Core Idea
We tell ourselves comforting stories about why civilisation succeeded. The West rose because of the rule of law, property rights, and individual genius. China stagnated because of Confucian rigidity. Rome fell because of moral decay.
Meanwhile, progress happens when good ideas meet brave people who know all about innovation, democracy, scientific enlightenment, and superior values.
The problem with this anthropocentrism is that societies might generate ideas, but they are governed by thermodynamics. Energy in, entropy out.
Surplus energy from agriculture kept early civilisations fed, and the fossil fuel pulse made modern life possible. Without coal, oil, and natural gas delivering concentrated exogenous energy at scale, there would be no cities of ten million, no supply chains spanning six continents, no population of 8 billion increasing at 8,000+ an hour.
And these thermodynamic constraints are not cultural preferences. Confusing the two blinds us to what actually sustains complex societies and what threatens them.
Counterpoint
We like to believe that enlightenment values liberated human potential, capitalism rewarded innovation, and democracy protected freedom. Together, these ideas built prosperity.
And there is enough truth in there to make us further believe that if we spread these values, prosperity follows. Protect these values, and prosperity persists.
It is a story that promises moral clarity and practical utility at once. The right ideas matter, and moral institutions deliver to make success repeatable.
But in practice, it does not work that way.
Civilisations are not pyramids balanced on ideology. They are metabolic systems held together by energy flows and resource throughput. What keeps a modern nation functioning is not whether its constitution is elegantly written but whether the energy arrives each day, whether the nutrient cycles still close, and whether the waste sinks still absorb.
The fossil fuel revolution delivered a massive energy surplus beginning around 1800. Suddenly, human societies had access to ancient sunlight stored in coal seams and oil fields. This was not genius. This was geological luck. The surplus energy allowed exponential population growth from one billion to eight billion in two centuries. It powered mechanised agriculture, global trade, antibiotics, and the entire infrastructure we mistake for progress.
Ideas grab attention, but attention is not causation. Worse, the obsession with values and governance models lets us avoid harder truths. We can pretend not to know that collapse is driven by resource depletion, energy descent, and the arithmetic of overshoot. None of these are solved by better constitutions or smarter entrepreneurs.
Here’s the thing.
You can refine every institution, perfect every policy, celebrate every innovation and still watch societies unravel when the energy flows falter.
Thought Challenge
Analyse a turning point… Choose a major historical transformation such as the Industrial Revolution, the Green Revolution, or the rise of Silicon Valley. Write down what is celebrated (innovation, entrepreneurship, freedom) and what is missing (coal deposits in Britain, oil-based fertilisers, cheap electricity from hydropower). What energy or resource inputs made this possible?
Investigate a collapse... Pick a civilisational decline such as Rome, the Maya, Soviet Russia. Research what role energy or resource depletion played. Did deforestation reduce fuel supplies, did soil exhaustion lower crop yields, or did the oil shocks of the 1970s accelerate Soviet fragility? Contrast the mainstream explanations of moral decay, bad leadership, and ideological failure with the biophysical constraints.
Both actions sharpen the sceptical instinct. Instead of being captured by the surface drama of ideas and personalities, you learn to look underneath the story for the energy flows and resource systems that matter.
Closing reflection
Being a mindful sceptic is not about dismissing the value of democracy or mocking those who believe in human progress. It is about the discipline to resist the easy lure of ideological explanations, and directing attention to the ordinary, the physical, the thermodynamically indispensable.
Energy flows built civilisation and energy descent will reshape it.
Evidence Support
Morris, I. (2010). Social Development. In Why the West Rules—For Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future (pp. 95–240). Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
TL;DR… traces patterns in social development against the backdrop of energy capture and use, showing a direct relationship between energy availability, social complexity, and civilisational prosperity.
Relevance to insight… Rigorously quantifies energy flows as the real foundation beneath societal advance, deflating ideological or cultural explanations. The book’s peer-reviewed chapters are often cited in academic circles for highlighting how every surge in civilisation has matched—almost mechanically—a surge in accessible energy.
Smil, V. (2017). Energy and Civilization: A History. MIT Press.
TL;DR… comprehensive, peer-reviewed account of how energy capture and thermodynamic efficiency govern the trajectory of every “civilizational” leap—from the first agriculture to the massive energy surplus provided by coal and oil.
Relevance to insight… how each technological “breakthrough” is always, at root, a breakthrough in energy acquisition or conversion, making this book a foundational resource for debunking ideology-driven just-so stories.
Hall, C. A. S., & Klitgaard, K. A. (2012). Energy and the Wealth of Nations: Understanding the Biophysical Economy. Springer.
TL;DR… how energy return on investment (EROI) constrains economic growth and societal complexity, using empirical data to show civilisations expand when EROI is high and contract or collapse as it falls.
Relevance to insight… wealth and progress track energy surpluses, not cultural superiority or policy genius.
Tainter, J. A. (1988). The Collapse of Complex Societies. Cambridge University Press.
TL;DR… reviews of collapses, including Rome, demonstrating that rising complexity and resource costs eventually outstrip obtainable surpluses, triggering decline regardless of ideology or leadership.
Relevance to insight… textbook mindful scepticism with neither moral panic nor “decadence,” but resource throughput and declining returns to complexity. This undercuts the comfort stories of decline due to values and squarely frames collapse as a material, energetic phenomenon.
Warde, P., Sörlin, S., & Lindqvist, S. (2018). The Environment: A History of the Idea. Johns Hopkins University Press.
TL;DR… traces intellectual and policy histories, stressing that real constraints on progress and preservation are always shaped by material flows and environmental limits, not intentions or doctrines.n
Relevance to insight… sober account of environmental history, reinforces the thesis that ignoring biophysical and thermodynamic boundaries betrays a fundamental ignorance that no clever idea or leader can escape.
These works are widely referenced, empirically grounded, and offer direct contrarian evidence for the claim that energy, not culture or values, structures civilisation’s fortunes. Each dismantles the myth that human ingenuity alone dictates history’s arc, showing instead that all enduring progress is, at heart, a thermodynamic story.