Wealthbuilder Stock Market Brief 15th.

December 2015
Arnold Toynbee A Study of History:
Civilizations die by suicide not by murder.
Very few people today know that between 1934 and 1961 the British historian Arnold Toynbee
wrote A Study of History describing the rise and fall of the 23 civilizations he had identified in
human history. In contrast to Oswald Spengler, who thought that the rise and fall of civilizations
was inevitable, Toynbee maintained that the fate of civilizations is determined by their response
to the challenges facing them. In fact the unifying theme throughout the book is challenge and
response. One of the ground-breaking discoveries by Toynbee is the fact that there have been so
many highly developed civilizations. Understandably in the West our history lessons focus on
our own civilization with its roots in Greek and Roman cultures, but in addition there have been
Chinese, Indian, Mayan, Islamic, Sumerian and Orthodox civilizations, to name but a few.
According to Toynbee, civilizations start to decay when they lose their moral fiber and the
cultural elite turns parasitic, exploiting the masses and creating an internal and external
proletariat. He has been criticized for exaggerating the role of religious and cultural value
systems while underestimating the importance of economic factors in shaping civilizations.
It appears that with advancing age, Toynbee became even more convinced of the importance of
the spiritual dimension.
Throughout his 12 volume epic Toynbee outlines how civilizations develop in response to
environ-mental challenges of special difficulty. The challenges should be neither too severe to
stifle progress, nor too favorable to inhibit creativity. Such challenges find response among the
creative minority who provide leadership to a passive majority. Toynbee found through his study
that the creative minority tended to be generally mystically inspired. Furthermore he outlined
that civilizations breakdown as a result of the inevitable commission of the sins of: arrogance,
hubris, over-weaning pride and self-confidence, manifested in such things as nationalism,
militarism, and the tyranny of a dominant minority. This moral breakdown brings with it its own
retributive justice (nemesis). The creative people having become reactionaries, no longer
constitute an elite creative minority but simply an elite dominant minority.
We are not doomed to make history repeat itself; it is open to us, through our own efforts, to
give history, in our case, some new and unprecedented turn. As human beings, we are endowed
with this freedom of choice, and we cannot shuffle off our responsibility upon the shoulders of
God or nature. We must shoulder it ourselves. It is up to us, it is up to us to respond creatively to
the challenges of our time.
In essence Toynbee propounds that when a civilization successfully responds to challenges, it
grows. When it fails to respond to a challenge, it enters its period of decline. Toynbee argued that
"Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder." For Toynbee, civilizations were not intangible or
unalterable machines but a network of social relationships within its border and therefore subject
to both wise and unwise decisions made.

I believe that the wisdom expounded within the pages of A Study of History should be
rediscovered by our western leaders because it would appear to me that the West is no longer
responding creatively to external challenges and that its creative minority has become
parasitic. Thus according to Toynbee the West will terminally decline unless a new spiritually
motivated minority emerges offering new creative leadership, bringing the society to a new level
of consciousness and development.
Dow Transports Re-Enters Bear Market, Caution Warranted.
In an unexpected turn of events the Dow Transports has sliced below the August crash lows.
This means that the tranny index has re-entered a bear market configuration. The Dow
Industrials are still is in a stronger position but if the 15,370 level is broken down through the
market will have an official Dow Theory sell re-confirmation signal.

Reference: A Study of History, Arnold Toynbee, Oxford University Press.

Charts: Courtesy of StockCharts.Com.

Christopher M. Quigley 15th. December 2015.