You’ve heard the following adage, surely: “Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.” Though recently popularized by G. Michael Hopf in his 2016 novel, Those Who Remain, this axiomatic distillation of a cyclical theory of human history finds its origins much further back in time.
Hard times create strong men,
Strong men create good times,
Good times create weak men,
Weak men create hard times.
The 18th Century
In the early 18th century, Giambattista Vico noticed this and proposed the idea in his work Scienza Nuova that this little aphorism — though he wouldn’t ever state it quite as succinctly as Kopf — was an inexorable part of a never-ending ebb and flow of human civilization: chaos, order, chaos, order, and so on. He called it the corso e ricorso and traced this not in four steps as did Kopf, but in three as follows:
- The Age of Gods – Primitive, religious, fearful. Humans live under divine authority and rule, something Vico called “mystic theology.”
- The Age of Heroes – Aristocratic, powerful, dynastic. Humans live under what Vico calls “civil equity” characterized by “verbal scrupulosity,” with a nod to Ulysses.
- The Age of Men – Reason, democracy, equality. Humans live free from divine or aristocratic rule, and govern themselves in a “free commonwealth…each for his own particular good.”
Interestingly, Vico noticed that this third age wasn’t an ascent from the former two leading to some sort of pinnacle of humanism, but rather it was a descent off a cliff’s edge. Further, despite not demarcating the following traits into a fourth stage, Vico noted that individualism, luxury, and skepticism characterized the inevitable end of the Age of Men, citing that “they live like wild beasts in a deep solitude of spirit and will, scarcely any two being able to agree since each follows his own pleasure or caprice…”
But as the popular states became corrupt, so also did the philosophies. They descended to skepticism. Learned fools fell to calumniating the truth. Thence arose a false eloquence, ready to uphold either of the opposed sides of a case indifferently. Thus it came about that, by abuse of eloquence like that of the tribunes of the plebs at Rome, when the citizens were no longer content with making wealth the basis of rank, they strove to make it an instrument of power. And as furious sound winds whip up the sea, so these citizens provoked civil wars in their commonwealths and drove them to total disorder. Thus they caused the commonwealths to fall from a perfect liberty into the perfect tyranny of anarchy or the unchecked liberty of the free peoples, which is the worst of all tyrannies.
– Giambattista Vico, The New Science
Key to understanding Vico’s observations is something he called the barbarie della riflessione or, the “Barbarism of Reflection.” He acknowledged that the Age of Gods was characterized by barbarism of sorts, something he would see as honest, primitive savagery. But this latter barbary, the “Barbarism of Reflection,” was worse. Vico promised that “rust will consume the misbegotten subtleties of malicious wits that have turned them into beasts made more inhuman by the barbarism of reflection than the first men had been made by the barbarism of sense.”
So to sum up Vico in his own words: “Men first feel necessity, then look for utility, next attend to comfort, still later amuse themselves with pleasure, thence grow dissolute in luxury, and finally go mad and waste their substance.”
The 14th Century
Vico was far from the first to make observations like this, however. About 350 years prior, scholar Ibn Khaldun penned Muqaddimah (“The Beginning”), an introductory volume to a set of seven tomes of world history called Kitāb al-ʿIbar (“Book of Lessons”). In it, Khaldun described a theory known as Asabiyyah that’s translated as “group cohesion” or “social solidarity;” however, don’t be misled by its disarming name — what Khaldun was describing was the very same phenomenon about which Kopf and Vico wrote.
Khaldun argued that a society’s strength and cohesion (what I would probably describe as its capacity to function and flourish), its Asabiyyah, doesn’t survive longer than four generations.
The founder…knows what it cost to build the group’s glory… He sets an example for his descendants to follow. The son who comes after him…has had contact with the first generation and its striving…However, he is inferior to him…The third generation is satisfied with imitation… He has not had direct contact with the first generation and its ‘desert’ toughness. The fourth generation…is inferior to the preceding ones in every respect. He has lost the Asabiyyah completely… He thinks that the edifice was not built through striving and effort, but is something his people deserve… In one stroke, he destroys what his ancestors have built.
Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddimah Chapter 3, § 12
To paraphrase Khaldun, then, sounds something like this: the hard times of the desert forges good men and fosters Asabiyyah. Their descendants then, as good men, create good times. Their descendants, however, begin to strain at the Asabiyyah with their good times and begin to create weak men. Their descendants, now weak men with no Asabiyyah, create hard times. To Khaldun, this was all but inevitable.
What he was describing was a cycle of creation and de-creation, or as Vico would say, chaos and order. To Khaldun, the men raised in the wild and waste1 of the desert created a paradise, which was then spoiled by men who acted like “women and children.” And thus paradise was lost, and back into wilderness exile they went. John Milton wrote something similar to this, I think.
Sedentary culture is the last stage of civilization and the point where it begins to decay. It means the end of a dynasty and its ‘senility’… The effect of sedentary culture and luxury on the dynasty… is that it accustoms them to a life of ease and indulgence. The ‘desert’ toughness that was the source of their Asabiyyah and their victory is lost. Their children… are raised in this atmosphere of comfort. They become… like women and children, who are dependent on others… This is the ‘senility’ that attacks the dynasty.
Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddimah Chapter 3, § 4, 5
But — and this won’t surprise my Christian readers — this is far from the first time we’ve seen this pattern of creation and de-creation, flourishing and ruination.
The Deuteronomistic Cycle
Not only is this cycle found in Scripture, but it is the primary engine that drives the history of Israel as told in the books of Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, and the four books of the Kings (I & II Samuel, I & II Kings). Not to mention the prophets and their constant clarion calls, from Abel to Zechariah, from John the Baptist to Jesus Christ: repent or perish.
It’s here that we should clear off a spot and clarify that when God judges a nation in Scripture — when he “de-creates” them, so to speak, he usually doesn’t need to employ fireballs and floods. He just…lets the cycle happen. He steps away and allows humans to do what humans do best: de-create. Ruin. Corrupt. Decay. And this is seen perhaps no more clearly than in the book of Judges.
A strong leader (think Joshua or Othniel, for example) leads Israel out of weak times and into a place of functioning and flourishing, rescued and redeemed from their tormentors, delivered safely into Vico’s “Age of Gods” and Khaldun’s Asabiyyah. But it doesn’t last long.
And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers. And there arose another generation after them who did not know the LORD or the work that he had done for Israel. And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the LORD and served the Baals…So the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, and he gave them over to the hand of plunderers, who plundered them. And he sold them into the hand of their surrounding enemies, so that they could no longer stand before their enemies…but when the people of Israel cried out to the LORD, the LORD raised up a deliverer for the people of Israel, who saved them…
Judges Chapter 2, Verses 10-12, 14; Chapter 3, Verse 9
After the first generation dies, the next generation lives in ease and security and breaches the covenantal peace of their forefathers with their sin. As a result, God removes his protection, enacting the “curses” of the covenant. This is the de-creation. He allows hard times (famine, plague, or a foreign oppressor like the Philistines or Midianites) to afflict the people, wiping out any vestiges of Asabiyyah that might remain after the people themselves pillaged it in their “Barbarism of Reflection,” to borrow from Vico.
So we’ve looked at three different viewpoints from three different works across three very different epochs of time and region, and we find that all three of these authors agree: paradise is lost not because of an external enemy of some kind, but because of internal rot.
Is that it?
To be very frank, if I were to end this article here, I think it would stand alone just fine as a piece of comparative philosophy, demonstrating how various frameworks are all describing the exact same fundamental pattern of human history.
But that’s not the point of my article. My point isn’t just to talk about what is happening, but why.
If you were to ask Vico, the reason for the rot is skepticism and individualism. And of course, those are certainly components of what’s happening. A recent author who has explored this most adeptly is Carl Trueman, who, in his work The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, postulates that individualism inherently replaces external authority (or, to quote Vico, the “Age of Gods”). Per Trueman, “The intuitive moral structure of our modern social imaginary prioritizes victimhood, sees selfhood in psychological terms, regards traditional sexual codes as oppressive and life denying, and places a premium on the individual’s right to define his or her own existence.”
What Trueman means here is that “strong” and “weak” are no longer measured by external virtue, duty, or resilience, but by internal feelings of “authenticity” and “harm.” This, by the way, is the final stage of Vico’s “Age of Men” before the ruin comes in: There is no higher authority than the individual’s “pleasure or caprice.”
In a world where authenticity means expressing your inner feelings, the foundations for social life become very fragile. Why? Because social life requires all of us at times to suppress our feelings and act in accordance with external obligations… A world of expressive individualism is a world of performative selves who find it hard to understand, let alone tolerate, those who do not share the same inner psychology.
Carl Trueman, Strange New World
But the rot runs deeper than this. That is, expressive individualism and skepticism aren’t only causes — they’re also the result of something. Let’s keep exploring the reason for the rot.
If you were to ask Khaldun, the reason for the rot is luxury and a sedentary culture. And those, too, are part of what’s going on, to be sure. While Trueman provided a good mirror for Vico’s perspective, let’s allow the learned Edward Gibbon to contribute here. In his work The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Gibbon’s diagnosis of why Rome fell is almost a perfect echo of Khaldun’s. He argues that the good times, the Asabiyyah, the long, stable, wealthy peace established by strong men like Augustus was the very thing that created weak men.
The long peace, and the uniform government of the Romans, introduced a slow and secret poison into the vitals of the empire. The minds of men were gradually reduced to the same level, the fire of genius was extinguished, and even the military spirit… evaporated. The provincials, enjoying the present happiness, detached their minds from the bloody scenes of the past. They were no longer soldiers, or citizens, or subjects… but insensibly sunk into the languid indifference of private life.”
Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapter II
Interestingly, Gibbon notes the same thing that Khaldun did when it comes to the people being able to defend themselves: the people, being weak, had to enlist the help of the strong in order to protect them from others. Gibbons saw that Romans resorted to needing to “purchase the aid of the Goths,” for example, and Khaldun also complained that the people had to rely on mercenaries or bureaucrats to do the hard work of fighting and ruling and providing because they were too “soft” and “dependent” to do it themselves.
So…is that the answer?
So, then. The rot. That which brings down nations. That which forces the cycle of ruin and restoration to begin anew, time after time after time. What is it? Is it skepticism and individualism (per Vico and Trueman)? It is luxury and sedentary lifestyles (per Khaldun and Gibbons)? No — it’s deeper still. Those are really only symptoms of an even deeper reason behind the rot than we’ve seen so far.
The reason — and we see this from the Garden of Eden to the Garden of Gethsemane — is found right in the quote with which this article opened: Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.
I submit to you that the root of the rot is when men — I mean actual males here — abdicate their duties, and the beginning of the solution is when they wipe away their blood and tears, pick up their crosses, set their faces like flint toward their Golgotha, and do the hard thing. Further, I submit to you that the problems that this nation faces, just like the bestial carnality Vico saw and the carnal laziness Khaldun bemoaned, are ultimately the result of men not faithfully and soberly stepping into their roles as men: leading their homes and nations, loving their wives and children like Jesus, and being willing to live chaste, incorruptible, disciplined lives for the good of something greater and more timeless than themselves.
Is this Bigotry? Misogyny? Chauvinism?
This view, by the way, does not exist in tension with the flourishing, freedom, and function of women in a society. In fact, it’s exactly the opposite: when men do what they’re supposed to do and be what they’re supposed to be, this liberates women to enjoy life without experiencing the constant pain of loveless marriages and constant pressure to step into any given vacuum of leadership. In short, the problem is that men have abandoned their noble and virtuous call to protect, provide, and empower women and have instead embraced lifestyles of lasciviousness, lethargy, and milquetoast lukewarmness.
But I’m not alone in this assertion, nor am I joined only by basement dwellers who’d agree with me for all the wrong reasons. Even Khaldun saw the rulers becoming “like women and children” (i.e., dependent supplicants) as the key symptom of decay. Roman historians like Livy lamented the decline of the pater familias (the strong, leading father of the household), seeing it as parallel to the decline of Roman strength. We need fathers and husbands to pick up the scepter and crown once more, not to rule in anger or violence like Lamech, but to rule with mercy, grace, wisdom, and purity.
Oh, and speaking of purity: J.D. Unwin, a 20th-century British anthropologist said in his 1934 work Sex and Culture that no society in history has ever sustained a high level of “civilizational energy” for long after it abandoned strict pre-nuptial chastity and life-long monogamy. He argued, from a purely secular, anthropological standpoint, that sexual “liberation” always preceded civilizational collapse. And that’s to say nothing of the Bible’s clear instruction on the matter, which I don’t think I need to write much on here.
What are we saying here?
In short, Vico’s “Barbarism of Reflection” and Khaldun’s “senility” are simply what a vacuum of strong, Christlike male leadership looks like on a civilizational scale. And this isn’t just locked to one specific culture or region: I’ve quoted people across far too broad of geographical and chronological span for that to be true. Not to mention the Scriptures, which is in overt agreement on the topic: when women and children rule over men, this is a curse to any nation.
For behold, the Lord, the LORD of hosts, is taking away from Jerusalem and from Judah the stay and the staff, the whole stay of bread, and the whole stay of water; the mighty man and the soldier, the judge and the prophet, the diviner and the elder, the captain of fifty and the man of rank…And I will make boys their princes, and infants shall rule over them. My people—infants are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, your guides mislead you and confuse the way of your paths.
Isaiah Chapter 3, Verses 1-4, 12
Again, this isn’t some backwards view held by some nomadic tribes of misogynists over the years — this is a stalwart, stubborn truth of history, repeated far too often to be dismissed as the whims of bigots and toxic males. But it’s imperative to be very clear here: Male headship isn’t a privilege to be exploited or a power to be abused. It’s a sacrificial call of duty, a divine responsibility that’s been neglected for far, far too long.
In closing…
In the end, none of this means anything if men don’t step up and start leading in competent, Christlike ways. If we don’t stop picking useless, foolish battles and playing with temporal, silly toys. If we don’t put down the porn clips and corn chips and pick up our crosses instead. Men have the capacity to change the world, to create, to conquer, and to civilize. They are designed, programmed, fully equipped to win the contest, to woo the bride, to captivate the hearts of men, women, and children with deeds of valor. By the way — as an aside — this is why video games are so fun for many men — they provide an outlet for these desires. Even Princess Peach, though fake, is still a princess to be won, and a pixelated crowd on a screen still cheers when the bomb is defused and the alien invasion is thwarted. Something to think about there.
So when elections happen and we see that so-and-so only won because “middle-aged college-educated women” voted for him (or her, to be even more pointed)2, don’t waste a single thought internally chastising women or colleges or whatever else comes to mind. Instead, let’s put the responsibility back on the shoulders of the ones who were created to bear it: the men.
This is far from a toxic masculinity. It’s a triumphant one.
- “Wild and waste” are my favorite translations of תֹ֙הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ (tohu wabohu), words used in Genesis to describe the pre-created creation. ↩︎
- Case in point: Yesterday (11/4/25), there were three significant votes for leadership in my country, the United States of America: 81% of women voted for Mamdani in New York City, 80% of women voted for Sherrill in New Jersey, and 78% of women voted for Spanberger in Virginia per NBC’s exit polls. This could cause people to say, “oh, those women are the problem!” But I think this view is a myopic one. I think men need to be leading their homes and families better. And I do think our country was rightly founded on the ideal that men voted for their whole homes, their whole families, their whole households. Is this a utopian, fantastic, unrealize-able vision? Maybe. And maybe it’s too late for America to be saved from this particular “cycle” of chaos, and that just might be the point. Maybe the spiral downward into our own undoing is uninterruptible by now. But maybe not. ↩︎
