This example of a civilization suddenly getting markedly worse, by any meaningful definition of the word, is extremely interesting and worthy of note. The fact that history took such a sudden and, yes, dark turn is important to emphasize. It’s something every society might profit from remembering. I don’t mean to be a doom-monger but we could do with it now. A big threat to our current civilization is the persistent post-Victorian assumption of progress. This ‘Whig Interpretation of History’ has been regularly debunked ever since the term was coined by the historian Herbert Butterfield in
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