> New civilizations emerging at the periphery...
Well, they're unlikely to emerge within another's sphere, aren't they? Unless they're exceedingly civilised, civilisations behave like cuckoos to their neighbours.
> A rise in strongmen or dictators
Good point. I'll keep this in mind when reading Spengler, but as for two famous strongmen, I believe more parsimonious explanations are:
(a) Putin : neo-feudalism is what one gets when russians spend the 1980's deciding the capitalists had valid criticisms of communism, then the 1990's deciding the communists had valid criticisms of capitalism.
(b) Xi : his decisions are backed because they are popular in china, not the other way around.
and as for the third, I'm willing to wait until 2021 to collect more data, but note that his military has been, in writing, disinclined to cross the Rubicon.
> resurgent popularity of religion
[citation needed] Even in the US context, imx much more religious than ours, religion isn't resurging. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_United_States#...
TL;DR: unfalsifiable, true, false?
TIL Alea iacta est referred to ἀνερρίφθω κύβος (and is referred to by finyish du wedzha). https://laudatortemporisacti.blogspot.com/2017/12/let-die-be...
How would you describe christianity in the roman empire? I might considerit a 'new civilization' once it was adpoted.
In the US, religion is in severe decline in any place near or in a city. Rural religious communities are hanging on by threads. I've seen church closings and communities that have adopted agnostic beliefs fairly qucikly in the last 4 years. Immigrants do bring a lot of religious people here but their children usually do not conform to those beliefs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_of_the_Third_Century
> "The crisis began with the assassination of Emperor Severus Alexander by his own troops in 235. This initiated a 50-year period during which there were at least 26 claimants to the title of emperor, mostly prominent Roman army generals, who assumed imperial power over all or part of the Empire."
Furthermore,
> ... religion is in severe decline in any place near or in a city. Rural religious communities are hanging on by threads.
is not supported by the data[1] on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_United_States#... and we know from the 1950-2019 graph that secular trends are not rapid enough to drastically change the numbers below in half a decade.
For instance, Seattle itself was 63% religious, and as for rural religious communities, alabama was 87% religious.
[1] It's amusing to me how the US divides religious beliefs. For example, my wife, from a traditionally catholic area, divides christianity with the trichotomy of "Christians" (catholics), "Reformeds" (protestants) and "Fishies" (all the other cults). To be fair, she might count orthodox in their own grouping, but when this came up we were talking about local cults.
So (assuming all those racially segegrated listings are evangelical denominations?) she'd say the US a few years ago was 13% reformed, 20% christian, and 32-35% fishie.