Theme: Civilization

DEFENDING RUDYARD LYNCH ( @Whatifalthist ) ON CIVIL WARS

THE RHYTHM OF HISTORY
He is the only other ‘very smart person’ on the center-right that I know of. His knowledge base evolved from alternate history using deep knowledge of each time period. The job of intellectuals is to paint a field of possibilities for the future that we can then drive toward or away from. I do that. He does that. Every single intellectual who studies what we would call cycles from memory to development, to fashion, to business cycles, to economic cycles, to generational cycles, to secular cycles, to warfare cycles, to civilizational cycles comes to the same conclusions over time.

COOPERATION > MARKETS > MARKET EXHAUSTION
And since about 1990 a number of us have predicted this current collapse-war-restructuring cycle, because many cycles (markets so to speak) are converging on cycle (market) failure. I’ve been ‘on message’ since 2004. Huntington since 1981, Strauss and Howe since the 1990. And Turchin since about 2000. Plato, Aristotle, and Polybus discussed it. The romans made an institution of it (see Cato). Also see Machiavelli, Carlyle, Spengler, Pareto, Sorokin, Modelski, Kuznetz, Kondratieff(Where I learned it), and many others.

I tend to underestimate the ‘slowness’ of the population so to speak (consistently) so I predicted it earlier, (by 2020) but I was close. Most predicted around 2030. It’s very difficult to see that number as not ‘close’. Like all markets, one cannot ‘time’ a market. One can only roughly estimate the range.

THE OVERCONFIDENCE OF THE CONSERVATIVE MIND
Instead I would suggest that you are overestimating your ability as do almost all conservatives (it is why conservatives are conservative) and overestimating your perception of the state of mind of the population. As Lynch points out repeatedly in his video (as have every synthetic historian), almost no one predicts them, and less so times them correctly. Instead, the conditions arise (they have) and a trigger event or sequence of trigger events occur, and the tiny fraction of the population willing to resort to force reach their limit of tolerance, and the result spirals.

CONDITIONS
Given the scarcity of US forces, the state of european forces, the divisiveness and the loss of trust in government, combined with the economic failures and the shift in world power structures, and the pent up demand for aggressive reorganization of borders and power in the world, it is almost impossible for a population with an oversupply of single males not to revolt – or for powers to seek coherence in suppression of revolt by initiation of external warfare in desperate attempt to increase dependence on the state. (Russia today, China Soon, Iran consistently).

If civil war doesn’t happen in the USA it will likely escape that pressures by the emergence of foreign wars. Otherwise , massive foreign invasion, hypersupply of single men, hopeless economy, no faith in govt, ideological (religious) divide, sedition from within in the academy, the divergence of male and female interests behind it, and a democracy lacking a monarchy able to force resolution of it, will end up in civil war.

It’s just deterministic.

Cheers

Reply addressees: @JackOfAwlTrades @demontage2000 @NetheriteSpart1 @whatifalthist