The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, 16th October, 1834 by J. M. W. Turner
There's an inherent contradiction looming over grand theories about where we stand in the scheme of history, and what we should do about it. Whether it be Darwinian evolution, cycles of elite overproduction, Strauss-Howe's "turnings" or Spenglerian civilizational souls and destinies, this contradiction presents itself in the following popular motif: "there is this natural historical development because of some hidden law, which dooms us all to a certain outcome. However, by becoming aware of it, we can work against it and change our destiny." Lately, for example, Bret Weinstein has been a strong proponent of such a theory, in his case referring to Darwinian maladaptation to the modern world and how we need to counter it.
Postulating the existence of some sort of natural law guiding human destiny, and then advising us to break that law, presents us with an obvious problem. Either this really is a natural law, which means we cannot escape it anymore than we can breathe underwater or escape death. Or, we can escape it by an act of will — but if we can do that now, so could various people in the past at different historical junctures, which then raises the question of how much of a law this really is, or why people in the past should have had less free will than us.
Take the idea that we are maladapted to modern life because of Darwinian programs that arose in a very different context, and are now screwing things up for us moderns who are faced with an environment so radically different from the past. This is all fine and good, until you say "but well, just act against those programs." Either the Darwinian process of natural selection works as advertised and there simply is no escaping it — we will naturally adapt, or we will be selected out of the game, evolution continuing its thing regardless as the blind force that it is. Or, we have a conscious choice, but then so did people in the past: it wasn't a natural process of selection after all, but people constantly making choices to consciously interact with changing circumstances. But this means there is no reason why we shouldn't be adapted to our modern environment too, since presumably people have been consciously adapting over the course of our collective walk into modernity. Conscious adaptation means we don't need vast timescales, and that our bio-psychological make-up is the result of a much more flexible process, countering the idea we could be "maladapted." In other words, if we can break Darwinism at any point, what, then, survives of Darwinism? It's the same dilemma faced by the eugenicists from the other direction: either Darwin takes care of it, or he fails, requiring our "correction," but then he ain't no Darwin.
Similarly, if elite overproduction cycles lead to certain outcomes as day follows night, then we can't break them; but if we can, then so could people in the past. But if this is so, either those people just hadn't realized their predicament yet (but we enlightened moderns have and therefore can do something about it), or there is something wrong with the theory. That's why those who make such cases implicitly (or explicitly) postulate a fundamental difference between us and people in the past: once we recognize the theory, we can change our fate. But again, if we can break the theory, how true is the theory, really? Either certain factors lead to a certain outcome, or they don't.
More broadly, there is a problem arising from thinking scientifically about the human condition, a condition that is inaccessible to our modern concept of science, which after all had been modelled on physics and what came to be thought of as "dead stuff." Spengler at least was consistent enough to evade this trap at the price of becoming the archetypical doomer: you can't escape the fate of your civilization, he says; the only thing you can hope for is to enjoy the sunset and make the best of it. Unlike others, he didn't sell you a grand theory about the natural development of civilizations on the one hand, and a dishonest White Pill that magically breaks such natural processes on the other.
Don't get me wrong: I understand what people mean when they talk about cycles we need to consciously break out of, or about biological maladaptation to the modern world. These thoughts are not entirely wrong or useless. But to recognize the logical tension in these ideas is necessary, if only because it can be productive, like all recognition of tensions can be. This particular one can open our eyes to the fundamental role of consciousness when it comes to historical cycles.
Our experience of the scientific age has conditioned us not to think about it that way, but perhaps the "laws" that lead to civilizational cycles, dead ends, maladaptations and the rest aren't natural laws out there, but rather principles of consciousness: qualities of the thoughtplane, the landscape of the unseen world to which we humans have unique access to. This would be more in line with a Hegelian approach: to the degree that there is a destiny, a teleology, a pattern in history pointing to the future, it is not something "natural" as we usually think about it, but something in the world of Geist (spirit). To the degree that such patterns exist, they are properties of consciousness: they play their part in forming and modulating our experience at any given point in the cycle.
There are patterns of development alright, but if they are to be found on the consciousness plane as opposed to in the "natural world," then they might be very different from the patterns we see in nature. Not that those are entirely independent of one another, as some overly spiritually-minded people might believe; it's just that the world of nature and the world of consciousness (or Geist) aren't in a relationship of cause and effect, or of one being reducible to the other, but of analogy. Hence Spengler's approach of comparing civilizations with organisms makes intuitive sense, even though these are entirely different things.
The cyclical nature of natural processes is congruent with the cyclical nature of our inner experiences: joy and depression, high and low energy, creativity and passivity, armchair-philosophizing and practical work... these come in seasons, too. Similarly, beauty in nature isn't just a product of our imagination stemming from some dreamed-up fitness-maximizing benefit in the remote past; it is the equivalent of divine love that we, too, can manifest in our awareness and actions. And ugly parasites aren't just the result of some evolutionary strategy as good as any other, but metaphors for the evil taking place on the human — and the higher — planes as well, taking different forms there that are ultimately based on the same kind of energy.
Coming back to our initial conundrum: if there are patterns, teleologies, "laws" if you will, in the realm of consciousness, that are essentially different from what science yields for the realm of nature, what are they? And how do they relate to our ability to "overwrite" them, that is, to our free will when facing these things?
“Hold on, so Spenglerian cycles aren’t just material?” — “Consciousness, Joe, it’s about consciousness. Look, maybe the West will end, maybe not. But there’s going to be a huge shift in consciousness like you wouldn’t believe. It’s going to be the grandest thing we’ve ever seen.”
"The idea of destiny is rooted in life experience, not scientific experience; the force of penetrating imagination, not of calculation; depth, not intellect.In his view, there is a relationship between destiny and life, and between causality and death.
...
Destiny is the word for an inner certainty that cannot be described in words."
While this sort of holistic concept of destiny strikes me as the right way of looking at historical patterns, emphasizing as it does deep, imaginative empathy as opposed to quantifiable laws, it still treats history as something "out there" that can be studied like we would study animals in a terrarium. Spengler makes the conceptual leap from dead physics to life when it comes to history, but what's missing from this picture is the element of dialogue between our own consciousness and the consciousness imposed on us by the historical patterns.
If historical patterns work by imposing themselves on our consciousness, by impacting our awareness and how we see the world, we are talking about mind affecting mind here.2 We know that interactions between minds are two-way streets: you can't convince someone of something without dialogue, and without the other person voluntarily accepting the change. Even in cases of crass manipulation, there's an element of consent, and of course it would always be possible to see through the manipulation and therefore stop it. This means that in our relationship with historical patterns, we play an active part: they inevitably will try to change us, and society, as we go through the cycles. But these patterns might adapt depending on our reaction, and we have a choice as to how we interact with them, how we integrate them and find the right part we can play when faced with these forces. In other words, our relationship with historical cycles is not like that of planets being governed by physical laws; it's rather like a dialogue with an intelligent mind working under certain constraints, trying to effect certain changes. Put differently, history in its totality is downstream from mind, and the discernible patterns playing themselves out are features of mind itself as they appear from our perspective. And since we are part of mind ourselves, how we perceive and think about things matters to it, as it matters to us how this mind works.
What does all this mean for us? It means that change will come, indeed has come, and there's nothing we can do about it. In that sense, historical cycles and patterns are deterministic. However, it also means that how this change will play out for us, individually and collectively, is extremely variable and subject to our own consciousness. If the goal of mind-as-such is to effect a certain change, it doesn't care too much about how this is achieved. Ideally, we would just get out of the way and let our perspective change naturally as things begin shifting, even while such change necessarily means chaos. However, looking at the state of the world, chances are many of us need to suffer a lot more to burn away all those falsehoods and dead ends looming large in our psyches, preventing us from changing and taking the ride. Whether this suffering will come in the form of economic collapse, civil war, comets hitting the earth, a sudden ice age, some real pandemic, or a combination, is anybody's guess. Or maybe nothing of the above: keep in mind that a drastic change of a civilization, while inevitably causing chaos, doesn't necessarily mean its physical end. Indeed, the chaos might be limited to a chaos of the mind as opposed to a chaos of the material, or a combination thereof. A lot depends on us, specifically how we interact with the changing energies and revelations of the current inflection point.
Snow Storm - Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth, Joseph Mallord William Turner 1842
The good news is that if this is indeed how historical patterns and cycles work, we do have ways to affect how it will play out this time. Which means that while we must accept the change itself, this doesn't mean we have to bury our heads in the sand: we can get ahead of the change so that we may need less "convincing" by that pesky mind-at-large. And should there still be such a program of persuasion playing out, we can see it for what it is: a necessary step, an opportunity, an invitation. What's more, we might hope that individually, or on the level of groups who manage to get ahead of the curve, we can evade the worst of it simply by allowing our consciousness to adapt to the changing landscape of the wider consciousness. Mind you that this doesn't have to be a passive affair: what such adaptation means can vary wildly from individual to individual, because again, the point is a change in general outlook and awareness, not a physical change effected by a law, and this new outlook may lead to different decisions depending on individual situations. It is passive only in the sense of accepting the change, and the destiny Spengler talked about: that inner certainty that cannot be put into words.
What, then, is the true meaning of "Trust the Plan"? Certainly not anticipating specific outcomes. That never works, and in fact might make those outcomes more unlikely. Certainly not hoping for a savior to do all the work. Certainly not fantasizing about a perfect future. Rather, it's about recognizing that fundamental and necessary changes are currently playing out as history re-balances itself, as new patterns emerge from mind, impacting our minds: a process either manifesting as chaos and mayhem within and without, or as an elevating experience teaching us entirely new ways of looking at the world. If we rise to the challenge, we might forego the worst material aspects of the change.
The apocalypse, too, is fundamentally a matter of mind. It is the great teacher, trying to get our attention, hinting at higher possibilities. It weighs on us until we learn how to become decisive in our attention, casting the widest net of subtle information-discernment we can possibly manage. Old tools start looking crude, while the new, finer tools are still being developed in the collective mindspace: chaos. The interaction between the unseen world of our deep perception and what plays out in the material realm becomes ever-more apparent: thrill. A new equilibrium will eventually be formed and sustained by those who learn to skillfully ride this now-visible relationship: bliss.
Perhaps it's time to consider current and future events in this light. Which, I hope it is clear by implication from the points made here, means looking at these events more, not less, without discarding their mundane and down-to-earth aspects, but adding a new layer of perspective to it. Think of this layer as analogous to that space in your consciousness from whence you can see your own thoughts and inner workings coming and going, a space worth cultivating even while you plunge head-first into the brouhaha of your thoughts, using them, sculpting them from within.
This kind of layered perception might become our greatest tool for this new chapter, and maybe, just maybe, it will allow us to escape the endless going in circles we call human existence.
In that sense, my friends, Trust the Plan.
Notes:
1. Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlands, p. 214 (translation mine)
2. See also my essay, History as Mind, in which I make the case that our relationship with history is one of mind understanding mind.
"According to Gurdjieff, knowledge and being are distinct concepts. Knowledge is material and can be gathered through various means, but it does not necessarily translate into personal understanding or a change in one's state of being. Being, on the other hand, refers to the level of consciousness or awareness one possesses, which can influence how knowledge is perceived and utilized . Gurdjieff emphasizes that for knowledge to truly become understanding, it requires a corresponding development in one's state of being. This means that merely acquiring knowledge does not automatically lead to a higher state of consciousness or being; it requires practical experience and the integration of that knowledge into one's being."