The evolution of civilizations

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1. thegrim33Feb 2024
   Another book that covers the topic - Quigley's the Evolution of Civilizations. Taken from a summary:

   "Quigley defines a civilization as “a producing society with an instrument of expansion.” A civilization’s decline is not inevitable but occurs when its instrument of expansion is transformed into an institution—that is, when social arrangements that meet real social needs are transformed into social institutions serving their own purposes regardless of real social needs."

   He spends some time defining institutionalization, when groups transition from being a group that was formed to accomplish a goal, to being a group whos goal becomes to preserve the group, the various stages involved, and the points where there's opportunities to rectify the situation via reform.

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2. arca_voragoSep 2017
   The ones that cut through the stale version taught in schools.

   Mostly Carroll Quigley's works like Tragedy and Hope, Anglo-American Establishment, or The Evolution of Civilizations.

   Another I consider at the level of Quigley is Anthony Sutton.

   There are quite a few less academically accurate books that are good eye openers anyway like Howard Zinn's A Peoples History of the United States. As a combat vet a couple that speak to the issue of war are God's War: A New History of the Crusades by Christopher Tyerman and The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History by Philip Bobbitt (some really good stuff about the future of nation-states in a post nuclear world.)

   Those are just a few key ones off the top of my head. Personally, what I find one of the best ways is to find a more narrow interest and find books written by or about the key players at the top. I often find that tidbits across various sources add up to very interesting insights.

   Also, a must in my opinion for an American is the Norman Dodd interview about his investigations on the Reece Committee and how history was targeted as being needed to be controlled.

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3. arca_voragoJan 2017
   I have a treat for you, please try out Carroll Quigley's works regarding civilization (and if you want major political insight, try his other works too, many of my conspiratorial leaning rants on hn come from his very academic and dry but largely unknown analysis of the world power structure).

   Luckily, some have been made readily available on the internet. Here is The Evolution of Civilizations: An Introduction to Historical Analysis by him, which I think would be one of the best starting points for your type of historical curiosity.

   http://www.carrollquigley.net/pdf/Carroll-Quigley-TheEvoluti...

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4. iterationxAug 2009
   Introducing NLP - Joseph O'Connor, John Seymour, Propaganda - Edward Bernays, Tragedy & Hope - Quigley, Evolution of Civilizations - Quigley, 911: The Road to Tyranny - Alex Jones, New Order of Barbarians, AA-1025
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5. seanhunterSep 2025
   > All in all, once an organization gets big enough, power does what power wants,

   There is an interesting hypothesis for this in the book "The Evolution of Civilizations" by Carroll Quigley[1]. Basically his idea in the book is that as organizations (or civilizations) get beyond a certain critical mass, people start to lose connection with the collective goals that originally united them and start to coalesce around internal goals related to their smaller unit. So this in a company is when you go from everyone devoting all their efforts to the shared mission and instead working on team goals or (worse) internal politics that may or may not be aligned with the bigger goal.

   It's a very interesting book. He's a controversial figure because some of his (other) writings are popular among conspiracy theorists. I haven't read that stuff, but this certainly made sense to me at the time that I read it.

   [1] https://ia801601.us.archive.org/4/items/CarrollQuigley-TheEv...

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6. jefuriiOct 2020
   Political stress because of resentment due to rampant economic inequality. One of the theses of "The Evolution of Civilizations" by Carroll Quigley is that many major civilizations of the past have collapsed because of economic inequality that got too large.

   We need a Marshall Plan to deal with the underlying causes. Even if Biden wins we can't go back to business as usual because the business as usual is what brought us to this point. We need to address the material causes of economic inequality, in red states as well as blue ones.

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