Periods of mass madness

. . . and the collection of knowledge

Gurdjieff

“There are periods in the life of humanity that generally coincide with the beginning of the fall of cultures and civilizations when the masses irretrievably lose their reason and begin to destroy everything that has been created by centuries and millenniums of culture. Such periods of mass madness, often coinciding with geological cataclysms, climatic changes, and similar phenomena of a planetary character, release a very great quantity of the matter of knowledge. This, in turn, necessitates the work of collecting this matter of knowledge, which would otherwise be lost. Thus, the work of collecting scattered matter of knowledge frequently coincides with the beginning of the destruction and fall of cultures and civilizations.”

-G.I. Gurdjieff