This distinction of at least two geographic areas in each
civilization is of major importance. The process of expansion,
which begins in the core area, also begins to slow up in the core
at a time when the peripheral area is still expanding.
In consequence, by the latter part of the Age of Expansion, the
peripheral areas of a civilization tend to become wealthier and
more powerful than the core area. Another way of saying this is
that the core passes from the Age of Expansion to the Age of
Conflict before the periphery does. Eventually, in most
civilizations the rate of expansion begins to decline
everywhere.
It is this decline in the rate of expansion of a civilization which
marks its passage from the Age of Expansion to the Age of
Conflict.
This latter is the most complex, most
interesting, and most critical of all the periods of the life cycle
of a civilization.
It is marked by four chief characteristics: (a) it is a period of
declining rate of expansion; (b) it is a period of growing tensions
and class conflicts; (c) it is a period of increasingly frequent
and increasingly violent imperialist wars; and (d) it
is a period of growing irrationality, pessimism, superstitions, and
otherworldliness. All these phenomena appear
in the core area of a civilization before they appear in more
peripheral portions of the society.
The decreasing rate of expansion of
the Age of Conflict gives rise to the other characteristics of the
age, in part at least.
After the long years of the Age of Expansion, people's minds and
their social organizations are adjusted to expansion, and it is a
very difficult thing to readjust these to a decreasing rate of
expansion.
Social classes and political units within the civilization try to
compensate for the slowing of expansion through normal growth by
the use of violence against other social classes or against other
political units.
From this come class struggles and imperialist wars. The outcomes
of these struggles within the civilization are not of vital
significance for the future of the civilization itself.
What would be of such significance would be the reorganization of
the structure of the civilization so that the process of normal
growth would be resumed.
Because such a reorganization requires the
removal of the causes of the civilization's decline, the triumph of
one social class over another or of one political unit over
another, within the civilization, will not
usually have any major influence on the causes of the decline, and
will not (except by accident) result in such a reorganization of
structure as will give rise to a new period of expansion.
Indeed, the class struggles and imperialist wars of the Age of
Conflict will probably serve to increase the speed of the
civilization's decline because they dissipate capital and divert
wealth and energies from productive to nonproductive
activities...
http://real-world-news.org/bk-quigley/01.html
