Ed Warren

[H2O Man]

18. Interesting.

I'm not sure that you are disagreeing, really, with the idea that the increasing technology has increased the pace of society, in a manner that has created fractures within groups of people. There have long been computers, for example. The high school I attended had one that students learned to use half a century ago. Today, the majority of students have cell phones or tablets, and a computer at home. The significant changes in the amount of information thus available, plus the style of communications, have certainly changed quickly.

There have been long-standing distinctions between the ways different people experience and understand "time." Western society has viewed it as lineal, traditional societies as cycles. Science has shown that the universe we inhabit exists in a lineal sense, with numerous cycles contained within. Even someone as limited in intelligence as me knew when the coldest days of the month would be, as well as the warmest, on New Year's Eve. Being confident that I was 100% correct allowed me to impress the younger generations of the family ...... if, of course, they were pating attention!

The cycles of history, which in sociology involves the life-span of empires, has held true in 100% of known empires. This might be unnerving to those who just bought a house in America. But it is of the Laws of Nature, and hold true for all organic life on earth, from the very tiny to those empires.

But, of course, Schlesinger's model is only one available to us.