Societal collapse

Societal collapse (also known as civilisational collapse or systems collapse) is the fall of a complex human society characterised by the loss of cultural identity and of social complexity as an adaptive system, the downfall of government, and the rise of violence. Possible causes of a societal collapse include natural catastrophe, war, pestilence, famine, economic collapse, population decline or overshoot, mass migration, incompetent leaders, and sabotage by rival civilisations. A collapsed society may revert to a more primitive state, be absorbed into a stronger society, or completely disappear.

Quotes

• Far-call’d our navies melt away—
    On dune and headland sinks the fire—
  Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
    Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
  Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
  Lest we forget, lest we forget!
  • Rudyard Kipling, "Recessional", st. 3, in The Times (17 July 1897); cp. Psalm 90:4—"For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night." (KJV) and Nahum 3:7—"And it shall come to pass, that all they that look upon thee shall flee from thee, and say, Nineveh is laid waste: who will bemoan her? whence shall I seek comforters for thee?" (KJV)

• Solomon, where is thy throne? It is gone in the wind.
  Babylon, where is thy might? It is gone in the wind.
  Like the swift shadows of noon, like the dreams of the blind,
  Vanish the glories and pomps of the earth in the wind.
  • James Clarence Mangan, "Gone in the Wind", st. 1, in Anthologia Germanica (1845), p. 97; cp. the title card of Gone with the Wind (1939): "There was a land of cavaliers and cotton fields called the old south. Here in this pretty world gallantry took its last bow. Here was the last ever to be seen of knights and their ladies fair. Of master and of slave. Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered. A civilization gone with the wind."

• Piety, and fear,
  Religion to the gods, peace, justice, truth,
  Domestic awe, night-rest, and neighbourhood,
  Instruction, manners, mysteries, and trades,
  Degrees, observances, customs, and laws,
  Decline to your confounding contraries,
  And let confusion live!
  • William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens, IV, 1, Timon curses Athens

• ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings;
  Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
  Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
  Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
  The lone and level sands stretch far away.
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Ozymandias", in The Examiner (11 January 1818)

• We wonder,—and some Hunter may express
  Wonder like ours, when thro’ the wilderness
    Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
  He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
    What powerful but unrecorded race
    Once dwelt in that annihilated place.
  • Horace Smith, "On A Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below", in The Examiner (1 February 1818) and collected in Amarynthus, with Other Poems (1821)