MimesisAndCivilization

ThoughtStorms Wiki

TheArchDruid cites ArnoldToynbee's theory that civilizations are made by Mimesis. In healthy, growing civilizations, the population admire, aspire to be like and emulate those at the top.

In the declining / falling civilizations, those at the top have become so greedy / irresponsible that they forfeit that admiration, and the population turn their admiration to others, often outsiders and criminal elements who are idolized and copied.

Was at http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com.br/2014/06/the-broken-thread-of-culture.html but now on the mirror http://archdruidmirror.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-broken-thread-of-culture.html

Note that the story begins by relating a frightening myth of "Bloody Mary" that is circulating in the children's homes of Florida. He then comments :

This isn't the sort of worldview you'd expect from people living in a prosperous, scientifically literate industrial society, but then the children in Dade County's homeless shelters don’t fit that description in any meaningful sense. They live in conditions indistinguishable from the worst end of the Third World; their lives are defined by poverty, hunger, substance abuse, shattered families, constant uncertainty, and lethal violence dispensed at random. If, as BruceSterling suggested, the future is already here, just not evenly distributed yet (Note, he means WilliamGibson), they're the involuntary early adopters of a future very few people want to think about just now, but many of us will experience in the decades ahead, and most of humanity will face in the centuries that follow: a future we may as well call by the time-honored label "dark age."

Read that and then try to deny that QAnon and the syncretic ConspiracyTheories arising around Covid19 aren't examples of what he is talking about.

I now have a longer discussion of this on Quora : https://www.quora.com/What-is-your-opinion-of-Qanon/answer/Phil-Jones-He-Him