Serial events.

The cycles of history have often been written about. Be it the rise and fall of power or other more complex phenomena. One apparent series goes from monarchy to republic and on to empire, then an intermediary period of anarchy before starting again. Such a repetition seems to occur when the city states of Greece are compared to the nation states of Europe, in the first case leading to Rome and in the second to America. Has the cycle repeated itself because the new world was founded on the old, or is it because the concentration of power has only one course to follow? Whatever may be, the similitudes are there, and even Hadrian’s 2nd century enthusiasm for walls and limes resonates to-day.

Class struggle has been theorised in a linear form, where the bourgeoisie overthrows the aristocracy, and is in turn overthrown by the proletariat at the end of time. But it can also be seen as a perpetual fight between the middle class and the ruling class, with the working class tipping the balance according to circumstances, siding either with the proprietor or with the demagogue who wants the proprietor’s place. If class struggle is in fact a cyclical upheaval – in a three class society with no final confrontation – its repeated resurgences alongside the other historic stutters are a logical result.

Technology also appears cyclical. A new medium is developed and improved, it becomes universal then fades into oblivion when something more effective comes along. However, the time span of renewal is getting shorter and shorter. Old stone, new stone, bronze, iron, steam, internal combustion, battery – alternatively, speech, writing, printing, audio, video, digital – how much faster can change take place?

Finally, though not exclusively, there seems to be a variety of business cycles – those that have been studied have periods of 2/3 years (Kitchin), 9/10 years (Juglar), 17/20 years (Kuznets), 55/60 years (Kondratieff) – all going on at the same time.

The natural world’s cycles are generally accepted, and atomic half lives, tides, eclipses, comets, et cetera, can be predicted precisely. If the synthetic cycles of human society were better known, their future phases might also be foreseeable. And even if the timing lacked precision (How quickly is the technological time scale contracting? How long do empires last?) this knowledge would still give a sense of perspective to a species blindly groping forward into the unknown.