No.2427
I'm very wary of models of recurring events with any specific time frame, especially linear time frames i.e. cycle of constant frequency. And 50 is a nice round number, which might show psychological bias in both the Kondratiev and Turchin cycles.
Granted, the reason for my distrust is itself not exactly empirical evidence, but a observation. Society is an absurdly complex and non-linear system (as Turchin's own graphs show), thus the odds of recurring phenomena having a nice, constant frequency are vanishingly small. Turchin mentions peaks of social upheaval in America in 1870, 1920 and 1970, but that says nothing over the upheaval of the 1929 crash, for example. Not to mention other countries, of course.
What does have merit, however, is his managing to estimate a point of convergence between the numerous bad trends introduced by neoliberalism. Anyone who took a look at the latter could see that it would not end well, but making a good prediction of that point in time, is impressive. I find his observation of the ratio between elite population and their collected wealth to be particularly interesting. It makes sense on its face – fewer resources imply stronger fights for it – but it also fits well with leftist analysis. Given the innate tendency for capital to accumulate, this spread-out is a counter-tendency, and a "corrective shock" is to be expected. Although in this case, it's coinciding (or inciding, I suppose) with several other destabilizing trends which might break everything apart, God willing.
I`d like to extend something which he mentioned there?
>Elite overproduction, the presence of more elites and elite aspirants than the society can provide positions for, is inherently destabilizing.
This reminds me of a theory I heard as to the causes of the alienation and anomie which have become rampant today. Recall the famous behavioral sink experiments? The rat Utopias which turned into rat Rwandas? Forget all the nonsense you read about it online or in normiedom, all of them are narrations of the collapse and, almost inevitably, they draw the most smoothbrain takes in existence, especially when the peson in question is a reactionary vomiting appeals to nature. Virtually none of them look past the cause of the collapse beyond overcrowding, which is like looking at the fall of Rome and blaming invading foreigners (notice the reactionary stupidity at work).
Overcrowding, this theory says, was the event which enabled the morbid phenomenon to happen, whereas the actual cause was lack of social roles. Social animals, it stands to reason, aren't just able to live in society, but need to do so – social behavior isn't an advantage in and of itself, because it entails a new set of needs. These social needs were the scarce resource, as it were, although I suppose social role is one single need. At any rate, smoothbrains love to point out that collapse of rat society followed the abandonment of natural behavior. Even if you don't dismiss the fallacious argument in the first place, it's still a weak one. Rat are characterized by their remarkably simple and undemanding behavior, that's partially why they're a pest in the first place, and lacking any concerns about resources, their social behavior boils down to foraging, defense of territory and harems, reproduction and a pecking order – and this is exactly what reactionaries always fixate upon, violence, sex and power, and they're only too eager to translate that to human society. Nevermind their idiocy, and focus on the social roles. From the outset, basic resources, the most primal need of lifeforms and over which traits like sociability evolve, require no time nor effort to collect. Given that these resources are naturally scarce, a large proportion of the social roles in a wild rat society is dedicated to foraging, and all those roles, which arguably are the large majority of them, aren't available. Since the behavioral sink does not take place since the start, odds are that the remaining social roles are enough to keep every individual provided with some manner of positive function.
As population expands, roles become scarce (the non-linearity again) and individuals become outcasts despite permanently sharing the same physical space. An individual without a social role does not belong in society anymore, ergo he doesn't have his social needs met, and morbid behavior inevitably follows. Among the peculiarities of the "sinking" rat society were "the beautiful ones", individuals which retired themselves from the decaying society (and from the horrible mob which replaced it), each one by itself, and did nothing but eat, sleep, and groom themselves. These were the role-less individuals who added a physical aspect to their social isolation. They were mostly male, and despite awful takes from smoothbrains, this too is related to social roles. It's an inescapable fact that the female role in reproduction is incomparably longer and more intense than the male one and thus the female population has a "reserve pool" of social roles, resulting in fewer of them becoming beautiful ones.
Now, with the social role framework laid down, I think we can draw comparisons with human society without falling for evopsych hot takes. The beautiful ones are an obvious counterpart for the urban hermit/hikikomori, but it would be a mistake to draw a direct parallel. The outcast is not necessarily an all-or-nothing status, and in fact, it's a growing trend within normie society, with the hermits themselves being just the extreme cases. Most cases are mild, and it supposedly is the alienation epidemic. This makes even more sense when you add things about human society without any possible counterpart in rat society, the key one being, no doubt, industrialization. For all its material benefits, it's undeniable that it necessarily decreases the available "amount" of social roles, those related with the most basic aspects of maintaining society. And this is a global phenomenon despite the very lopsided industrialization rates of countries because international trade tends to level that aspect out amongst everyone. People keep retreating more into homebound activities, or rather, "passivities", as it's almost always consumption rather than creation, compounding the alienation. Capitalism only makes things worse, as it fosters endless consumerism while subsuming creative activities under the market.
Another key factor is urbanism. Some lessons about it were drawn from the behavioral sink experiments, yet I fear it's nowhere near enough. For all the overcrowding concerns, the experiments remain woefully, inexplicably unxpanded-upon. There is an infinity of variations on the physical space for the rat Utopia which can modify results, and this could have immense use for us, as it would be a way of modelling the human capacity of altering our environment and ourselves. But capitalist society has no interest in a project for mankind, and thus no interest is modelling it. Urban growth is as haphazard as the free market itself, islands of order in a sea of chaos, or, as third world metropolises show, islands of wealth in a sea of misery. And all of this before we even cover the psychological effect that makeshift urbanism has on us, which is, I think, one of the main shapers of the alienation epidemic. Put simply, our cities are built by us but not for us. They're hostile environments to ourselves. And the massive urbanization of the 20th century has huddled together so many people whereas social roles keep decreasing. Much has been said about the seeming extinction of "organic" social behavior of small cities of the past, replaced by an "artificial" behavior to be enforced, so I guess I'll cut this topic short here.
So then I guess I got a bit carried away here, but still, I think this social role framework might be an X factor which we have so far been ignoring in the so-called cliodynamics. After all, consider that the immense unemployment rate is, besides a central material issue, also an immense loss of already-dwindling social roles, and this current crisis just might get deeper than we exp