Human/civilizational growth

Awakening eras, crisis eras, crisis wars, generational financial crashes, as applied to historical and current events
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Brendan
Posts: 39
Joined: Wed Jul 05, 2017 10:34 pm

Human/civilizational growth

Post by Brendan »

One thing I have been thinking about recently is the shape of the graph of the generational cycle. Obviously this graph would be that of the classic sin/cos (as all circles are). What I have been struggling to fully understand though is why it takes the shape of the cycle/circle/sin/cos. We see a similar pattern when observing a physical spring. What I have been thinking about though is what the fundamental force is that is causing these oscillations across generations. I think the conclusion I have come to is that human energy is the force and could be extended to any organic organism or in the case of humans collections of them (civilizations). If we take the micro approach to this there has been a lot of work done recently in psychology regarding "willpower" and how humans have finite amounts of it. On a macro level I think this likely holds for "civilizations". We see that the hero generations that end up fighting and "building" the nation have a surplus of generational energy due to increased investment and support from the previous generations. Hero generations though spend their energy creating these changes in the physical world. All of this discipline required to create change is exhausting which is why following generations lack the "energy" to summon the discipline/willpower to match such achievements. In my experience (haven't looked into the research) on the micro level my personal energy levels tend to coincide pretty well with a sin/cos function (by tracked hours of disciplined focus). I would imagine this is why there is the generational cycle. The hero generation represent the peak in generational willpower and the subsequent generations are the civilization "vacation" where energy is accumulated.

A note about this graph that has been mentioned by John in some capacities before: the oscillations are amplifying. This means that the amplitude of the oscillations increase as time goes by. This is due to the fact that the civilizations that win and survive then have more resources: money, weapons, humans, etc. to devote to recovery and reinvestment for the next high. Another reasons for the amplification of oscillations is the convergence of generational time lines.

What this leads to is essentially growth and recovery cycles for each civilization. The civilizations ability to capitalize on these growth and recovery periods dictates how well/how much it will grow. The more improvements that are made in technology and efficiency of the civilization will result in more saved human energy to be put to use later.

(Didn't have the time to make this as clear as I would like but I think the point has been made adequately)

shifter
Posts: 1
Joined: Sun Oct 01, 2017 12:30 pm

Re: Human/civilizational growth

Post by shifter »

I also think there is a psychological connection here. By analogy I'm looking at psychological skills as an economic issue with the generational cycle as representing the state of the market correcting itself over time.

I would love it if someone can help flesh this out. My intuition is telling me that there is a connection with the two axes of Jungian psychology, Freedom/Order and Ego/Social, which I think corresponds with Strauss and Howe's secular/spiritual axes. Arranged in a circle around this are the differing jungian archetypes, like what the fourth turning model uses. Jung only has twelve, but myers briggs has 16 archetypes, which is exactly the number of boxes on the generational diagonal. My hunch is that the psychological skills of the quadrant of the personality types (freedom-social driven, order-ego driven, etc.) who dominated in restoring order during the last crisis are supplied through the economy in the first turning while the other's are neglected. As that successful generation's influence wanes so do society's production of those psychological skills, until the Turning or inflection point is reached and a pursuit of a different set of long neglected skills becomes trendy. For example if social/order personalities solve the crisis, these skills will be economically rewarded and likely at the expense of ego freedom personalities who will start finding the willpower to pushback.

Each one of the 16 boxes represents a dominant psychological constallation in time. Since in any turning only four personality types, prosper these are spread out by life cycle, in each generation a specific type will be nurtured at a different point in its life cycle which will shape its cultural development. In other words, in youth for some generations its cool to be a conformist and in others a rebel. But depending on whether an aligned generation is in power, some of these conformists and rebels will be punished and some rewarded leading to internal strife in different periods of their life. For the constallation where it happens at the peak of their power, an all out crisis breaks out.

Brendan
Posts: 39
Joined: Wed Jul 05, 2017 10:34 pm

Re: Human/civilizational growth

Post by Brendan »

In looking at this more I think really it boils down to the factors that shape human behavior. You can realistically view it with just about any perspective used to describe/explain human behavior. Although I, like most, prefer my superior perspective to others obviously flawed ones.

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