The Cycles of Civilization

At work today my co-workers and I discussed how and in what way this great nation of freedom may fall. Great teachers and students of the Book of Mormon have studied and identified a pattern or cycle that the great Nephite nation followed from prosperity to destruction. At the website mormonhaven.com they displayed a great diagram show below:


I also found another similar observation that is alleged to have been written by a Scottish historian that lived in the 1700's about the patterns of civilizations. The source of who actually said this has been disputed but it is believed to be Alexander Fraser Tytler:

A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:

• From bondage to spiritual faith;
• From spiritual faith to great courage;
• From courage to liberty;
• From liberty to abundance;
• From abundance to complacency;
• From complacency to apathy;
• From apathy to dependence;
• From dependence back into bondage.