Ibn Khaldun's Theory of Dynasty Formation and Disintegration

[sbarrera]

(08-25-2022, 10:45 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: So... the founders are nomads who take over the decrepit, depraved community in which the potential leaders wallow in "wine, women, and song", kill off such people because they are no longer needed, and establish their own dynasty. The new dynasty begins in austerity, recognizing that the "wine, women, and song" (OK, orthodox Islamic societies aren't havens for wine, but there are plenty of other distractions such as ornament, gems, fine silks, and the like. The founders find those seductive but scary, for they know why they were able to overthrow the previous kings.  Their sons find them occasional diversions from the austerity that they do not fully understand, and might find them good for divide et impera. It is obviously far more difficult to plot overthrow of the dynasty if otherwise capable of doing so when  one  pays attention to the music coming from the oud and the lyrical poetry chanted or sung in its presence.  Grandsons have largely lost their distinction from the populace, and great-grandsons who have never met the founders are fully assimilated into the ways of superficial indulgence yet gross neglect of the security of the State.

Personal austerity is one way to be above the social depravity and lassitude. Surely you have seen my thread on dictatorial leaders and suchlike (including mobsters and drug kingpins, and one pop musician. They take little time to go from the austerity that they may have known in childhood to the overweening indulgence that marks them as powerful figures. There may be ways to preserve the institution, such as deeding it to a charitable trust upon death. So it was with Carl Zeiss, Howard Hughes, J. Paul Getty, and (apparently) Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. If one is Hermann Goering, Nicolae Ceausescu, Ferdinand Marcos, Saddam Hussein, or Moammar Qaddafi, (or Carlos Lehder, John Gotti, Donald Trump, or Michael Jackson, then there might be practically no transition from being a non-entity to being a self-indulgent creep.

The United States is not and never has been a dynasty, and it has never been close. ibn-Khaldun  might find a social cycle more than a leadership cycle here in the Good Old US of A, which has generally done well at mitigating tendencies toward depraved, self-indulgent leadership.

It's a stretch, I know, to apply Khaldun's ideas to a modern society with its democratic forms of government and complex industrial capitalist economy. But it's hard (for me) to resist given that he speaks of a progression of four generations, and describes a process by which "royal authority," which I equated with institutional authority, is established and subsequently decays. This is obviously similar to S&H theory.

Certainly there's a great hope that by its nature a Constitutional Republic is protected from the effect of the "leadership cycle," where a leader's inheritors end up with lesser qualities than their forefathers. Wasn't that part of the intent of the founders of the United States? To avoid this flaw in monarchical government? But still Khaldun's idea of "group feeling" being a prerequisite for government of any form to have authority seem to apply even to the Good Old US of A.