Historical Inevitability

[Maimonides]

I would like to dedicate this thread to the topic of "historical inevitability." In subsequent posts I shall attempt to demonstrate that history is logical, that it drifts inexorably in certain directions due to clearly explicable spatio-temporal factors. In its inevitability, however, I believe it to be balanced by variables or "loose cannons", including individual idiosyncracies and happenstances.

Before I go on much further, what do you think?

[Minnesota]

What do I think? I think, Questions. In what sense would history be illogical? What kind of expressed factors would not have a "spatio-temporal" (sic) component? If variables or "loose cannons" do indeed "balance" history wouldn't their existence be nothing less than part of its inevitability?

I await................................... with reserved expectations

[kofh2u]

I would like to dedicate this thread to the topic of "historical inevitability." In subsequent posts I shall attempt to demonstrate that history is logical, that it drifts inexorably in certain directions due to clearly explicable spatio-temporal factors. In its inevitability, however, I believe it to be balanced by variables or "loose cannons", including individual idiosyncracies and happenstances.

Before I go on much further, what do you think?


1) I agree with the premise: "history is logical, that it drifts inexorably in certain directions "

2) I point out that this is the basis of prophecy in scripture, better understood as Sociological Prediction.

To a large extent, this IS what the Bible concerns, human behavior. In an Atomism of individual behavioral inputs, a compound sociological manifestation becomes universal.

The moslems recognize as Big Satan our American culture which ise largely the result of individual hedonistic personal philosophies.

3) We differ on the reasons for this. I see it it a springing from a genetic source.

[CatholicSage]

I think I would agree with the basic concept. There do seem to be some aspects of history that are circular, rather than linear. Representative governments tend to become authoritarian, empires rise and fall and rise and fall again, there are rising and falling periods of the religiousness of a population, etc.

[Maimonides]

History is inevitable. Civilization is tied to factors of geography and biogeography that determine its character and very existence.

At one time our ancestors were all one people in Africa. But then we diverged, heading north into Eurasia, down Southeast Asia to Greater Australia and then to the Americas. Forced to adapt in disparate and divergent local conditions, cultures in different locales developed along widely different lines.

Why did Europeans build a society in the Western Hemisphere at the expense of the indigenous peoples, using African slave labor? Why did not instead Native Americans build a society in Africa and Australia using Eurasian slave labor?

The answer lies in recognizing the different nature of local climes. First, pull out a globe and look at the continents: Antarctica, Australia, North and South America, Africa, Eurasia. Eurasia leaps out at us right away: her axis is east-west rather than north-south, as is the case for Africa and the Americas. This facilitates diffusion of ideas, crops, and domestic animals: for example, Fertile Crescent crops and animals traveled readily across the length of Eurasia because they did not have to adopt to widely divergent zones of latitude to do so (hence, if wheat is from Iraq it can speedily reach Morocco and southern Spain; if it can adapt to European Russia it can leap forward across Poland and Germany to the Netherlands; by contrast corn had a more difficult route in the Americas). One can draw a line directly from Portugal to China; Eurasia is far more amenable to diffusion than either Africa or the Americas. This factor enabled Eurasian civilizations to thrive from societal intercourse, conquest and trade to a far greater degree than those of any other continent. How easy to forget in this day in age that at one time Islamdom, India and China were all much more advanced than comparatively backward Europe! Eurasia's axis was a net benison through time, then: if a useful megafaunal domesticate such as the horse, which can alter the balance of power in a region, can diffuse more rapidly, the sooner its impact will be felt and the more time civilization will have to incorporate it and use it.

By contrast the Americas were horseless and much of Africa inhospitable to their presence. Advanced West African states such as Ougadou, Mali and Songhai did use horses with great effect, but the Sahara desert remained an impractical abode for them and parts of Western and Central Africa were too densely forested for them to be of much use.

In a later post I shall go on at length about crop diffusion and the fourteen megafaunal species amenable to domestication. Further still, we shall see how the combined factors of geography and biogeography can facilitate paradigm shifts in civilization, including the creation of new religious movements.

[Minnesota]

Why?

[Maimonides]

What do I think? I think, Questions. In what sense would history be illogical? What kind of expressed factors would not have a "spatio-temporal" (sic) component? If variables or "loose cannons" do indeed "balance" history wouldn't their existence be nothing less than part of its inevitability?

I await................................... with reserved expectations
Precisely my point. Factors in the lives of individuals create a kind of "individual inevitability" molding their idiosyncratic legacies. As regards "illogical" I am contrasting my own position to that of the individual who sees no real, underlying connections in history and perhaps prefers to generalize it as "Providence."

I attended a conservative religious school. As regards the problematic European inundation of the Western Hemisphere, I still distinctly remember one of my teachers attributing it primarily to "Providence." I find this both despicable and unpalatable; I see no burden of proof for a divine "historical plan" of any kind.

[Maimonides]

Why?
Why, my friend? Because equilibrium/inevitability theory is a historical model to which I have devoted much thought. If you agree/disagree you are welcome to do so. I take a certain pleasure in defending the validity of my ideas and ascertaining whether they are in fact valid. It's a dialectic that keeps me open-minded and aware, I hope.

[Maimonides]

Although it's true, too, that one's spatio-temporal awareness of the cosmos must needs include room for the supernatural. By this I mean that too often the scientifically minded seem unamenable to the concept of the numinous. I should qualify my previous statement about seeing no divine plan by saying that one certainly could exist: witness the perseverance of some of the world's great religions, for example. As concerns the nascence of said movements, many empirical spatio-temporal factors do apply, however.

[CatholicSage]

Hmmm...your post about geographic and climate effects on history is interesting, but it doesn't seem to display inevitability, at least not how I'm thinking of it. It seems to display how certain civilizations can rise to prominence, but I don't yet at least see this as inevitable.

[kofh2u]

Why?

dominance

[kofh2u]

Hmmm...your post about geographic and climate effects on history is interesting, but it doesn't seem to display inevitability, at least not how I'm thinking of it. It seems to display how certain civilizations can rise to prominence, but I don't yet at least see this as inevitable.

Inevitability?

He has merely hypothesized an economic aspect of geography that explains the emergence of the Agarian Age.


What is it about history that is inevitable?

In fact, define inevitable. Does he mean predictable sociology? That is quite different from survival of our species in the long run, in the big picture, in the future adaptions required of our species.

Sociologically, hIstory , its inevitable outcome, may be a record of great men, great insights, great cultural interactions, wars, and such... but, it may be predictable in terms of human nature.

[Maimonides]

Inevitable... this has been a long time in coming.

The coming of agriculture was inevitable; it related to factors pressuring people to settle down, such as changing conditions, die-off of some megafaunal species, presence (in some cases), of domesticable megafauna, etc. Remember agriculture involves a competition with hunting-gathering; for the one to win out it must become expedite, even requisite.

Inevitable as in no other conceivable way it could have gone. Why did Rome win the Punic Wars? Because she had the institutions and the resources to do so. Why did the North win the American Civil war? Same reason.

Predictable sociology yes. Survival of our species in the long run: inevitable too, one way or the other. Inevitability theory is useful (if at all), only in retrospect: why did I take that flight? Why did my neighbor get drunk and crash his car? Why did Columbus voyage to America? Why didn't Australia adopt New Guinean horticulture? All inevitable.

[kofh2u]

Inevitable... this has been a long time in coming.

The coming of agriculture was inevitable; it related to factors pressuring people to settle down, such as changing conditions, die-off of some megafaunal species, presence (in some cases), of domesticable megafauna, etc. Remember agriculture involves a competition with hunting-gathering; for the one to win out it must become expedite, even requisite.

Inevitable as in no other conceivable way it could have gone. Why did Rome win the Punic Wars? Because she had the institutions and the resources to do so. Why did the North win the American Civil war? Same reason.

Predictable sociology yes. Survival of our species in the long run: inevitable too, one way or the other. Inevitability theory is useful (if at all), only in retrospect: why did I take that flight? Why did my neighbor get drunk and crash his car? Why did Columbus voyage to America? Why didn't Australia adopt New Guinean horticulture? All inevitable.


I am certain you have collect much data for your Inevitability theory. Is it a theory or still at the Hypothesis Stage of empirical investigation?

The reason I ask is the Hebrew's apparently have advanced their hypothesis to the experimental stage.

The Jews predicted the rise and fall of dominant powers in the western world they were familar with. This was based on what is still a caballaistic methodology.

But, figuring backwards, examining their "experimental results" compared with the predictions they made, offers speculation about the original hypothesis operating.

For instance, they hypothesis that humanity is in a state of maturation and development in the facility of Consciousness.
Homo sapiens are gradually developing the awareness of mind that allows for growth in everyway, to include sociological progress. Simply said, new thoughts are occuring to us.

The source of this budding awakening is the sevenfold psyche.

Hence, we ought observe sociologically and now historically, in retrospect, societies that evidence innovative or new perspectives allowing them to overcome and ultimately dominate those prior societies that existed before themselves. Furthermore, seven such stages ought be observable in hindsight if the operating theory is correct.

Since there are seven facets to the Homo psyche, we might account for a theory of sociological dominance that has seven stages of expression. That would suggest one major stage of sociological advancement for each corresponding "awakening" with the Collective Homo sapiens mind.

Here is evidence that the Jews were using this particular theory, and that time has proven their "sociological experiment" prove them right.

Rev. 17:3 So he carried me away (in the spirit of thought), into the
wilderness (of my imagination) and I saw (as if) a woman, (those who
have Instittutionized a system of sexual seduction into a failed
matrimony), sit upon a scarlet coloured beast (of a brazen and corrupt sexually misdirected economic system), full of names of (Pagan) blasphemy, having seven heads (which existed in (1) Egypt, (2) Assyria, (3) Babylon, (4) Persia/Mede, (5) Greece, (6) Rome (7) the whole of Western Culture to follow)


Have you examined just how these seven separate phases in our historical sociology differed from one another?
In your opinion, for instance, how might the Golden Era of Greece support the emerging and awakening of the Homo sapiens SELF, that rational and orderly facility of our mind?












Rev. 1:16 And he had in his right hand seven stars, (the sevenfold
spirit of the psyche: Id, Libido, Ego, Anima, Self, Harmony, Superego):

[Maimonides]

I am certain you have collect much data for your Inevitability theory. Is it a theory or still at the Hypothesis Stage of empirical investigation?

The reason I ask is the Hebrew's apparently have advanced their hypothesis to the experimental stage.

The Jews predicted the rise and fall of dominant powers in the western world they were familar with. This was based on what is still a caballaistic methodology.

But, figuring backwards, examining their "experimental results" compared with the predictions they made, offers speculation about the original hypothesis operating.

For instance, they hypothesis that humanity is in a state of maturation and development in the facility of Consciousness.
Homo sapiens are gradually developing the awareness of mind that allows for growth in everyway, to include sociological progress. Simply said, new thoughts are occuring to us.

The source of this budding awakening is the sevenfold psyche.

Hence, we ought observe sociologically and now historically, in retrospect, societies that evidence innovative or new perspectives allowing them to overcome and ultimately dominate those prior societies that existed before themselves. Furthermore, seven such stages ought be observable in hindsight if the operating theory is correct.

Since there are seven facets to the Homo psyche, we might account for a theory of sociological dominance that has seven stages of expression. That would suggest one major stage of sociological advancement for each corresponding "awakening" with the Collective Homo sapiens mind.

Here is evidence that the Jews were using this particular theory, and that time has proven their "sociological experiment" prove them right.

Rev. 17:3 So he carried me away (in the spirit of thought), into the
wilderness (of my imagination) and I saw (as if) a woman, (those who
have Instittutionized a system of sexual seduction into a failed
matrimony), sit upon a scarlet coloured beast (of a brazen and corrupt sexually misdirected economic system), full of names of (Pagan) blasphemy, having seven heads (which existed in (1) Egypt, (2) Assyria, (3) Babylon, (4) Persia/Mede, (5) Greece, (6) Rome (7) the whole of Western Culture to follow)


Have you examined just how these seven separate phases in our historical sociology differed from one another?
In your opinion, for instance, how might the Golden Era of Greece support the emerging and awakening of the Homo sapiens SELF, that rational and orderly facility of our mind?












Rev. 1:16 And he had in his right hand seven stars, (the sevenfold
spirit of the psyche: Id, Libido, Ego, Anima, Self, Harmony, Superego):
kofh2u I continue to stand astounded at your powers of intellect. Let me try to answer as best I may; if my answers fall short of the mark I will try again.

First of all, as concerns the ascendancy of societies: Let us start with the Greek polis and the Golden Age of Greece. In this era Greece was the most innovative, dynamic, and powerful culture in the Mediterranean world (if not the entire world). An examination of factors will reveal the reasons behind this brilliant trajectory.

Greece absorbed many developments and influences from earlier civilizations, including Egypt, Anatolia, and Syro-Palestine. But she then transmuted them, built upon them, developing her own distinctive traditions. Why Greece? The answer may surprise you.

Take a look at the geography of mainland Greece: a welter of peninsulas, islands, rugged mountain ranges. That contorted geography was the fertile soil that grew the polis. The geographical matrix fostered communications by the sea, and the coalescing of centralized, independent, fiercely competetive city-states. Because of the geography of Greece it was impractical, nay impossible, to unite the Greek city-states by land until the time of Philip and Alexander (although Persia did try). The city-states were too evenly matched, and they were more advanced than surrounding cultures so they remained independent.

That spirit of competition spawned a civilizational legacy. Trade by sea meant the Greeks became very good seafarers. Enter colonization. Greek poleis dotted the Mediterranean and Black Seas like "frogs around a pond". Now Old Greece could bring in fresh resources by expanding her sphere, and drain off excess population. Thus two handicaps that have long plagued civilization were solved at once. And warfare among the different city-states meant the Greeks became effective soldiers: the older, Mycenaen mode of warfare (chariots, nobles, etc.) was replaced by the hoplite phalanx of densely packed infantry.

So competition bred an innovative spirit bred a new form of civilization. Human evolution is different from that of other animals (or at least it has been since the nascence of a modern humanity) in that we adapt/evolve primarily through culture: better technology rather than longer claws or thicker skin or wings. In reality the Greeks were nothing special: they were part of the same human genome as the other cultures with whom they shared the world. The Greeks played a paramount role in Mediterranean and Western history not because of any special inborn quality but because of their geo-political position. Ultimately Greek influences and innovations left their mark on Macedonia, little more than a backwater until the coalescing of a dynasty at Pella. Philip II, a formidable warrior and politician, forged a united kingdom in Macedonia and Greece due to earlier innovations and his own brilliance. His son Alexander conquered the Achaemenid Persian empire and continued east.

Greek dynamism was a vast reservoir of power, but on their own the Greeks were divided. It took the unifying suzerainty of Macedonia for Greek ideas, institutions, and culture to become ascendant east to the Indus.

That is the secret of historical inevitability. Honestly, I consider it a theory in the scientific sense rather than a hypothesis, although its veracity may still of course be contended. In conclusion, societies evolve culturally through factors implicit in their matrices of origin and development, and this produces the legacy of human history.

[kofh2u]

kofh2u I continue to stand astounded at your powers of intellect. Let me try to answer as best I may; if my answers fall short of the mark I will try again.

First of all, as concerns the ascendancy of societies: Let us start with the Greek polis and the Golden Age of Greece. In this era Greece was the most innovative, dynamic, and powerful culture in the Mediterranean world (if not the entire world). An examination of factors will reveal the reasons behind this brilliant trajectory.

Greece absorbed many developments and influences from earlier civilizations, including Egypt, Anatolia, and Syro-Palestine. But she then transmuted them, built upon them, developing her own distinctive traditions. Why Greece? The answer may surprise you.

Take a look at the geography of mainland Greece: a welter of peninsulas, islands, rugged mountain ranges. That contorted geography was the fertile soil that grew the polis. The geographical matrix fostered communications by the sea, and the coalescing of centralized, independent, fiercely competetive city-states. Because of the geography of Greece it was impractical, nay impossible, to unite the Greek city-states by land until the time of Philip and Alexander (although Persia did try). The city-states were too evenly matched, and they were more advanced than surrounding cultures so they remained independent.

That spirit of competition spawned a civilizational legacy. Trade by sea meant the Greeks became very good seafarers. Enter colonization. Greek poleis dotted the Mediterranean and Black Seas like "frogs around a pond". Now Old Greece could bring in fresh resources by expanding her sphere, and drain off excess population. Thus two handicaps that have long plagued civilization were solved at once. And warfare among the different city-states meant the Greeks became effective soldiers: the older, Mycenaen mode of warfare (chariots, nobles, etc.) was replaced by the hoplite phalanx of densely packed infantry.

So competition bred an innovative spirit bred a new form of civilization. Human evolution is different from that of other animals (or at least it has been since the nascence of a modern humanity) in that we adapt/evolve primarily through culture: better technology rather than longer claws or thicker skin or wings. In reality the Greeks were nothing special: they were part of the same human genome as the other cultures with whom they shared the world. The Greeks played a paramount role in Mediterranean and Western history not because of any special inborn quality but because of their geo-political position. Ultimately Greek influences and innovations left their mark on Macedonia, little more than a backwater until the coalescing of a dynasty at Pella. Philip II, a formidable warrior and politician, forged a united kingdom in Macedonia and Greece due to earlier innovations and his own brilliance. His son Alexander conquered the Achaemenid Persian empire and continued east.

Greek dynamism was a vast reservoir of power, but on their own the Greeks were divided. It took the unifying suzerainty of Macedonia for Greek ideas, institutions, and culture to become ascendant east to the Indus.

That is the secret of historical inevitability. Honestly, I consider it a theory in the scientific sense rather than a hypothesis, although its veracity may still of course be contended. In conclusion, societies evolve culturally through factors implicit in their matrices of origin and development, and this produces the legacy of human history.

Gad.
I wish I could express myself near as well and half asl eloquently.
Do you paraphrase or refer to notes you have taken earlier?

People, not I, must suffer through my dyslexia for which I must apologize.

However, hopefully, you can wade through and find some redemption in the point I make.

We know that our history seems to have occured in a series of "stages." The Age of Reason, for instance, preceded the Age of Enlightenment, which has now been followed by the present Informaton Age.

I would dare suggest that the building of Empires proceeded our recent era of Western Culture, these present times.
I see that there was an Aggressive Age of economic intercourse marked by trade and commerce. This Ego consciousness, as I see it, would have arose out of some earlier period. That earlier stage being agrarian.

The laborious hard work which pitted the physical strength and sweat of the brow against harsh facts of life relied upon the Libidinal realities of man, physically. This gradually developing agricultural basis for what followed must certainly have been proceeded, itself, by dark times of chance and luck, gathering, forging, hunting. Life was anarchical and survival an instinctual response arising from the cauldron of ideas in the abyss of the human Id.

What I see here, in this largest of pictures, the entire drama of our ever emerging civilization, has analogy with what Eric Ericson called our individual Life Stages.
Ericson tells us of seven stages of growth and development in our lives, one leading and preparing us for the next.

In this, I see the Greeks as the sociological analogy of Ericson's Middle Age Stage of personal developnent. I see the first seven grand empires as a reflection of this pattern, each empire based upon an expression of an internal archetypal drive. Each sort of a collective Ericson Stage emerging, evolving, evidencing itself in a collective social behavior. nEach empire then ought have characteristics germane to those we associate with our psychic entities. We must and ought look for characteristics in each empire that support such a theory. In Greece, the rational quality of our psychic Self seems expressed in the Golden Age in general. It is specifically noted in its quality of democracy. The mental illness of Dissociation seems strangely reflrcted in separation of City-States.

For the Greeks, the Freudian Self seems to have expressed itself through the direct effort of Alexander. But the Greek Empire was a way of thinking, a mind set, too. One that would later be again reflected in the rebuilding of this present Western Society following the fall of Rome.

I see Greece, in the Age of Reason, an age resurrected, a Greek Age revisited. That the great personal tutor of Alexander, himself, wasAristotle is credible dupport for this idea.

What I see in the Greek Empire, what I see in the legacy of Phillip, his father, and what young Alexander could past forward is the Age of Plato manifested in the Greek Empire and then, once again influencing the ten horns of Western Culture to arise as the Pheonix from the ashes of previous archetypal expression in empire.

Rev. 17:3 So he carried me away (in the spirit of thought), into the
wilderness (of my imagination) and I saw (as if) a woman, (those who
have Instittutionized a system of sexual seduction into a failed
matrimony), sit upon a scarlet coloured beast (of a brazen and corrupt sexually misdirected economic system), full of names of (Pagan) blasphemy, having seven heads (which existed in (1) Egypt, (2) Assyria, (3) Babylon, (4) Persia/Mede, (5) Greece, (6) Rome (7) the whole of Western Culture to follow) having ten horns upon these seven heads:
(1. Anarchy, 2. Lombard-Vandalism, 3. Papacy, 4. Charlemagne, 5. Holy
Roman Empire, 6. Italy, 7. Spain, 8. France, 9. Britain, 10. Nazi
Germany.)

[Maimonides]

Gad.
I wish I could express myself near as well and half asl eloquently.
Do you paraphrase or refer to notes you have taken earlier?

People, not I, must suffer through my dyslexia for which I must apologize.

However, hopefully, you can wade through and find some redemption in the point I make.

We know that our history seems to have occured in a series of "stages." The Age of Reason, for instance, preceded the Age of Enlightenment, which has now been followed by the present Informaton Age.

I would dare suggest that the building of Empires proceeded our recent era of Western Culture, these present times.
I see that there was an Aggressive Age of economic intercourse marked by trade and commerce. This Ego consciousness, as I see it, would have arose out of some earlier period. That earlier stage being agrarian.

The laborious hard work which pitted the physical strength and sweat of the brow against harsh facts of life relied upon the Libidinal realities of man, physically. This gradually developing agricultural basis for what followed must certainly have been proceeded, itself, by dark times of chance and luck, gathering, forging, hunting. Life was anarchical and survival an instinctual response arising from the cauldron of ideas in the abyss of the human Id.

What I see here, in this largest of pictures, the entire drama of our ever emerging civilization, has analogy with what Eric Ericson called our individual Life Stages.
Ericson tells us of seven stages of growth and development in our lives, one leading and preparing us for the next.

In this, I see the Greeks as the sociological analogy of Ericson's Middle Age Stage of personal developnent. I see the first seven grand empires as a reflection of this pattern, each empire based upon an expression of an internal archetypal drive. Each sort of a collective Ericson Stage emerging, evolving, evidencing itself in a collective social behavior. nEach empire then ought have characteristics germane to those we associate with our psychic entities. We must and ought look for characteristics in each empire that support such a theory. In Greece, the rational quality of our psychic Self seems expressed in the Golden Age in general. It is specifically noted in its quality of democracy. The mental illness of Dissociation seems strangely reflrcted in separation of City-States.

For the Greeks, the Freudian Self seems to have expressed itself through the direct effort of Alexander. But the Greek Empire was a way of thinking, a mind set, too. One that would later be again reflected in the rebuilding of this present Western Society following the fall of Rome.

I see Greece, in the Age of Reason, an age resurrected, a Greek Age revisited. That the great personal tutor of Alexander, himself, wasAristotle is credible dupport for this idea.

What I see in the Greek Empire, what I see in the legacy of Phillip, his father, and what young Alexander could past forward is the Age of Plato manifested in the Greek Empire and then, once again influencing the ten horns of Western Culture to arise as the Pheonix from the ashes of previous archetypal expression in empire.

Rev. 17:3 So he carried me away (in the spirit of thought), into the
wilderness (of my imagination) and I saw (as if) a woman, (those who
have Instittutionized a system of sexual seduction into a failed
matrimony), sit upon a scarlet coloured beast (of a brazen and corrupt sexually misdirected economic system), full of names of (Pagan) blasphemy, having seven heads (which existed in (1) Egypt, (2) Assyria, (3) Babylon, (4) Persia/Mede, (5) Greece, (6) Rome (7) the whole of Western Culture to follow) having ten horns upon these seven heads:
(1. Anarchy, 2. Lombard-Vandalism, 3. Papacy, 4. Charlemagne, 5. Holy
Roman Empire, 6. Italy, 7. Spain, 8. France, 9. Britain, 10. Nazi
Germany.)
Pardon the length of tardiness in my reply.
You bring up some very interesting points: civilization does move along in paradigm shifts, with ages of incredible advancement and darker eras of serious reversals. It's interesting to see how you tie in Revelations with future eras of Western civilization. Honestly, it has been my wont to regard Revelation as rather impenetrable and opaque, a kind of religious apocalyptic work. Can you tie your theories in with other civilizations?

Paradigm shifts are interesting partly in that the way people think can change so dramatically. They're also interesting to predict through inevitability theory: decline of the Roman Empire, invasions of barbarians, subsequent rise of the Medieval order and then the modern West.

[kofh2u]

Pardon the length of tardiness in my reply.
You bring up some very interesting points: civilization does move along in paradigm shifts, with ages of incredible advancement and darker eras of serious reversals. It's interesting to see how you tie in Revelations with future eras of Western civilization. Honestly, it has been my wont to regard Revelation as rather impenetrable and opaque, a kind of religious apocalyptic work. Can you tie your theories in with other civilizations?

Paradigm shifts are interesting partly in that the way people think can change so dramatically. They're also interesting to predict through inevitability theory: decline of the Roman Empire, invasions of barbarians, subsequent rise of the Medieval order and then the modern West.



I am sure tweb is not a high priority for your busy day.

Revelation is Christianity's Gordian Knot.

But, is it really strange that the capstone to scriptures might concern an application of an unknown method of Sociology?

And, ought we expect that the application of such a Sociology would relate to history? A proof of the Sociology proposed?

I mean, the bible is about human behavior, and about where such behavior ultimately leads. Is Sociology dependent upon the individual sum of the behaviors of society's membershio?