The background material, provided in advance, focuses on “the science of history,” relying on the work of the mathematical historian Peter Turchin.
Throughout recorded history, great nations have experienced repeated cycles of harmony, which coincided with a rise to greatness, and disharmony, which coincided with decline—and ultimately their demise.
Turchin’s thesis is that two primary factors drive these cycles:
1. the degree of income disparity between the upper and lower classes of each society and
2. the production—or overproduction—of “elites,” i.e., those seeking wealth and social power.
The United States is in its third period of extreme disharmony—the first was the decade before the Civil War, the second was in 1920, and the third is today.
The discussion will attempt to avoid a political debate and instead focus on the underlying factors behind our nation’s contentious and divided state.
The 1850s preceded the Civil War, and the 1920s preceded the Great Depression, so what is next for America?
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