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Summary of Prof.

Carroll Quigley’s
Last Public Lecture Before He Died

Christopher M. Quigley
B.Sc., M.M.I.I., M.A.

“This shift from customary conformity to decision making by some other power, in its final stages,
results in the dualism of almost totalitarian imperialism and an amorphous mass culture of
atomised individuals.

The fundamental all pervasive cause of World instability today is the destruction of communities by
the commercialization of all human relationships and the resulting neurosis and psychosis.

Another reason for the instability of the Western system is that two of the main areas of sovereignty
are not included in the state structure: control of credit/banking and corporations. These two
elements are therefore free of political controls and responsibility. They have largely monopolized
power in Western Civilization and in American society. They are ruthlessly going forward to
eliminate land, labour, entrepreneur-management skills and everything else the economists once
told us were the chief elements of production. The only element of production they are concerned
with is the one they control: capital. Thus capital intensification has destroyed food, manufacturing,
farming and communities. All these processes create frustrations on every level of modern human
experience and result in the instability and disorder we see around everyday”.

In 1978 Professor Carroll Quigley, a few months before he died, gave three lectures at Georgetown
University, Washington. The lecture series was sponsored by a grant from the Oscar Iden endowment.

The genius of Carroll Quigley shone through his three presentations because, as always, he forced his
audience to think. His essays covered the thousand years of the growth of the State in the Western
tradition from 976 – 1976. His approach went against the grain of most academics who only taught
history in short sound bites. Quigley believed that you could not understand anything unless you saw the
whole and the essence of his philosophy was that history was logical i.e. things happen for a reason. For
him the core of all that occurs throughout the ages is the underlying force of fundamental human values.
Leaders, rulers and executives who miss this point are prone to make erroneous decisions because their
actions will be based on flawed analysis and understanding. The professor saw that American society and
Western Civilization were in serious trouble in the late 70’s. In hindsight his final essay “The Sate of
Individuals” was particularly prophetic and events during the subsequent 32 years have exonerated his
controversial conclusions. In summary this essay stated the following:

Society is an organization of persons and artefacts to satisfy human needs.

Currently our desires are remote from our true needs. Societies are built on needs and they are ultimately
destroyed through desires.
Power between the state and the society rests on the ability of the state to satisfy human needs.

The state is a good state if it is sovereign and responsible.

There are seven level of culture or aspects of society: military, political, economic, social, emotional
religious and intellectual.

Military: men cannot live outside of groups. They can satisfy their needs only by co-operating
within community. This group needs to be defended.

Political: If men operate within groups you must have a method to settle disputes.

Economic: The group must have organizational patterns for satisfying material needs.

Social: Man and women are social beings. They have a need for other people. They have a need to love
and be loved.

Emotional: Men and women must have emotional experiences. Moment to moment with other people and
moment to moment with nature.

Religious: Human beings have a need for a feeling of certitude in their minds about things they cannot
control and do not fully understand.

Intellectual: Men and women have a need to comprehend and discuss.

Power is the ability in society to meed these eight fore-mentioned human needs.

Community is group of people with close inter-personal relationships. Without community no infant will
be sufficiently socialized. Most of our internal controls which make society function have historically
been learnt in community. Prior to 976 most controls in society were internal. In the West after 976 due to
specialization and commercial expansion controls began to be externalized.

Sovereignty has eight aspects: defence, judicial, administrative, taxation, legislation, executive, monetary
and incorporating power.

Expansion in society brings growing commercialization with the result that all values, in time, become
monetized. As expansion continues it slows with the result that society becomes politicized and
eventually militarized. This shift from customary conformity to decision making by some other power in
its final stages results in the dualism of almost totalitarian imperialism and an amorphous mass culture of
atomised individuals.

The main theme in our society today is competition and no truly stable society can possibly be built on
such a premise. In the long term society must be based on association and co-operation.

From 1855 Western Civilization has shown signs of becoming increasingly unstable due to: technology
and the displacement of labour: increased use of propaganda to brainwash people into thinking society
was good and true; an increased emphasis on material desires; the increased emphasis on individualism
over conformity; growing focus on quantity rather than quality; increased demand for vicarious
satisfactions. As a result more and more people began to comprehend that the state was not a society with
community values. This realisation brought increasing instability.
Another element of the trend towards instability in Western Civilization was the growth in weapon
systems that if actually used would ensure total destruction of the planet. This in effect meant that they
were effectively redundant.

In addition the expansion of the last 150 years has in essence been based on fossil fuels. The energy
which gave us the industrial revolution, coal – oil – natural gas – represented the combined savings of
four weeks of sunlight that managed to be accumulated on earth out of the previous three billion years of
sunshine. This resource instead of being saved has been lost. Gone forever never to return.

The fundamental all pervasive cause of World instability today is the destruction of communities by
the commercialization of all human relationships and the resulting neurosis and psychosis.

Medical science and all the population explosions have continued to produce more and more people
while the food supply and the supply of jobs are becoming increasingly precarious, not only in the
United States, but everywhere, because the whole purpose of using fossil fuels in the corporate
structure is the elimination of jobs.

Another reason for the instability of the Western system is that two of the main areas of sovereignty
are not included in the state structure: control of credit/banking and corporations. These two
elements are therefore free of political controls and responsibility. They have largely monopolized
power in Western Civilization and in American society. They are ruthlessly going forward to eliminate
land, labour, entrepreneur-management skills and everything else the economists once told us were
the chief elements of production. The only element of production they are concerned with is the one
they control: capital. Thus capital intensification has destroyed food, manufacturing, farming and
communities. All these processes create frustrations on every level of modern human experience
and result in the instability and disorder we see around everyday.

Today in America there is a developing constitutional crisis. The three branches of government set up
in 1789 do not contain the eight aspects of sovereignty. As a result each has tried to go outside the
sphere in which it should be restrained. The constitution completely ignores, for example, the
administrative power. As a result the courts, in particular the Supreme court, is making decisions
it should not be making. In addition the President, who by the constitution should be easily
impeached, has become all powerful to such an extent that the office is now as basically Imperial.

However, to me the most obvious flaw in our constitutional set-up is the fact that the federal
government does not have control over money and credit and does not have control over
corporations. It is therefore not really sovereign and is not really responsible.

The final result is that the American people will unfortunately prefer communities. They will cop or
opt out of the system. Today everything is a bureaucratic structure, and brainwashed people who
are not personalities are trained to fit into it and say it is a great life but I think otherwise.

Do not be pessimistic. Life goes on; life is fun. And if a civilization crashed it deserves to. When Rome
fell the Christian answer was. “Create your own communities.”

Source:
The Oscar Iden Lecture Series Georgetown University Library
Prof. Carroll Quigley
Lecture 3
“The State of Individuals”
Full lecture is available in the essay section on the Wealthbuilder.ie website.

A copyright dispensation to quote from this publication was granted by Georgetown University to
Christopher M. Quigley on Tuesday may 13th. 2008.

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