Proper criticism

The question is what do people tell themselves about the reasons for decline? How do they make excuses for the errors of their leaders? What is the difference between a society that produces an enlightened elite, which can recognize the dangers of the status quo and can alter the course of their societies and their traditions, versus a society that produces an excusing elite, which conceals the dangers of the status quo and finds distractions and scapegoats to keep the society from dealing with the symptoms of decline? 

What allowed the Japanese to recognize the challenges of modernity while the Jews languished in the nonsense of Orthodoxy and the revolution of Zionism? How can traditional systems come to be self-critical? 

When YHWH says in the Decalogue that He keeps accounts of the sins of the fathers on the sons for multiple generations He is saying that talionis entails proper criticism and recognition of error and violation. Tokhacha requires a prior recognition of one's own defects before one entitles oneself to the blame of others. 

A society built on justice as deservedness will need practices that moderate the action of praise and blame to harness them as productive elements of the culture rather than, as they often are in small towns and in civil society, as the instruments of social friction and discord. It is often to get away from the pernicious use of praise and blame that people leave their small towns to gain the anonymity of the large city. Perhaps the large city is less spiritually rewarding but at least it is not stifling of the creative urge that comes with a sense of deservedness.