It is often said, with culinary simplicity, that the cream rises to the top. But so, invariably, does the scum. This adage—drawn from the behavior of broth—carries a sobering truth when applied to human affairs.
Success does not distinguish the virtuous from the vile. Sometimes the noble ascend to prominence; more often, the cunning and the corrupt claw their way to the summit. Thus, to judge the character of a person merely by the height they have reached in the social or political order is to mistake outcome for essence. The most revered figures of an era may be moral failures in disguise, while those who languish in obscurity may possess the inner life of saints.
The same paradox holds true for civilizations. We are habitually conditioned to associate power with virtue—believing that a civilization that achieved global dominance must have been superior in intellect, moral clarity, or political brilliance. But history offers little support for such optimism. Many civilizations that rose to prominence did so not because they embodied justice, wisdom, or cultural refinement, but because they mastered the brutal logic of conquest, extraction, and domination.
In fact, the world has seen more than one high civilization—deeply ethical, artistically advanced, and intellectually fertile—crushed under the boots of less cultivated but more aggressive invaders.
It is an error, then, to conflate civilizational success with civilizational virtue. Power does not imply wisdom, nor does victory confer value. The Roman Empire, for all its legal, philosophical and engineering brilliance, was built on systemic slavery, blood sports and imperial exploitation. Timur, the scythe-wielding founder of the Timurid Empire, carved his legacy through massacres and terror—his empire vast, but his moral vision void. Nazi Germany achieved swift technical and military advances, yet its moral depravity remains without parallel.
Success, whether military or economic, must always be measured against the means by which it is attained and the ends toward which it is directed.
Worse still, the historical record is often an unreliable witness. The origins of civilizations are embedded in mythology and nationalistic self-narration. Every civilization seeks to enshrine its past in tales of divine favor, civilizing missions, and righteous triumphs. But these stories are rarely neutral. They are embroidered by victors, censored by regimes, and propagated through generations until they ossify into orthodoxy. What is remembered is what serves power; what is forgotten is often what mattered most.
The truth, therefore, lies not in outcomes, but in essence. To understand a civilization, we must look not at the size of its armies, the scale of its monuments, the size of its economy, but at its metaphysical compass—its conception of justice, its ability to self-criticize, its vision of the place of humanity in the universe, and its openness to transcendental truths. These are harder to measure, harder still to preserve, and almost impossible to resurrect once lost. But they are the true indicators of a civilization’s soul.
To believe otherwise is to mistake surface for substance—a perennial error in the reading of history. It is to applaud the ascent of scum while mistaking it for cream. In our time, as in times past, discernment—not triumph—is the mark of wisdom.
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