The Mechanical versus Tactical View of History

I was meditating, as often I do, being of a morbid nature, on the causes and progress of the corruption and downfall of the West, and I wondered what could hinder a process that seemed quite inevitable. Is it inevitable? For that matter, is it a process?

It was not until this week that it occurred to me to question something I have assumed about the nature of history and the way it unfolds. It is an assumption no ancient or medieval thinker would have made, and it is an assumption few modern thinkers can avoid.

The assumption is that the process in history, particularly the process by which social and political orders become corrupt, is akin to an inevitable mechanical process, a matter of incentives and disincentives, and therefore a process wise statesmen leading a virtuous body politic could slow, stop, or reverse, if the proper corrective process were applied, either wise laws or the indoctrination of certain habits of public virtue.

I have, in other words, always assumed political economics was a matter of social engineering. It is a non-supernatural and mechanical view of history.

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