Validity of Culture

By definition a civilization or culture must provide these efforts, if it is to succeed and prosper:

1. Ability to care for the young
2. Ability to educate required knowledge
3. Ability to pass on traditional values
4. Ability to protect national interests
5. Ability to care for the elderly

Yes, no rocket science here.  If you can not care for your young – your civilization will die.  If you can not educate your citizens – you will cease being able to care for yourselves and the culture will die.  If you can not pass on traditional values – someone else’s value will replace yours and the culture will die.  If you can not protect your national interests – you will be acquired by your neighbors and your culture will die.  If you can not protect your elderly – you will not share in their history and wisdom – thus you will not be able to acquire education, values, etc – you are already dead and just do not know it! 

Just plain common sense, of course I had to learn this for a major exam in college (politics – bleech!).  Obviously, you may already realize that today’s system of civilization, “western civilization”, does not hold to these 5 arguments.  So, there is a similar list for what will destroy a culture as well – from another test in politics I was forced to do.  However, this time it was interesting:

“The following five attributes marked Rome at its end:  first, a mounting love of show and luxury;  second, a widening gap between the very rich and the very poor;  third, an obsession with sex;  fourth, freakishness in the arts, masquerading as originality, and enthusiasms pretending to be creativity;  fifth, an increased desire to live off the state.”

Edward Gibbon, wrote this line between 1776-1788 in his book, ‘The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’.  What an interesting observation he made.  Was he correct?  Certainly, about the Roman Empire, without a question.  And you know as well as I, these five cultural conditions did not just ‘happen’ and then suddenly came the end of Rome.  Surprise!  No, it took time, it came gradually, across several generations.  But, none the less, the mightiest empire the world has ever seen, fell to a group of Visigoth invaders from central Europe.  It was not superiority of line commanders’ intellect, nor Visigoth weapon’s technology, nor did the Visigoth’s fielded a larger army, but it had to do with internal corruption within the Roman Empire itself.  The rot ran from the lowest peasant to the highest officials.

If this was what destroyed Rome, as Gibbon’s observed, then can this be true of other empires?  In other words, can we learn something here by looking at history?  Certainly, these attributes were true of the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Israelite Kingdom and all of the Persian empires.  The far flung British Empire, the 20^th century Fascist and Communist states and to an extent even China have not been exempt from these conditions.  And, they all fell due to their own internal failures as well as the predominant culture at the time of their conquests.  Apparently, with wealth and security comes the degradation of the standards for culture, morality, value of human life and then comes the end.

Sound like anybody we know?  I can think of quite a few candidates rather easily…..