[voveo]

"Tytler Cycle" or the "Fatal Sequence"

The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history
has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always
progressed through the following sequence:

* From bondage to spiritual faith;
* From spiritual faith to great courage;
* From courage to liberty;
* From liberty to abundance;
* From abundance to complacency;
* From complacency to apathy;
* From apathy to dependence;
* From dependence back into bondage.

I afraid "We the People" are somewhere between apathy and dependence.

[mamelukesabre]

It’s a good theory. I’m not so sure about the 200 year time frame though. I think the chinese and the romans and possibly the egyptians stretched it out a bit more than that.

I would put us at complacency. We are still on the tails of “abundance”. And we are about to move past that by two big steps and into dependency. Obama might inadvertently shock us back a step, into complacency again. we’ll see what the next election looks like.

But you know what? The longer we linger at abundance and complacency, the harder I think the climb back out of bondage will be when it gets here.