Is society disintegrating?

Welcome back, faithful reader. And yes, I acknowledge that there is only one of you. I've been thinking lately about evolution and meta-evolution; Evolution of societal meta-organisms versus the traditional evolution of people.

If one accepts that societies are organisms (at least they share some properties thereof), then do societies evolve (as in survival of the fittest) or do they learn (as in our 200-year old American democracy* is a spoiled rich kid who has nearly spent all of his trust fund). Societal organisms should be longer-lived than their constituent people, but then do they breed? Do they preproduce by sharing memes? Is Victorian society a dead organism, or did it learn to become industrial England?

And the reason I'm thinking about this is because I wonder if the kind of stupid stuff my boys do is the same level of stupid stuff that boys (who will, after all, be boys) did 100 years ago. Or 1000.







*There is a saying: "Democracy is the system of government where everybody gets what the majority deserve." It is one of my favorite quips, but I do not know to who to attribute it.