6.12.2011 THE RISE AND FALL OF CIVILIZATIONS

terrific energy is expended - civilizations are built up - excellent institutions devised; but each time something goes wrong. some fatal flaw always brings the selfish and cruel people to the top and it all slides back into misery and ruin. c.s. lewis

..socialogists and historians have attempted to unlock the keys of this rise and fall pattern.

for his 1934 classic work, sex and culture, british anthropologist j.d. unwin studied 80 societies, analyzing their cultural beliefs and practices, especially as related to sex and marriage. this study included the primitive societis of history and his own time, as well as ancient cultures likde the sumerians, babylonians, persians, greeks, romans, ango-saxons, english and others.

unwin examined the 'cultual conditin' of these societies, by which he meant the developmental status and energy they manifested. was the culture growing - demonstrating what he called 'expansive energy' - and then, later in its history, was it improving what it had built - what he called 'productive energy'.

whether or not a society had moved from an uncivilized state to a civilized state, and whether it was manifesting creative energy, was a direct product, unwin said, of how sexually permissive the culture was. he defined this by identifying various degrees of 'sexual opportunity'. the more sexual opportunity a society's people had - that is , the fewer restraints placed upon sexual habits - the less energetic it would be.

penalies for breaching the moral code might take the form of cultural disapproval, punishment, banishment, or even death. together the variations of social reproach limited sexual opportunity.

these restraints were mormally tied to marriage and the historical evidence showed that absolutely monogamous cultures were the strongest.

'in the records of history, indeed, there is no example of a society displaying great energy for any appreciable period unless it has been absolutely monogamous', unwin said. 'moreover, i do not know of a case in which an absolutely monogamous society has failed to display great energy'.

on the positive side of this theory, unwin argued that limiting sexual opportunity in a societ allowed energy to be directed toward creative ends. creativity required 'sacrifices in the gratification of innate desires', he said.

'the placing of a compulsory check upon the sexual impulses, that is , a limitation of sexual opportunity, produces thought, reflection and energy', unwin insisted.

on the negative side, however, was what happened when a people began to transgress its own moral codes - when sexual opportunity began to be extended in both premarital and extra-marital sexual freedom. across the board, unwin found, such cultures began to decay.

in his 1956 work, the american sex revolution, pitirim a. sorokin, who founded the sociology department at harvard university, examined this phenomenon as well. he explained: 'since a disorderly sexual life tends to undermine the physical and mental health, the morality and the creativity of its devotees, it has a similar effect upon a society that is composed largely of profligates. and the greater the number of profligates and the more debached their behavior, the graver are the consequences for the whole society. and if sexual anarchists compose any considerable proportion of its membership, they eventually destroy the society itself'.

..when energy is expended outwardly, self-discipline if exerted to achieve the envisioned goals. it is easy to gratify every desire immediately, but it takes self-control to corral those desires and channel them in ways that benefit society. that means the society that is restricting its desires and keeping them in their proper place is likely to also possess the self-discipline to work in the lab to develop a better light bulb rather than watch movies every night.

..both unwin and sorokin noted that history is filled with remarkably consistent manifestations of this process of corruption.

afa journal, june 2011