Civilizations have come and gone. Why?

As I sit here in my den, not wearing pajamas but leisure shorts and a bright red T-shirt instead, I’m thinking it’s time for a hot cup of java, most likely a cup of Eight O’clock, in memory of my Grandmother Gen.

I can smell it brewing now, and the memories are special to me.

Thoughts are running through my head, and the collapse of civilization is one of them.

My old pal, Ed from Smithsburg, suggested recently in suspense humor, I think, that he was considering building a bunker.

What are the voices of war saying?

The rhetoric of our current president in confirming our country’s assistance to Taiwan in the event that China attacks that island is not reassuring. The war losses are already being discussed, calculated and considered. How would a war over Taiwan with China end?

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Has our president even once considered that military enlistments are currently waning?

To add suspense to this elixir, I was watching TV and some Russian nutcase suggested that his country should send a nuclear war head to Britain.

You know, I have always agreed with Ralph Emerson’s prophecy that "The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.”

But I never thought I’d be alive to see it.

And many civilizations, according to British macrohistorian Arnold Toynbee, have all come and gone.

Luke Kemp, a research associate at the University of Cambridge, in 2019 studied and submitted research on societal collapse and climate change. He has a forthcoming book on societal collapse scheduled to be released in 2023 by Penguin.

Kemp has examined Toynbee’s "A Study of History" about the rise and fall of 28 civilizations and agrees somewhat with Toynbee’s analysis that “(g)reat civilizations are not murdered. Instead, they take their own lives.” Kemp has considered several other possibilities as well.

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"The Roman Empire, for example, was the victim of many ills including overexpansion, climatic change, environmental degradation and poor leadership," he wrote. "But it was also brought to its knees when Rome was sacked by its enemies in 410 and 455."

Kemp, in studying those collapses of civilizations, wants to see how they may be applicable to our own possible demise.

I am reminded of that Chinese proverb: "To know the road ahead, ask the one coming back."

By studying a list of past civilizations and longevity, Kemp has suggested that the average life expectancy of a civilization is established at about 336 years, but many factors are considered.

Collapse can be defined, he says, as a rapid and enduring loss of population, identity and socio-economic complexity. Public services crumble and disorder ensues as government loses control of its monopoly on violence.

That one sounds prophetic.

Kemp goes on to suggest that there are many factors contributing to a collapse of civilizations, including:

• Climatic change: "When climatic stability changes, the results can be disastrous, resulting in crop failure, starvation and desertification. The collapse of many civilizations have all coincided with abrupt climatic changes, usually droughts."

• Environmental degradation: "Collapse can occur when societies overshoot the carrying capacity of their environment. This ecological collapse theory discusses excessive deforestation, water pollution, soil degradation and the loss of biodiversity as precipitating causes."

• Inequality and oligarchy: "Wealth and political inequality can be central drivers of social disintegration; This not only causes social distress, but handicaps a society’s ability to respond to ecological, social and economic problems."

• Complexity: "Collapse expert and historian Joseph Tainter has proposed that societies eventually 'collapse under the weight of their own accumulated complexity and bureaucracy.’ As societies grow in complexity and problem-solving becomes more difficult, a point of diminishing returns occurs and a collapse is likely to ensue."

• External shocks: "In other words, the Four Horsemen: war, natural disasters, famine and plagues. The Aztec Empire, for example, was brought to an end by Spanish invaders. Most early agrarian states were fleeting due to deadly epidemics."

• Randomness and bad luck: "Evolutionary biologist and data scientist Indre Zliobaite has observed a similar pattern in the evolution of species which suggests ‘if species are constantly fighting for survival in a changing environment with numerous competitors, extinction is a consistent possibility.’"

As I read Kemp’s study and many assumptions, I would be a fool to sit here in my leisurely attire with a cup of cooling java and ignore the current situation of this country and many other world civilizations.

Technology has taken one’s thinking to overload. Cellphones and data saturate our brains. Good sleep is no longer possible.

There are many signs to our own civilization’s decay.

Have we learned anything along the way from Kemp’s historical civilization autopsy?

I don’t think so.

Pete Waters is a Sharpsburg resident who writes for The Herald-Mail.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Exploring the reasons why civilizations collapse. Are we next?