Why civilizations fail? What is the real challenge of maintaining a free society?

In Pashat Eichev, Moses springs his great surprise. Here is words, be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God.

Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your

silver and gold increase, and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud,

and you will forget the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

You may say to yourself, my power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.

If you ever forget the Lord your God, I testify against you today that you will be surely destroyed.

What Moses was saying to the new generation was this.

You thought that the 40 years wandering in the wilderness were the real challenge,

and once you settle and conquer the land, your problems will be over.

The truth is that it is then that the real challenge will begin.

It will be precisely when all your physical needs are met

when you have land and sovereignty

and rich harvest and safe homes that your spiritual trial will commence.

The real challenge isn't poverty but affluence.

It isn't insecurity but security, not slavery but freedom. Moses, for the first time in history, was hinting at a law of history.

Many centuries later, it was articulated by the great 14th century Islamic thinker

Ibn Khaldun, by the Italian political philosopher Giambattista Vico

in the early 18th century,

and most recently by the Harvard historian Nile Ferguson,

Moses was giving an account of the decline and fall of civilizations.

Ibn Khalduin argued similarly that when a civilization becomes greater to its elites,

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