Prophets of Doom: A review
Cartoon by Crid.
PROPHETS OF DOOM (Imprint Academic, September 2023) by Dr Neema Parvini looks at thinkers who have opposed Enlightenment view of history as linear. The 12 writers selected advanced different theories about societal (and even civilisational) cycles of rise and decline. The cyclical view of history states that progress (in civilisational terms) is an illusion. The Prophets of Doom are Giambattista Vico, Thomas Carlyle, Oswald Spengler, Arnold Toynbee, Arthur de Gobineau, Brooks Adams, Julius Evola, John Bagot Glubb, Pitirim Sorokin, Joseph Tainter and Peter Turchin.
Vico sets out a cycle of decline, but one that has linear qualities. He wrote that the age of men leads to the “Barbarism of Reflection”, where scientism and rationalism make men insensitive to social duty and religious observance. Vico predicts the social atomisation of our era. Carlyle is a prophet of decline and degradation, decrying the effects of industrialisation. Carlyle’s Great Man theory of history may not be cyclical but it is antithetical to the incrementalist progressive view that there are no exceptional individuals, only gradations of privilege and opportunity.
The racial theories of de Gobineau have seen him marginalised to a degree that he is relegated to footnotes in studies of National Socialism. For de Gobineau, racial conflict is the greatest driver of civilisational change; democracy and homogenisation sap the racial vitality, hence racism is an expression of aristocratic character. He is as pessimistic as it is possible to get.
Adams put forth a cyclical view of civilisations, with regular rises and falls caused by the human spirit in these societies swaying between fear and greed. Fear forms a strong militaristic, patriotic society; security, then comfort, support the rise of commerce and science, where cupidity and materialism cause social decay. Spengler’s The Decline of the West, already well-known (if more by reputation than familiarity), is ably summarised here.
Sorokin’s contribution is a persisting process of fluctuation between two poles, ideational (poetic, of which two subsets: aesthetic and active) and sensate (rational). The active ideational figure is the ruler and warrior; the aesthetic ideational man is the priest and monk. Toynbee’s massive and contradictory A Study of History (1933-54, 1959, 1961) is included. Toynbee set his task to be an empirical comparative history of different civilisations, more closely recounting specific societal developments in these nations. He did not see the course of history as necessarily entropic.
Revolt Against the Modern World (1934) is another well-known text, this one by Evola. Reaching deep in pre-history, referring to religions and esoteric knowledge of all eras, Evola sets out recurrent cycles, each a decline from the preceding one. British soldier Sir John Bagot Glubb’s contribution is a history of empires, seen from the perspective of the Arab experience. American academic Joseph Tainter uses economic analysis to underpin his theory of societal collapse and Peter Turchin uses Demographic-Structural Theory (DST) to create a Metaethnic Frontier Theory that calculates the will of an ethnically consistent elite to resist outside elites capable of toppling advanced civilisations.
Prophets of Doom is an essential read for all thinking dissenters.
