Recommended: How Civilizations Die

The criteria for inclusion in my book list (see sidebar) is that the book has provided me with some new and unexpected insight, or proposed a new way of looking at an issue. The problem with the commonly received wisdom in a society like ours is that it can suffer from “groupthink” – a belief is wrong, but since everyone believes it there is a self-reinforcing factor in play that maintains the belief, even in the face of evidence that it is wrong. That is why I am always looking for books that argue cogently for alternative positions.

David Goldman’s new book How Civilizations Die: (And Why Islam Is Dying Too), meets the criteria of proposing a new and different way of looking at the world. David Goldman is a polymath (economist, investment banker, harpsichordist, music critic and music teacher, and prolific author) who has authored the widely-read “Spengler” column in the Asian Times for some years. In his 2011 book How Civilizations Die he lays out the demographic evidence that many major nations will essentially disintegrate in the next 50-100 years, as their low reproductive rate leads to an ever aging population supported by every fewer young until eventually the existing social and political system is no longer supportable.

Goldman writes from a decidedly Judeo-Christian perspective. That doesn’t mean his arguments require religious faith to accept. Instead, he argues that current foreign policy and political science fail to understand the current world because they are thoroughly secular in outlook – they ignore the profound effect that a culture’s religious beliefs can have on the choices that culture makes. He explores just why some nations are suddenly depopulating themselves, and suggests it may have to do with their reaction to the realization that their comfortable and familiar culture is in danger of disappearing in the modern world.

It has certainly been clear for decades now that US policy makers don’t understand other cultures very well. The current Democratic administration has stumbled repeatedly by misreading the political dynamics of other nations, and the Republican administration that preceded it wasn’t any better. This book is worth reading and thinking about because it proposes another way to try to interpret and predict the actions of other cultures.