“The West may collapse very suddenly. Complex civilizations do that, because they operate, most of the time, on the edge of chaos.”

— Niall Ferguson

Source: "TED Talks: Niall Ferguson" http://www.ted.com/speakers/niall_ferguson.html TED

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Niall Ferguson 24

British historian 1964

Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) American historian

Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Lecture 3: "The State of Individuals" (1976)

“If Iraq collapses in chaos and civil war, there will be a ferocious fight in this country over who misled us and who may have lied us, into war. Into the dock will go the neoconservatives whose class project this was.”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

2000s, Where the Right Went Wrong (2004)

“The conclusion drawn by … most of our élites … is that the population constitutes a deep and dangerous well of ignorance and irrationality; if our civilization is in crisis the fault must lie with the populace which is not rising to the inescapable challenges. And yet civilizations do not collapse because the citizenry are corrupt or lazy or anti-intellectual. These people do not have the power and influence to either lead or destroy. Civilizations collapse when those who have power fail to do their jobs.”

John Ralston Saul The Doubter's Companion

"Anti-Intellectualism"
The Doubter's Companion (1994)

“the radical feminist revolution is nothing less than a destruction of our civilization…We are no longer what were were. The West has collapsed.”

Kenneth Minogue (1930–2013) Australian political theorist

How Civilizations Fall

“In fact, the more power-driven, complex and delicate our civilization becomes, the more likelihood arises that a collapse will force us back to wildness.”

Charles Lindbergh (1902–1974) American aviator, author, inventor, explorer, and social activist

"The Wisdom of Wilderness" in LIFE (22 December 1967)
Context: The wild world is the human world. Having evolved in it for millions of centuries, we are not far removed by a cloth of civilization. It is packed into our genes. In fact, the more power-driven, complex and delicate our civilization becomes, the more likelihood arises that a collapse will force us back to wildness. There is in wildness a natural wisdom that shapes all Earth's experiments with life. Can we tap this wisdom without experiencing the agony of reverting to wildness? Can we combine it with intellectual developments of which we feel so proud, use it to redirect our modern trends before they lead to a worse breakdown than past civilizations have experienced? I believe we can, and that to do so we must learn from the primitive.

“Living systems are never in equilibrium. They are inherently unstable. They may seem stable, but they’re not. Everything is moving and changing. In a sense, everything is on the edge of collapse.”

Michael Crichton book Jurassic Park

Source: Jurassic Park

“We are the ones who have been operating against our public opinion, against our bureaucracy, at the very edge of legality.”

Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) United States Secretary of State

Kissinger to Nixon, quoted in Bass, G. J. (2014). The Blood telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a forgotten genocide.
Source: FRUS: Documents on South Asia, 1969–1972, vol. E-7 (online at http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76ve07), White House tapes, Oval Office 637-3, 12 December 1971, 8:45–9:42 a.m. Hereafter cited as FRUS, vol. E-7. quoted in Bass, G. J. (2014). The Blood telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a forgotten genocide.

“Complexity theory began with an interest u how order spring from chaos. According to complexity theory, adaption is most effective in systems that are only partially connected. The argument is that too much structure creates gridlock, while too little structure creates chaos. A good example would be the traffic lights in a city. If there are no lights, traffic is chaotic. If there are too many lights, traffic stops. A moderate number of lights creates structure, but still allows drivers to adapt their routes in surprising ways in response to changing traffic conditions. Consequently, the key to effective change is to stay poised on this edge of chaos. Complexity theory focuses managerial thinking on the interrelationships among different parts of an organization and on the trade-off of less control for greater adaptation.”

Shona Brown (1960) businessperson

Source: Competing on the Edge, 1998, p. 14

“There is a vivid contrast between the order of China and the chaos of the West.”

Xi Jinping (1953) General Secretary of the Communist Party of China and paramount leader of China

Source: As quoted in The East Is Rising': Xi Maps Out China’s Post-Covid Ascent https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/03/world/asia/xi-china-congress.html The New York Times

“This breakdown in the bicameral mind in what is called the Intermediate Period is reminiscent at least of those periodic breakdowns of Mayan civilizations when all authority suddenly collapsed, and the population melted back into tribal living in the jungles.”

Julian Jaynes book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book II, Chapter 2, p. 197
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)

“The West may collapse very suddenly. Complex civilizations do that, because they operate, most of the time, on the edge of chaos.”

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