A great many phenomena in both Nature and human history follow cyclical patterns, while others form waves. Author David Hackett Fischer (The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History) described the difference between cycles and waves:“Cyclical rhythms are fixed and regular. Their periods are highly predictable. Great waves are more variable and less predictable. They differ in duration, magnitude, velocity, and momentum. One great price wave lasted less than ninety years; another continued more than 180 years. The irregularities in individual price movements make them no more (or less) predictable than individual waves in the sea.Even so, all great waves had important qualities in common. They all shared the same wave-structure. They tended to have the same sequence of development, the same pattern of price relatives, similar movements of wages, rent, interest rates; and the same dangerous volatility in later stages. All major price revolutions in modern history began in periods of prosperity. Each ended in shattering world crises and was followed by periods of recovery and comparative equilibrium.”As Fischer observed, waves of human history share characteristics with ocean waves, which can accrete energy and become giant rogue waves that cannot be predicted even as they can be foreseen as recurring phenomena.Two cycles have attracted much commentary over the past decade: The Fourth Turning posited by William Strauss and Neil Howe in their 1997 book The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy (subtitled What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America’s Next Rendezvous with Destiny) which laid out an 80-year cycle of four generational turnings (High, Awakening, Unraveling, Crisis) that culminate in a system-changing Fourth Turning.This 80-year cycle aligns with the nation-changing crises of 1781 (the end of the Revolutionary War and the founding of the United States), 1861 (the start of the Civil War) and 1941 (America’s entry into an existential global conflict, World War II). This cycle suggests a nation-changing crisis began around 2021.Strauss and Howe took pains to note that the outcome of each crisis isn’t pre-ordained to be positive. Complacency based on the idea that it will all turn out wonderfully due to the nation’s destiny could be fatal.Peter Turchin and his colleagues have mapped out a 50-year cycle based on data ranging from archeological to financial–or in the case of coin hoards buried in times of crisis, both archeological and financial. Turchin’s prediction of a crisis beginning in 2020 drew skepticism which then flipped to recognition when the events of 2020 came to pass.Cycles are generally depicted as some version of a sine wave:Waves build up and break in irregular fashion. If we discern the forces at work–storms, etc.–we can predict the eventual arrival of waves but not their amplitude. In other words, the outcome of waves cannot be predicted. The complacency lent by cycles–everything will recover in time, etc.–is not possible in waves, as the wave might sweep away the entire status quo.A pendulum offers a third model of history: asymmetries push the socio-political-economic order to an extreme that cannot be sustained, and the pendulum swings to the opposite extreme, for example, from order to chaos and from surplus to depletion.In my framework, the shared interests of society are always in competition with the private interests of markets. Ideally, these generate a dynamic equilibrium, as adaptive forces provide feedback that counteracts any overreach.But as I have taken pains to explain, when one set of interests gains the power to override or ignore competing interests and the shared interests of society, their power becoming self-reinforcing, with fatal consequences. When a financial-market elite gains enough wealth to take control of the political machinery, they use this power to increase their share of the economy’s output / gains at the expense of everyone else.From their point of view, this is the natural order of things: we’ve gained supremacy because we’re smarter and therefore deserving of power.What they miss is that by gaining dominance, they eliminate the adaptive forces needed to maintain systemic stability. The system veers into moral decay as self-interest is deemed all that’s necessary for “growth,” and rampant corruption / unfairness reigns as the system is tilted to benefit the few at the expense of the many.The irony is rich: the status quo the dominant few believe is permanent cascades into disorder due to the destabilizing effects of their dominance.Read the Whole ArticleThe post The Pendulum of History appeared first on LewRockwell.