social theory

how do whole communities act when conquered and enslaved? The same strategy serves them as it does the lame individual in a society of warriors. They specialize and become indispensable to their masters.

If there can be any defense of civilization it is this, that historically it gave a class the full or nearly full benefits of the free life of the steppe and forest and mountain while ridding them of some of its inconveniences—at the price, of course, of misery for the vast majority.

noble peoples do not endure slavery, they’re either free or they die out. There is no “adaptation” to slavery for some types of life. What is that people, who has chosen survival at any price? The price they paid was monstrous and such a people becomes monstrous and distorted if it accepts this.

when you look at life of true nomads who are always on the move and in open space, they never engage in the kind of depressive introspection and questioning of life that you only see in settled and civilized peoples.

Everything for oneself, everything for personal utility: a pleasure in cruelty toward the weak and toward animals. This is the end-result of thousands of years of “civilization.”

Toynbee expounds the principle that times of trouble or rapid change produce militarism, and it is militarism that produces empire and expansion.