I love the example of ancient texts that decry how the youth don’t listen to their elders any more and the lords are getting stingier with the taxes every season. It’s a universal feeling.
You mean this quote by Socrates, which was written as Athens was entering a period of (terminal) decline?
“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”
Maybe it is not so universal, but an actual predictor of civilizational decline?
Socrates never said that and he never wrote anything (that has survived, anyway).
"QI has determined that the author of the quote is not someone famous or ancient.
It was crafted by a student, Kenneth John Freeman, for his Cambridge dissertation published in 1907. Freeman did not claim that the passage under analysis was a direct quotation of anyone; instead, he was presenting his own summary of the complaints directed against young people in ancient times. The words he used were later slightly altered to yield the modern version. In fact, more than one section of his thesis has been excerpted and then attributed classical luminaries."
> but an actual predictor of civilizational decline?
I think it is more of an indicator of overall prosperity, which may, in fact cause civilizational decline. I'm reminded of the mouse utopia[0], and my own family.
