Two weeks after I came down from University in 1969 (drugs were cheap in those days) I sat up half the night with my Dad, and watched Neil Armstrong jump down in slow-motion onto the surface of the Moon. Eighteen months later, the world’s first supersonic airliner took off and landed successfully. Forty years on, the Americans have withdrawn from moon flights, and Concorde is no more. This may be the first time since the Dark Ages that Man has stagnated technologically.

At least the US has Mars in its sights – however unrealistic that might be. Here in Britain, we have retreated into Health & Safety.

In London’s Theatreland in 1969, although seven productions out of forty-four were long-running and four were revivals, the rest were either new variety or new (ie, original) plays. The latter included Forty Years On (Bennett), The Price (Miller), The Contractor (Storey), Play it Again Sam (Allen), and a number of other worthy hits like Conduct Unbecoming, There’s a Girl in My Soup, The Secretary Bird – and of course, Hair.

Risks were also taken with the players. Jazz pianist and satire dwarf Dudley Moore starred in Woody Allen’s play, while the lead role in Conduct Unbecoming was brilliantly played by blues singer Paul Jones.

Compare that stunning outburst of creativity with what’s on offer this week….and weep.

There’s a lot more to see – eighty-four productions – but more is very definitely less. Thirty-four are revivals or classics, twenty-two are crossovers, and eight have been running for over five years. Out of the eighty-four offerings, just twelve are original and new.

In short, nearly 70% originality in 1969 has been replaced by 13% originality in 2010.

In the UK, we haven’t formed a successful new political Party since 1883. The SDP was a breakaway from a Labour Party gone mad, and the LibDems are a merger of that failed breakaway and the old Liberals.

We haven’t had a completely new musical genre since 1954 (Rockabilly, which became rock n roll, which became rock, which became glam rock which….). Music today is in precisely the same position as the theatre. Movies are largely formulaic violence, Britpack, costume drama and remakes. New television drama beyond midbrow cops, spies and future-fiction is nonexistent.

In the last half-century, two innovative newspaper titles (The Independent and The Sun) have appeared. To date, not a single new and fully online title has been launched.

Our cultural output is driven almost entirely by risk aversion. But the tricky part – having observed and audited the obvious phenomenon – is to work out what the chicken and egg relationship is.

On the one hand, focus groups have stultified creativity in everything from politics to advertising. But on the other, is it a British genetic weakness that has accepted this?

Similarly, while damnable market economics, ratings mania and greedy shareholders insist on ‘banker’ productions, what is it about the once highly discerning British public that enables them not only to put up with this rubbish – but positively demand it?

No influential British politician has come up with an original philosophy in my lifetime. (Thatcherism was simply Victorian laissez-faire capitalism revisited). The electorate’s response has been apathy – as opposed to storming the Establishment with a radical approach like their great-grandparents did. Have UK politicos done this purely because they were able to get away with it….or because they’re neither bright nor creative? Or both?

There are any number of candidates to blame, but the same conundrum applies. Sure, we have dumbed-down education – but why have parents put up with it? We have a dysfunctional EU – but why have British citizens not had the guts to break away from it?

Empires decline: this is as certain as death and taxes. A mixture of Christianity and lead piping did for the Romans, allegedly. But other elements of Roman decline – decadence, sloth, perversion, greed, relativism, hedonistic dictatorship and braindead mob entertainments – provide a strong parallel with contemporary Britain. How does this happen?

I haven’t the empirical data (let alone the proof) to answer this question. But I can draw a further parallel. It’s no more than a hypothesis – but I find it intriguing.

Dominant cultures tend to go through three phases: expansionist mercantile trade; deciding that annexing trading partners is the best way to ensure commercial success for that trade; and then retreat from the old imperial borders….until the homeland is invaded, and even that breaks up into smaller parts.

During this process, the key diplomatic weapon is war. In these wars, the dominant gene-carrying males – the politico-military leaders – tend to be killed. During the Hun and Ostrogoth campaigns, the brightest and best Romans died. During the First and Second World Wars, an enormous proportion of the British ruling class was wiped out. During that same time period, the Soviet empire suffered the purge of all with the courage to stand up to Stalin – and millions of brave lives lost resisting the German invader.

Fear not: this isn’t me adopting Nazi eugenic loopy-loo theory. But we must recognise the one downside of defeating the Nazis: genetic science became a tricky (not to say taboo) area for many decades. Whether our bourgeois pc sensitivities like it or not, the efficient survival of dominant genes will produce risk-taking, voyager civilisations. If those genes are artificially stopped from reproducing, the culture will not only retreat into safe avoidance behaviour: it will give way to stronger civilisations where that process hasn’t occurred. The obvious example of such a latter culture today is China – which hasn’t had an expansionist war for nearly 3000 years.

The PRC is both commercially and territorially expansionist now. Its people are thrifty, disciplined, hard-working and highly intelligent. Is it merely their turn? Or are genetic factors behind its emerging status as the new globally dominant empire?