The Storm Before the Calm: America's Discord, the Coming Crisis of the 2020s, and the Triumph Beyond

the sixth cycle, accepting the collapse of old rituals, will need to create new ones, based not on the urgency of reproduction before you die but on a more leisurely realization that having options ultimately culminates in making choices. There are dangers in growing old healthfully, as there were in dying too soon. The social upheaval of the sixth

As Americans live even longer with some regularity, the country may become wiser but less knowledgeable. And given that knowledge is essential to driving the cycles forward, the crisis of 2080 may well be built around the heavy weight of a large elderly population, in good health and filled with wisdom but unable to move beyond a cycle that’s faili

Living a long life without anyone needing you, no one really caring if you live or die, is liberation, but the terrible implications of liberation emerge with time.

But technology is a poor guide to what comes next. The reaction to technology is frequently not what the technologists want to see.

It is clearer that the climate is changing, and I am open to the claim that it is changing in a calamitous direction, but I am not certain. Many of the press releases are drawn from very limited studies relating a few variables. In isolation, they create a compelling argument for outcomes that would harm human beings. But given that there is no com

First, there will be the issue of the tax code. The tax on higher incomes will surge at the beginning of the sixth cycle. But the problem will be that the new medical developments will require massive private investment.

there are two kinds of empires. One kind is strictly exploitative such as Hitler’s attempt at creating an empire. The second type of empire benefits from the empire but also creates a system of symbiotic relations that all benefit from. That empire is held together not only by imperial force but by the benefits the colonials obtain. So, the Roman E

As for the institutional cycle, the solution that will emerge in the federal government is one in which its internal functioning will shift, with the rigidity of regulation giving way to the use of increasing judgment among decision makers, from the public on up. In addition, there will be a resurrection of local political systems that have as thei

these tax cuts would be to create capital investing in the treatments of diseases of an extended life. Self-interest will supersede ideology. Just as tax cuts drove the microchip economy, so they will, in the 2050s, drive the transformation of medical care.