Reynolds Speaks on Warning Signs of Cultural Collapse and How to Avoid Collapse
Posted Apr 4, 2017
Last night, John Mark Reynolds, the President of Saint Constantine College, spoke on “The Fall of Russia and the Warning Signs for the U.S.” Reynolds believes that by examining cultural trends that one can predict the future. Through his analysis of the fall of Tsarist Russia, he identified six signs of a collapse of a culture. He believes that a leadership class out of touch with populace combined with intellectuals who just attack a system and a nominal religious belief among the populace leads to a rise of the occult and irrationality. If there are no progressive conservatives to maintain and improve the system, external pressures could bring the collapse of the old regime. The solution to cultural collapse is the middle taking the best of the extreme left and right to create a more sustainable system.
Reynolds, a philosopher, is the President of Saint Constantine School/College in Houston, TX. Prior to starting this great books college, he was the founder of the Torrey Honors Institute at Biola and provost of Houston Baptist University. The author of many books, his most well-known book is Between Athens and Jerusalem: An Introduction to Classical and Christian Thought. He is a frequent lecturer on ancient philosophy, the great books approach, politics, faith, and virtue. He is also a Senior Fellow of Humanities at The King’s College in New York City, and a Fellow of the Center for Science and Culture at The Discovery Institute in Seattle, WA.
Reynolds begins with several assumptions. First, he believes that we can make general cultural predictions by looking at what cultures do. This doesn’t mean that he can make specific predictions about the future but rather that general social trends can point us to things that we can expect in the future.
Second, cultures reboot every 70 years. The idea is that when there is a revolution of some sort, the influence lasts through one’s great grandchildren. The founding and second generation generally lived through the experience that shaped them which led them to create a cultural system to respond to that situation. Since that experience was real for the first two generations, they can pass those ideas to the third. However, the great grandchildren of the founding generation are skeptical of this system, question and challenge it, and seek to reboot it for the new conditions they face.
An example could be the founding generation of the Constitution in 1789 understood the struggles they faced and why they created a limited government to protect liberty. 70 years later, the founding generation’s original sin, slavery, led to the struggles of the antebellum period and the Civil War. By the end of the Civil War, the United States was dedicated to liberty and equality, based on the Declaration of Independence’s call that “all mean are created equal.” In another seventy years, the Great Depression and WWII came and led the “greatest generation” to create a new system to navigate the international world and economic prosperity at home. Today, the United States is at the end of the WWII generation’s influence and we are seeking a new domestic and global order as we deal with globalization (economic, cultural, and political).
Third, success requires the middle to muddle through the extremes of the left and right to create a new cultural and governing paradigm. We need to avoid both those who say any change is a move toward liberalism and decay and those who say we need to change for change’s sake. Every society needs the two to identify what works and doesn’t work in the current cultural system so we can keep the best of what we have while changing that which needs to be improved. Societies that collapse are those that lose either the extreme left or right. If one extreme group becomes so unpopular that it loses influence, the other extreme group takes control and destroys the country. The unfortunate fact is that if a society collapses, the poor and weak are the ones who are hurt the most. The rich can escape by moving or avoiding the chaos. Thus, all societies have an incentive to prevent societal collapse.
Based on these assumptions, he discussed the signs of collapse of a society focusing on the end of Tsarist Russia. The first sign of collapse is a leadership class that is out of touch with the young who have lost faith with the governing class. Contrary to what many believe, cultures are usually in trouble in good times. Economic success usually leads to rising aspirations that can’t be met. The mismatch between aspirations and reality causes the loss of confidence in societal institutions. While a massive reboot can cause problems, he suggests that people will follow a governing class as long as it is in their self-interest. When the governing class no longer benefits them, people will quickly move to a new order that may benefit their interests.
The second sign of collapse is the failure of the intellectuals. The failure is not a failure of the left or right but intellectuals in general if they become a parasite on the system. Intellectuals are parasites if they often attack the system without contributing to the reboot. Sometimes, intellectuals are good at pointing out the flaws. When they do this, they provide intellectual support for attacks on the system. But if they do not provide suggestions for improvement, all the focus is on the failure of the society which points to collapse.
Third, the nation has a nominal religion or people have a faith that is on auto-pilot rather than a true heart conversion. If people are Christian because they were born into the faith without an authentic faith, the collapse of the state will coincide with the collapse of the religion of the state. In Tsarist Russia, Tsar Nicholas reestablished the Patriarch as an independent force which helped contribute to a revival in the Orthodox Church but the revival was too little, too late.
Fourth, the decline in religion led people to turn toward irrationality when trouble came. Religion is about seeking truth and promoting virtue so when we turn from religion, societies sometimes try to shut down those who don’t agree with them in order to pursue a utopian ideal. This irrationality leads to people believing reality is based on one’s individual perspective. In current parlance, we divide ourselves into the Republican and Democratic teams and then believe something because our term believes it. This turn away from truth prevents a society from muddling through because regular/normal people can no longer see the truth or believe that there is truth.
Fifth, the society sees the death or progressive conservatives/conservative progressives. This term is not meant to be an oxymoron. Progressive conservatives are those who see the problems in the system and try to change them while keeping the best of the old system. When these individuals can no longer be heard in a society, the society will collapse as the society seeks a utopian ideal (think French or Russian Revolution).
Sixth, external pressures/existential crises leads to a challenge to the existing order that causes its collapse. Too often in this situation, the extreme right collapses, the middle becomes the left and tries to outbid the far left and fails. The rise of radical intellectuals point to the middle’s support of the old system and proposes a utopia which eventually hurts many innocents. In Tsarist Russia, there were many indicators that Russia was moving toward a constitutional democracy like Britain. While Tsarist Russia could survive WWI, other crises led to its collapse. Originally, the moderates took power with Kerensky who was eventually replaced by the radical Vladimir Lenin. Lenin then eliminated all opposition.
The signs of all these factors coming together at one time can be seen in several ways. First, the left and right adopt the mantra of “by all means necessary.” By the time they reach that point, they are different than when they began and the reboot can go awry. The key for a society to survive is for the middle to persist. The middle doesn’t need to create a utopia, because that is impossible, but instead they need to create beauty wherever they are. Second, society is in trouble when no one cares about hypocrisy anymore. People can and should change their mind when new information is presented but people who change their mind from one idea to the next with no real reason for change are the kinds of hypocrites that damage a society. For example, pundits who change everything they have said because a new person comes to town and they move toward that person for money or power are a sign of trouble. Third, a society will suffer if sarcasm and cynicism become the default of many people, especially the young. The cynicism in one area is not a problem unless it accumulates in many areas. Then the cynicism is so great that no one is willing to die for something. If they have no principles, anything goes, the society collapses, and everyone will suffer.
He ended saying that we don’t have to “win,” we just need to not leave because despair kills a society. Everyone needs to try to make a difference. If enough people try, the society will survive. It will reboot to adapt to the changing times but the reboot will not be catastrophic like Soviet Russia and the French Revolution. We need to remember that because a society struggles, that does not mean it will collapse. The society can change.
Reynolds ended talking about the example of Elizabeth Romanov, the sister of the Empress who was known for her beauty and charitable works for the poor. After Elizabeth’s husband was assassinated in 1909, she forgave the assassin and sought his pardon. She also became a nun and went to the poorest parts of Moscow and ministered to them creating the Mary and Martha convent. Seeing the threat, Lenin ordered the assassination of Elizabeth in 1918 because she could reboot the culture in a way that threatened his aim. Elizabeth, her family, and other nuns who worked with her were thrown down a mine shaft with grenades chasing after them. Farmers who went to the mine shaft later heard her praying. When they eventually went down to get her body, she had tore her nun’s habit to bandage the wounds of others. The farmers took her body to Jerusalem where she could be buried in peace. Yet, her work touched so many people that people remembered her throughout the Communist regime and the Soviets could never eliminate the convent. Today, the Soviet Â鶹ÊÓƵ no longer survives but the Mary and Martha convent still remains. She tried but not enough did and the Soviets took over. If enough try today, we can successfully reboot the American culture and adapt to our new circumstances.