jmm1184 wrote:
> If a society undergoes an internal civil war, does that
> necessitate that the unraveling period will also be violent?
> While violence in an awakening does result from an internal crisis
> civil war, in my studies it does appear to be possible for a
> society that experienced an internal crisis civil war to
> experience a unifying external crisis civil war (in fact this is
> probably how the cycle of internal civil wars ends). This would
> explain why England has not refought its civil wars, and why
> England's next crisis war was external - The War of the Spanish
> Succession with France and Scotland.
> It seems that if the awakening era, even if violent, answers the
> demands of the younger generation, it creates the possibility of a
> relatively peaceful unraveling era, which can lead to unity in a
> crisis war if faced with an external threat.
If I understand your point, you're saying that the War of the Spanish
Success unified England and Scotland after their split in the English
civil war. That makes sense to me. There have been tens or hundreds
of thousands of individual tribes and societies throughout history,
and now there are only about 250 nations and a few hundred more
identifiable societies. All those thousands of separate timelines
have had to merge over the centuries, and that could only have
happened in generational crisis wars.
So you're saying that if there's an internal crisis civil war between
two ethnic groups, then those two groups will be unified if the next
crisis war is a war against an external foe. That makes sense. But I
don't see how it follows that the two ethnic groups will become
unified during the Unraveling era. It seems more likely to me that
low-level ethnic clashes will begin during the Awakening era, and
worsen during the Unraveling era, and the two ethnic groups will not
become unified against the common foe until the Regeneracy occurs in
the new Crisis era. Do you have a reason to see it differently?
One reason for confusion is that there are really two different
meanings of "merge." What it really means for two ethnic groups to
merge timelines is not always clear. Scotland's timeline is merged
with England's, but the Scottish and English ethnic groups are not
really merged as ethnic groups, which is why there's still talk of
Scottish independence.
And in another thread you've previously written at length about the
the Mennonites-Pennsylvania Dutch ethnic group, which is certainly on
the same timeline as other Americans, but is a distinctly different
society.
So there are two completely different meanings of "merge," and if two
societies are not really merged ethnically, then their timelines could
become un-merged (diverged) in a future crisis war.