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I’m a big fan of historical cycles; they help give a contour to the human experience. In a manner, they’re like seasons: never definitive, yet very real, experiences that we can use to both literally and metaphorically sow and harvest our crops.
And if history is like seasons, we’re in winter, possibly coming to its darkest point.
Credit is where credit’s due: this metaphor is heavily borrowed from the Strauss-Howe Generational Theory, which posits that history goes in generational cycles from a High to a Crisis, driven by generational dynamics best explained at this here link. It’s a theory being tested in the instability of our era.
That instability is caused in large part by vast generational partisan differences. Boomers are scrambling for their last ideological gasps before they begin dying at scale in the late 2020s, while the more unified Millennials and emerging Gen Zers are just beginning to flex their demographic muscles at the ballot box.
But enough about that. What I posit is that we’re coming up to our darkest “night” of our historical cycle — the winter solstice of our common experience. It is a historical experience that will set us on the path towards a new High.
It’s also likely to hurt like hell. That’s the point. It has to hurt, in the way…
