Ossify

As societies become more complex they inevitably become more precarious and vulnerable. As they begin to break down, the terrified and confused population withdraws from reality, unable to acknowledge their fragility and impending collapse. The elites retreat into isolated compounds, whether at Versailles, the Forbidden City, or modern palatial estates. They indulge in unchecked hedonism, the accumulation of wealth, and extravagant consumption. The suffering masses are repressed with greater and greater ferocity. Resources are depleted until they are exhausted. And then the hollowed-out edifice collapses. The Roman and Sumerian empires fell this way. The Mayan elite, became, at the end, as the anthropologist Ronald Wright notes in A Short History of Progress, "...extremists, or ultraconservatives, squeezing the last drops of profit from nature and humanity." This is how all civilizations, including our own, ossify and collapse
--Chris Hedges & Joe Sacco, "Days Of Destruction, Days Of Revolt", p. 149-150