Quigley Comments From 1972

[palani]

http://www.carrollquigley.net/Lectures/General_Crises_in_Civilizations.htm


The Age of Conflict of any civilization can be identified by the fact that it has four characteristics different from the four characteristics of the Age of Expansion. These four indicators are: (a) decreasing rate of expansion; (b) increasing class-conflicts; (c) increasing imperialist wars among the political units which make up most civilizations; and (d) growing irrationality. As we shall see in a moment, other characteristics are also to be found in an Age of General Crisis, which help to identify it.
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This process of the institutionalization of organizations is the chief cause of the decreasing rate of expansion and of class and group conflicts as Stage III of any civilization passes into Stage IV. Somewhat more remotely it is also the chief cause in the onset of imperialist wars.
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In the Age of Conflict this culminates in a great effort to fuse into a single system three quite distinct social organizations: the community, the state, and the civilization itself. The last two of these usually do reach a point where they obtain coterminous boundaries (as a Universal Empire), but the effort to pretend that this huge social aggregate is a community is always a failure.

[Hatha Sunahara]

Quigley said that he was allowed access to some of the written references of TPTB. I would therefore assume that he wrote this lecture from information and a viewpoint that the vast majority of us do not have access to. I've read a few parts of his book Tragedy and Hope. My impression of that was that TPTB have had the best, most loyal scholars, people such as Quigley, looking into the 'causes' of history--from the standpoint of learning lessons from it that would help them shape human history by using whatever means were at their disposal. I've categorized his work as the 'foundations and principles of social engineering'. Quigley's work captures the essence of the rational use of power--based on the knowledge of human interactions--of individuals, groups, and institutions. His work captures the 'real' history of the world--not the crap they feed us in the public school systems that they call history.

Bill Clinton claims that Quigley was his mentor. I believe him. Clinton has a sense for power.

The lecture in the link is an excellent summary of what we see today. Apparently we cannot avoid these death throes of our civilization. The best we can do is to teach ourselves how the new powers that will inherit this earth --the Chinese most especially view their power, and how they think. It is a foregone conclusion that our current Powers that Be will lose that status shortly, but not before a titanic struggle with the forces that are causing them to disintegrate. They have lost the support of the people. The only way to get it back temporarily and buy time for themselves is to wage endless war. That too will end. Our problem is to survive their death throes. That will require some spiritual resources. We will see who is endowed with them as this drama unfolds.


Hatha