On Collapses
...and corrections, Fourth Turnings, "the Big Ones", and global panics
The Reformer Community believes the Church is called to proclaim Christ as we live and build in the Kingdom of God. This letter explores how today’s technologies, teams, and governance structures can be applied towards that mission as we answer the commission to be fruitful and make disciples of the nations.
The nations rage, the kingdoms totter; he utters his voice, the earth melts. The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.
Psalm 46:6-7
In a recent post, we broke down a framework to help make sense of the disorder around us, separating the “Systems of the World” from the “Institutions of Man.” For a quick recap: systems are organic, emergent, and represent reality. They are timeless, and as humans we cannot directly interact or control them. They exist as macroscopic trends and operate in secular cycles over generations. Examples we used were society, the economy, technology, and education. In a Christian context, they are the aspects of Creation necessary for humans to operate, and they are just as real a part of Creation as the earth, sea, sun, moon, and stars (non-Christian philosophers might recognize systems as analogous to Platonic Realism and the Theory of Forms).
Humanity is large and chaotic. In order to engage with systems, we need organization and structures. Structures are created and synthesized to deal with the organic and ungovernable systems listed above. In our framework these synthesized structures are institutions, and unlike the systems above they can be directly managed, planned, and steered by people. They include governments, banks, businesses, schools, and many other organizations you can join today.
A system represents reality, and reality is structured based on God’s divine Laws, Covenants, and Creation. Limited as we are, we can only see this reality dimly and imperfectly, so the institutions we build are not in perfect alignment. However, the closer aligned to reality, the more effective the institution is and the more capacity for human flourishing we can see.
Rise and Fall of Civilizations
Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.
Matthew 24:35
“Civilization” is based on institutions. When we look back at history and study discrete civilizations, the way we differentiate between them across time and space is based on the turnover of their institutions. We are taught that Rome collapsed in the West in AD 476 but continued in the East until 1453. This holds because the institutions which originated in the city of Rome in the early Iron Age - its government, courts, military, and financial structures — ceased to operate in Italy in the fifth century AD, but they continued (with adaptations) in Constantinople and the Eastern Mediterranean for another thousand years. When people debate the continuity of “Western Civilization”, the context of the debate revolves around how strongly we can trace a lineage of institutions originating in Jerusalem and Athens through Rome, into Europe, and eventually shifting its center of gravity to America.
Why do some institutions collapse while others adapt? What is necessary for institutional continuity?
My assertion is that the phenomenon of “civilizational collapse” occurs when the institutions in place lose the trust and consent of the broad populations they represent. This is similar to the Chinese concept of “The Mandate of Heaven”. Populations drift away from the institutions when they are no longer aligned with underlying reality. This movement is historically accompanied by the Four Horsemen of war, famine, plague, and death measured by decreasing populations, shortened lifespan, reduced trade and material access, and general collapse of human flourishing.
Why would a population turn away from institutions and precipitate such a collapse?
Elite Failure
Ah, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep. The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them.
Ezekiel 34:2-4
Institutions are always run by people. The people who operate at the top of the institutional hierarchies I will call “elites”. These elites are the ones who can either steer institutions towards reality — aligning with the Goodness, Truth, and Beauty of Creation and the systems of the world — or they steer away from them. Steering away causes the loss of trust from the population and is the baseline cause of a collapse.
The nature of elites and institutional hierarchies is such that they are interconnected across domains. To be a chief of a global bank you most likely needed to graduate from an elite Ivy League university and must be a card-carrying member of some political party with connections in a government position. This centralizes power, consolidates hierarchies, and introduces risk and fragility into a set of institutions — if faith and trust is lost in one set of elites, it is typically lost in all institutions across the civilizational board.
In a recent article of The Reformer we discussed rational thinking vs. rationalizing. The elite reaction to the collapse is typically rationalizing - “yes, we did debase the currency, but it that is actually a good thing,” (CNN, 2021) or “our attempts to reimagine cultural pillars failed, and it is the fans’ fault,” (Forbes, 2022) and more recently “we need a coordinated disinformation campaign to make sure dishonest people don't get elected” (lots of people, 2024).
The Collapse Is Already Happening
Collapses through history look different. The Bronze Age Collapse occurred simultaneously in Egypt and Assyria but looked different for each, and both were entirely different than the end of the Hellenistic Kingdoms 1000 years later, which in turn looked different from nearly concurrent Warring States period of China. Some people claim that history follows cyclical patterns, and therefore the path of collapse can be predicted. This reasoning has produced some interesting ideas, but they always make sense in hindsight only. Because of this, people focus on the most dramatic and catastrophic elements of past collapses. The benefit of this is that it keeps people on their toes — no one wants to see the sack of DC or London the same way we saw the sack of Rome or Nineveh. However, this blinds us to the actual collapses happening around us.
We are facing a complete loss of trust in institutions and elites from populations today. Failed responses to pandemics, elites enriching themselves during financial crises, lies from politicians knowingly endorsed by the media, and leaders from the military and intelligence communities driving us into long wars have all eroded trust in once-stalwart institutions.
The loss of trust has already led to the unwinding of society’s well-being: birth rates are down as is life expectancy, deaths of despair (substance overdose or suicide) are up, real wage growth has stagnated while cost of living has skyrocketed, and wealth has concentrated as elites have found ways to secure transfers from the entire population into their own pocketbooks.
We are not heading towards a collapse which we can blame on rising bond rates or failing global trade. We are a civilization in collapse, and everything we experience today is downstream of that.
Follow the Money
The history of our collapse can be viewed through many lenses (moral, communal, industrial, etc.). I will explore a fiscal viewpoint.
The economy (a system) is mediated by banks and money (two institutions). The Great Depression was caused when a panic in stock prices — a relatively strong, but not unprecedented, price correction in 1929 — caused people to panic, withdraw too much money too quickly, and forced bank failures. One of many diagnoses for the Depression was that there was not enough money to go around. Subsequently, any time in the last 100 years economic uncertainty appeared, the response has been to create new money and avoid panicked bank failures. 2008 and 2020 were the biggest tests of this, and the governments’ response to keep banks alive at all costs by bailing them out was an attempt to maintain trust in one institution — banks — by leveraging against trust in another — money. We can (mostly) trust banks, but we are skeptical of the value of the dollar, euro, yuan, etc.
The trigger-happy money printing response has devalued the dollar so that it has lost any claim to being a store of value. We know that the dollar is always losing value in normal conditions (the Fed openly targets a 2% annual inflation rate as “good”), and any future economic shake ups will cause an even faster loss of value since the only play in the financial policy playbook is “print more money.” People with means look for alternative stores of value. In recent years, this has meant people flock to store value in hard(ish) assets — real estate, gold, equities, and even cryptocurrencies. These then become “relatively inflated” in price. Unfortunately, we cannot call them “absolutely inflated”, since we do not have a stable measuring stick for comparison. If a dollar is devalued by 50% and the price of a home doubles, but the stock market rides up 10% annually for 5 years, has the home increased in real value compared to the dollar? Compared to the stock market? Compared to other housing markets?
Right now, we are looking at an economic situation which is different than we have seen in the past 50 years, but not unique in history. Our national debt levels indicate we need to cut rates to refinance (the US government has the ability influence its own interest rate and debt payments, so why not go lower?), but lower interest rates can cause high inflation to return. The playbook for inflation is to raise interest rates, which could cause monetary tightening and economic slow down. Any one of these events could cause a correction in asset prices, and to add to the confusion it could also be countless other unforeseen global events.
Debt levels compared to GDP reached this same level after WWII, and the answer was to inflate the debt away. Long term interest rate trends went up and to the right, with cuts periodically to manage debt refinancing, but the strategy was to maintain a reasonably high level of inflation.
We cannot say things will play out the same way the did before. We can say that the system has become complicated, opaque, and run by elites who have lost the trust of the population. So brace for uncertainty, look to invest in hard assets while also diversifying across asset classes.
Don’t be a Roman. Be a Barbarian.
Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
Philippians 4:8
In this model of history, the “barbarians” did not cause the Fall of Rome. They were just the dynamic civilization with younger, hungrier, and more resilient people that were ready to pick up the pieces of a collapsing civilization and replace or reform their institutions.
I have an intellectual alignment with Western Civilization. Because of that I have a tendency to identify with the past “keepers” of that tradition, and my media choices project this history from the viewpoint of a Roman watching his empire collapse. Starting in the 3rd century AD, Roman elites neglected their duties to the population and in so doing they abandoned their role as keepers of Western Civilization, culminating in the collapse of Rome in Europe in the 5th century AD. Ironically, it was the barbarians, long thought to be the instigators of the Fall of Rome, who allied with the Church and its varied institutions to “keep the light alive.” Franks, Germans, and Saxons inherited this mantle of civilization because they were more capable and more deserving than Rome. They maintained learning through the Church, reinvigorated traditional Roman legal structures (including removing the Emperor and reinstating authority to a Senate), and established a more primitive yet more firm footing for trade in society.
If it is true that civilization is slowly collapsing, we should not make that intellectual mistake and align with the losing side. The current institutions must adapt and/or be replaced like the Romans before, and we can play the role of “barbarians” to be the beneficiaries of that turn over. This is why we can operate with hope, confidence, and even optimism looking at the years to come. This is the true technology revolution — there are tools at hand to create fair monetary systems, to educate masses at low cost, to distribute art more broadly and to directly support artists. This allows us to reform or rebuild new institutions aligned with the reality of Creation.
Don’t passively wait for what is coming. Don’t depend on failing institutions to save you. Seek opportunities that open up. Seek new frontiers that are opening.
Don’t be a Roman. Be a Barbarian.
The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever.
Revelations 11:15