Purpose

This long essay addresses the work of a number of authors relating to the decline of historically dominant civilisations. Always we will have one eye on the implications for ourselves, now, in the Western culture. The focus will alight on the role of women in the process of decline, as expressed by the authors named in the title. Both the emancipation of women and the emergence of sexual licence find themselves in the dock to be tried.

I could have added Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee to the title. In fact, the views of these authors will provide a suitable introduction to the subject of the rise and fall of civilisations. But it is with Unwin, Glubb and (very recently) Sulikowski that the gender issue comes to the fore. These authors I treat in chronological order: Unwin first and then Glubb before reaching the present with Dani Sulikowski, though she might be surprised to find herself in such company.

I had intended for some time to write on Unwin and it is appropriate after doing so to show how consistent is Sir John Glubb’s thesis with that of Unwin. But my recent spur to address these issues was given powerful motivation by Dani Sulikowski’s take on the broader societal implications of female social psychology. Sulikowski has provided a new twist to this old tale, and one which resonates with Unwin and Glubb. Actually, Sulikowski’s views are arguably more than consistent with Unwin and Glubb, potentially providing the missing causative factor between cultural decline and the rising dominance of the feminine. If ultimately proved correct, her ideas may provide the explicative key to understanding why the cultural decline occurs. However, it is not the only feasible explanation.

That the theme here is inevitable cultural decline and collapse invites the accusation that I have taken the black pill of despair. I attempt to head off this accusation in my closing suggestion as to who may win the gene-line competition which is inherent in Sulikowski’s thesis on manipulative reproductive suppression (MRS). This is potentially a positive outcome, of sorts. But I get ahead of myself. We have some distance to cover before getting to all that.

Spengler and Toynbee

Spengler’s Decline of the West was published, initially in German, in two volumes in 1918 and 1922. He attempted a broad comparative study of world cultures/civilizations. Spengler’s thesis was that the histories of cultures follow cyclical, organic patterns.  Civilisations, he argued, are like living organisms in that they have a finite life span and will naturally, and inevitably, grow old and die. The life of cultures from their arising to their collapse bears a generic similarity in every case, he claimed. But he also acknowledged that every culture had its own peculiar flavour or spirit (unique ‘souls’ as he put it). Spengler thus placed himself firmly in opposition to the liberal-progressive mindset by rejecting the Enlightenment idea of linear progress.

In Spengler’s classification, “culture” refers to the vigorous phase of expansion whilst “civilisation” refers to the mature phase in which the society starts to rest on its laurels and so decline. Spengler identified the West as in the latter state, characterised by a spiritual exhaustion. His view was that decline cannot be reversed.

I recall reading The Decline of the West as a student in the 1970s when Spengler was widely derided as a crank. That period was the high water mark of the post-hippie, boomer ascendency. It was Karl Popper (he of The Poverty of Historicism) and his ilk who defined the presumptions of the time. Popper would undoubtedly excoriate all the authors discussed here. He would do so by claiming that prediction of the future course of a civilisation based on some supposed laws of development is not possible. But noting the similarities between certain characteristics of cultures during their growth and decline does not constitute prediction, and still less immutable ‘laws’. So Popper’s objection seems a straw man.

Popper would also warn that claiming to foresee a civilization’s fall is scientifically illegitimate and even a dangerous folly. But given that civilisation do fall – and all have previously done so – then at some sufficiently late time the prediction of the culture’s imminent fall will become obvious to all. So prediction of the fall is merely noting what is already very close to having come to pass. Why then would a somewhat earlier prediction be regarded as “scientifically illegitimate and even dangerous”?

I suspect the liberal discomfort with Spengler, or any of the other authors discussed here, is actually that monotonic progress is their core belief and it is precisely this that all the authors challenge, presenting instead a picture of cyclical rises and falls. Since a great many civilisations have indeed risen and fallen (and none so far which have not) it is clear which of these positions falls at the first hurdle.

Arnold Toynbee’s magnum opus, A Study of History, was published in 12 volumes between 1934 and 1961 and had as its primary purpose understanding the rise and fall of civilisations. Like Edward Dutton (below), Toynbee saw civilisations arising from the challenge posed by a harsh environment (though not too harsh). But the central core of Toynbee’s opinion was that a culture grew in size and strength and became dominant due, not necessarily to characteristics of the masses, but due to the creativity and vigour of a minority. Conversely, that culture started to decline when the creative, hardworking and self-sacrificing minority became authoritarian. If the dominant minority (the elite, as we would now say) started to rule by force rather than by example then the culture would wane. Rather than the elite being an inspiration to the masses, a gulf would then grow between the masses and the elites who would begin to despise each other. Under rule by authoritarianism, the masses become alienated. To exacerbate all that, the culture would also be challenged by “an external proletariat” (read “immigrants”). One must admit, this sounds familiar. Toynbee’s view, then, was that civilisations die by suicide due to failure of the creative spirit.

Unlike Spengler, however, Toynbee did not see decline as inevitable. Rather a culture may persist as long as it meets successfully the moral challenges raised by a mature civilisation and maintains its spiritual vitality. I would add: these are Big Ifs.

Introduction to Unwin and Glub

The whole of this essay should be seen as an hypothesis attempting to understand why our own culture is declining, and what the end point is likely to be. None of the authors’ opinions are definitive, and this is especially so later in the essay when discussing Sulikowski’s suggestions. The latter are especially wanting empirical examination, as Dani Sulikowski would undoubtedly agree. Of all the authors, Unwin has the greatest claim to sound empirical underpinning, though only in respect of the historically observed correlation between sexual mores and cultural health – not as regards any causal explanation thereof, and certainly not the Freudian explanation Unwin himself favoured.

One does not need Freudian sublimation to understand why sexual behaviours might relate to cultural vibrancy. Here’s another possibility. Sexual continence and chastity outside marriage are key to men’s security in paternity. Without it, men’s commitment to family will diminish and with that men’s commitment to work. As a result the economy flounders and maintaining high culture is not an attribute of poor societies.

Edward Dutton, in his Foreword to the 2023 Imperium Press edition of Sex & Culture, favours another explanation. In this a “harsh ecology” is expected to drive pro-social attitudes, to favour intelligence and religion, and encourage a focus on stable family and prioritise care of children, thus “taking energy away from copulation”. Conversely, an easy ecology – essentially an affluent society – has no great need for these self-sacrificial, pro-social behaviours, with the result that cultural health declines. In this view the strong selection pressures of the former condition result in a society of individuals with integrity whilst the lack of selection pressure in the latter leads to degrading of the moral fibre of the nation (in my words).

I include these alternative proposals immediately in order to emphasise my acknowledgement that the perspectives expounded below are yet to be proved. But I submit that these ideas pass the first necessary test: that of internal consistency together with breadth of explanatory power. They are, therefore, to be taken seriously.

J.D.Unwin (Sex & Culture, 1934).

In 1934, the Oxford sociologist J.D.Unwin published an epochal work which detailed the effects upon a culture of the loosening of sexual constraints, Sex & Culture, His was an empirical study based on an exhaustive analysis of historical instances of cultures which underwent such changes in sexual mores.

Unwin examined the data from 86 societies and civilizations to see if there was a relationship between sexual freedom and the flourishing of cultures. As regards “civilized” societies, Unwin recognised only 16 historical examples, namely Sumerians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Assyrians, three Hellenic civilisations (namely the Macedonian, the Seleucid, and the Ptolemaic), Persians, Hindus, Chinese, Japanese, Sassanids, Arabs (i.e., Moors), Romans, Teutons and Anglo-Saxons. I presume the latter subsumes what we would now refer to as Western culture, sans Teutons (perhaps oddly, as most of Europe would not be pleased to be regarded as Anglo-Saxon).

Unwin’s headline finding was that sexual restraint is correlated with the rise of a vigorous culture whilst sexual licence is correlated with the later decline of that culture.

We note in our own times and in Western culture that sexual licence arose from feminism, and hence from what might be regarded as female emancipation (understood to mean the complete social, legal, educational and professional equality of the sexes). But there is a widespread view that such female emancipation is unique to recent, Western culture – that only the modern white man has been sufficiently enlightened to enact such equality of the sexes. On the contrary, notes Unwin, “a female emancipating movement is a cultural phenomenon of unfailing regularity”. Neither is the relationship of this emancipation with sexual licence in our own culture unusual. Rather, the same connection has always been seen in the past in other cultures.

This immediately raises a question: is it sexual restraint versus sexual licence which is the cause of cultural rise and decline, as Unwin asserts, or is it female subjugation versus female emancipation which causes cultural rise and fall – or are both merely correlates of the true causal factor, whatever that might be?

Unwin is clearly uncomfortable with pinning the blame for cultural decline on female emancipation – as, indeed, we may also be. But the fact is that his historical evidence cannot discriminate between this and sexual licence, because, by his own admission, they have always and everywhere occurred together. I return to this key issue below, but for now note that where I am heading in this essay is towards the potential answer that Dani Sulikowski brings to the picture. For now I will proceed with an account of Unwin’s thesis.

It is not clear to me whether the progressive mindset assumes that cultural progress has been monotonic throughout all recorded history, or that we are now so elevated in our nature that continual upward progress is assured. The former view requires a wilful ignorance of history whilst the latter is based entirely on a groundless, and highly contestable, conviction of our superiority to the people of history. Unwin makes his position clear,

“The use of the word “evolution” in reference to the cultural process is also responsible for another devastating preconception…the biological process has been regarded as a progressive development in the course of which higher and higher forms of life are successively produced…there is some evidence which inclines some students to regard the biological process as a continual development towards “higher” things. The result is that the cultural process has been regarded in the same way; but, if we base our conclusions on the cultural evidence alone, we see that in the past the cultural process has consisted of a long series of alternations, uprisings and declines. By no means can it be represented as an ascending straight line.”

I would add that evolutionists these days would likely repudiate the notion that natural selection progresses towards “higher things”, even in biology. Unwin continues,

“The notion of an ever-increasing cultural process has been encouraged by our own attitude to our own peculiar culture. There is reason to believe that in some ways our own culture is incomparably richer than that of any known previous culture. This well-recognised but usually exaggerated fact, combined with a pardonable egocentricity, has produce an irrational attitude towards the changes in our own cultural condition…convinced that the cultural process is a progressive development and that our own culture is the most developed of all cultures, we assume that every change in our cultural condition is evidence of higher cultural development…”

Readers might take issue with the claim that we in the West believe that “our own culture is the most developed of all cultures” which betrays its date (1934). Those on the left now do not hold that view, whilst those on the right might have held this view only up to the time that the degeneracy of our culture became undeniable. However, this does not undermine Unwin’s point. Modern progressives still believe in their personal enlightened superiority whatever they claim for the broader culture, and are adept at holding two contradictory views in their heads at the same time. Unwin continues, referring to the sort of progressivism described above,

“It is a quaint and comfortable doctrine; yet until it is dispelled we shall understand neither our own culture nor that of any other society. It vitiates many of our historical judgments and plays havoc with our efforts to understand the culture of societies which have passed away. If, in the study of a society which no longer inhabits any part of the earth as an organised unit, we discover an institution which we ourselves have adopted, we call it a civilised society. If the society allowed the institution to fall into desuetude, we say that then its members were degenerate. Sometimes we applaud as more enlightened the introduction into our own society of a custom which in the culture of another society we have condemned as decadent; but this does not embarrass us; we simply rewrite the history of that society. Sometimes we find that an ancient society introduced a reform which recently we ourselves have adopted. We call attention to this strange phenomenon, and condescendingly observe how civilised those ancient men were. We forget that there is another point of view; a more disinterested spectator might remark that only recently have we become as civilised as they were. Admittedly, the vague use of the word “civilised” is responsible for some of this woolly thought; the word is essentially meaningless, yet masquerades as a technical term…”

Rather than vague notions of civilisation Unwin replaces this with “culture” and defines in clear and definite empirical terms how cultural condition is to be measured within his comparative anthropology. In brief his scheme was as follows.

Unwin set out to investigate the relationship, if any, between sexual mores and cultural vibrancy. He therefore needed a categorisation scheme for both. He provided detailed criteria to define what he meant by sexual constraint versus sexual freedom, and the degrees between the two. He did so separately for the married and the unmarried (and note that the existence of marriage was a universal across all cultures). Prior to marriage Unwin’s categories were,

• Complete sexual freedom—no prenuptial restraints at all
• Irregular or occasional restraint— cultural regulations require an occasional period of abstinence
• Strict Chastity —remain a virgin until married

Whereas after marriage he defined four categories,

• Modified monogamy: one spouse at a time, but association can be terminated by either party.
• Modified polygamy: men can have more than one wife, but a wife is free to leave her husband.
• Absolute monogamy: only one spouse permitted for life (or until death in some cultures) 
• Absolute polygamy:  men can have more than one wife, but wives must confine their sexual activity to their husband for the whole of their lives.

Similarly, Unwin also systematised how cultural vigour, or lack thereof, could be clearly defined and categorised. He deployed four degrees of cultural flourishing measured in terms of architecture, art, engineering, literature, agriculture, and so forth. Specific criteria were devised which allowed a given culture at a given period to be classified into one of four levels of cultural achievement, which, in ascending order were,

• zoistic: defined as entirely self-focussed on day-to day-life, wants, and needs, with no interest in any deeper understanding or philosophy. This is a “dead or inert culture”.
• manistic: defined as a progression from the zoistic as regards the acquisition of superstitious beliefs and/or special treatment of the dead, and hence the beginnings of a greater curiosity beyond the daily grind.
• deistic: defined as a culture which deployed the idea of a god or gods as explanations for enquiring minds on matters which were otherwise mysterious. (I believe we would now refer to this as “theistic”, as the term “deism” has a more specific meaning in modern parlance).
• rationalistic: defined as a culture which had moved beyond the theistic by the use of rational thinking to understand nature and the deployment of such rational understanding to improve the everyday lives of the people (leading potentially to the development of science and technology).

I shall shortly draw out some illustrative quotes from Sex & Culture which provide amplification and context to Unwin’s headline conclusions from his detailed comparative anthropological study. Those conclusions were summarised by Unwin in the form of five laws, two primary laws and three secondary laws, which, in abbreviated form were,

Primary 1: “The cultural condition of any society in any geographical environment is conditioned by its past and present methods of regulating the relations between the sexes.”

Secondary 1: “Any society in which complete pre-nuptial sexual freedom has been permitted for at least three generations will be in the zoistic cultural condition.”

Secondary 2: “If in any human society such regulations are adopted as compel an irregular or occasional continence, the cultural condition of that society will become manistic.”

Secondary 3: “If in any human society the girls of an uprising generation are compelled to be pre-nuptially chaste, that society will be in the deistic cultural condition.”

Primary 2: “No society can display productive social energy unless a new generation inherits a social system under which sexual opportunity is reduced to a minimum.”

Unwin’s main conclusions were,

• Increased sexual constraints, either before or after marriage, always led to increased flourishing of a culture.
• Conversely, increased sexual freedom always led to the collapse of a culture in about one century (which Unwin aligns with three generations).
• The clearest correlation with the flourishing of a culture was pre-marital chastity, especially for women. This had a highly significant effect in both directions: chaste singles make for a flourishing culture; sexually active singles result in cultural decline.
• The largest effect size on culture was for pre-marital chastity coupled with “absolute monogamy”, i.e., monogamy without the availability of divorce. Rationalist cultures that retained this combination for at least three generations exceeded all other cultures in every area, including literature, art, science, furniture, architecture, engineering, and agriculture. Only three out of the eighty-six cultures studied ever attained this level.
• Whenever the ethos of pre-marital chastity was abandoned, then absolute monogamy, theism, and rational thinking also disappeared within three generations.
• Whenever total sexual freedom was embraced by a culture, that culture collapsed within three generations to the lowest state of flourishing, becoming zoistic, effectively a dead culture. At this point, the culture is usually conquered or taken over by another culture with greater social energy.

Let me remind you that Unwin published his study in 1934, some 30 years before second wave feminism and the sexual revolution even started.

The issue for us is whether Unwin’s historical findings provide a prediction for the endpoint of the trajectory that Western civilisation is now following. You may assume that I think it probably does, or I would not be taking up your time with this essay – but that does not mean I am pretending to certainty.

As a general rule, changes in sexual mores only realise their full cultural effect by the third generation. In our case, if we count the start of the sexual revolution as the sixties, then Unwin’s thesis predicts its full effects will only be realised when Gen Z are post-middle-aged.

You may be tempted to imagine that Unwin’s systematics of historical cultures have nothing to say about our culture now, that his predictions will not apply to us, that we are somehow immune to what befell previous cultures. But, in as far as sociology results from psychology, and in as far as the psychology in question is innate, being of evolutionary origin, there are no obvious grounds for dismissal of Unwin’s predictions.

The evolutionary perspective is at odds with the idea that we are exceptional, that our culture is immune to the decline, collapse and potential extinction that has befallen all other dominant cultures in the past. Whilst perhaps not unanimous, the mainstream evolutionary view is that culture is a product of human evolution, essentially the extended phenotype. If one accepts that – and also accepts that evolution is so slow a process that our human nature has changed insignificantly over recorded history – then the idea that our culture is exceptional, and so will not be prone to decline and replacement, stands revealed as mere groundless egocentric conceit.

The meaning which Unwin attaches to Absolute Monogamy is uncompromisingly harsh and could have been formulated to confirm the feminist position on historical patriarchy. He writes,

“When absolute monogamy is the rule, marriage is a means whereby a man secures domestic labour and heirs of his blood. A wife and her children are under the dominion of her husband; in the eyes of the law he alone is an entity. The wife is taught to submit to her husband in all things; it is her duty to serve him and to obey him. No woman may have sexual relations with any other man than with him whom she marries as a virgin. When she is married, she is not permitted to withhold conjugal rights. In an absolutely monogamous society female chastity becomes desirable for its own sake, for after a while the women accept as a point of honour the restraint imposed upon them by their lords. Over his children also a man has complete power.”

Unwin immediately adds, “In its full rigour this institution has never lasted for very long. Indeed all those human societies which have adopted it were constantly revising their method of regulating the relation between the sexes”. I would go further and suggest that, even at its most harsh, there would always be a degree of fiction to the above description. Wives do not become doormats merely because society demands restrictions on public behaviour, and the law of coverture can be rather a fig leaf for the reality of marital relationships (see chapter 1 of this book). Unwin goes on to described how this hard-line absolute monogamy morphs into do-as-thou-wilt “liberalism” (that is, libertinism), thus,

“…the reforms which they introduced always conformed to the same pattern, being apparently designed to correct a state of affairs in which women and children were legal nonentities…In every case, too, the qualification of the marital and parental authorities was accompanied by the reduction of marriage to a temporary union made and broken by mutual consent. Furthermore, in most cases the demand for pre-nuptial chastity was relaxed. In this manner the sexual opportunity of each society was extended; and as soon as a lack of compulsory continence became part of the inherited tradition of a complete new generation the energy of the society faded away. Sexual impulses could be satisfied in a direct manner; there was no compulsory continence, and consequently no energy.”

In this last remark Unwin’s adherence to the Freudian notion of sublimation of sexual energy is clear, as it is throughout Sex & Culture. Recall that this work is a product of the 1930s, when Freud was most influential amongst intellectuals. The idea of sublimation is that if the energy that, unfettered, would go into sexual congress was prevented from being expended in that manner by a social imposition of obligatory sexual restraint, then the displaced energy became “sublimated” into different pathways of expression – specifically, cultural endeavours. Thus, Unwin’s presumption is that the reason for sexual restraint leading to cultural vigour and growth is precisely the psychological mechanism of sublimation. Conversely, as sexual mores become relaxed in a society, so the need to sublimate energy diminishes and cultural vigour declines, and with it the civilisation which depended upon that cultural strength.

Freud generally, and sublimation in particular, no longer being so highly regarded we may be sceptical about the explanation that Unwin offered. But what remains of his work is, crucially, the purely empirically based relationship between sexual mores and cultural growth or decline. We must, therefore, retain that correlation as having been established for historical cultures. What remains open is the true explanation of it. And in that respect we have no basis, from Unwin alone, for regarding that correlation to be causal. The true causal factor is therefore, as ever, what we seek.

Unwin noted that, whilst the emancipation of women is logically quite distinct from the extension of women’s sexual opportunity, in practice the two things have, so far, always gone together. Here, “women’s emancipation” is understood to mean the social, legal and political equality between the sexes. In respect of the existence of historical cultures from which to draw data regarding the effects of increased sexual licence, Unwin writes,

“…it is often supposed that female emancipation is an invention of the modern white man. Sometimes we imagine that we have arrived at a conception of the status of women in society which is far superior to that of any other age; we feel an inordinate pride because we regard ourselves as the only civilized society which has understood that the sexes must have social, legal, and political equality. Nothing could be farther from the truth. A female emancipating movement is a cultural phenomenon of unfailing regularity; it appears to be the necessary outcome of absolute monogamy. The subsequent loss of social energy after the emancipation of women, which is sometimes emphasized, has been due not to the emancipation but to the extension of sexual opportunity which has always accompanied it. In human records there is no instance of female emancipation which has not been accompanied by an extension of sexual opportunity.”

Note that Unwin’s assertion here that the “loss of social energy after the emancipation of women… has been due not to the emancipation but to the extension of sexual opportunity” is without any evidential basis. He continued,

“From a superficial study of the available data it might be thought that the questions of female subjugation and parental power are indissolubly allied to that of female continence; but actually their alliance in the past has been due to the chance factor that sexual opportunity has never been reduced to a minimum except by depriving women and children of their legal status. It is historically true to say that, in the past, social energy has been purchased at the price of individual freedom, for it has never been displayed unless the female of the species has sacrificed her rights as an individual and unless children have been treated as mere appendages to the estate of the male parent; but it would be rash to conclude that sexual opportunity cannot be reduced to a minimum under any other conditions. The evidence is that the subjugation of women and children is intolerable and therefore temporary; but we should go beyond the evidence if we were to conclude from this fact that compulsory continence is also intolerable and therefore temporary. Such a statement, indeed, is contradicted by the tenor of the whole story.”

Unwin here bends over backwards to avoid blaming women’s emancipation per se for cultural decline, preferring to place the blame entirely on the relaxing of sexual mores. That the two things have, by his own admission, always occurred together is something he attempts to pass off as a “chance factor”. He is clearly driven here by a desire to leave the door open for gender equality without cultural collapse by suggesting that compulsory sexual continence might be possible in a society with emancipated women – for which there is no historical precedent.

But, if we are not convinced by the Freudian sublimation explanation anyway, Unwin’s anthropological evidence is just as consistent with cultural collapse being caused by emancipation itself, not sexual licence, because the two things always occur together and so cannot be discriminated by his data. Or, of course, the causal factor may be something else entirely, with which both emancipation and sexual licence happen to be strongly correlated.

John Glubb (The Fate of Empires and the Search for Survival, 1978)

“The life histories of great states are amazingly similar”, opines Glubb. His thesis is that the rise, the chief characteristics and the final demise of a culture follow broadly similar patterns repeatedly over history. Contrary to Popper, but in agreement with Spengler, Toynbee and Unwin, Glubb sees history as a great teacher.

The stages of the rise and fall of great nations Glubb identifies as being: “The Age of Pioneers, the Age of Conquests, the Age of Commerce, the Age of Affluence, the Age of Intellect and finally the Age of Decadence”.  Decadence is marked by pessimism, materialism, frivolity, an influx of foreigners, the Welfare State and a weakening of religion. Sound familiar?  Decadence arises due to too long a period of wealth and power, widespread selfishness, love of money and the loss of a sense of duty.”

As we will see, Glubb noted that the emancipation of women and the decline of sexual morality were symptoms of the decadent stage and the incipient collapse of the culture, but he did not claim the connection to be causal.

Another feature of decline also sounds very familiar, Glubb wrote, “Another remarkable and unexpected symptom of national decline is the intensification of internal political hatreds.” As we would also note, Glubb continues, “One would have expected that, when the survival of the nation became precarious, political factions would drop their rivalry and stand shoulder-to-shoulder to save their country.” Not a bit of it. Intensifying political hatreds are a symptom of decline, not a motivation for reversing it.

Glubb illustrates his thesis with a number of historical examples, including the Arab empire of the eighth and ninth centuries. It was at its zenith in the early ninth century when “the caliphs of Baghdad achieved fabulous wealth owing to the immense extent of their territories, which constituted a single trade bloc. The empire of the caliphs is now (i.e., in 1978) divided into some twenty-five separate ‘nations’.” Glubb notes the contemporary evidence of the symptoms of the decline of this early Arab empire that occurred in the late 9^th century,

“The works of the contemporary historians of Baghdad in the early tenth century are still available. They deeply deplored the degeneracy of the times in which they lived, emphasising particularly the indifference to religion, the increasing materialism and the laxity of sexual morals. They lamented also the corruption of the officials of the government and the fact that politicians always seemed to amass large fortunes while they were in office.

The historians commented bitterly on the extraordinary influence acquired by popular singers over young people, resulting in a decline in sexual morality. The ‘pop’ singers of Baghdad accompanied their erotic songs on the lute, an instrument resembling the modern guitar. In the second half of the tenth century, as a result, much obscene sexual language came increasingly into use, such as would not have been tolerated in an earlier age.” (My emphasis).

And as for Rome, Glubb writes,

“An increase in the influence of women in public life has often been associated with national decline. The later Romans complained that, although Rome ruled the world, women ruled Rome. In the tenth century, a similar tendency was observable in the Arab Empire, the women demanding admission to the professions hitherto monopolised by men…. Many women practised law, while others obtained posts as university professors. There was an agitation for the appointment of female judges, which, however, does not appear to have succeeded.” (My emphasis). Glubb adds,

“Soon after this period, government and public order collapsed, and foreign invaders overran the country. The resulting increase in confusion and violence made it unsafe for women to move unescorted in the streets, with the result that this feminist movement collapsed.”

Glubb reacted to these observations with much the same surprise that I did myself on first becoming acquainted with these historical examples. He writes,

“When I first read these contemporary descriptions of tenth-century Baghdad, I could scarcely believe my eyes. I told myself that this must be a joke! The descriptions might have been taken out of The Times today (i.e., in 1978, though you could equally well make that 2025). The resemblance of all the details was especially breathtaking—the break-up of the empire, the abandonment of sexual morality, the ‘pop’ singers with their guitars, the entry of women into the professions, the five-day week.”

And then there’s immigration (“the influx of foreigners” as Glubb puts it). He notes,

“One of the oft-repeated phenomena of great empires is the influx of foreigners to the capital city. Roman historians often complain of the number of Asians and Africans in Rome. Baghdad, in its prime in the ninth century, was international in its population—Persians, Turks, Arabs, Armenians, Egyptians, Africans and Greeks mingled in its streets.”

And the following observations remain apposite today,

“…poorer peoples were only too happy to migrate to the wealthy cities of the empire, and thereby, as we have seen, to adulterate the close-knit, homogeneous character of the conquering race. The latter unconsciously assumed that they would always be the leaders of mankind, relaxed their energies, and spent an increasing part of their time in leisure, amusement or sport.”

“In recent years, the idea has spread widely in the West that ‘progress’ will be automatic without effort, that everyone will continue to grow richer and richer and that every year will show a ‘rise in the standard of living’. We have not drawn from history the obvious conclusion that material success is the result of courage, endurance and hard work…”

Glubb goes on to blame complacency, born of luxury and wealth, for the undermining of the national character, facilitated by the declining nation’s false belief in their natural superiority. Decadence is not physical, he notes.

“Decadence is a moral and spiritual disease, resulting from too long a period of wealth and power, producing cynicism, decline of religion, pessimism and frivolity. The citizens of such a nation will no longer make an effort to save themselves, because they are not convinced that anything in life is worth saving.”

Glubb explodes the idea that the Western white people were the first in history to indulge in State funded welfare. He noted,

“When the welfare state was first introduced in Britain, it was hailed as a new high-water mark in the history of human development. History, however, seems to suggest that the age of decline of a great nation is often a period which shows a tendency to philanthropy and to sympathy for other races.”

“The Arab Empire of Baghdad was equally, perhaps even more, generous. During the Age of Conquests, pure-bred Arabs had constituted a ruling class, but in the ninth century the empire was completely cosmopolitan.”

“State assistance to the young and the poor was equally generous. University students received government grants to cover their expenses while they were receiving higher education. The State likewise offered free medical treatment to the poor. The first free public hospital was opened in Baghdad in the reign of Harun al-Rashid (786-809), and under his son, Mamun, free public hospitals sprang up all over the Arab world from Spain to what is now Pakistan.”

And if ever there were a conclusion to enrage the progressive, it is Glubb’s here,

“The impression that it will always be automatically rich causes the declining empire to spend lavishly on its own benevolence, until such time as the economy collapses, the universities are closed and the hospitals fall into ruin.”

“It may perhaps be incorrect to picture the welfare state as the high-water mark of human attainment. It may merely prove to be one more regular milestone in the lifestory of an ageing and decrepit empire.”

Like Spengler and Unwin before him, Glubb does not indicate any likelihood that the decline of a culture, when once underway, can be halted or reversed. Is it all gloom, then? I think not. Whilst the declining culture as the dominant political force may be doomed, that does not necessarily prevent small communities preserving much of the culture’s finer achievements, albeit this requires determination because it is not easy to disconnect from the sinking mainstream. Pioneers of such small, local break-away communities may be encouraged by the thought of a potential future renaissance. Cohesion and longevity of these communities is likely to need a religious backing (cf. the Benedict Option). Glubb wrote,

“But while despair might permeate the greater part of the nation, others achieved a new realisation of the fact that only readiness for self-sacrifice could enable a community to survive…”

“In this manner, at the height of vice and frivolity the seeds of religious revival are quietly sown. After, perhaps, several generations (or even centuries) of suffering, the impoverished nation has been purged of its selfishness and its love of money, religion regains its sway and a new era sets in.”

Dani Sulikowski (2025): Manipulative Reproductive Suppression

This is Dr Dani Sulikowski, evolutionary psychologist. She has done a great deal of work on non-human species. Her published work on humans has included intrasexual competition amongst women. However, no publications have as yet covered the material addressed here, which I have taken from Dr Sulikowski’s many YouTube interviews (see, for example, Female Psychology & The End of Empires and How Intrasexual Competition Suppresses Female Fertility). She is currently considering what empirical studies are possible to confirm or refute the ideas she has been expressing in these videos.

I have noted that previous authors have observed an historical relationship between the rise of women (emancipation) and cultural decline. I do not find convincing the Freudian sublimation hypothesis favoured by J.D.Unwin. Consequently, we do not know whether the correlation between female emancipation and cultural decline is itself causal, and if so by what mechanism, or whether both share a common causal origin.

The relevance of Dani Sulikowski to this essay relates to her hypothesis that Manipulative Reproductive Suppression is the missing causal factor which explains the correlation. She is rightly cautious about making any definitive claim in this respect, noting that it is an hypothesis only. At least some aspects of the hypothesis are potentially capable of empirical examination, but this is currently outstanding. For now I note only that it meets the requirements of an hypothesis upon which it might be worth expending research effort, namely that it is internally consistent, has broad explanatory power, and is capable of being refuted.

Evolution revolves around being reproductively successful. Sulikowski’s hypothesis of Manipulative Reproductive Suppression (MRS) starts from the key fact that reproductive success is relative, not absolute. To win the evolutionary game you need more babies to survive to adulthood than other people manage. There are broadly two strategies: try to make (or sire) more babies than everyone else, or attempt to prevent others from doing so. This is where Intrasexual Competition (ISC) comes in.

In the case of men, ISC is manifest as just that: competition. It is all up-front with men. But women are a different matter. Unlike men, women’s social style is not competition and hierarchy but (ostensibly) consensual and cooperative. No doubt much of that is actually real, but also, beneath the lovely surface, there is cutthroat competition. But it is crucially important to women not to get ostracised by their peer group, which might happen if they are openly aggressive. Consequently, women’s ISC is carried out mainly by sabotage. This is why women are so natural skilled at situational aggression – the destruction of the opponent’s reputation. This can occur in many contexts, one being a (possibly covert) interest in the same man. But the tactics of MRS are far broader than just competition over mates.

Of interest to us here is that, according to Sulikowski’s hypothesis, MRS is being enacted on a culture-wide level via female ISC. That is, some women are espousing and promulgating opinions and perspectives (viz propaganda) which discourage other women from having babies.

Feminism itself is a case in point.

“What we currently have across the West is suffocating levels of reproductive suppression”, opines Sulikowski, adding that, in her view, ISC is causing the breakdown of Western civilisation. When male ISC is the fundamental organising force, the culture in question grows; when female ISC is the fundamental organising force, the civilisation goes into decline. In short, Sulikowski links the rise of the dominance of the feminine after emancipation to civilisational collapse, caused by female MRS.

Sulikowski cautions that, even though civilisational rise and fall is cyclical, and even though there are clear similarities in the “symptomatics” of decline, that does not establish that female ISC or MRS is definitively the cause – though she offers that hypothesis for consideration. She adds that she believes the underlying cause of decline, whatever it is, is a “fundamental trait of being human” and so will be common between cultures and epochs.

I admit my first reaction to this hypothesis was to regard it as improbable. Can female MRS be severe enough it its collateral effects to destroy entire civilisations? Well, one reply to that criticism is to note that few would regard as outlandish the association of male ISC, i.e., male competitiveness, with the cultural and economic vigour of a people. Why, then, should women’s ISC not also have profound implications culture-wide?

Another response to that criticism is simply to note how many of the issues de nos jours are anti-natal, either explicitly or in their effect, and then to ask yourself “why?”. Here are some examples,

• Feminism openly diminishes motherhood and encourages women to prioritise career.
• Feminism has, with planned determination, largely achieved the destruction of marriage – the previously approved vehicle for child-rearing.
• Abortion is explicitly anti-natal and has been vigorously demanded with ever fewer limitations, even now up to full term in some jurisdictions.
• The feminist position on parental alienation seems inured to its damage to children, even when the alienated parent is a mother.
• The lauding of homosexuality and trans is again clearly anti-natal in its effect.
• #MeToo, harassment at work narratives, rape culture narratives, impracticable consent standards, the diminished status of men – all frustrate the mating game and so reduce birth rate, and all have been promoted in the name of women.
• Anti-male rhetoric (men are oppressors, toxic masculinity) is for the purpose of discouraging women from relations with men entirely. (Sulikowski goes so far as to claim that men are not the primary intended target of these anti-male narratives – women are).
• Climate change zealots are appallingly anti-human, and hence anti-natal. Have you heard that climate change is a feminist issue?
• Having children is now presented as morally reprehensible because too many humans are wrecking the planet.
• Promoting the skinny ideal is also anti-natal as it reduces fertility.
• The lack of concern over reducing sperm counts is consistent with MRS because reduced birth rate is being touted a good thing.
• The “body positive” movement is a fairly clear case of women’s ISC as it encourages other women to be fat, hence leaving the field clear for themselves.
• The use of sex by women to get ahead, then using that sex later to cry ‘victim’, and finally ‘warning’ other women about said men (e.g., #MeTo) so they cannot use the same approach. All this is about MRS according to Sulikowski.
• Sulikowski cites the case of celebrities adopting black kids as a clear visual signal that the kid is not theirs. The point is to telegraph a virtue signal, namely that they have foregone their own reproduction. The same now applies with celebrity’s boasting of their trans kids.
• And it is working. I know many young women who will not be having any children because they regard this world as an unsuitable place into which to bring a child, what with the end of the world being nigh and society being full of violent, misogynist rapists.
• And, so, it is a successful strategy, birth rate has diminished dramatically, and continues to diminish, and this is now the case across the whole world, excepting only Africa.

Is it just an accident that all these disparate issues are anti-natal?

If not, then what is their common explanation?

It seems we must grant MRS some credibility.

Sulikowski argues that MRS is a specifically female phenomenon because it only works for women. This is because women are the “critical path”, the rate determining sex, in respect of childbirth. I’m not sure this argument holds water. If men could prevent 50% of other men who would have reproduced from reproducing at all, then their own offspring would have double the evolutionary impact – just as for women. And if the overall birthrate remained invariant then the fewer men who were still reproducing would now be on a bonanza.  

I suspect the issue here is which sex has available to them a social mechanism which can transmit their anti-natalist propaganda. Women’s social groups with their conformance ethos provides them with such a vehicle (powerfully aided by women’s magazines, women’s web sites, modern novels, etc.).

Men, on the other hand, lack the social mechanisms to make MRS happen. Men’s drive for competition & hierarchy is opposed to the tightly controlled, policed and conformist social groups that women deploy. In any case, men lack the skill in situational aggression that would be needed. So men have no choice but to continue to use direct competition to obtain absolute reproductive success, rather than the relative success of MRS. The latter is possible only for a group with enough influence over their own sex to propagandise them into behaviours against their own (or their genes’) interests.

It has frustrated advocates for men and boys for decades that men will not form a large-scale push-back against feminism and the feminist state – but this is the reason why. We men have no social mechanism for its achievement, such a thing being at odds with competition and the importance of personal status with respect to the male hierarchies.

For women, being within a social group is essential – being ostracised is a harsh punishment for non-conformance. This why social contagions affect women more than men. It’s why women seem compelled to follow fashion. This is why policing of speech has arisen culture-wide as women have become dominant – it’s because that’s what women have always done within their single-sex groups.

This nature of women’s spaces provides the dominant women within them with a ready-made means of promulgating propaganda messaging. But there is a distinction between signalling conformance and embodying the message in one’s own life. The cunning wielder of MRS can attend anti-abortion demos, wear a pussy hat, state that they are feminist, etc., without having an abortion themselves or being in earnest about genuinely sticking up for women. And quietly have children.

This is why, Sulikowski argues, many conservative women pronounce themselves supportive of ‘woke’ ideas, i.e., those that promote MRS, despite clearly not being adherents of the associated ideology. It explains why feminism is across all political parties – and hence why it has become de rigueur. Meanwhile men haven’t got a clue and think feminism is just about being nice to women, misled by their innate gynocentrism. I’m guessing the knowing, mean-girl feminists find this hilarious.

One of the perennial questions is whether this MRS behaviour is conscious. Are such women blindly following the diktats of their genes, or are they knowing and wicked? Or do they believe they are doing good? One answer, which I personally favour, is that there is not the clear cut distinction between deliberate action and unknowing action that is often assumed. There are none so ignorant as those who are wilfully so.

On this point Sulikowski also notes that activists – such as those who might push the MRS agenda – are “high on the dark triad” – they are not nice people. So they may not need to feel they are doing good. But the many zealots who follow them probably are “true believers”, convinced by the messaging that they are doing good things for women and “smashing the patriarchy”. In truth, thinks Sulikowski, men have nothing to do with it at all. Even the toxic masculinity narrative is not necessarily primarily aimed at men. The denigration of men and masculinity is to discourage other women from marriage, or even partnership, at least to masculine men: all this as a means to achieve MRS.

Hence, we are in a game of last man (actually woman) standing – those left still procreating as the birth rate falls very low will define the genes that ultimately win. This is why the promulgators of MRS are so aggressive towards pro-life conservatives, because the latter are potentially wrecking their strategy to suppress reproduction from all but themselves. Note that the zealots who push the messaging are mostly not the winners but rather the useful idiots of the few who are using them.

One wonders whether full-blown MRS is necessary to provide the link between the dominance of the feminine and cultural decline. As Helen Andrews notes, cancel culture, for instance, is just what you get when the feminine social style is in control. Cancel culture is just female ostracism from the peer group, the punishment for non-conformance, writ culture wide. But then one comes hard up against the oddly anti-natal characteristic of all the modish issues (i.e., the bullet list above) and the idea that female social style is a sufficient explanation flounders.

Who Wins?

The obvious winners are those foreign cultures which, immune to the anti-natal messaging by virtue of being culturally decoupled, continue to thrive as the previously dominant culture dwindles and dies. The “barbarians” are not at the gates; they have long since been colonising the nation(s) in question. The take-over is gradual and seamless.

But remnants of the dead culture remain in some altered form. Who from the dying culture manages to populate this rump remnant society?

The bottom line of Sulikowski’s argument is that the promulgators of MRS will, through their own reproduction, be the ultimate evolutionary winners. The post-collapse society that emerges and becomes part of the follow-on mixed culture society is seeded by these same successful manipulators – in her view.

But I take issue with this assumption. There is a more obvious spin on who are the winners. Surely the winners would be those women who never fall for the narrative. What percentage of Western women do not subscribe to the progressive/feminist position on most topics (specifically those in the above bullet list) and also have enough independence of mind to reject the anti-natal messaging? A large percentage, I think. And this does not require actually seeing through the MRS strategy. It only requires knowing that the narrative is wrong-headed by simple common sense.

The MRS strategy is rather fragile. Anyone who ignores the narrative can also avail themselves of the opportunity to amplify their evolutionary efficiency. In fact, it may be that the knowing few who push the narrative for their own reproductive benefit are very few and it has always been those smart enough to see through the scam that provide the genetic feedstock for the later resurgent culture.

In fact, this is virtually a truism. The resurgent rump culture must have reverted to the male-led ethos (even male ISC) or it would not be resurgent. A continuation of the female-led, female ISC, ethos in a new culture starting to grow from a small beginning would surely be a contradiction. The conditions under which this nascent rump culture will struggle will be harsh. They will find themselves in the early days attacked by the dying, but not yet dead, old culture. Then they will find themselves in severe competition with the more vibrant, and numerically larger, foreign cultures which by then will have become firmly established. These conditions will not support a female-dominant society which thrives only in the affluence of late-stage civilisation. The MRS strategy destroys itself.

Be that as it may, the big losers will be the large bulk of a society which has become degenerate, including all the true believer useful idiot zealots.