The five stages of civilisation
One of my occasional pieces where I take big ideas and try to make sense of them in a small format. This poster represents my take on how societies rise and fall: broadly the 50-80 year timescale of the long-term debt cycle and the 500-year sweep of the average civilisation. Its thesis: individual people of course affect events, but the broad sweep of history doesn’t change, because human nature doesn’t.
“Every civilisation carries the seeds of its own destruction, and the same cycle shows in them all. The Republic is born, flourishes, decays into plutocracy, and is captured by the shoemaker whom the mercenaries and millionaires make into a king. The people invent their oppressors, and the oppressors serve the function for which they are invented.” – Mark Twain
And in case you’re wondering: The UK is entering Stage 4, with the USA heading for Stage 5 and much of the EU already there. China is zooming through an exhilarating Stage 2 (note: economic freedom and political freedom aren’t the same thing) with much of Asia following; Japan is in lifeless Stage 3. Much of the global South is at Stage 1; one possible outcome for the next few decades is depopulation due to climate change, with the southern hemisphere basically uninhabited.
Chris does Content 