Big Cycles: Apathy, dependence and a return to bondage?

How Tytler's cycle and other Big Cycle thinking prompts five key strategic questions that business leaders should be asking right now

Emma Walford

September 16, 2025

TL;DR

A centuries old theory of civilisational decline resurfaced when I read my stepson’s essay on whether our society is in danger. If he is right that we sit at a critical point in our history and it prompts five key questions organisational leaders should be asking themselves right now.

The cycle of civilisation

Tytler’s cycle is said to chart a civilisation’s rise and fall through nine repeating stages:

Diagram depicting the stages of Tytler's Cycle: bondage -> spiritual faith -> great courage -> liberty -> abundance -> selfishness -> complacency -> apathy -> dependence

Although widely attributed to the Scottish historian Alexander Fraser Tytler, it remained completely unknown to me despite also being Scottish. I only came across it when reading my stepson Tom’s essay competition submission: ‘To what extent is our civilisation in danger?’.

His essay won. And, although that was over a year ago, it came back to me recently while listening to debates about AI’s growing influence on our future. The parallels were hard to ignore.

Do civilisations really follow a cycle?

Once I dug further into Tytler, the first surprise was that it might not have been Tytler’s at all. Historians point out that it is rhetoric more than scholarship, and that many alternative models of rise and fall exist.

Spengler compared civilisations to living organisms that inevitably age and die.
Toynbee argued that societies rise when they respond creatively to challenges and fall when elites fail to adapt.
Ibn Khaldun, centuries before, thought that “social cohesion” held empires together until decadence weakened it.
Peter Turchin has attempted to quantify cycles of roughly 200 to 300 years driven by economics and elite competition.
Ray Dalio, Founder of Bridgewater Associates and author of several bestselling works, has devoted much of his life–and attributes much of his success–to understanding the repeating Big Cycles of World Order.

Different data, different angles, yet the same conclusion keeps surfacing. Civilisations, more often than not, decline. Abundance leads to complacency, complacency to disconnection and drift, drift to collapse. Whether that collapse destroys, transforms or evolves is the part that varies.

For the sake of an accessible framework, then, let’s stay with Tytler’s nine stages. The obvious question becomes where we are now.

Where are we now?

If the model holds, today’s West appears to sit uncomfortably between apathy and dependence. Tom’s essay took exactly this view. And once you start looking for evidence, it is hard to argue otherwise.

UK voter turnout has been subdued since 2001: an average of 64 percent between 2001 and 2024 compared with 76 percent between 1922 and 1977. Only 27 percent of the UK public say they trust the government. In the US that figure sits at 22 percent. Regular volunteering stands at a record low of 16 percent. Interest in news has dropped from 63 percent in 2016 to 46 percent today.

There are the softer indicators as well. Graduates describing a sense of helplessness about jobs and home ownership. The blank indifference on a packed London street when someone’s phone is stolen. Falling birth rates. A broad, unspoken sense that many outcomes lie beyond personal influence.

Dependence gets more nuanced

In earlier periods, dependence meant reliance on rulers and the state. That dynamic still exists, and recent years have reinforced it. The pandemic showed how quickly freedoms can be suspended, and how readily populations complied. Large numbers of households across the West have come to depend on energy subsidies and cost-of-living support. With ageing populations, pressure on housing and the likelihood of more climate- and conflict-driven shocks, there is little indication that state dependence will ease.

Yet a second form of dependence has formed around digital systems. Smartphones have shifted from tools to tethers. Nomophobia is now recognised as a clinical anxiety condition. Navigation apps have begun to weaken wayfinding skills. Algorithms shape not just what we watch and read, but increasingly how we think about the world. For the moment, the Musks and Zuckerbergs sit behind the systems, though that is unlikely to remain the final layer.

A third layer is emerging rapidly. Dependence on AI is harder to measure but increasingly visible. Many people, especially those in the workforce and younger generations, rely on large language models such as ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini. Some use these tools to enhance their cognitive capabilities. Many simply outsource them. The volume of AI-generated “thought leadership” circulating on platforms like LinkedIn is testament to how quickly this habit spreads. And although humans still operate these systems, the direction of travel suggests that this dependence will not stop with them.

Taken together, these shifts suggest more than convenience. They look like early-stage symptoms of Tytler’s ninth step. Habits of reliance are forming. The open question is whether governments, the tech elite or the systems themselves will hold the reins.

How we got here

If we are indeed between apathy and dependence, a look in the rear-view mirror helps explain how. Estimates about the start of our current cycle vary, but using the basis of a 200-year span places the beginning somewhere in the mid-nineteenth century. The timeline maps surprisingly well.

1830s to 70s (bondage to spiritual faith): Victorian reformation, abolition of slavery, education and trade union acts
1880s to 1910s (great courage and liberty): Industrial power, financial might, population growth and the rise of the suffrage movement
1914 to 45 (cycle interrupted): The Great Wars, setbacks to liberty then renewed courage and expansions of rights
1950s to 70s (abundance): Rising living standards, broader education, consumer culture
1980s to 90s (selfishness): Finance-led growth, conspicuous consumption, widening inequality
1990s to 2000s (complacency): Confidence that prosperity was secure, despite growing fragilities
Today: Apathy and dependence.

What do we face next?

If the cycle continues unbent, we are heading towards bondage. The uncomfortable question is what that looks like in the twenty first century, and who or what sits at the centre of it. Bondage today may not look like ancient subjugation. It may look like a slow erosion of agency under powers we have created but do not fully control.

There is also the possibility that the cycle bends. Such bends can be positive or catastrophic. Should we aim to avoid collapse or prepare to guide it? Should we fear bondage, or only certain kinds of bondage? Are we safer under human power or machine power? Only a few years ago these questions would have seemed outlandish. Now they feel strangely practical.

If collapse is where we are headed, the challenge is to shape its direction. To turn it towards renewal rather than drift.

Questions for the boardroom

For leaders, this framing turns into a set of questions worth holding in view.

On accountability: Is our organisation taking responsibility for its impacts, and protecting the resources that society will depend on in future?
On AI: Are we using AI to extend human capability, or to replace it? How dependent are we already, and are we engaged enough to influence its development?
On shocks: Which shocks matter most for us, and how resilient are we? What should we do now to increase resilience and reduce exposure?
On long-termism: What commitments made today could place us on the right side of history in 10, 20 or 50 years? How do we build durability without rigidity?
On humanity: How do we counter apathy and dependence in our own people? What fears about the future are they carrying, and how do we help them face it with purpose, hope and accountability?

If Tom’s question was whether civilisation is in danger, the question for leaders is whether we recognise the moment we are in. And whether we intend to drift with the cycle or bend it.

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