The Mirage of the 'Right Side of History'

A Manichaean view of history impedes civilizational regeneration.

Abu Zayd Abd al-Rahman ibn Muhammad ibn Khaldun al-Hadrami (commonly known as Ibn Khaldun) was born in 14th Century North Africa, in what today is known as Tunisia. He dedicated his life to teaching, scholarship, and synthesizing a grand theory of history from the knowledge he acquired in his travels. He would end up in the employ of imperial courts and universities throughout North Africa, Al-Andalus, and the Middle East. Today, he is regarded by many as the founder of the modern field of historiography. Internationally, he is most well known for his cyclic theory of history, the idea that civilizations decline due to continuously inherited inertia and a breakdown in social and communal bonds.

Ibn Khaldun posited that, eventually, these declining states come under pressure from foreign actors, who succeed in replacing the endogenous elites of these static civilizations with their own (often nomadic peoples from the Sahara or Eurasian steppe). Despite their much smaller numbers, the greater social solidarity (asabiyyah) of these external actors, based on personal loyalty and proven communal bonds of the tribe rather than the impersonal and bureaucratic structures of the state, offered these so-called “barbarians” superior vitality and tangible military and diplomatic advantages relative to the more established, but calcified, civilizations.

Once these outside groups become insiders and members of the civilizational establishment, however, the process repeats anew. Civilizational wealth and status creates a force of irresistible entropy whose powers only increase in time until a new outsider group rejuvenates society again. One critical extrapolation of this worldview is that no two societies are necessarily at the same stage in their lifecycle. The rise and fall of civilizations entails many staggered cycles, not a unified or linear one.