They don’t. This is a general misconception. History researchers don’t say this.
About Glubb’s writings, it suffers from two major errors:
The “civilizations” listed are subjectively chosen and do not cover all such “civilizations” in all human history
There is no such thing as a objectively defined “civilization”
History can’t be divided in discrete events. It’s a continuous process which means that casual theories trying to explain discrete events will fail, without exception. Another problem is that we already know roughly what happened, so it takes a really well trained historian to disregard pre-conceptions and manage to look at historical events as objectively as possible. But historians don’t try to find scientific causality. They seek understanding: which past events and actions led to which future events and actions in a continuous process. This is not at all the same thing as scientific cause-effect the way it is defined in e.g. physics.
Finally, Glubb had a military training. He was not a historian, not even an academic. What he published was personal conclusions, based on primary school understanding of history and “civilizations”, not on scientific training and understanding of how historical analyses should be done.
First of all you should see my previous response (before the comment by devinganger ) to similar statements about history not repeating itself. It seems you didn’t see them I would request that you do so that I do not have to repeat the same text twice.
Considering the state of modern academia not being an academic is not necessarily a fault but could be a plus. Otherwise someone might think that Marxist historians who litter many campuses give the best view of history, that everything should be viewed as class struggle. While feminists historians see everything as gender struggle. They see it through their own lens. The lens is sometimes so muddy as to make their work useless because you have to scrub it so much to get to any useful bits. So Glubb being a military man is not a fault as he sees things from that perspective. Nor does he claim to have included every possible civilization. Someone like Tonybee did. But even Toynbee gets criticized, Surprise, academics don’t agree.
We should also recall that practically all the early history texts in the West that we have were done by men in the military class, men such as Thucydides, Xenophon, Caesar,Tacitus, and Arrianus. And in modern times Churchill, who had at his disposal secret archival material academics had no access to, material that has only recently been declassified.
History is studied so that we can learn from the past.To imply that we can not learn from the past is absurd. The fact that we remember that when we stuck our finger in a fire it got burned reminds us that if we do it again in the present then what happened in the past we got burned, will repeat it self.
Learning from the past is something the ruling class (military) class is interested in.
And we should also note that from earliest times historians had to be careful what they wrote lest they got in trouble with the powers that be. That was true in the past. Suetonius was careful what he said about previous Caesars so as not to irk the current one in power. And, Procopius the court historian of Justinian, while he was alive wrote glowing reports about Justinian, his consort and Belisarius his general, But after Procopius died his posthumous Secret Histories painted a very different picture. Ones which would have had him tortured and executed for Lèse-majesté. While in modern times academic historians will be pilloried if they go against what is politically correct to say. And, since they accept the universities salt they must follow their script.
Though not specifically about history the following is representative of what happens if you against political correctness in modern academia.
Cambridge Capitulates to the Mob and Fires a Young Scholar
This articleThe Coddling of the American Mindgives some insight. And while it is about the USA you could extrapolate it to Canada and Europe and other places.
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that this correlation stands up in way that you intend. If so, it is an interesting observation, and it’s worth looking for a rationale. Let’s also allow that feminism (however defined) or ‘the moral state the United States is in now’ is a cause (in some sense) of the collapse. It absolutely does not follow that feminism (etc) is the evil that your other posts suggest.
Here is another explanation.
In the early stages of civilization, when physical size and strength confer on men a significant advantage, values championed by men become embedded as social norms, and an elite group of men come to hold most of society’s status and power. This is patriarchy (however defined).
As civilizations advance and increasingly benefit from intelligence (and other qualities) instead of physical size and strength, patriarchal values are displaced by feminist (etc) values. However, (many) men are challenged by this shift. Those most challenged are elite men who lack the qualities that civilization now needs and values most, but who nonetheless still enjoy status and power because of the legacy patriarchal systems.
Civilizations reach a tipping point when enough elite men would rather bring down the whole system than share their status and power. No past civilizations have got past that point. Our task is to make sure that this time we do.
Just a sketch, and I don’t claim any originality. Just making sure the OP views do not stand unchallenged.
Btw, your other post:
As it happens, I did a philosophy degree. It didn’t lead to a job in philosophy, and I never expected it would. It did teach me to think deeply and clearly about things.
