palani
29th September 2012, 05:49 AM
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.
.
.
.
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.
.
.
.
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.
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.
.
.
.
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.
.
.
.
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.