Rise and Fall of Great Civilizations

I love the quote "Those who Ignore History are Destined to Repeat it".

I mentioned in a previous post a short review of the movie Swing Vote that I saw earlier in the month. The heroine in the movie made a compelling speech with portions of the commentary below. It has stayed with me ever since.

Culture not only provides tools for physical survival, but it is also the source with which people find purpose and meaning for their actions. Purpose and meaning are so central to human existence that their flow is prominent in the rise and their ebb equally prominent in the fall of all great civilizations of the past. These civilizations seem to have gone through identical stages (Ruggerio, 1994) as they arose:

1). From Enslavement towards spiritual faith.

2). From spiritual faith to courage, tenacity and inspiration in the face of
adversity.

3). From courageous triumph over adversity to liberty and freedom.

4). From freedom into abundance and prosperty.

And, then amid the erosion of meaning and purpose, they descended:

1). From abundance toward greed and selfishness.

2). From greed and selfishness into complacency and passivity.

3). From complacency to apathy.

4). From apathy into helplessness and dependency.

5). From helplessness and dependency, the cycle is completed with a return to
enslavement.

As this history reveals, when culture loses its social and spiritual efficacy, it places the community as a whole and its individual members at risk in many ways.

Back to my earlier post on God and Politics, this is why we need to solidify our spiritual center.