Immoderate Greatness

• Book: IMMODERATE GREATNESS. by William Ophuls (2012)

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Review

H.J. Spencer:

"This 116-page powerful, short book explains how a civilization’s very magnitude conspires against it to cause its downfall. Civilizations are hard-wired for self-destruction. Ophuls abstracts from the long and historical record, the six major factors that drive civilizations to defeat. He identifies the inexorable trends and claims that complex adaptive systems (like societies) are ultimately unmanageable. Societies are organisms that evolve organically; (unlike machines) they are not invented deliberately or imposed by prescription. All Civilizations travel an arc from initial success to terminal decay and ultimate collapse due to intrinsic, inescapable biophysical limits combined with an inexorable trend toward moral decay and practical failure. Because our own civilization is global, its collapse will also be global, as well as uniquely devastating owing to the immensity of its population, complexity, and consumption. To avoid the common fate of all past civilizations will require a radical change in our ethos—to wit, the deliberate renunciation of greatness—lest we precipitate a dark age in which the arts and adornments of civilization are partially or completely lost. Perhaps, the technocrats planning our current 'virological' crisis have read this book and tried to short-circuit a radical solution?

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Ophuls has certainly done his homework on the threats to civilization. He also offers a quick summary of his major sources that is worth repeating here, so that readers (like me) can extend their personal knowledge. He begins with Will and Ariel Durant's The Lessons of History (1968) as a succinct, readable and wise guide to the historical process. He goes onto Ian Morris's Why the West Rules - For Now (2010) describing our current situation more readily.

He adds John Michael Greer's assessment of our demise in his The Long Descent (2008) that describes a more extended version of decline rather than a precipitous collapse. Ophuls found that Thomas Homer-Dixon's The Upside of Down (2006) combines interviews, anecdotes and observations with an in-depth analysis provided a rich and detailed portrait of the End-Times. Joseph A. Tainter's The Collapse of Complex Societies (1988) sets forth his seminal and pioneering theory of declining returns on human investment in complexity. Ophuls also includes Jack A. Goldstone's Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World (1991) showing how popular grievances, fiscal crises, factional infighting and elite disaffection prepare the ground for eventual revolution by exposing the State as unjust and ineffective. Ophuls gives a brief nod to Donella H. Meadows' Thinking in Systems (2008) as an excellent primer into systems thinking. He also read Melanie Mitchell's Complexity (2009) to understand an important topic. He warns the reader that Complex Adaptive Systems (2007) by John H. Miller and Scott E. Page is even more challenging while still accessible and offering an abundance of real-world examples. John Gribbin's Deep Simplicity (2004) is a short and readable introduction to Chaos. He modestly recommends his own Plato's Revenge (2011) as a broader criticism of Hobbesian political economy. Finally, he [and I] strongly recommend Ronald Wright's A Short History of Progress (2005) as a short, pithy summary of the fallibility of man.

This is a tough book to read as its message will be resisted by almost everyone as our global civilization faces terminal collapse as our elite rulers try to dramatically reduce the global population through viral scares and bioweapons. This is the final and desperate move to simplify the challenges they face. I, like Ophuls, suspect they will fail: humanity will undoubtedly survive: civilization as we know it will certainly not.

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The book fails to discuss the poor roads taken to getting here, including the huge error of industrialism that enabled mass-killing and pharmaceutical research that has given us an instrumental approach to good health instead of living with nature, not trying to fix it later. Ophuls hints at the major error we made in the Agricultural Revolution that enabled us to readily outbreed the natural limitations of the HG life-style.

The most impressive fact about this book is how the author has resisted the publisher's pressures to expand this book into another "fat" (important) book. He has boiled down his points to a few lines per paragraph. Ophuls has done his homework: he has read many of the latest books on Social Collapse and organized their diverse messages into a coherent story to warn the few to "abandon ship" now before we hit the rocks."

(https://www.academia.edu/61123433/HUBRIS_A_Review_Essay_of_IMMODERATE_GREATNESS_by_William_Ophuls_2012_H_J_Spencer_06Nov_2021_6_000_words_9_pages_)