As all fauceirs have a limited life span, this is true for societies a subset of social fauceirs too, of course. The life span of societies may vary from a cursory friendship up to dynasties that lasted thousands of years. This article is not about any specific society. Instead the article attempts to summarize general and abstract rule that characterize a social fauceir's life cycle.
A society's life cycle is divided into birth, growth, reproduction, and finally death. The similarity with a human's life cycle is not surprising. Societies comprise mostly human individuals as sub-fauceirs so they would inherit most of their properties including life cycle characteristics from human biology. The acceptance of a life cycle and death in particular has to overcome grave ideological obstacles. Each society is connected with certain believes, ideals, and even myths that many people feel worthwhile to keep. Sometimes they cannot let go and so it develop into so called generation problems, when the young refuse to maintain their parents traditions, or the company.
All those reluctant to throw overboard their ideology may be said killing a society is not about killing people any more it is restructuring a society and giving the people new perspectives. More about that under the term evolution of a societies life cycle, which is coming soon.
Birth
The society starts its existence when it is recognized as such. The exact data of birth of a society often is difficult to set. There exists no exact definition and it is even more difficult to give one as societies differ so widely. Soon after birth growth begins.
Growth
A growing society is still vulnerable but subsequently gains importance. Growth is mostly an accumulation of sub-fauceirs. Most of these in primitive societies have been people. In more evolved societies other forms of sub-fauceirs are abundant too. Those include social sub-groups, and all kind of rules that make the society stronger. Again there is no sharp divide between growth and the next phase in life cycle.
Reproduction
Reproduction is characterized by cessation of significant growth. The persistent production of fauceirs does not add further stability. So these new sub-fauceirs either become germs that inseminate other societies or develop into new societies. Some of the sub-fauceirs begin to degenerate and become parasites which initiates senescence and death.
Death
A society's death can come in several ways.
- Dying of most of the people (This was typical mostly among primitive societies.)
- A society failed in competition with other societies. (In less evolved societies this again involved killing of most of the members.)
- A society's assets are eaten up by parasites.
Sometimes a combination of these is also possible. For instance
- The Roman Empire died because of parasitism and the conquest of German tribes.
- Medieval feudalistic societies were challenged by the growing power of merchants but the pest in Europe helped to accelerate this process.
- The last German Emperor was removed when Germany lost World War I that killed many people. The same was true after WW2 when the fascist society died in Germany in some other countries. By contrast, in Spain, fascism withered for several years. Surely less people, a smaller portion of the populations, was killed and less infrastructure destroyed.