{"id":4765,"date":"2025-10-20T13:20:01","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T12:20:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/empathygap.uk\/?p=4765"},"modified":"2025-10-20T13:20:02","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T12:20:02","slug":"unwin-glubb-sulikowski-and-the-decline-of-the-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/empathygap.uk\/?p=4765","title":{"rendered":"Unwin, Glubb, Sulikowski and the Decline of the West"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Purpose<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s thesis with that of Unwin. But my recent spur to address these issues was given powerful motivation by Dani Sulikowski\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Spengler and Toynbee<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Spengler\u2019s Decline of the West<\/em> was published, initially in German, in two volumes in 1918 and 1922. He attempted a broad comparative study of world cultures\/civilizations. Spengler\u2019s 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 \u2018souls\u2019 as he put it). Spengler thus placed himself firmly in opposition to the liberal-progressive mindset by rejecting the Enlightenment idea of linear progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Spengler\u2019s classification, \u201cculture\u201d refers to the vigorous phase of expansion whilst \u201ccivilisation\u201d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I recall reading The Decline of the West<\/em> 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<\/em>) 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 \u2018laws\u2019. So Popper\u2019s objection seems a straw man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Popper would also warn that claiming to foresee a civilization\u2019s fall is scientifically illegitimate and even a dangerous folly. But given that civilisation do fall \u2013 and all have previously done so \u2013 then at some sufficiently late time the prediction of the culture\u2019s 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 \u201cscientifically illegitimate and even dangerous\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arnold Toynbee\u2019s magnum opus, A Study of History<\/em>, 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 <\/em>harsh). But the central core of Toynbee\u2019s 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 \u201can external proletariat\u201d (read \u201cimmigrants\u201d). One must admit, this sounds familiar. Toynbee\u2019s view, then, was that civilisations die by suicide due to failure of the creative spirit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction to Unwin and Glub<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019 opinions are definitive, and this is especially so later in the essay when discussing Sulikowski\u2019s 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 \u2013 not as regards any causal explanation thereof, and certainly not the Freudian explanation Unwin himself favoured.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One does not need Freudian sublimation to understand why sexual behaviours might relate to cultural vibrancy. Here\u2019s another possibility. Sexual continence and chastity outside marriage are key to men\u2019s security in paternity. Without it, men\u2019s commitment to family will diminish and with that men\u2019s commitment to work. As a result the economy flounders and maintaining high culture is not an attribute of poor societies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Edward Dutton, in his Foreword to the 2023 Imperium Press edition of Sex & Culture, favours another explanation. In this a \u201charsh ecology\u201d 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 \u201ctaking energy away from copulation\u201d. Conversely, an easy ecology \u2013 essentially an affluent society \u2013 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).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

J.D.Unwin (<\/strong>Sex & Culture<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, 1934).<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/a>, His was an empirical study based on an exhaustive analysis of historical instances of cultures which underwent such changes in sexual mores.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 \u201ccivilized\u201d 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).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unwin\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 \u2013 that only the modern white man has been sufficiently enlightened to enact such equality of the sexes. On the contrary, notes Unwin, \u201ca female emancipating movement is a cultural phenomenon of unfailing regularity\u201d. 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 \u2013 or are both merely correlates of the true causal factor, whatever that might be?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unwin is clearly uncomfortable with pinning the blame for cultural decline on female emancipation \u2013 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\u2019s thesis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe use of the word \u201cevolution\u201d in reference to the cultural process is also responsible for another devastating preconception\u2026the biological process has been regarded as a progressive development in the course of which higher and higher forms of life are successively produced\u2026there is some evidence which inclines some students to regard the biological process as a continual development towards \u201chigher\u201d 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would add that evolutionists these days would likely repudiate the notion that natural selection progresses towards \u201chigher things\u201d, even in biology. Unwin continues,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe 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\u2026convinced 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\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Readers might take issue with the claim that we in the West believe that \u201cour own culture is the most developed of all cultures\u201d 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\u2019s 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,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt 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 \u201ccivilised\u201d is responsible for some of this woolly thought; the word is essentially meaningless, yet masquerades as a technical term\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather than vague notions of civilisation Unwin replaces this with \u201cculture\u201d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s categories were,<\/p>\n\n\n\n