The Extinction of Passionarity in E. Todd's Demographic Concept

Currently, the theory of passionarity is just beginning to take shape by explaining the driving forces and mechanisms of the dynamics of creative activity of nations. However, while there is an understanding of the process of passion's birth, there is currently no adequate understanding of the phenomenon of its extinction, and therefore the article offers a simple logical model of this process. The approach proposed by E. Todd is used to consider the defeat of the West, which was launched in 2022. For these purposes, we considered the process of degradation of the institutional base of civilization, the central link of which are three drivers of self-identification and consolidation of the nation – the ethical code of conduct, the traditional family model and a common language. We revealed their features for three stages for a better understanding of the evolution of these three institutions – the active, zombie, and null phases. The focus of the logical scheme of the fading passionarity of the nation is the growth of the welfare of the population, which, paradoxically, weakens the sociality of individuals. The article shows that this effect occurs through five key mechanisms: the demographic equivalent of H. Gossen's law, the reproductive effect of replacing the number of children with their quality, the principle of Z. Bauman, the iron law of welfare and the law of J. Calhoun's “death squared”. This is a manifestation of the dialectical contradiction between the development of human civilization and man himself: passionate impulses contribute to the launch of a spiral of economic, technological and social progress, which in turn eventually leads to a weakening of social ties in society and the extinction of the passionate potential of the nation. We considered the application of the theory of passionarity to modern Russia