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Biohistory: Decline and Fall of the West
Western civilisation is on a path to destruction. In coming decades, economies will shrink, democracy will retreat and nations crumble. The long-term result will be grinding poverty, superstition and disease. This isnt scaremongering it is science. In The Decline and Fall of the West, Dr Jim Penman, PhD, details a revolutionary new theory about why civilizations collapse. For the first time, Penman directly links human biology with the rise and fall of civilisationsa cataclysmic relationship that brought the Romans, the ancient Greeks and all other Empires to their knees. Based on pioneering scientific research, Penman reveals the deadly, invisible forces at play across human and animal historyand why the West will be the next victim. Biohistory makes use of the latest findings in epigenetics, the study of how the environment affects our genes. Presented in easy-to-digest language, it draws on history, biology, anthropology and economics to explain the real drivers of social change and how evolutionary mechanisms designed to adapt animal social behaviour to changing food conditions determine the fate of civilisation. The Wests only hope of avoiding catastrophe lies with the biological sciences, but is it already too late to change the course of history?
320 pages, Paperback
First published February 28, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
April 29, 2018
Bullshit right-wing propaganda disguised as science
September 8, 2017
Interesting concepts on how and why civilizations decline and then fall, using biohistory. Biohistory is a field of study that attempts to explain social change through the interplay of biology and culture, or epigenetics. The author is attempting to test for the way epigenetics, the study of how the environment affects genes, changes culture and causes civilizational collapse. Food scarcity and child rearing play prominent roles in changing the genes of the next generation and, as a result, the culture of society. These are long-term trends, sometimes hundreds of years for certain characteristics to emerge. The author uses his hypothesis to go back and test it using past civilizations that have collapsed like Rome, Greece, and others. It is interesting to see that a pattern exists throughout history. I think the author is on to something and that biohistory does play a role in the destruction of societies. However, I'm not sold on it being able to predict the next collapse. Although, the state of affairs today are matching uncomfortably close to his hypothesis.
October 7, 2016
Thought-provoking hypotheses about sympathetic nervous system stressors, hunger and puberty onset. With a glaring, cyclical view of civilization in the Spenglerian tradition, readers may be surprised to find no mention of the Kali or Satya Yugas whatsoever! The two combine in a strange fixation on Victorian England. Not scientifically rigorous, but more worthy of perusal than the typically thin far-right screed about "inferior races". C+ for creativity.
April 3, 2023
This is an interesting book. I don't regret reading it. However, I do have some reservations. First, I am skeptical of his reliance on epigenetics. I know journalists and activists (although usually on the left rather than the right) are fascinated by epigenetics just as their predecessors (such as Lysenko) were entranced by Lamarckism, but genetical researchers consider it to be a minor effect. Second, his thesis explains the cycles of history via psychometric factors he labels C, V, and S, but he has developed no psychometric instrument that can measure these factors to show that they actually exist and actually vary between populations (and birth cohorts) in the pattern he hypothesizes. Third, he blithely dismisses the explanatory power of general intelligence differences between nations for differences in national achievement and eminence, even though the correlations are very high and the psychometric instruments for measuring general intelligence have replicated very well through a hundred years of research, versus his hypothetical C, V and S metrics which he has made no attempt to measure. Nevertheless, his book is interesting, even if his hypothesis is highly speculative.
January 27, 2020
Certain assumptions are absurd, Certain ones are have succeeded in looking past the current Zeitgeist.
Together, while not really illuminating as the author clearly wanted it to be, they make for an Interesting read. The author likes to Jump the gun too often for the work to not be aggressively average.
Together, while not really illuminating as the author clearly wanted it to be, they make for an Interesting read. The author likes to Jump the gun too often for the work to not be aggressively average.
April 11, 2025
This is a dense read. Showcases a theoretical attempt to understand and enlighten lay people about the trends of civilization through the lens of epigenetics and behavior. It is hard to not have emotional reactions to some of the analyses because I found myself wanting to insert my own thoughts about what impacts temperament over civilizations specifically pertaining to slavery. The author covers a range of social orders and is a good attempt at empirically analyzing human behavior.
November 17, 2025
What an adorable high school essay. A nothing burger of a book.
TLDR: Jim Penman is a (potentially 12 year old) hack with zero expertise in any related field, yet he, probably due to being a wealthy businessman and not a real academic, got this book published to stroke his own ego.
A Reddit comment regarding Jim: "Didn't he set up some sort of genetic research facility in an attempt at immortality or something equally cooked?"
Also, an author Penman cites in his book called it bs: https://peterturchin.com/biohistory-m.... "This critique misrepresents our theory." LOLs. This entire book is that one Tumblr post about 12 year old girls crying in their bedrooms having revelations that take male philosophers their entire adult lives to arrive at.
Jim Penman's 'Biohistory' is what happens when a STEM business chud attempts intersectionality into the social sciences. Penman's observations about Western society, which he seems to believe are the first ever of their kind, are oversimplified to the point of me wondering if perhaps he really is 12 years old.
"Neither the researchers nor these Institutions had any knowledge of the theory and ideas presented in this book. The conclusions and the interpretations are mine." Yeah, Jim, that's because if you had presented such an uninformed, maddeningly oversimplified social theory you claim is pioneering a new approach to human social evolution to a group of actual professionals, you would have been laughed out of the room.
Behold! Jim Penman says. My new theory: Social Darwinism meets epigenetics and also the environment. Yes, that's NEVER been done before in the field of anthropology, ever.
Penman begins by waxing poetics about the Roman Empire, and likens it to the modern West. Not white supremacist at all. He also does not offer a cohesive definition of "the West" in his first chapter, and so it remains an amorphous concept to the reader, which gives Penman enough room and deniability to never have to define, explain, or critically analyze anything regarding the history of the Holy Roman Empire and why it "fell."
Penman spends little time discussing broader social forces of culture (which he defines in a single paragraph) such as family, education, imperialism, colonialism, racism, sexism, et cetera, and instead focuses on the impacts of individual personality upon culture. Bert Kaplan's chapter 'Personality and Social Structure' in 'Theory in Anthropology', compiled and published in 1968, explains that anthropologists and sociologists have become interested in this field already. He also highlights the complexities of studying such a relationship, as such a study cannot be empirical. Nevertheless, it is nothing new within the fields of sociology, anthropology, and psychology.
Penman boldly proposes that biohistory "proposes the key to ALL of this - from the decline of Rome to the Industrial Revolution and the current financial crisis - is temperament." I actually laughed out loud when I read this. Our good friend Jimmy claims, "Some countries are wealthier than others because the people in them are harder working, more innovative, more willing to sacrifice present consumption for future benefit, less inclined to corruption as a government official, and so forth."
Wow.
To say that any attempt to objectively measure subjective traits such as "innovation" and "willingness to sacrifice" and then, in the next paragraph, claim it is not "a moral judgement," is 1. Bullshit, 2. False, and 3. Gaslighting. This opinion is completely removed from necessary context about society. How are you judging "innovation" in the Roman constitutionalist society of - well, I'm assuming around the fall of the Roman Empire, since Penman does not ever DEFINE anything let alone a time period within which he's working, with a structurally inspired but overall hyper-consumerist, hyper-capitalist society such as the modern USA?
On the next page (6) he writes, "For example, some people in society A may be harder working than many in society B ... this may have profound implications for wealth and other characteristics of each." Wealth is defined by what? What measurement are you using, Jim? If Jim knew literally anything about human culture, he would have the bare-bones, college-level 100 knowledge that concepts such as "harder working" and "wealth" are wholly culturally subjective. Is this measurement via GDP? If so, then his opinions can be discarded entirely, as that is just juvenile.
It is also difficult to take any claim to measure wealth seriously when Penman uses almost zero sources for the things he claims. On page 6 is a brief inclusion of the career of Richard Neville, earl of Warwick in 15th century England. Penman explains that Neville, chronically indecisive, changed his loyalty from King Henry VI to King Edward IV to Henry VI, and throughout all of this, his men remained loyal to him. That loyalty was personal, rather than impersonal, such as one to a king. That's adorable (and gettin' somewhere!). But how can I be certain any of this is true? There's no fucking citation. Cite your sources, Jim. I know you won't learn to do this until your junior year of high school, but there are tutorials out there on YouTube.
On page 7 is the sentence, "Even soldiers and policemen who had voted for Romney would most likely ignore or arrest [Gov. of California, upon illegally overturning election results], because their loyalty to the Constitution would outweigh their support for the man." Well, recent events certainly proves you wrong. Not that you could have known. Or maybe you could have, if you actually knew anything about anything.
I will speak little about the following paragraph on Saddam Hussein. Or maybe I won't. "Saddam Hussein, as ruler of Iraq, was a brutal tyrant." Where are your sources? This is certainly YOUR opinion, which I know you seem to think is extremely important. There are no examples of his brutal rule offered, and no analyses of Iraqis' responses to his rule, which would have given significant material to work with in the study of individual/group personality. There is no inclusion of Iraqi contemporary literature. Penman simply blames the people of Iraq for the undemocratic government that followed Hussein, implying that it is due to their nature, accepting authority that is "harsh and intimidating," such as the people of Egypt. He cites a single study done 50 years before the publishing of his book as his evidence of a "fundamentally different temperament to that of people in the democratic nations of the West." A few pages later, he has the audacity to talk about the "classic Arab temperament." Holy Orientalism!!
Let me make it extremely clear: If I wrote this back in undergrad and only cited a SINGLE community study done FIFTY years ago, I would have failed immediately, and my professors would have taken me onto the roof and Old Yeller'd me. I will certainly be doing a follow-up on this study. TL'DR: Can cultural differences be properly translated in studies such as this? NO!!
Let me make it clear: If you are presenting what you claim is a new framework within which to study human cultural evolution, you need some goddamn citations. Jim Penman seems to think that since he is dabbling in the social sciences, he can just say things without showing his work. No, no, Jimmy. That's not how this works. Anthropologists have designed ways to objectively and subjectively study culture, and are constantly re-working, re-defining, and updating these methods. Participant observation, genealogical studies, ethnology, ethnohistory, and surveys exist for cultural methods, and many more for biological methods. He states on page 8 that "... Saddam's rule merely reflectec the the kind of leadership the majority of Iraqis were temperamentally inclined to accept." Nowhere does Penman mention of the 1991 uprisings by Iraqi Shi'as and Kurds against the Ba'athist government. To say this when Iraqis also could not vote to remove Saddam is obtuse, hateful, and Orientalist. To no one's surprise, missing from this oh-so astute observation of his is an analysis, or even an acknowledgement, of decades of US and Western intervention and destabilization in the SWANA region that directly resulted in an individual like Saddam Hussein coming to power, or even in individuals like Osama Bin Laden inspiring movements behind the 9/11 terror attacks - he himself says as much in his Letters To The American People, where he explicitly gives examples, including the Western-financed Zionist occupation of Palestine.
While Penman brags that the libshit blue-haired pronouns-having social sciences can't test hypotheses (yes they can), he claims that his crackpipe theory can, which makes it way better. I have yet to read his designs but don't worry my precious readers, I will. However one cannot be too certain of the validity of Penman's proposed tests because on the very next page he states, "These epigenetic differences can make people more or less hard working, rigidly dogmatic or open to change, peaceful or violent, timid or forceful, honest or corrupt, accepting or rejecting of brutal authority, and much more." Yes, dear readers, there exists a totally 100% objective biological basis for subjective cultural concepts like 'dogma,' 'timidity,' or 'violence.'
In short: Epigenetic studies MUST be contextualized within the specific historical, sociopolitical, and environmental realities of the individuals' lived experience. This is not a new idea. The environment has profound impacts on gene expression and somatic responses, yes, and massive strides are made every day in the discovery of the matriarchal nature of genetics. Historians, sociocultural and biological anthropologists, geneticists, sociologists, et cetera have been working on this intersectionality for a while, and it is certainly a challenging but necessary and very real field. But it is certainly not one worthy of being taken up by an ill-informed, supremacist, overconfident individual such as Jim Penman.
Oh, wait a minute. You're a CEO. You've never been in academia. Ohhh, okay. I can stop this review now.
TLDR: Jim Penman is a (potentially 12 year old) hack with zero expertise in any related field, yet he, probably due to being a wealthy businessman and not a real academic, got this book published to stroke his own ego.
A Reddit comment regarding Jim: "Didn't he set up some sort of genetic research facility in an attempt at immortality or something equally cooked?"
Also, an author Penman cites in his book called it bs: https://peterturchin.com/biohistory-m.... "This critique misrepresents our theory." LOLs. This entire book is that one Tumblr post about 12 year old girls crying in their bedrooms having revelations that take male philosophers their entire adult lives to arrive at.
Jim Penman's 'Biohistory' is what happens when a STEM business chud attempts intersectionality into the social sciences. Penman's observations about Western society, which he seems to believe are the first ever of their kind, are oversimplified to the point of me wondering if perhaps he really is 12 years old.
"Neither the researchers nor these Institutions had any knowledge of the theory and ideas presented in this book. The conclusions and the interpretations are mine." Yeah, Jim, that's because if you had presented such an uninformed, maddeningly oversimplified social theory you claim is pioneering a new approach to human social evolution to a group of actual professionals, you would have been laughed out of the room.
Behold! Jim Penman says. My new theory: Social Darwinism meets epigenetics and also the environment. Yes, that's NEVER been done before in the field of anthropology, ever.
Penman begins by waxing poetics about the Roman Empire, and likens it to the modern West. Not white supremacist at all. He also does not offer a cohesive definition of "the West" in his first chapter, and so it remains an amorphous concept to the reader, which gives Penman enough room and deniability to never have to define, explain, or critically analyze anything regarding the history of the Holy Roman Empire and why it "fell."
Penman spends little time discussing broader social forces of culture (which he defines in a single paragraph) such as family, education, imperialism, colonialism, racism, sexism, et cetera, and instead focuses on the impacts of individual personality upon culture. Bert Kaplan's chapter 'Personality and Social Structure' in 'Theory in Anthropology', compiled and published in 1968, explains that anthropologists and sociologists have become interested in this field already. He also highlights the complexities of studying such a relationship, as such a study cannot be empirical. Nevertheless, it is nothing new within the fields of sociology, anthropology, and psychology.
Penman boldly proposes that biohistory "proposes the key to ALL of this - from the decline of Rome to the Industrial Revolution and the current financial crisis - is temperament." I actually laughed out loud when I read this. Our good friend Jimmy claims, "Some countries are wealthier than others because the people in them are harder working, more innovative, more willing to sacrifice present consumption for future benefit, less inclined to corruption as a government official, and so forth."
Wow.
To say that any attempt to objectively measure subjective traits such as "innovation" and "willingness to sacrifice" and then, in the next paragraph, claim it is not "a moral judgement," is 1. Bullshit, 2. False, and 3. Gaslighting. This opinion is completely removed from necessary context about society. How are you judging "innovation" in the Roman constitutionalist society of - well, I'm assuming around the fall of the Roman Empire, since Penman does not ever DEFINE anything let alone a time period within which he's working, with a structurally inspired but overall hyper-consumerist, hyper-capitalist society such as the modern USA?
On the next page (6) he writes, "For example, some people in society A may be harder working than many in society B ... this may have profound implications for wealth and other characteristics of each." Wealth is defined by what? What measurement are you using, Jim? If Jim knew literally anything about human culture, he would have the bare-bones, college-level 100 knowledge that concepts such as "harder working" and "wealth" are wholly culturally subjective. Is this measurement via GDP? If so, then his opinions can be discarded entirely, as that is just juvenile.
It is also difficult to take any claim to measure wealth seriously when Penman uses almost zero sources for the things he claims. On page 6 is a brief inclusion of the career of Richard Neville, earl of Warwick in 15th century England. Penman explains that Neville, chronically indecisive, changed his loyalty from King Henry VI to King Edward IV to Henry VI, and throughout all of this, his men remained loyal to him. That loyalty was personal, rather than impersonal, such as one to a king. That's adorable (and gettin' somewhere!). But how can I be certain any of this is true? There's no fucking citation. Cite your sources, Jim. I know you won't learn to do this until your junior year of high school, but there are tutorials out there on YouTube.
On page 7 is the sentence, "Even soldiers and policemen who had voted for Romney would most likely ignore or arrest [Gov. of California, upon illegally overturning election results], because their loyalty to the Constitution would outweigh their support for the man." Well, recent events certainly proves you wrong. Not that you could have known. Or maybe you could have, if you actually knew anything about anything.
I will speak little about the following paragraph on Saddam Hussein. Or maybe I won't. "Saddam Hussein, as ruler of Iraq, was a brutal tyrant." Where are your sources? This is certainly YOUR opinion, which I know you seem to think is extremely important. There are no examples of his brutal rule offered, and no analyses of Iraqis' responses to his rule, which would have given significant material to work with in the study of individual/group personality. There is no inclusion of Iraqi contemporary literature. Penman simply blames the people of Iraq for the undemocratic government that followed Hussein, implying that it is due to their nature, accepting authority that is "harsh and intimidating," such as the people of Egypt. He cites a single study done 50 years before the publishing of his book as his evidence of a "fundamentally different temperament to that of people in the democratic nations of the West." A few pages later, he has the audacity to talk about the "classic Arab temperament." Holy Orientalism!!
Let me make it extremely clear: If I wrote this back in undergrad and only cited a SINGLE community study done FIFTY years ago, I would have failed immediately, and my professors would have taken me onto the roof and Old Yeller'd me. I will certainly be doing a follow-up on this study. TL'DR: Can cultural differences be properly translated in studies such as this? NO!!
Let me make it clear: If you are presenting what you claim is a new framework within which to study human cultural evolution, you need some goddamn citations. Jim Penman seems to think that since he is dabbling in the social sciences, he can just say things without showing his work. No, no, Jimmy. That's not how this works. Anthropologists have designed ways to objectively and subjectively study culture, and are constantly re-working, re-defining, and updating these methods. Participant observation, genealogical studies, ethnology, ethnohistory, and surveys exist for cultural methods, and many more for biological methods. He states on page 8 that "... Saddam's rule merely reflectec the the kind of leadership the majority of Iraqis were temperamentally inclined to accept." Nowhere does Penman mention of the 1991 uprisings by Iraqi Shi'as and Kurds against the Ba'athist government. To say this when Iraqis also could not vote to remove Saddam is obtuse, hateful, and Orientalist. To no one's surprise, missing from this oh-so astute observation of his is an analysis, or even an acknowledgement, of decades of US and Western intervention and destabilization in the SWANA region that directly resulted in an individual like Saddam Hussein coming to power, or even in individuals like Osama Bin Laden inspiring movements behind the 9/11 terror attacks - he himself says as much in his Letters To The American People, where he explicitly gives examples, including the Western-financed Zionist occupation of Palestine.
While Penman brags that the libshit blue-haired pronouns-having social sciences can't test hypotheses (yes they can), he claims that his crackpipe theory can, which makes it way better. I have yet to read his designs but don't worry my precious readers, I will. However one cannot be too certain of the validity of Penman's proposed tests because on the very next page he states, "These epigenetic differences can make people more or less hard working, rigidly dogmatic or open to change, peaceful or violent, timid or forceful, honest or corrupt, accepting or rejecting of brutal authority, and much more." Yes, dear readers, there exists a totally 100% objective biological basis for subjective cultural concepts like 'dogma,' 'timidity,' or 'violence.'
In short: Epigenetic studies MUST be contextualized within the specific historical, sociopolitical, and environmental realities of the individuals' lived experience. This is not a new idea. The environment has profound impacts on gene expression and somatic responses, yes, and massive strides are made every day in the discovery of the matriarchal nature of genetics. Historians, sociocultural and biological anthropologists, geneticists, sociologists, et cetera have been working on this intersectionality for a while, and it is certainly a challenging but necessary and very real field. But it is certainly not one worthy of being taken up by an ill-informed, supremacist, overconfident individual such as Jim Penman.
Oh, wait a minute. You're a CEO. You've never been in academia. Ohhh, okay. I can stop this review now.
September 23, 2021
In my humble opinion, this book (including the academic version of it) is a failed attempt to validate Jim's personal opinions and justify anti-freedom, anti-happiness, and anti-fairness agendas through misinterpretation of science . In my view, biohistory is a clear demonstration of pseudo-science, of which there has been huge surplus lately. Please stop fearing of opening your mind. Life is not fear.
December 18, 2020
Epically bad. DNF
November 21, 2021
Needs more fascism and racism, also my lawn is getting long Jim please see to it
July 28, 2021
Did you watch the YouTube videos? Good. Save your money and go watch them again because the book isn't going to tell you anything you don't already know from 1. Reading History and 2. Watching the videos [which are far more entertaining]
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews