By Tim McMillan for The Debrief
September 24, 2021 – From the very moment humans started grouping in complex centralized societies, people became obsessed with the idea of civilization’s collapse.
In fact, the destruction, salvation, and
rebirth of society are some of the central tenets of virtually every major
organized religion. Likewise, thanks to the psychological principle of recency,
every generation tends to believe it will be the one that has to face Armageddon.
In fairness, if history is any
indication, indeed, every civilization is inevitably bound for destruction.
Although both modern nations vastly differ from their ancient counterparts,
China and Egypt are notable examples of societies that recovered from
collapse.
In the nearly 6,000-year-old known
history of civilization, even the mightiest of nations don’t tend to last that
comparably long.
The prevailing belief is the Roman
Empire was one of the longest-lasting civilizations of all time. However, the
1,622-year reign of power often attributed to the Romans includes the total
span of the Western Roman and Byzantine Empires. The “classic” Roman Empire,
based around Rome with Julius Caesar, actually fell in 476 A.D. after only 499
years.
And while there are plenty of examples
of societies enduring hundreds, in some cases thousands, of years, a
civilization’s collapse tends to be pretty swift. Take, for example, the
Western Roman Empire. The classical Romans went from controlling an area nearly
the size of the United States in 390 A.D. to ceasing to exist in a mere
86-years.
Throughout the centuries, as societies
have risen and fallen, scholars have simultaneously pondered what causes a
civilization to fall into ruin.
Having spent decades studying 19 past
major civilizations, one of the early 20th Century’s foremost experts on
international relations, British historian Arnold J. Toynbee concluded, “Great
civilizations are not murdered. They commit suicide.”
Most modern historians and
anthropologists believe Toynbee was partially correct, generally agreeing that
civilizations collapse due to a complex and interconnected mix of internal and
external factors.
These factors include climatic
instability, ecological degradation, financial and political inequality,
economic complexity, and menacingly uncontrollable external forces like natural
disasters, plagues, or wars.
Conversely, some scholars suggest that
no civilization can withstand the test of time. In this vein, Dr. Luke Kemp of
the Center for the study
of Existential Risk argues that civilizations are just complex
systems, bound by the same theory of “normal accidents” that regularly cause
failure in complex technological systems.
Research by evolutionary biologist Dr.
Indre Zliobaite suggests extinction is a persistent threat whenever a species
has to constantly fight for survival amongst numerous competitors and within a
changing environment. Dr. Zliobaite and her colleagues call this perennial
struggle for survival the “Red
Queen Effect.”
So while there is no single agreed-upon
theory for why civilizations collapse, The Debrief decided to
examine the road to collapse for the “2021
Top 10 Most Powerful Nations,” according to U.S. News and World Report and
the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Each nation was judged on how well it
currently ranks in ten factors generally accepted as influencing a society’s
downfall. These factors were:
- Susceptibility
to Climate Change, based on the Global
Climate Risk Index.
- Ecological
Degradation according to the Environmental
Performance Index.
- Equality
of Wealth according to the Gini
Index.
- Political
Equality and Social Freedoms based
on the Freedom
House, Freedom Index.
- Economic
Complexity Index, which measures the current
state of a country’s productive knowledge by the Growth Lab at Harvard
University’s Center for International Development.
- Response
to National Crisis, by examining the disparity
between a nation’s GDP from the third quarter of 2020 and spring of 2020
at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Status
of National Defense, according to Global
Firepower’s 2021 Military Strength Ranking.
- Political
Stability based on Global
Economy’s Political Stability Index.
- Availability
of Natural Resources, according to The
Changing Wealth of Nations: Measuring Sustainable Development in the New
Millennium report by the World Bank.
- Innovation,
based on the number of patent applications filed by a nation to the World
Intellectual Property Organization.
Each country was then given an overall
raw score based on the collective scores in these individual categories.
So without further ado, here is The
Debrief’s list of the most powerful nations that could be most likely
headed for collapse. [Listed from
tenth most likely to fail down to first to likely
10 Japan
9 South Korea
8 United Kingdom (tied)
8 USA (tied)
6 Germany
5 France
4 China
3 Russia
2 United Arab Emirates
1 Saudi Arabia
https://thedebrief.org/10-modern-civilizations-on-the-road-to-collapse/
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