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Relevant Wikipedia articles:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oswald_Spengler

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Decline_of_the_West

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spengler's ... tion_model

Basically Oswald Spengler argues that like all other civilizations Western civilization will go through the cycle rise, glory, and fall. According to Spengler (writing in the 1910s) the next century would see a series of wars which would result in one power becoming dominant in the West-he believed it would be Germany but it turned out to the be the United States of America. Now according to the model in the next century America will end up forming a world empire covering most of the world which will ossify and eventually decay and fall creating a new civilization. I think Spengler's track record so far has been quite accurate but he did not see one thing-space colonization which I believe will keep civilization vigourous for far longer.

Spengler's work is irredeemably flawed because his entire method is flawed: he uses phrases like "decline", "degradation", "decadence" as if they had any sort of objective meaning whatsoever, and weren't merely the products of his position as a conservative German romantic.

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