Why Civilizations Disintegrate

“The sense of drift,” says British historian Arnold J. Toynbee, “is one of the most powerful of the tribulations that afflict the souls of men and women who are called upon to live their lives in an age of social disintegration; and this pain is perhaps a punishment for the sin of idolatry committed through worshiping the creature instead of the Creator; for in this sin we have already found one of the causes of those breakdowns from which the disintegration of civilizations follows.”