It only takes a brief glance at the news headlines to remind oneself that we live in times which almost all our ancestors – and even ourselves just a few years ago – would have regarded as insane. And perhaps they are – there is, indeed, a serious theory that dying civilisations go mad.

The theory of collective madness in collapsing civilizations holds that societies in terminal decline abandon rational governance, reality and long-term self-preservation. They turn instead to irrational, self-destructive behaviours: denial of obvious crises, hedonistic excess, magical thinking, and policies that actively accelerate the breakdown. What begins as elite decadence or mass delusion spreads until the culture can no longer adapt or even perceive its own peril.

The idea that the spread of crazy and irrational ideas is somehow intertwined with the senility and death of a culture and society was proposed by Oswald Spengler in The Decline of the West (1918–1922). He concluded that all societies age naturally, from vigorous “Culture” (creative, soul-driven) to rigid “Civilisation” (the winter phase of decline and death).

In this final stage, the living “soul” of the culture dies and is replaced by soulless intellect, materialism, money, and megalopolis. Rational thought gives way to widespread, irrational return to mystery cults, superstition, and mythic thinking.

Most intriguingly in the light of current developments, Spengler asserts that, as an society moves towards death, its politics hardens into Caesarism — rule by strongmen and pure power, while the masses become passive “fellaheen” (a spiritually dead peasant-like class).

To Spengler, the brain rot which afflicts a dying civilisation is not so much madness as senility, but in terms of the impact there is not a great deal of difference.

Arnold Toynbee drew on Spengler in his A Study of History, speaking of a “schism in the soul” where elites lose vitality and societies fragment into internal proletariats gripped by fantasy and violence.

Joseph Tainter (The Collapse of Complex Societies) and Ronald Wright (A Short History of Progress) argue that complexity traps produce diminishing returns, leading to denial and counterproductive “solutions”. These can appear “mad”, even if they are more properly errors created by the strains of irredeemable circumstances.

The most widely cited modern expression of the idea is the phrase “When civilizations start to die they go insane.” This was popularised by American journalist and author Chris Hedges, in his writings on imperial decline, late-stage capitalism, and Empire of Illusion. Hedges describes how dying empires enter a psychotic break – rationalising their own suicide while punishing truth-tellers.

Is the increasing madness the cause or the effect of the rolling collapse? The consensus is that the growing irrationality of rulers and ruled alike is primarily a result of disintegration, but that it rapidly becomes a cause in a vicious feedback loop.

The convergence of various problems – debt, falling birthrates, military overreach, immigration are invariably among them – create unbearable stress. People and leaders retreat into fantasy, ideology, or short-term pleasure because reality has become intolerable.

The resulting madness prevents adaptation – elites double down on failed policies, the masses embrace hedonism, fantasy ‘cures’ and scapegoats. Institutions become predatory or just make a show of going through the motions. This all accelerates the very disintegration that triggered the madness in the first place. Examples include:

TheLate Roman Empire: While barbarians pressed the borders and the economy crumbled, elites bought off the masses with bread-and-circuses spectacles, currency debasement, and theological hair-splitting. Denial of structural rot hastened the fall.

Easter Island: Ancestor-worship statue cults consumed the last trees; rival clans escalated statue-building even as famine set in—a classic case of ideological madness overriding survival.

Maya Classic collapse: Overpopulation, deforestation, and warfare intensified while kings commissioned ever-grander monuments and rituals, ignoring the growing crisis caused by natural climate change.

… It’s Just a Silly Phase We’re Going Through

In short, the theory sees collective madness not as mere metaphor but as a predictable phase in which a civilisation, confronted with its own mortality, chooses delusion over adaptation – sealing its fate. Whether the madness is the final symptom or the fatal blow is ultimately academic; by the time it dominates, the collapse is already irreversible.

To return for a moment to Trump, while he is the nearest to an insane Caesar yet produced by the “Decline of the West”, it is possible to ask: What choice does he actually have?

The USA is slipping behind China in every way, the petro-dollar recycling mechanism and the status of the dollar as global currency are on their last legs. What remains of America’s economy is drowning in a sea of utterly unrepayable debt.

A revolutionary patriot might strive for a revolution, in which the breaking of the Federal Reserve would play a central part. But Trump is not a revolutionary patriot, he is an ageing, historically ignorant, capitalist. Is it any wonder that, instead of risking his life confronting the vested interests and the intractible problems produced by their greed, he listenes instead to the insane notions poured into his ears by a gaggle of messianic Jews and End Times Christians – both groups more or less heretics and as mad as all previous Millennial crackpots?

Curiously, the madness explanation fits too with the theories on the lifespan of civilisations produced by Sir John Bagot Glubb (1897–1986), better known as Glubb Pasha, a British soldier, scholar, and commander of the Arab Legion in Jordan.

In his short 1976 essay The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival, Glubb examined the life-cycles of 11 major empires across 3,000 years of history (Assyria, Persia, Greece under Alexander’s successors, the Roman Republic, the Arab Empire, the Mameluke Empire, the Ottoman Empire, Spain, the Romanov dynasty, Britain, etc.). He concluded that, with striking regularity, they rose and fell in roughly 250 years – about ten generations – of “national greatness.”

He observed that this average held remarkably steady and proposed a consistent six-stage pattern every empire followed:

1. Age of Pioneers (the outburst)
2. Age of Conquest
3. Age of Commerce
4. Age of Affluence
5. Age of Intellect
6. Age of Decadence (the final phase of decline, marked by welfare dependence, loss of martial spirit, influx of foreigners, and frivolity)

Glubb explicitly wrote: “In a surprising manner, 250 years emerges as the average length of national greatness. This average has not varied for 3,000 years.”

What do you get when you put all this together? The strong possibility that – even without the very special madness and racial supremacism of the Chabab Lubavitch. revisionist Zionism, the greed of the Military Industrial Complex and the Kool-Aid Rapture lunacy of the Christian-Zionists – it’s all over for American/liberal Western civilisation, simply because, it really is all over.

If you want evidence of this, just scan the news headlines. Not just the latest madness from The White House Caligula, any number of other examples of utter lunacy just leap out at you the moment you look. QED, as my old Latin master used to say.

This is not to say that “we’re all going to die”, although the odds are that an awful lot of people are going too – and not just in the places where they are dying already. In every one of the earlier civilisations cited in support of such theories, some of the people have survived the fall of the actual society. Human beings are, after all, very adaptable creatures.

If you’re not adaptable, now could be a very good time to try to make it a habit. And try to enjoy it – at least we don’t live in boring times any more!

https://nickgriffin544956.substack.com/p/do-dying-civilisations-go-mad