In Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse, Dr.
Luke Kemp attributes the cause of civilizational failures in 400
societies over the course of 5,000 years of history to the
contaminating effects of leaders who possess the “dark triad” of
narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellian manipulation. A related but
equally intriguing perspective comes from Dr. Leanne ten Brinke, a
professor of psychology and director of the University of B.C.’s Truth
and Trust Lab, who has done extensive studies on the behaviour of
convicted criminals (University of British Columbia Magazine,
Spring/Summer 2025, “The ‘Strongmen’ Who are Breaking Democracies” by Jared Downing).
Tag Archives: Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse
The Quadra Project – The Dark Triad – Part 1
As the course of history attests, civilizations tend to rise and then fall. This process poses two fundamental questions. What causes people
to coalesce into complex societies? And what causes them to fracture
into disorganized populations? Perhaps the most cogent and credible of current explanations to both their formation and collapse is in Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse, a remarkably insightful 2025 book by Dr. Luke Kemp, a scholar from the Centre for Studies of Existential Risk at the Cambridge University.