Holding Up a Mirror: How Civilizations Decline

Drawing on the thesis of Pitirim Sorokin's 'Social and Cultural Dynamics' this magisterial book uses dramatic entertainment as the means of telling the story of the rise and fall of Greece and Rome and the disquieting symptoms mirrored in our own situation - hence the title. Sorokin distinguished three different phases of society - the ideational, where reality is seen as immaterial and truth attained through revelation, the idealistic, where the material world begins to be appreciated but without having authority in the realm of values; and the sensate, where materialism dominates both philosophically and in terms of the ideals of happiness. Then, writes the author, 'a wholly sensate, materialist society, in Sorokin's opnion, ultimately loses all moral restraint to the point at which crime and lawlessness make the pursuite of happiness a hollow goal'. Everything is permitted, but the society loses cohesion and, historically, is in danger of self-destructing. This carefully researched and penetrating book asks where we are going next: will we manage to self-organise into greater self-restraint through a spiritual renaissance? Or will nature help us reorder our priorities in some probably unpleasant fashion?