Internal orders typically (though not always) change through a relatively standard sequence of stages, like how a disease progresses. By looking at their symptoms we can tell what stages they are in. For example, just as Stage 3 cancer is different from Stage 4 cancer in ways defined by different conditions that exist and have come about as a result of things that happened in prior stages, the same is true for the different stages of the big internal order/disorder cycle. Like diseases, different conditions warrant different actions to address them and they produce a different range of probabilities that those actions will produce. For example, an old, unhealthy set of circumstances produces a range of possibilities and warrants different actions than a young, healthy set. As with cancer, it is best to stop the progress before getting into the later stages.
Below is the list of measures of health that I first passed along to you in Chapter 1. Most of these measures of health can be quantitatively measured to create a country's health index. When the ratings of each of these items are strong/good (i.e., on the left side of the continuum) the health is strong/good and the period ahead is much more likely to be strong/good; when the ratings of these items are weak/bad, the condition of the country is weak and the period ahead is more likely weak/bad. The dimensions that we are measuring the strengths of are the most important determinants of total strength. In this chapter we will examine how these conditions together define a stage, so one will be able to look at the conditions that exist to tell what stage a country is in and then come up with a prognosis. In the concluding chapter of this book, which is on the future, I will show each country's ratings for each of these measures, as well as use them in my attempt to explore what might be ahead. For now I just want to convey the concepts.
These strengths evolve together in archetypical ways to create the stages of the archetypical cycle. By using markers of them, we can identify where in the cycle each country, state, and city is and form our expectations of what the probabilities of different next developments will be based on the conditions at hand. In the following table, to help convey the picture, I converted most of our measures into colors with bright green being a very favorable reading and bright red being a very unfavorable reading. It is the average of these readings that defines at what stage the cycle is in, in much the same way as it was the average of the eight readings of power that I used as my measure of total power. Like those power readings, while one could reconfigure them to produce marginally different readings, they are broadly indicative in a by-and-large way. I am showing this to exemplify the typical process, not to look at any specific cases. I will look at the specific cases and their readings in the conclusion of this study.
More specifically, from studying history it appears to me that the stages of the archetypical big internal cycle from internal order to internal disorder and back are as follows:
- Stage 1 when the new order begins and the new leadership consolidates power, which leads to…
- …Stage 2 when the resource-allocation systems and government bureaucracies are built and refined, which if done well leads to…
- …Stage 3 when there is peace and prosperity, which leads to…
- …Stage 4 when there are great excesses in spending and debt and the widening of wealth and political gaps, which leads to…
- …Stage 5 when there are very bad financial conditions and intense conflict, which leads to…
- …Stage 6 when there are civil wars/revolutions, which leads to…
- …Stage 1, which leads to Stage 2, etc., with the whole cycle happening over again.
Each stage presents a different set of conditions that the people facing them have to deal with. Some of these circumstances are much more difficult than others to resolve. For example, early in a long-term debt cycle, when there is plenty of capacity of governments to create debt to finance spending, it is easier to deal with the circumstances at hand than late in the long-term debt cycle when there is little or no capacity to create money and credit to finance spending. For these reasons the range of possible paths forward and the challenges that leaders face depend on where in the cycle a country is. These different stages present different challenges that require different qualities, understandings, and skills from leaders in order to effectively deal with them.[1] How well those facing these circumstances—e.g., you facing your circumstances and our leaders facing our collective circumstances—understand and adapt to them affects how good or bad the outcomes will be within the range of possibilities that exist given the circumstances. Different cultures have different established ways of approaching these circumstances. Those leaders and cultures that understand them and can adapt to their circumstances will produce much better outcomes than those who don't. That is where timeless and universal principles come in.
While the length of time spent in each of these stages can vary a lot, the evolution through them generally takes 100 years, give or take a lot and with big undulations within the cycle. This evolution occurs because of logical cause/effect relationships in which existing conditions propel the changes that create the new set of conditions that propel the next changes and so on like a perpetual-motion machine. Because a given set of conditions creates a limited set of possibilities, by properly identifying the conditions and understanding the cause/effect relationships, one can improve one's imagination of the possibilities of what will come next.
The cycle's archetypical evolution transpires as shown in the following diagrams.[2] Like evolution in general, the evolution of internal orders typically occurs in a cyclical way in which one stage typically leads to the next through a progression of stages that repeat and, in the process, evolve to higher levels of development. For example, Stage 1 (when the new internal order is created by new leaders who came to power via a civil war/revolution) normally comes after Stage 6 (when there is a civil war/revolution, which is the low point in the cycle), which leads to the next stage and so on up to Stage 3 (which is the high point in the Big Cycle because there is a lot of peace and prosperity in that stage), which gets overdone in Stages 4 and 5 and so on, leading to the next new order (Stage 1). That happens over and over again in an upward-evolving way. Again, that archetypical cycle typically takes 100 years, give or take a lot.[3] Within each of these big cycles are similar, smaller cycles. For example, there is a short-term debt cycle that leads to bubbles and recessions that come along roughly every 10 years, there are political cycles that move political controls between the right and the left that come along with roughly equal frequency, etc. Every country is going through them, and many of them are at different stages. For example, China and India are at very different stages than the United States and most European countries. What stages they are at in relation to other countries affects the relations between countries and is the primary determinant of the whole world order. We will explore all of these in the last chapter of this book rather than digress into them now.
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