Dr. Darren Staloff, Arnold Toynbee and World Historical Speculation 

Thank you for these! Please more of these historical thinkers, especially if you have more on Vico.

Is War Over? 2:19 WWI was immense, devastating of Man and (Man’s Land) 3:25 Europe declined 4:28 Arnold Toynbee wrote on this 5:12 Comparative Study across time and nations 7:58 Universal Church, Ecumenical Brotherhood 8:34 6 Civilizations 9:25 People faces Adversity • Physical Challenges -> River Valley Civilizations dealing with flooding. 11:07 Island Peoples • Polynesians • Greeks 12:37 PENALTIES - Freed Slaves 13:50 Minorities Communizing 14:22 Eskimos, only able to survive, not able to thrive in abundance 15:30 *Success evokes more Challenge* *Growth of Civilizations* 16:00 Society - A Straightforward Set of Relations between Individuals 17:20 Drilling 18:08 Social Differentiation *Most Types of Civilizations have already broken down* 18:38 Most Civilizations have Come and Gone 19:28 Christian Monks 20:18 Rituals Stop Being Performed, (Shared Characteristics fall away) 22:21 Outdated Techniques, Antiquated *Disintegration* 25:04 (1) Dominant Minority (2) Disaffected Proletariat (3) External Proletariat 26:14 Dominant Minority Rallies around Unified Belief 27:29 External Proletariat = Barbarian Warbands 28:50 _Alternative Lifestyles, Disillusion_ *Time of Troubles* 29:43 30:21 Challenge Crisis, RallyCrisisRallyCrisisRallyCrisis, GONE 31:03 Time of Troubles: Civil War 33:13 Roman Roads, Transportation, Lingua Franca, (Newspapers, Radio, Media) 34:17 Preservation, Maintaining Past for Future 34:57 Universal Churches 35:17 Spiritual, Consentual, Submission 35:54 Militancy *Educated Barbarians* 36:46 Usher In Dark Ages *Middle Class* 38:30 The West’s Creative Class 39:31 Educated Elites Produce Revolutions 41:10 Economists studies tell truth about Human Behavior *Concluding Topics* 42:02 Past foreshadowed Present foreshadowed Future 43:07 WE ARE SO TECHNOLOGICAL, WE OUTLAWED SLAVERY, WOMENS RIGHTS, DEMOCRACY, UNITED NATIONS 🇺🇳 LED BY THE AMERICANS 🇺🇸 Universal, Disinterest in Foreign Policy 45:10 Division of Labor, Automation, Tech Innovation. DECLINE OF LIBERTY TO PRODUCE EQUALITY

One of the rare lectures that so piqued my interest that I've started Toynbee's "Civilization on Trial."

Looking forward to your commentary on Spengler!

I can’t unsee the Sean O’Malley in Dr. Staloff.

All of this is in Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" series, funny enough. He tricked a lot of people that wanted to read about spaceships into learning the ebbs and flows of the life-cycles of human civilizations.

It's sad, that Oswald Spengler and Othmar Aenderle are not mentioned.

Brilliant synopsis!

Thanks!

first lecture ever done on Toynbee besides Ebert, and Toynbee himself

With freedom comes inequality? What an interesting perspective.

Great topic, looking forward to hearing this. Arnold Toynbee is certainly a lot more interesting than his Guardian journalist granddaughter, Polly.

I can’t help but see these markers of decay in the west today

It would seem the US is an ideal example of this lecture.

❤

I get that this is literally labeled as speculation, but man is this a hell of a lot of speculation. I guess we all have to start somewhere to get anywhere, so I supposed Toynbee might as well start with this.

Should we distinguish Anglo-American civilization from Western civilization? The cold war required the ideological fetishization of "The West" with a straight line from Plato to NATO. But two things delimited the West's historical progression: Greek philosophy and Roman empire, which became fused in Christendom. The ideology of "the West" is mostly an anachronistic synthesis of ideas that follow a teleology which progresses toward greater and greater liberalism. But the true historical West was the hulk of the Roman empire loosely held together by the Popes. Anglo-American civilization was always an outlier in this Roman tradition. English is not a romance language. The US/UK are now synonymous with "the West" as a historical civilization. But Anglo-American civilization was born out of a revolt against the historical West, starting with the characteristic English revolt against monarchy and papacy in the 16th century. Even today we speak of the US/UK as the West, but we should call them the North (Atlantic). White Anglo-Saxon Protestants have little in common with Latin Catholic civilization which defined the historical West as the remnant of the Roman empire.

spoiler alert, there is no audience............

Staloff is articulate and brilliant. Questionable fashion sense though.

TERRIFYING.

The jedi were wise teachers once, and their religion of the universal force helped foster the rise of the republic. Unfortunately, after thousends of years, they had become conservative and withdrawn and the universal religion had declined. As more and more planets and multi planet factions sought to evade republican control, including a massive increase in lawlessness and criminality on the outer rim of the galaxy, the stage was set for outright seperatism. The insuing galactoc civil war was devestating and forced the republic to militarize in response. However, a smal number of idealists attempted to stave off and even reverse this decline, to save the republic by recreating it as a universal state: first galactic empire. While it was easily able to decapitate the seperatists and rebels arrayed against it, as well as to destroy the final remnants of the once great jedi society, controling such a vast territory proved impossible. Soon, separatist remnants and new rebel factions arose and unified in response to the even more brutal tactics of the new empire which allowed them no place within it and who seemed to offer only terror as an arguement for However, upon defeating the empire, the new republic proved equally incapable of handling the crisis and their replacements, the so called new order, were destroyed within only a few years by a massive grassroots mobilization. Devestated by this third great crisis, the galactic civilization has finally collapsed. the galaxy now stands in a state of political chaos, confronted by the greatest power vacuum it has seen in millenia. Now, the last jedi retreats into incubatory excile the deasert, to reconnect with the force and rekindle a new awakening.

Thanks!