Immoderate Greatness: Why Civilizations Fail

CreateSpace Publishing, 2012. Paperback. Good. *Immoderate Greatness* explains how a civilization's very magnitude conspir es against it to cause downfall. Civilizations are hard-wired for self-dest ruction. They travel an arc from initial success to terminal decay and ulti mate collapse due to intrinsic, inescapable biophysical limits combined wit h an inexorable trend toward moral decay and practical failure. Because our own civilization is global, its collapse will also be global, as well as u niquely devastating owing to the immensity of its population, complexity, a nd consumption. To avoid the common fate of all past civilizations will req uire a radical change in our ethos-to wit, the deliberate renunciation of g reatness-lest we precipitate a dark age in which the arts and adornments of civilization are partially or completely lost.