Civilisations collapse when the elites become self-destructive in their greed and evil. This is a theme common to much of the reporting at this blog. Is it true? A scholarly book explores the same theme: Anne Glyn-Jones, Holding Up a Mirror: How Civilizations Decline, (Imprint Academic, Thorverton, 1996). There is also a very good video about this which can serve as Collapseology 101, an introduction to this topic by Paul Joseph Watson, who argues that almost every factor that led to the collapse of past civilisations, can be found in the West, and there are more as well, generating a situation of over-determination:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELoFwPwIQm0
First, on the Glyn-Jones book, there are informative remarks given in an interview, saving us time in reading the book: