When the Part Betrays the Whole

Between-levels Conflict, Subsystem Carcinogenesis, and the Logic of Endogenous Collapse

Abstract

This paper delineates a unified theoretical framework for civilizational collapse by conceptualizing decline as a structural “betrayal of the whole by the part.” Moving beyond the traditional dichoto of environmental determinism and aggregative eclecticism, the study anchors the logic of collapse in Multilevel Selection (MLS) theory. It posits that civilizations operate as high-level complex organisms that inevitably encounter “subsystem carcinogenesis”, a systemic dynamic wherein localized entities, such as predatory elites, self-referential bureaucracies, or decoupled markets, maximize their own fitness at the expense of the societal totality. By scrutinizing the developmental trajectories of Modern Europe, Greco-Roman antiquity, and Classical China, the research demonstrates how the “Great Dis-embedding” of these subsystems leads to an endogenous exhaustion of both moral and material reservoirs. This framework suggests that civilizational collapse is not a contingent historical accident but a deterministic evolutionary-physical process, structurally isomorphic to the self-destruction of malignant neoplasms within biological hosts. Ultimately, the paper bridges the gap between classical historiography and contemporary complexity science, framing the fall of civilizations as a terminal manifestation of between-levels conflict ubiquitous across the cosmological scale.