The year 2020 saw a global panic over COVID, and the climax of Brexit and the Trump presidency. Europe, the UK and the USA have suffered damage to their already struggling economies; their citizens have lost significant personal freedoms and spent a year fleeing from the police, rioting in the streets or hiding in their homes. Poor political choices include implementing "whatever-the-cost" measures, pushing populist messages, and banking on money-tree economics. Who makes these choices ? Is it the government, the leaders and the civil servants, and their advisors ? Is it the media ? Or is it, in these democracies, the voters, the people ? How is it possible that the most intelligent species, capable of building great civilisations, is capable of destroying them with the same fundamental behaviours ? Clearly, explanations about selfish genes, human intelligence, cooperation, altruism and objectivity fail to describe human behaviour in the real world.This book sets out to explain just how humans do behave, in ways that help create the most marvellous societies, and inevitably go on to destroy them.It is non-judgemental. It neither criticises nor praises individuals, but focuses on specific, observable behaviours ofpresidents, prime ministers, voters and tax-payers. These behaviours are responsible for creating the complex societies we live in. They permit the co-operation of large numbers of individuals, of large numbers of different groups, each with unique objectives and strategies for achieving them. As a result of the combined investment of thousands or millions of people, great civilisations rise from the almost nothing. They create political and legal systems, religions, art and culture, language, and build cathedrals and castles, skyscrapers, railways and airports.The same behaviours that permit this civilisation are also responsible for their destruction. History is littered with empires that dominated their environment only to succumb to foreign invasion, internal collapse, or the takeover by nature. The greatest academics, the most violent warriors, the best organised industries fell to barbarian tribes with no organisation, no technology and often no written language. A single impereial collapse of this type would be a curiousity, but human history is an unending litany of rise and fall, and every empire, usually during its Golden Age, is invaded and defeated by a smaller, weaker and less civilised enemy.Looking forward from 2020, the inevitable conclusion is that for Europe and the European colonies, including the United States, that collapse is a possibility, even a probability. There is nothing in their current policies that precludes such an eventuality. This is a thrid draft, but the work is still in progress - buy this book on tis condition, and please do give me feedback.
