But the main problem with De Benois seems to be that there’s simply not that much historical resonance happening, apart from the fact that social structures indeed do decay over time when circumstances change but the structure does not or not fast enough. Periods of rapid cultural changes (e.g. the early industrialization 19th century) always push the social into extremely difficult spots. One could even suggest the world wars were a long term consequence of one important transition.

Never mind all that, what about the ongoing process of tribal unification, the many merging of various regions and languages over the course of history? The change of beliefs, like the change of paganism into state religion and back again into other, more splintered forms.

This discussion still has great value though despite the partial ignorance or cherry picking of historical processes. It might be very true that “a society without strong beliefs is a society about to die”. Our modern times we might has well summarize as having a lack of some strong, universal belief in anything concrete or achievable any more. The great boredom and flight of fancy both rule the day. But it’s highly doubtful that this is really some long-term problem. Humanity had always one thing going for it without much dispute: adaptation of mind and means. That itself might have to become a strong belief, instead of looking for solutions for elsewhere, like a system, a technology or governing bodies. Not even philosophers, as they generally describe and remind, or ask, but not *believe* as much.