Thank you for a very informative exposition. If I may, I have nothing to offer as regards material causes, but it would seem that we can speak most rigorously of “collapses” of systems of governance, specifically, particular sets of institutions associated with specific regimes of governance, which can include physical structures such as palaces and monoliths.

It might be that the ‘formative abstractions’ justifying this or that regime of governance collapse first, for being unable to deliver what was needed. It is my position that we are currently witnessing in that very sense the end of the Age of Ideology that came after the Age of (‘Christian’) Theology in Europe. Modern forms of ideology were invented to replace (that) theology, but have done no better towards solving societal problems or lessening conflict.

We must transition away from ideology to a different regime of governance in a positive way or endure a period of collapse. Going back to theology can’t be the answer.

That seems to leave rationality as the only alternative. Both modernists and postmodernists have insisted on the rationality of ideologies, but that is incorrect. Ideologies are based on beliefs as surely as theologies are. Ideologies are based on secular beliefs, such as a belief in equality and a belief in the existence of a priori Rights such as “”Natural” or “Human” Rights. Ideologies are therefore no more rationalistic than theologies are.