How can a culture avoid falling into a Dark Age or near Dark Age, when that appears, objectively, to be its destiny?….
The pressing immediate task is for the society to be sufficiently self-aware to recognize the threat of accumulating cultural weaknesses and try to correct them to stabilize the cultural network. Vicious spirals have their opposites: beneficent spirals, processes in which each improvement and strengthening leads to other improvements and strengthening in the culture, in turn furthering the initial improvement. Excellent education strengthens excellent teaching and research by some of those educated, activities that in their turn strengthen communities. Responsive and responsible government encourages the corrective practices exerted by democracy, which in their turn strengthen good government and responsible citizenship.
–Jane Jacobs, Dark Age Ahead (New York: Random House, 2004), pp. 171, 174-175
[blockquote]Responsive and responsible government encourages the corrective practices exerted by democracy, which in their turn strengthen good government and responsible citizenship.[/blockquote]
That’s a bit too broad, I think. We’re seeing a phenomenon today that seems to actually discourage good government and responsible citizenship: That of citizens relinquishing their adult responsibilities to the State, resulting in a perpetual adolescence of the populace. No, Jacobs fails to get to the heart of the enervation of civilization here.