Who Do We Choose To Be?

THE ARROW OF TIME: FACING REALITY

The Rise and Fall of Civilizations

The movement of civilizations along the arrow of time has been a mesmerizing field of study from the time of classical Greek scholars such as Plato up to our present. Historians want to know what has gone before, not from intellectual curiosity, but from a desire that their current civilization avoid a similar fate. And there is a plethora of examples for study: Globally there have been dozens of complex civilizations during the last 5,000 years of recorded human history (by 3000 BCE there were already seven known to Western scholars). Every one of them illustrates the same pattern of ascendancy and collapse. In addition, excellent archeological research on the causes of decline ...