Holding Up A Mirror - How Civilisations Decline | Anne Glyn-Jones (ISBN: 712676333)

HOLDING UP A MIRROR: How Civilisations Decline
By Anne Glyn-Jones
Century. 650 pages. £20.00
ISBN 0 7126 7633 3

A 76 year-old spinster living quietly on the outskirts of Exeter has emerged as a leading expert on the social forces underpinning modern Western civilisation. She believes our society is in its 'struggling on phase', and is doomed to collapse because it is increasingly driven by materialistic values and 'the hunger for pleasure'. Former Western Morning News news editor Alex Alexander reviews her 1996 book, Holding up a Mirror - How Civilisations Decline.

The end is probably nigh, if you accept the arguments advanced by a Devon pensioner who in her time has been a counter-espionage officer and personal assistant to Harold ('you've never had it so good') Macmillan.
Anne Glyn-Jones is the unlikely author of a mammoth 650-page book which plots the downfall of the civilisations of late Rome, Greece and medieval Christendom, and points to the ultimate collapse of our own society.

SuperMac's secretary

She got the idea for the book while working for the then retired Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan. Glyn-Jones found an obscure but fascinating book on his shelves. It was written by Russian social theorist Pitirim Sorokin, who sought to explain how apparently thriving societies can at one and the same time enjoy affluence and technical advance, yet also witness soaring crime, a coarsening of the arts, the corrupting of morals and the disintegrating of civic values.

His thesis was that material prosperity inevitably leads to philosophical materialism, which ultimately undercuts fundamental social bonds and leads to cultural, civic and moral decline and collapse.

In her book, Glyn-Jones recounts how Sorokin looked at the philosophy, politics, science and technology of particular societies to analyse what made them tick and then to explain why they fell.

Treading a parallel path to Sorokin, Glyn-Jones analyses how the temper of a society is reflected not just in its philosophy, politics, science and technology, but also in the popular theatre of the day. She meticulously documents the rise and decline of earlier civilisation and marshals the information with extraordinary parallels between the ancients and modern Western civilisation.

Similarities

Similarities which leap off the pages include:

* A disease comparable to Aids was ravaging late 4th-century Rome, afflicting 'childless and unmarried' men;

* late Greece and late Rome faced a depopulation crisis with couples limiting family size to one or two children 'so as to leave these in affluence', according to Polybius (cf. the 'demographic timebomb' of Western Europe; the declining birthrate; and the trend to delay first childbirth later and later);

* Law and order steadily broke down as first Greece and later Rome advanced materially;

* The late Roman army was increasingly unable to fill its ranks with Roman citizens and had to rely on foreign mercenaries (cf. the modern-day Army recruitment crisis);

* Mystical new religions flourished in the declining civilisations as 'a world of knowledge transformed itself into a world of belief; philosophy to theology; astronomy to astrology . . .'

* The Romans instituted a 'corn dole' initially to provide free food, but eventually distributing enormous cash bounties from the emperors, lottery-style, to their subjects.

Ammunition

Glyn-Jones elaborates on these and other parallels to point up where our society is headed and, in her words, to 'provide the ammunition for others to use'. The 'others' are the opinion-formers, politicians and clergy who help (or should help) shape the values which our fellow-citizens live by.

The munitions provided by Glyn-Jones are well-documented warning signs that Britain is in the midst of exactly the same moral malaise that preceded the demise of the ancient Greeks, the Romans and medieval Christendom. According to Glyn-Jones, a wartime Wren and former member of the Canadian Special Branch, we are demonstrably in an era of moral malaise, the root causes of which lie in our underlying value system. Borrowing from Sorokin, she argues that we have moved from a society built on 'idealistic' values grounded in a belief in the Judaeo-Christian world view of rights and wrongs to one resting precariously on 'sensate' values which are informed solely by the senses and human reason.

She writes: 'Sorokin's theory was that societies prosper economically as they turn away from a preoccupation with the non-material world- the gods and the spiritual realm - to grapple through science and technology with the problems of manipulating nature.'

But there's the rub, according to Glyn-Jones. The values which enable us to subdue our world, in equal measure then erode the very values that tie society together in personal and civic relationships.

She argues that the materialism of the scientific worldview becomes the materialism characterised by selfish, reedy, inconsiderate, money-grubbing hedonism.

Is, and ought

Logically she argues, philosophic materialism always leads to moral materialism, because science cuts across and undermines notions of right and wrong. Science is only about what is - not what ought to be. And history has already proved the 'decline theory' to be right, time and time again, according to Glyn-Jones. She details how the ancient civilisations crumbled, often at the peak of their creative and manipulative powers, because they became decadent, barbaric and 'emasculated' with neither the moral will or the energy to defend and renew themselves.

Hence, she argues, the failure of technologically-superior Western societies to subdue the likes of the North Vietnamese, Saddam Hussein, the Somali warlords and Slobodan Milosevic.

Despite everything

Despite all their brilliant accomplishments, former civilisations lacked the internal strength, moral integrity and political will to hold together to reproduce themselves with stable families, and to defend themselves from external threats.

Glyn-Jones says we too are close to a similar point of no return. We are in the 'struggling on phase' of civilisation when increasing numbers of people feel the direct impact of what is going wrong in society. 'It's their children who are being shot at in Dunblane. It's their cars which are being vandalised.' How are the two events related?

Glyn-Jones replies by quoting Sorokin: 'If a person has no strong convictions as to what is right and what is wrong, if he does not believe in any God or absolute moral values, if he no longer respects contractual obligations, and finally, if his hunger for pleasure and sensory values is paramount, what can guide and control his conduct towards other men? Nothing but his desires and lusts. Under these conditions, he loses all rational and moral control, even plain common sense. What can deter him from violating the rights, interests, and well-being of other men? Nothing but physical force. How far will he go in his quest for sensory happiness? He will go as far as brute force, opposed by that of others, permits. His whole problem of behaviour is determined by the ratio between his force and that wielded by others.'

Consider the Dunblane massacre and read that quote again. It was written 50 years earlier.

Glyn-Jones believes Sorokin's thesis also explains the collapse in family values, the debauching of the arts, the crumbling of civic values, and the cynicism with which people view the judiciary, the Royal Family, the Church and local and national government.

Holding up a mirror is not another call for return to Victorian morality.

It is an historical analysis which invites readers to draw their own conclusions while reminding them that the values of our society have a logic and a momentum which can be plotted - just like those of earlier civilisations.

And if the spinster from Devon is right, the end of our society is nigh - sooner or later.

Alex Alexander is a member of Honiton Evangelical Congregational Church.

Holding Up A Mirror - How Civilisations Decline