based framework for civilization development that complements and enhances the work of preeminent historians and sociologists. Accordingly, the foundation for societal progress is placed on restrictive scientific definitions, principles, and concepts of energy and wealth consumption, rather than solely on behavioral perspectives derived from empirical data and historical events. Society's dynamic forces are linked to the cultural deterioration and collapse of Ancient Greece and Rome, Imperial Spain, and Great Britain. Specific chapters are devoted to stagnation of Western civilization, Asian and Islamic resurgence, deterioration of the American culture, and ecological degradation of North America's largest estuary, the Chesapeake Bay; collateral damage of socio-economic profitability. The characteristics of America's current cultural deterioration parallel those of previous great civilizations. These include abuse of wealth and energy resources; excessive individual and national debt; lack of cultural civility, discipline, integrity, and ethics; unaffordable militarism, escalating income and wealth disparities; unresolved crises in health care and public education; and stultifying cultural complexity and bureaucracy. Themes include the underlying principles responsible for the eventual deterioration of all known civilizations; the basis for the recurring, sequential periodicity of civilization success and failure; and the roles and significance of militarism and religion in civilization growth, decay, and rebirth; Addres
Wealth, Energy, and Human Values
The Dynamics of Decaying Civilizations from Ancient Greece to AmericaBy Thomas P. WallaceAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2009 Thomas P. Wallace, Ph.D.
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4389-7627-3Contents
Foreword: The Inevitable Exhaustion of Civilizations................................................................................ixPreface: The Mysteries of Decaying Civilizations: A Scientific Perspective.........................................................xvChapter 1 The Role of Energy in Society's Organizational and Functional Systems.....................................................1Chapter 2 Wealth, Energy, and Science-based Economics...............................................................................23Chapter 3 The Driving Force of Cultural Complexity and Disorder.....................................................................50Chapter 4 Socio-economics: A Wealth-Energy Based Perspective........................................................................74Chapter 5 Socio-economic Transformations: Labor Power and Social Energy.............................................................98Chapter 6 The Mechanisms and Energetics of the Human Social Order...................................................................129Chapter 7 The Characteristics and Dynamics of Sociocultural Transitions.............................................................163Chapter 8 Periodicity of Human Advancement: Ancient Greece to the Twenty-First Century..............................................191Chapter 9 Properties and Characteristics of Sociocultural Stagnation................................................................229Chapter 10 Ecological Ramifications of Modern Socioeconomic Progress: Chesapeake Bay and the World's Oceans..........................270Chapter 11 Sociopolitical Evolution of Economic Power: The Stagnation of Western Civilization........................................290Chapter 12 Degradation of the American Culture: Abuse of Founding Principles.........................................................319Chapter 13 Shifting Twenty-First-Century Civilization Patterns: The Asian and Islamic Resurgence.....................................404Chapter 14 The Mechanistic-Thermodynamic Paradigm: A Unifying Perspective of Civilization Prosperity and Failure.....................440Appendix A The Fundamentals of Thermodynamics Applied to Socioeconomics..............................................................469
Chapter One
The Role of Energy in Society's Organizational and Functional Systems
"The Civilization is the inevitable destiny of the Culture, and in this principle we obtain the viewpoint from which the deepest and gravest problems of historical morphology become capable of solution. Civilizations are the most external and artificial states of which a species of developed humanity is capable. They are a conclusion, the thing-become succeeding the thing-becoming, death following life, rigidity following expansion, intellectual age and the stone-built, petrifying world-city following mother-earth and the spiritual childhood of Doric and Gothic. They are an end, irrevocable, yet by inward necessity reached again and again." Oswald Spengler
A multidisciplinary review of the literature regarding the evolution of societies, cultures, civilizations, and empires reveals common patterns of formation, growth, maturation, and eventual decline. Historians, political economists, sociologists, cultural anthropologists, and psychologists offer various interpretations and rationales for historic events and cultural attitudes, behaviors, and transformations. However, there is universal agreement that something appears to occur within mature civilizations that ultimately and significantly reduces their power, wealth, and global stature. The literature is abundant with theories, models, and rationalizations regarding the fates of past civilizations including debates as to if, and when, their destiny may appropriately be described as disintegration, stagnation, collapse, or death. Generally, authors attribute the historically observed sequence from a society's genesis to growth followed by decline as a consequence of people's inherent human instincts and cultural influences in an evolutionary process referred to as a sociocultural transition. However, some of the same authors admit that a complete and satisfying understanding of why successful civilizations ultimately decline is lacking and has not been revealed from social science approaches.
Additionally, authors tracing the evolution of cultural transitions employ the descriptive phrase cultural dynamics, but with rare exception, such literature is devoid of appropriate models that mention a driving force or an energy source necessary to energize such dynamics. The Encarta Dictionary defines "dynamics" as "the forces that tend to produce activity and change in any situation or sphere of existence." Basic physics, as well as intuition, tells us that a force requires an energy source. One wonders what such authors view as the energy source of the forces they refer to as responsible for the dynamic functions of a culture. Perhaps, it is simply a restrictive view of the energy humans absorb by consuming food and the dynamics involved in their daily activities implementing impulses of human nature.
As will be demonstrated, a thermodynamic-based economic model identifies the dynamics that drive all human existence including the economic, social, and political activities of a society. Such a model must employ strict science-based definitions of national wealth, wealth-energy resources, and related financial and economic parameters and must not violate the laws of thermodynamics. The activity and change resulting from these societal dynamics are the consequence of an almost-infinite number of specific mechanisms and conditions representing society's operational functions. It is instructive to consider a small-scale analogy of a chemical reaction to societal functional processes of existence (e.g., the complex biochemical process of photosynthesis). Such chemical processes consist of many sequential interrelated reaction mechanisms, occurring over time, under various potential sets of conditions. Depending on the nature of the specific reactants and conditions, desirable and undesirable products may be realized, with each potentially producing additional multiple products, thereby propagating a continuous multi-step process. Such mechanisms are fueled by some form of internal or external energy and conform to the laws of thermodynamics. This analogy will be more fully developed in a later chapter in conjunction with a model for civilization development.
Joseph Tainter, in The Collapse of Complex Societies, notes the mystery that surrounds the historic decline of all known civilizations: "Collapse is a recurrent feature of human societies, and indeed it is this fact that makes it worthwhile to explore a general explanation." Further, he states: "Explanations of collapse have tended to be ad hoc, pertaining only to one or a few societies, so that a general understanding remains elusive." The "general explanation" and "understanding" that "remain elusive" are due to a lack of recognition of the role wealth- energy resources play in providing the dynamics that drive the day- to-day functions of a society. More specifically, the second law of thermodynamics, the entropy concept, is the basis for why "collapse is a recurrent feature of human society," and this perspective will be fully explored in later chapters.
Leslie White emphasizes the necessity of available energy to drive cultural systems and, in general, recognizes the fundamental role of thermodynamics in the processes of a society:
Cultural systems, like all material systems, are thermodynamic systems. Their existence and operation require energy. Every cultural event ... involves the expenditure of energy.
It is noteworthy that only when the required amount of wealth-energy resources are available to provide the required dynamics for a given societal function can human judgments, behavior, and capabilities have a role in initiating a process mechanism and proceeding to achieve specific outcomes. Furthermore, the laws of thermodynamics are rules that control and restrict society's attempts to consume Mother Nature's resources in the pursuit of socioeconomic objectives.
While it is obviously useful to have historians and cultural anthropologists report observed social patterns and historical events for understanding, analyses, and for future projections, such literature does not provide a fundamental explanation for the inevitable decline of past civilizations. However, a thermodynamic-based economic model incorporating the mechanistic-thermodynamic paradigm properly represents a social order as it consumes wealth-energy resources. This constitutes the basis for the inevitable decline in the rate of socioeconomic progress, an inevitable thermodynamic consequence of the processes of cultural existence that generates by-products of costly and disruptive societal complexity and disorder. This will be defined as the societal entropy production effect, which will be developed further in a later chapter. Interestingly, this concept is conceptually consistent with, and supportive of, the hypothesis of economist Joseph Schumpeter that mature economies are destroyed by their own success.
The capitalist process not only destroys its own institutional framework but it also creates the conditions for another. Destruction may not be the right word after all. Perhaps I should have spoken of transformation.... In the end there is not so much difference as one might think between saying that the decay of capitalism is due to its success and saying that it is due to its failure.
(Note: This quote may bring to mind the analogy offered in the Foreword of a car battery's internal chemical system deteriorating as it accomplishes useful work of starting the car engine. The battery's ultimate failure is also due to its success!)
Schumpeter, in effect, describes an inherent property of a declining socioeconomic system as characteristic of its maturity. Other authors attribute cultural disintegration and collapse to the theory of faulty behavior and failure to adapt to increasingly unstable social and economic conditions (i.e., a culture of endlessly expanding complexity and bureaucracies). A more precise description, consistent with Schumpeter's view that "the decay of capitalism is due to its success," is a human inability to contend with the inherent accumulation of negative elements of out-of-control, irresolvable social, economic, and political by-products of a successful civilization. In actuality, Schumpeter is reacting to the accumulated societal entropy production reaching an intolerable level, precipitating a significant reduction in socioeconomic progress and resulting in what Toynbee refers to as cultural "breakdown" leading to "stagnation." In order to fully develop the important linkages among the works of Schumpeter, Toynbee, Sorokin, and others, the historical development of a society's creation of organizational and functional systems will be reviewed and related to the mechanistic-thermodynamic paradigm.
Cultural development, based on the creation of organizational and functional systems, is often characterized by a variety of conflicting terminology and definitions. Some authors of the civilization studies literature devote many printed pages to painstakingly providing such definitions with supporting rationale. Unfortunately for the reader, such definitions often lack the necessary scientific basis and the precision of mathematics, thus providing inadequate conceptual design for the nature and complexity of the particular matter being discussed. Precise, science-based definitions will be emphasized as concepts and models are developed in this work. This point is illustrated by the definitions and discussions of the concepts of society, culture, empire, civilization, and, most significantly, the laws of nature that apply to the processes of energy consumption.
The generic term society will be applied to a group of people who voluntarily organize and function to achieve common purposes of survival, security, and future socioeconomic success. The term implies the existence of some form of social order, morality, common purpose, self-determination, cooperation, and self-regulation, whether describing a primitive or more advanced and mature society. Members of a society possess some degree of centrality of mission and common agenda and thus consider a societal relationship as their most promising alternative for achieving their future objectives and aspirations.
Individual decision-making related to joining and enthusiastically participating in a society is based on the attractiveness of finding unity in the anticipated relationships with others. These judgments are influenced by ideologies, issues, and objectives pertaining to religion, governance, and politics; values; socioeconomics; and the nature and quality of leadership. Additionally, individuals may define themselves and create a given social order based upon such hereditary and cultural characteristics as ethnicity, race, tribe, language, organized religion, social practices, and some form of political ideology and nationalism. The same cultural elements are also the basis for people defining who and what they oppose, which is often founded on myth, ideology, and prejudice rather than on fact, reason, fairness, and the Golden Rule.
A composite of such characteristics begins to define the cultural traits of a given society. Leslie White notes that: "Culture, the cultural process, is an interactive process; it is composed of cultural traits that interact with one another, forming new permutations, combinations, and syntheses.... Cultural systems must be explained in terms of themselves." In addition, Durkheim states that cultural traits "attract each other, repel each other, unite, divide themselves, and multiply." Thus, the inherent distinctiveness, properties, and interactions of cultural traits within a society are responsible for observed cause-and-effect phenomena whose outcomes and consequences are dependent on human decision-making. Also, ethnicity denotes a unique group of people who are perceived to possess a cultural distinctiveness, expressed by their language, art, values, literature, religion, rituals, food, etc.
Depending on circumstances, cultural traits are capable of being divisive as well as unifying. Huntington points out that people separated by ideology but united by culture may eventually come together, as in the two post-WWII Germanys, whereas societies that are united by ideology or historic circumstances, but divided by culture, as with the U.S.S.R. and Yugoslavia, may disintegrate. He projects into the future that "the most pervasive, important, and dangerous conflicts, will not be between social classes, rich and poor, or other economically defined groups, but between people belonging to different cultural entities. Tribal wars and ethnic conflicts will occur within civilizations." He also notes, citing Yugoslavia and Lebanon, that "people who share ethnicity and language but differ in religion may slaughter each other." Thus, when issues and conflicts exist within a society that embraces a deeply respected value system, the consequences will depend on current circumstances and past experiences, but more significantly on the nature and intensity of hereditary cultural traits. Thus, when culture and change clash, culture usually prevails. The long-standing internal tribal, religious, and cultural violence in the Middle East attests to the fundamental nature and realities of such primitive instincts affecting human behavior.
Individuals are exposed to their society's adopted value system early in life and ultimately adopt, reject, or modify particular elements of the value system. This is based on personal aspirations, opportunities, successes, and disappointments as well as on responses to the influences of family, peers, and other members of their society and the external world. Sorokin recognizes "three supersystems of culture": religion, philosophy, and science, representing respectively the basic distinctive mentalities of faith, reason, and senses. These are also defined in terms of the "Ethics of Principles," the "Ethics of Love," and the "Ethics of Happiness," respectively. The shifting of values as socioeconomic conditions periodically fluctuate is inherent to Sorokin's model of societal maturation, particularly as a mature civilization approaches stagnation and eventual deterioration. Thus, a society's value system is central in the design, implementation, and modification of its socioeconomic system and the associated priorities, ethics, policies, strategies, and tactics. Thereafter, based on established economic systems, corresponding social and political systems are crafted, which may or may not reflect theoretically the essence of the adopted value system. Lawrence James in The Rise and Fall of the British Empire captures the typical cultural realities resulting from the interrelationships among economic opportunity and ambition, human nature, and cultural values of the expansionist aspirations of the British Empire:
The pursuit of profit remained the most powerful driving force behind Britain's bid for North American colonies. But from the start it was closely linked to a moral imperative founded upon contemporary conceptions of divine providence and the nature of the world and its inhabitants.... Commercial advantage, private greed, and a sense of divinely directed historic destiny were intermingled and bound together ... with a high-minded moral cause.
Authors gravitate to formal definitions of culture that reflect a social order whose organization and functional systems have become more mature and complex following a genesis phase. Consequently, as a result of a sustained period of societal growth, a social order will exhibit characteristics of a more highly integrated socioeconomic and political network. Thus, a culture is an organizational unit that is more distinctive and formally organized than a primitive society. Moreover, the culture refers to characteristics of a more unified and organized human grouping or society (i.e., more substantive, complex cultural traits). Consequently, societies, cultures, civilizations, and empires exemplify and exhibit specific attitudes, behavior, and skills; distinguishing forms of music, philosophy, literature, and fine arts; and technologies, tools, and ideologies reflective of a particular societal group and its era of existence.
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