| ------------ | Sir Arnold Toynbee, an Oxford-University educated English historian
who taught for years at the University of London, came to a most startling
and foreboding conclusion fifty years ago. In his now famed and magisterial
twelve-volume analysis of the rise and fall of world civilizations entitled,
A Study of History.
He painstakingly analyzes the histories of 21 different world civilizations from ancient Rome to imperial China to Babylon to the Greeks to the Aztecs to the Japanese. And on that basis he writes the 712 pages of volume five, which bears the subtitle, "The Disintegrations of Civilizations." Oxford University Press, 1974 1."schism [a breakage or fracture] of the soul." Cultural suicide - IS IT HAPPENING AGAIN? 2."truancy," Which is another word for "escapism," a mental
running away from society's problems by retreating into a world of distraction
and entertainment. The popularity of extreme sports,
3."sense of drift," "in which people yield to a meaningless determinism [nothing we do can make a difference now, fate has decreed it], as if their efforts do not matter and as if they have no control over their lives." 4."sense of sin," a self-loathing and guilt that come from civilization's moral abandon. 5."sense of promiscuity" that infiltrated a dying society--which is not meant so much in the sexual sense--but rather describes a state of mind that indiscriminately accepts anything and everything in an effort to find meaning and perhaps delay the impending doom. 6."abandon"- -"a state of mind that accepts antinomianism [old
English word for lawlessness] ...as a substitute for creativeness." (p.399)
A rank disregard of morality, the rules of society, the
The sequence of
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