Was reading a little on Arnold Toynbee the other day and one of the things mentioned is how Toynbee characterized the typical mental responses of people realizing that their civilization is in decline and heading towards collapse.

Toynbee argued in that environment of civilizational decay people tend to gravitate towards one of four intellectual responses: archaism, futurism, escapism and transcendence. You can see this playing out on social media these days.

Archaism is the idealization of the past. The concept is fairly easy to understand. The modern civilization is not so great anymore so let's rollback the clock to a time when our civilization seemed triumphant or emulate some great civilization of the past.

Futurism is the exact opposite, idealization of future possibilities. It might acknowledge there are some difficulties now but remains firm in the belief that some new development just around the corner will soon correct these problems.

Escapism or detachment is pretty much ignoring the problems along with civilization's decay. These days this typically takes the form of getting immersed in some form of mass entertainment like the Marvel franchise.

The one that does manage to do it, again in Toynbee's view, dominates the next civilizational cycle. Toynbee also says that as a civilization decays bitterness and envy increase markedly from the stress. This eventually leads to a schism within the civilization.

The main basis of this schism is what Toynbee called the Internal Proletariat and the External Proletariat. The internal proletariat is held in thrall by the government and grows increasingly bitter as the civilization decays.

Meanwhile the external proletariat exists outside the halls of power, increasingly living in poverty as the civilization's economy degrades and becomes increasingly envious and angry over the situation. Something you can also see playing out over social media these days.