“The average age of the world’s greatest democratic nations has been 200 years. Each has been through the following sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith. From faith to great courage. From courage to liberty. From liberty to abundance. From abundance to complacency. From complacency to selfishness. From selfishness to apathy. From apathy to dependency. And from dependency back again into bondage.”
— Alexander Tytler on the cycles of government
[Correction: I’m getting feedback that this quote exists in different versions and may not actually be from Tytler or may be attributed to him while being a pastiche from other individuals partly or wholely. No time to verify now, will be back later on this. My fault. I didn’t think to google it, as I’ve seen it quoted so extensively].
My Comment
Tytler misses a link here. Apathy leads to cowardice and then cowardice to.
dependency. Courage is a primary spiritual virtue – it’s part of effort or action.
You don’t have anything without courage. In religious teaching the opposite of love is never posited as hate, but fear.
Fear is the source of practically every evil that comes upon us. Selfishness stems from fear. Greed stems from fear….
We have become sheep because of fear.
That’s why I’m interested in trauma in childhood. That’s where we first learn fear and learn to hold it in rigid patterns in our bodies and minds. [Thanks to Kevin Duffy for the quote from Tytler]
Update: In response to a comment, I thought I’d add this here:
Most cyclical theories are simplistic in their broad outlines, but they’re useful when you look at them from a meta-theoretical level
By metatheory I mean the overarching narrative in which they are placed – i.e., what does the schematization of the theory say about the way that particular person or age reads history…
There’s Vico – Age of God, Age of Heroes, Age of Men.
There’s the Greek republic-democracy-tyranny
There are the mahayugas and yugas (great ages) in the Hindu cycles (which are cosmic, not political)
Ravi Batra, who was the first economist to write extensively about a coming great depression (late 1980s), I believe, has a new book out which includes his cycles – he has an age of acquisitors followed by an age of intellectuals (I forget the exact name) and then a golden age..and I think it’s based on the varna (caste) system – which originally was not socially pernicious.
Correction: Robert Prechter predicted a coming great depression early on, as well. I’ll verify the dates….
This strikes me as simplistic. How does one define democracy? Does some quasi-democratic systems such as the Roman Republic or Babylon qualify? Perhaps some ancient Indian states as well. For that matter, does the US qualify from it’s founding or do we establish the US democracy at the time of the progressive era?
Technically I’m not sure that the US qualifies even today, as it is supposed to be governed by law (laughs).
As a general rule, I do accept the premise that democracy contains the seeds of it’s own ultimate destruction and is destined to degenerate into oligarchy but I don’t accept a rigid deterministic schedule for such.
Most cyclical theories are simplistic in their broad outlines. I find them interesting not so much as theory but at the metatheoretical level
– what does that schematization say about the way that particular person or age reads history…
There’s Vico – Age of God, Age of Heroes, Age of Men.
There’s the Greek republic-democracy-tyranny
There are the mahayugas and yugas (great ages) in the Hindu cycles (which are cosmic, not political)
Ravi Batra, who was the first economist to write extensively about a coming great depression (later 1980s), has a new book out with his cycles – has has an age of acquisitors followed by an age of intellectuals (I forget the exact name) and then a golden age..and I think it’s based on the varna (caste) system
But you’re right about the determinism.
I don’t post these things to imply I accept them..
they are just things that produce thought in me..or seem provocative in some way
Lila
Hi Lila, First time posting. You’ve written some rally great stuff and sorry I’ve not commented before.
RE: The Tytler Quote (It’s probably NOT authentic, but I’ll get to that shortly.) … First, I very much agree that cowardice is a missing link, and prevalent today. I remember back in the mid-80s, I was writing articles, teaching seminars, and talking to people till I was blue in the face about what was about to happen (though like many, I was about 20 years too early. Who new the worlds’ investors would come to OUR rescue?) The apathy I ran into (and my getting financially and emotionally burnt-out rather than focusing on getting wealthy) led to my own growing apathy and, yes indeed, my own sort of cowardice had emerged, which I am attempting to push back into an inner-closet somewhere. Why risk my own Self for the sake of the apathetic cowards, you know?
Although none of my friends today would say I’ve retreated from the Good Fight! … (Although my sights are set more set on getting my internet-based and live Yoga Workshops up and running again and becoming a PT — expat.)
Anyway, I always like to confirm my research when possible, and I searched in used book stores, and asked booksellers to do rare book searches, for Tytler’s book on the Athenian Republic, and no one had ever heard of it, nor could they find it listed anywhere. FINALLY, and I am trying to remember where I stored it on my hard drive (Spotlight can’t find it), but some people did an extensive search for the alleged book — from The Decline & Fall of the Athenian Empire — and for that quote. The researchers said the book’s very existence, and the quote, appear to be fake. That’s interesting because in general, it does seem to have lot of truth to it, simplistic though it might be. I remember reading it back in the mid-1980’s, and totally agreeing with its premise, and still do. But even a fake quote can have truth to it. … Snopes has a comment on it:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/ballot/athenian.asp
As far as the simplicity of cycles goes, I think Robert Prechter’s comments are important. (Yes, he was Big Time wrong a couple of times, but he has been Big Time right more than enough to vindicate himself, *I* think.) Ironically, in a talk he gave at a technical analysts conference, he pointed out that the popularity of technical analysis was in itself cyclical, and was now back on the upswing. He ties this idea into *socionomics,* his research into social mood and the herding instinct, which from everything I’ve read, and my personal experience working very closely with human beings (hands-on, structural bodywork & yoga therapy), deserves close scrutiny. One of his papers explains quite well why the DOW itself works exactly opposite of traditional laws of supply and demand, and why everyone goes nuts when the markets get too high or too low. It’s that darn limbic system, you know!
To my memory, Prechter (as well as several others) was writing about the Great Depression LONG before Batra, though Batra seemed to make the biggest splash in the popular market. When I was doing technical charting at the Mercantile Exchange around 1980-81, many of the people I knew were certain a GP was inevitable, only a matter of time. In fact, I was living and working with a few of the most wealthy traders who had moved to southern Wisconsin and we were building geodesic domes, getting into solar power and the like, and raising ginseng (which the Chinese would come and buy, ship it back to China, process, then resell it here as Chinese ginseng) in a tax sheltered investment program. But I did not last long with that group. They liked watching TeeVee too much for me.
Regarding Democracy: It is not for nothing that the Founding Fathers explicitly warned against this thing called democracy, as in one person, one vote. The abject, long-term failure of pure democracy as a social and political system is long and well established in history, and why we were SUPPOSED to be a Constitutional Republic — a Nation of Laws — not of People with Good Ideas with Police Power (when it comes to using politics to get what you want). But the idea of pure democracy appeals to those enamored of egalitarianism, which I think is best treated by Murray Rothbard in his paper on Egalitarianism As A Revolt Against Nature.
As far as the Caste System ever being NOT pernicious, I have my doubts about that, but I guess on your cue, I must go back and reread about that. I’ve been into Yoga and Buddhist stuff since my teens, and have some familiarity with all that, but I’ve never been much into the Eastern culture myself, only as a distant observer. My understanding is that the Caste system and its religious underpinnings was covertly used to keep The Masses under control, since the Brahmins wanted to maintain strict limits on market forces, especially labor. But of that point I am less certain than others.
Keep Up the GREAT Work, and I’l Be Back!
David
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