In this section we will map the explosive new thinking inside of each long wave experienced during the Industrial Era. Each one of the events which occurred during our march through industrialization has transpired in the frenzy and synergy phases of every long wave. This is not a coincidence. The frenzy phase is the point in time when new technology becomes so well known that even the small investors place bets on that fresh technology. The technology is very well known and is then visibly making changes to the world. That's how even the small investor knows what to bet on and gives them the confidence to invest. The impacts are so significant that a pervasive feeling of exuberance is subsequently created. The converse is also true for those who were not benefiting from the new technology's development. A feeling of dread envelops workers whose wages, jobs or standard of living is being reduced as a direct result in the deployment of the new technologies.

The new thinking was in fact primarily one of fear during most of the Industrial Revolution, as the world was changing so dramatically. The legislation and government constructed and refined for an agrarian way of life was completely inadequate to deal with the new challenges and perils of industrialization. The perception of the new thinkers during the frenzy and synergy phases was that the world was irreparably moving further away from the agrarian life that the world had once known and enjoyed. In their eyes, the world was becoming a much more difficult and inequitable place to live and the very quality of life was diminishing. This is why prior to our current K-wave (the fifth K-wave), the new thinking was primarily negative in nature. Not only because it was a departure from the agrarian survival guides but also because the new thinking was predicated on the view that the industrial world was creating more inequality than had existed in the prior age.

The individuals and families who had moved out of farming towns to burgeoning industrial cities felt the reduction in personal freedom. They were living with less space and working at jobs where the future was less secure. Short of crop failure, they had always been confident that they could obtain food. This same kind of experience of course was true for the hunter-gatherer societies when they experienced the agricultural revolution. The people who had been living with the personal freedoms which hunting and gathering had allowed them moved into farming villages and their freedoms had been diminished. Unfortunately, the equation of personal freedom versus the maturation of civilization has always been a trade-off for the benefits which the new technologies create. It is in the frenzy and synergy phases when the dread or elation of the thinkers occurs, because the few who focus on these issues are clearly able to see the substantive changes in our lives. The frenzy phase is also a kind of point where one can look backward and forward for comparative purposes with the fewest historical obstructions.

By the mid 1700's in England, water was starting to be used to power the new machines in order to make materials such as thread much faster. The mechanization in those historical events drove the change from farming to industrialization as the economy of choice which nations pursue today. Nations pursue industrialization with all of its ills that come along with it because industrialization is the first economy in the entire history of our story that actually raises the per capita income for the many. The hunter-gatherers and the agricultural economies had only provided a subsistence economy for the people who performed that work. Even in the ancient world, with empires as powerful and wealthy as the Roman Empire, the per capita income remained unchanged for the overwhelming majority of the citizenry. The very few élite at the top of the empire did receive enormous financial benefit but virtually none of the individuals who performed the daily back-breaking work.

The Reformation

Europe had subdivided itself along two separate views of Christianity during a period called the early Reformation (the struggle between the Roman Catholics and the Protestants) in the waning days of the agricultural era (17th century). Though the early Reformation was relatively bloodless, that would not be the case by the end of the Reformation. The modification at the end of the farming age was very bloody, featuring three wars which were initially fought to wipe out the Protestant supporters in a vain attempt to keep the Christian church as a single entity. It had by this time been split in the near east as the Greek Orthodox Church had long ago split from the Roman Catholic Church. These European wars ended with the two Christian factions agreeing to allow regional rulers to determine which version of Christian theology they would prefer as a result of the wars. That agreement opens the two crucial floodgates which initially set the Industrial Revolution in motion.

The European wars at the end of the Reformation enabled the financial changes which powered the investments to develop the Industrial Revolution. The second crucial gate which is opened is the ideals to which the religious wars subsequently fought to hold back. Those religious wars had fanned the French idealism of freedom which gave rise to the body of thinking which ultimately completely changed how humans governed themselves during the industrial age. The cause for the new thinking was no different than it had been in the previous ages. The new thinking was addressing the problems which had occurred as a result of the new economic and technological conditions. We see that change start with the historical period known as the Age of Enlightenment.

The Age of Enlightenment

The economic shift to industrialization began similarly to the agricultural revolution, in a just few small villages and towns. Rapidly, the adoption of this economic engine spread. The change was much faster than the farming change because there was a pre-existing vehicle in place to speed the investments, which in turn rapidly brought the new technologies to market and into wide use. Therefore the relative speed of the changes experienced during the Industrial Revolution were felt almost immediately when compared to the changes experienced by the prior Agricultural Revolution.

The leading thinkers of the day began to feel the permanence of the change and with that feeling came new thinking, just as the ancient Greeks had experienced. A permanent change is called an inflection point, and the start of industrialization had been just that. It started with the French with their newly-minted and refined theories of government and human freedoms, which were not predicated upon the birthright of a person (royalty). Instead their theory was that government should be predicated upon the ability of individuals to govern in order to create and expand freedom and equality for the many.

Initially this thought was expressed through a radical shift in how the French governed themselves. They overthrew the monarchy in an effort to express the will and the best interests of the people through their government. The French tried to actually install this change in government at home, but were derailed by Napoleon in that they were too early in attempting this seismic modification. Their revolution had also traveled down into increasingly more radical thinking and actions. Napoleon took down the French Republic first as their military leader, then as a dictator, and finally as their emperor, along with a large portion of Europe and Russia for a short period of time. The Republic had let loose such chaos and violence through the execution of thousands of citizens that the people were relieved by Napoleon's restoration of order. However, the thinking that had launched the Republic and the overthrow and execution of the King was new breakthrough thinking, in spite of the fact that they were unable to operationalize it successfully for quite some time.

Like the ancient Greeks, the French were unable to translate their original thinking into a sustainable civilization at that time. As a result, they would not be the first industrializing nation to erect and sustain a functioning democracy. The power and influence in their ideas and passion, however, proved to be as contagious as the ancient Greeks' ideas and thinking had been. The ideals were transmitted throughout Europe and into their western colonies, just as the Greeks had transmitted their thinking into the Roman Empire. The power of their ideas can be seen in another parallel to the ancient Greeks as well.

The French language became the language of the educated élite, as had Greek 2,000 years earlier. The adoption of the French language as the language of the educated and the élite resulted from the breakthroughs the French-speaking thinkers had published. The French language had become the universal language of the educated and therefore, quite literally, the language for the new thinking. Their ideas were to impact several critical areas which arose as a result of the economic shift that catapulted into Europe as a result of increased industrialization. The specific areas were in government, social ideas, religion and science. The French had already formed a nation state, whereas other areas in continental Europe had not at this point in time. The rest of continental Europe was still in process of looking at how to break up the old empires and it was for this reason why the French were able to focus on new thinking as it pertained to government. We are going to track these areas through the successive K-waves of the Industrial Revolution up to the 21st century. At this time those ideas have become absorbed into our survival guide, even though many of the original thoughts had become significantly altered.

Long Wave One (1770s-1829) - Liberty, Equality & Brotherhood
Early Industrialization. Frenzy Phase: Late 1780s – Mid 1790s

Liberté, égalité, fraternité, ou la mort! (Liberty, equality, brotherhood, or death!), a slogan often repeated during the course of the French revolution. These thoughts, which were rooted in philosophies developed just prior to the onset of the industrial age, are in fact at the core of all the new trends in thinking and updates to our survival guide which is still underway to this day. When the price of bread reached an unacceptably high level in France in 1789, a large contingent of women, supported by armed groups of men, marched from Paris to the King's palace in Versailles. They would force Louis XVI back to Paris, sealing his fate with his later execution.

Though a host of financial and political issues preceded the bread march, it was the bread march that let loose the French revolution because the marchers had brought the King back to Paris. In bringing Louis XVI back there, his option to flee and raise an army was effectively removed. Without any organized force to reinstate the monarchy, the revolution was able to expand the areas the people sought redress for.

The French Republic had done much more than simply depose their ruling monarchy. In short order, the fledgling French Republic had outlawed religion in France as well. They did this to remove the yoke of the Catholic Church, just as the English had done earlier under Henry VIII. The difference between the two approaches, however, was that the English created a new church to replace the old one. The French did not replace the religion they had outlawed and in taking this approach created a tradition of rolling blackouts for religion and therefore spirituality which would reoccur later in the Industrial Revolution. These rolling blackouts can be seen as new thinking, which at this point in history looks like a discard. However, only time will tell if societies will again attempt to outlaw religion in future, or have tired of this simplistic approach in societal problem-solving. There are many academicians who are still proposing this solution today; however, through books instead of rigid legal structures. The new Republic in France did this during the frenzy phase of the first long wave. The laws were enacted during 1790, where they made the members of the clergy employees of the state and made the lands owned by the church property of the French Republic, including the famous cathedral of Notre Dame.

The aegis for this change been as a result of the taxes the church had levied on the people which were mandatory, as they had been in England. The change therefore was not the result of a raging theological debate but rather as their expression of freedom and equality. The infectiousness in this new thinking can be further seen through Thomas Paine, writing from England. He would pen The Rights of Man in 1791, in which he supported the thinking of the French revolution. The French extended him honorary French citizenship as a result of the book. The ideals of the revolution were now unmistakably extending beyond the borders of France.

Long Wave Two (1830-1873) - The Spring of Nations
Age of Steam and Railways. Frenzy Phase: 1840s

During the second K-wave, railways, telegraph and the postal services were born from the newly developed technologies. The world was growing smaller. Communications began an acceleration which has yet to abate or even slow. The newly attained speeds in communication would galvanize what began as isolated riots, into the revolutions for reform in Europe in the spring of 1848. The revolutions began in January in Italy and quickly spread to France, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and into Germany's confederated states. Though each of the revolutions would be rolled back by the ruling aristocrats and monarchies, very real lasting change had been effected.

The middle class was becoming wealthier and was demanding a voice in government which they had not previously possessed. The wealth which industrialization had created was shifting power from the aristocrats towards the educated and well-heeled middle classes. Therefore the uprisings brought odd sights to our modern perception of the forces which drove these changes. Well dressed Burghers had stood in the streets, instead of the tattered under-classes waving the tricolor, as they had done previously, in the French Revolution. The result was that the middle classes were granted a constitutional indirect and direct voting franchise. An almost universal, unrestricted free press was the secondary by-product of the revolts.

The revolutions had been spontaneous and this explains why they spread from one region to the next, where each revolt had begun for entirely different reasons. The revolts were however grounded within constitutional will for the sharing of aristocratic political power, and not in the social reforms which the fewer and far more extreme Republicans of that era had sought. The reason for this was relatively straightforward. Only England had industrialized to the point where the social issues were having visible impacts on society. The English monarchy had already made the concessions "to the liberalizing forces of the French Revolution" ( Page 19. Europe In Upheaval: The Revolutions of 1848. George Fasel. Rand McNally & Company. 1970). On the European continent this condition had yet to occur. "By 1850, there were twenty-eight (British) cities over 100,000, which collectively comprised one-fifth of the entire British population. France, by contrast, had only five cities over 100,000, and only one-fourth of the French population lived in towns with 2,000 or more persons" (Page 15. Europe In Upheaval: The Revolutions of 1848).

In the frenzy phase of this K-wave, Karl Marx had teamed up with Friedrich Engels to analyze and propose a new solution for the problems of the industrial working classes. In 1848, Marx published his Communist Manifesto. He had arrived at his model for the Proletariat state by synthesizing ideas from both the Greeks and the French philosophies. His utopian state was modeled after Plato's Republic and fed by such French philosophers as Rousseau and his famous quote that "man is born free, but is everywhere in chains." Marx turned Rousseau's thought into the rallying cry for the socialist struggle: "Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains."

Karl Marx was a philosopher and to his credit, in the Communist Manifesto, he recognized that through the ages, humanity had only ever experienced three economic ages. In his manifesto he stated that the hunter-gatherers were the first "primitive" instantiation of communism. In his view there had never been surplus, as everything was shared within the hunter-gatherer tribal groups. It was in the agricultural age that surplus was created, which had become increasingly problematic early in the industrial age according to his theory.

The fact that Marx saw the three economic ages that early in the Industrial Revolution was nothing short of remarkable. However, since the subsequent theory in economics would not mature for over another 100 years as a field of study, he made a critical and fundamental error in attempting to utilize the existing understanding from the field of economics in his theories. Today we know there really is no such thing as surplus per se. Rather when an excess supply is produced, then the value of that output drops. The price of the good produced simply decreases when excess supply is produced. In economics the most basic model is the intersection of where supply meets demand.

Marx of course did not understand this and neither did anyone else in his day. At the start of the 20th century the world still embraced Say's theory that supply simply creates demand. Accordingly Marx created a theory where he honestly believed that the surplus of goods could solely be controlled by a properly organized government. Marx had no idea that even as a purely conceptual model, a modern super-computer could not have tracked all of the variables required in order to accomplish this. The scope of the model he theorized was so incredibly vast in scale, and that was without even beginning to address the earth's environmental factors: population, weather and such. Those factors would have also had to be controlled and added in as well.

At the same time as Karl Marx published his manifesto, the secondary movement which would traverse the first four long waves of the industrial age – such as Communism – had been launched. Sören Kierkegaard, known as the "Father of Existentialism," wrote his famous book Either/Or in 1843. In it he addressed Aristotle's question concerning how we should live. Though Kierkegaard's variation of existentialism would be the most benign form created, he nonetheless launched the movement when he stated that all faith is essentially rooted in doubt. The term "leap of faith" is attributed to Kierkegaard, as he believed that anyone who did not have doubts about the existence of God did not really possess faith in God's existence. If one believed as they would in the reality of a pencil when touching it, then for Kierkegaard that was not faith, in his estimation. The historical significance of Kierkegaard's book and its popularity was that existentialism was the first real effort to synchronize Western theology within the new environment that had directly resulted from industrialization.

Kierkegaard, like Marx, did not understand that he was reacting to the same unstable conditions which the industrial economy had wrought during the 2nd wave's frenzy phase. A famous German philosopher named Friedrich Schelling* gave a series of lectures in 1841 where both Engels and Kierkegaard were in attendance. Engels and Kierkegaard would internalize Schelling's philosophical thinking in two very different ways, but the fact is very clear that the same frenzy phase was what drove their new thinking. The bifurcation in thinking was in Kierkegaard's view of the individual, while Engels and Marx would focus on the group. These two diverging perspectives would be the basis for new thinking waves two through four.

What had made Dickens the first popular star of the industrial age? Beyond his gift for writing, which was incredible, it was what he wrote about. His characters were struggling through the industrial world of England with all the odds stacked against them, and alongside the ills which the new economy had wrought. His books spoke directly to the people who were under attack from that new economy. His books ended up defining what a Victorian person should live up to morally. Beyond his worldwide fame he lived his life supporting and sometimes even creating social organizations for those being trampled by industrialization. Dickens traveled the road of applied thought, in comparison to the somewhat abstract philosophies of Marx and Kierkegaard. Charles Dickens' writings had a much greater impact on the frenzy phase of the second long wave. Marx and Kierkegaard, though well known in their age, were to make much larger impacts later in the following long waves, as their combined philosophies would become reinforcements for one another.

Long Wave Three (1875-1918) – Incubation
Steel, Electricity & Heavy Engineering. Frenzy phase: Mid 1880s – Mid 1890s

During the third K-wave, the telegraph, shipping (Suez Canal is a great example of this) and railway technologies are adopted worldwide. At a national level, the telephone along with large bridges and tunnels are constructed. The pace of industrialization continues to quicken. The European revolutions of 1848 had contained the radical left. This had not been accidental. Most people at that time feared change degenerating into the kind of chaos and bloodshed which the French Revolution had become. The European revolutions of 1848 had provided for more democratic political representation for the middle class and in delivering a free press. A free press is of course a relative statement. Where the press debated the mainstream issues it was permitted; however, when it was seen as communist and radical, it was suppressed. Therefore, even though the radicalization of the left continued, it was forced underground during the frenzy phase of the third long wave. The new thinking that we see emerge in the third wave is from much more popular and mainstream sources.

There were authors who would continue in the tradition of Charles Dickens, where their thinking would be personally influenced by the 2nd wave's frenzy phase; however, their publications would occur between the two phases. Dickens had been the middle classes' equivalent source for new thinking in the second wave. This torch of thought is passed on to Victor Hugo, Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky.

During Fyodor Dostoevsky's studies during the 1840s, he attended meetings where socialist literature was read and discussed. After the revolutions of 1848 and the crackdown by the governing aristocracy in Russia, he was arrested and sentenced to death for his attendance in those meetings. He made the grave mistake of telling the entire truth instead of retelling his involvement in a way which would have advantaged his plight. He spent years living in a camp featuring the most brutal and filthy conditions, where he starved and was freezing at the same time. Upon release Dostoevsky never looked back at the ideas of socialism with anything but extraordinary disgust and dislike. I am sure the high ideals discussed by the individuals at those meetings he found later to be disingenuous, as those same people had turned him in to save their own necks.

Dostoevsky's new thinking would in no way be political, but rather breathed into his characters the absolute and unimaginable depths of fear and despair which he had personally experienced in the labor camp. His characters were full of anguish in contemplating their own worldview and his books became enormous successes as soon as he began to publish them as serials. His books, such as The House of the Dead, The Idiot, Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, which was completed the year before he died in 1880, all exhibit the central theme of individuals trapped into a world where they are forced to make decisions in situations of extreme anguish and paradox. His writings were to become the fuel for the later existential writers, who subsequently embraced and considerably extended his characters' paradoxical and meaningless existence.

During the 2nd long wave's frenzy phase, Victor Hugo was elected to the legislative and constitutional assembly during the formation of France's 2nd Republic after the 1848 revolutions. His writings forced Hugo into exile when the 2nd Republic quickly collapsed, as did all of the European revolutions of 1848. During his years of exile he wrote the book that is still immensely popular today.

Victor Hugo published his best seller, Les Miserables, where he extends the story which Charles Dickens first brought to us. The narrative, which is rooted in the time period between the first and second K-waves, tells a new kind of story. It is a story where a criminal not only is the person who the readers root for, but accomplishes this in a very unique way. Hugo mixes the actual history of the French revolution with that of fictional characters to demonstrate just how much had changed in society as a result of industrialization. Very capable and good people were forced as a result of their economic straits to become criminals in order to survive.

Like Dickens, Hugo does not totally vilify industrialization. His main character in fact finds redemption in starting a small factory where his worldview and life become completely transformed. Hugo's book illustrates that there are real problems created through industrialization where some people, in this case women for the most part, are crushed by the ideas and economic realities of the age. Hugo tempers the crushing weight by pointing to a more humanistic approach for humanity to work their way through the new problems created by industrialization.

The middle ground created by Dostoevsky and Hugo between socialism/communism and existentialism/religion was immediately very popular. It was popular because it showed in concrete form that previous conceptions of what had been considered acceptable government, along with the traditional perceptions of simple good and evil, no longer functioned in those industrialized societies.

Tolstoy was completely on the other side of the spectrum. Since he had been born to an aristocratic family he did not have any personal experience that bordered on the leading edge in the social or philosophical issues of his time. Tolstoy was extremely popular for his writing in his day, however. Tolstoy's characters were very lifelike and transcended the written word, even though they did not come from the under-classes. As he became older he changed his views on religion to the extent that he gave away his considerable material possessions. He would die from exposure while sleeping in a train yard. Tolstoy published his book titled My Religion in 1884.

It was a rationalist view of Christianity, where he embraced its morals but not its mystical views. He was also very impressed with the Far Eastern religions, particularly the Hindu principle of ahimsa (non-violence). His work spawned followers who called his thinking Tolstoyism. Though the followers would later be jailed after the Communists came to power in Russia, his ideas would live on. Mahatma Gandhi had few possessions through his ascetic life; however, he kept a framed photo of Tolstoy on his desk. Gandhi's ideals of non-violence were the agent which freed India from its status as an English colony. Martin Luther King Jr. would follow in Gandhi's footsteps through his emulation of Gandhi's techniques in working to remove racial inequality from the US. Therefore, ideas of Tolstoyism were transmitted even though the movement itself was to be crushed by interning its adherents in labor camps and through outright executions.

The popularity of Hugo's Les Miserables and Tolstoy's My Religion was in no way confined to the masses, however. The thinking resonated with the leading thinkers and artists of the day. Vincent Van Gogh, who created all of his prodigious output of paintings during the 3rd long wave's frenzy phase, wrote letters to his brother Theo echoing his agreement with the themes in both Hugo's and Tolstoy's books. Van Gogh wrote in July 1888 to Theo: "It seems that in the book, My Religion, Tolstoi implies that whatever happens in the way of violent revolution there will also be a private and secret revolution in men, from which a new religion will be born, or rather something altogether new, which will have no name, but which will have the same effect of consoling, of making life possible, which the Christian religion used to have." In July of 1880 he wrote to Theo that authors like Dickens and Hugo captured the plight of the common man of that time. He further wrote that the plight of the working class was the soul seeking a way to get to eternity via their struggles and work.

The 3rd K-wave and the frenzy phase within it clearly demonstrate the shifting thinking of Western thought from the popular books and artists of the day. The world was undergoing a kind of incubation period where the new thinking was either being refined or organized into political ways. The radicalized left was mobilizing so that they could be in position to bring their theories into governmental form when the next wave of political unrest occurred. They had not expected nor had been ready for the political upheavals of 1848 when the rise in nationalism had gained steady support from the middle class. The radical left would however ride the tide of nationalism in the 4th long wave. The world was now on the cusp of major changes which would be permitted only because of this shift in thinking which Dostoevsky, Hugo, Van Gogh and Tolstoy epitomized and drove into the popular culture. Nietzsche must be mentioned as well even though the impact for his ideas occurred later but he represented the philosophical leading edge writing Thus Spake Zaruthastra, the Gay Science and several other books during the frenzy phase of the 1880s. His works have served to influence the leading edge thinkers to this day.

Long Wave Four (1908 – 1974) - Theory as New Governmental Forms
Oil, Automobiles and Mass Production. Frenzy phase: 1920s

The world accelerated even more during the fourth K-wave as the new the technology in automobiles and airplanes continued to shrink the size of the planet. Communication around the world dramatically increased as the telex, cablegram and analog telephones were also quickly developed and adopted worldwide. Industries sprang up into existence. The oil industry exploded on the scene to fuel the burgeoning transportation industries as a result of the adoption of mass production for cars and trucks during the fourth K-wave. The speed of this new world would sound the death knell for government by birthright.

After the French revolution, industrializing nations were all faced with having to have an elected body which began providing input into the monarchies. The news as to what was happening in one country spread rapidly and after World War I, all of the monarchies in Europe were summarily deposed. Some royal families were only left in power, as in England's case, as a pure traditional façade which is powerless and functions purely for traditional social aesthetic. Eventually almost all of the industrial world's monarchies were removed from power as elected bodies took control of government. Now in the industrialized nations there was no longer a place for government by birthright. This fundamental shift in thinking, transmitted from the French to the industrialized nations, made this outcome inevitable. The removal in Europe of their governing monarchies coincided with the start of the frenzy phase of the 4th K-wave.

Russia, which had been the most repressive for liberal thinking, would go the furthest in not only deposing Tsarist rule but actually erecting the world's first communist government. Karl Marx's ideas had been consumed by Lenin and synthesized into a doctrinal theory called Marxism-Leninism. In the fourth long wave, during the frenzy phase, the former USSR by the Decree of Council of People's Commissars had essentially copied what the French had done earlier, outlawing religion by separating it from the church. The exact same discussion will be true in the future for China, when the Communists, who came to power later than the Bolsheviks had in Russia, outlawed religion as well.

Religion and God were virtually outlawed, at different times, in the heavily socialized countries. This approach of outlawing God was unique to the industrialized age. Don't forget that in the ancient farming age, when the Akkadians defeated the Sumerians and took control of their empire, they did not outlaw the religion the Sumerians had evolved. This approach was common in the ancient world. In the agricultural age, governmental changes could be brutal to be sure, but the governing élite typically embraced the view of the majority. The majority of people who lived in ancient times all believed in some form of god, particularly since they were centered on a common set of symbols and beliefs inherited from the hunter-gatherer age. However the industrial age had to this point been centered on the new thinking of liberty, equality and fraternity. In that context they had arrived at a theory which had at its core a socialist utopian state and had broken with all the previous concepts in their survival guide for any spiritual component other than the state.

In the 20th century, during the 4th long wave, the new thinking reached its zenith in discarding God. This peaked with the governments in the former USSR, China and Germany. In those nations they continued the tradition which the French had unleashed in attempting to outlaw God. This was driven primarily by the movement during the 19th and 20th centuries where science had either superseded the prior theologies as the rational basis for worldview, or where the theologies were shown as having been mythologized. Science in and of itself was not the cause for the waves spiritualities legal blackout, however. Rather the cause was from the creation of nations in governmental form which had been carved out of the older empire form of government that had been brought into existence during the economic shift to agriculture.

Since an agrarian economy did not raise the standard of living or the equality for the many, the only way to rule had been through the few by physically conquering land masses and their occupants. That's where the crops and the labor to plant and harvest the crops were located. This is how the agricultural age had created empires out of unrelated groups and came into existence. This is also why the industrial age reframed the rule by few to that of the many and by sheer definition had to take apart all of thinking contained in government via empire into one of nations. Nationalism was the only vehicle which could structurally instantiate increased liberty and equality.

The 4th long wave and its frenzy phase were dominated politically by the political left. Even the US, which had only in its infancy seen empire and monarchy, had an explosion in communist thinking and activity. Upton Sinclair had written his famous book on the meat packing industry, The Jungle, which had been the force in the creation of meat packing inspection and regulation in the US. He ran for congress and the senate in the 1920s on the socialist ticket. His anarchist leanings would eliminate any political support from either of the majority parties and was unable to translate the impact and success from his book into political change in the US.

The undercurrents in literature would continue to build during the frenzy wave of the 1920s. The existential philosophical thinking originated by Kierkegaard and Dickens in the 2nd wave, refined by Dostoevsky and Hugo, and would continue to mature and gain via popular support from T.S. Elliot, James Joyce, Franz Kafka and finally Albert Camus during the 4th wave.

The horrendous human devastation of WWI had created an environment during the frenzy phase which immediately followed on the heels of the war, where the leading thinkers simply felt humanity as a species was absurd. Eliot published the poem The Waste Land in 1922. Originally he was going to title the work in reference to one of Dickens' books (Our Mutual Friend). The poem, which features no plot, suspense or action of any kind, conveys the absurdity which many saw as humanity's plight in life. So much so that Elliot was forced to include notes with the publication of the work so that anyone could understand it. Most experts are split as to whether the notes are helpful or add just another layer of confusion. James Joyce wrote Ulysses in the same year, in what the modernists term a stream-of-consciousness style of writing. It is so difficult to read that the vast majority of readers give up before reaching page 100. It is anywhere from 600 plus pages to 1000 pages in length depending on which version you are attempting to read. Ulysses relates in a different way from The Waste Land, the same feelings of the day regarding the philosophical worldview of humanity. This work is viewed as the centerpiece in the school of modernist literature. It may have been simply written for Joyce to understand. One will never know. The works of these writers were termed "modernist" literature. The removal of the traditional elements in literature such as plot and action was jarring in and of itself. However, they went further by juxtaposing the removal of these thematic elements while placing their characters into completely bizarre situations. The effect served to produce an absurdity which was intended to underscore the meaninglessness of human life.

The Trial, written by Franz Kafka in 1925, is also another extraordinary work for which Kafka was famous. In this book, Kafka describes hopelessness and absurdity, which all of his work exudes. The tendencies in the work of Eliot, Joyce and Kafka reach the peak of existential absurdity and meaningless with the advent of the French existentialist school in literature. During the fourth wave, Albert Camus published The Myth of Sisyphus, his first book featuring the most extreme form of existential philosophy. The version of existentialism which Camus helped develop was not the relatively benign version which Kierkegaard subscribed to, nor even Dostoevsky's and Hugo's one, where people were placed in anguished circumstances. Camus went much further than this and wrote of there not only being no type of God, reason or meaning in the universe, but that we were saddled with this burden of knowledge and pain as a simple dumb animal. Camus wrote that it was similar to a condition of that of a dog possessing the knowledge of a meaningless existence and therefore life was not only tortured but unfair as well. Camus had returned the traditional thematic elements which Eliot, Kafka and Joyce had removed. However in his stories the plight of humanity was plainly spelled out. This peak in existential thinking denied any universal meaning which was illustrated in these authors' minds by mankind's creation of unfounded meaning.

The impact of the fourth Kondratiev long wave was not simply dramatic due to the new technologies and their impact. Rather it was because the frenzy phases of the second and third K-waves had been theoretical in nature, while the fourth K-wave was experienced as a very real change. During the frenzy phase of the fourth K-wave, theoretical philosophy such as Marx's thinking on communism were put into reality. Looking back, the enormity of the change and the leap into the unknown void seems nothing short of incredible to us today. Putting in place new governmental and economic models from completely untested theory, however, is a hallmark of the frenzy phase in long waves. These are the times in human history when ideas become accepted because the world has so visibly changed that significant change or updates are permitted. It is the attempt to resynchronize a worldview inside of economic reality. The frenzy phase is actually the force which propels the technologies that radically change the world.

The "ISMs" peak

In the beginning of the 20th century there was an economic theory termed "Say's law" (Jean-Baptiste Say. French economist - 1767-1832) which was still in operation or under construction, depending on your views of supply-side economics. Essentially, most people at that time believed that merely by creating a product, demand would follow. It is most often crudely cited as "supply creates its own demand." Today we have a much deeper understanding thanks to economists such as Keynes, Schumpeter, Milton, Hayek and other significant economists. However, less than 100 years ago people really believed that "Say's law" was in operation and would stave off any economic disaster such as the Great Depression. Henry Ford went so far as to increase his employees' salaries believing that this would enable them to purchase his cars and sustain his company's growth. Because economic theory was not yet mature as a field of study, Ford did not know that in order for his wage policy to have the desired effect, all employers would have had to raise their wages, which of course they did not. From our vantage point of today we can see how utterly naïve the understanding of the industrialized economy was such a short time ago.

At the beginning of the 20th century, economic theory was much more closely aligned with the thinking that launched the French Republic than it is with economic theory of today. The philosophy which evolved into existence during the frenzy phase of the fourth K-wave we understand much more clearly than Say's law because this thinking still exists today. That school of philosophy created during the fourth K-wave became known as existentialism. Camus, like Sartre and the other members of the French existential school, felt that mankind's freedom was the burden that we were forced to wrestle with, without any purpose, as a result of no God existing within the universe. After having lived through two of the worst human conflicts to have occurred on Earth, it would be very difficult to really assign blame to them for their point of view. However, this thinking in no way remained confined to that literary community.

The popularity of these writers was rapidly transmitted via the conduit of existentialist thinking into the survival guide for all of the visual artists in the West. It was not that its consumption was directly related to the philosophy itself, as I am confident that you would not have found many artists who would describe themselves as existentialist painters or sculptors. Rather the transmission was in the feeling of the sense of a pervasive meaningless which was transmitted from literature into the fine arts. It is no accident that early in the 20th century, subject matter was disappearing in all of the leading schools of painting. By the end of WW2 most of the schools had gone totally mute in subject matter. In the 20th century, mankind was frowning on any subject matter being featured in art at all. This was the complete antithesis of the type of paintings launched by hunter-gatherers in those caves so long ago.

Painting had become an experiment in producing entirely decorative or other intentionally meaningless images, and the result was indiscernible exploration. In other words, you were supposed to think about the lack of meaning while you experienced the large color fields in the paintings. The aesthetic created by some of the artists from the abstract expressionist school was however both new and captivating. The paintings looked like some new form of Cuneiform, and so seemed like a new pictorial form of writing. Therefore I don't want to give the impression that I think that the pictures were without artistic merit or value. However, the bankruptcy of the philosophy subsequently created an overriding problem concerning the lack of meaning. The meaning in fine art of intentionally removing all images in order to present meaningless color patterns is quite clear. Sculpture would follow the painting community's suit as well. That is where you begin to see steel I-beams and floating formless mobiles in sculpture.

Architecture went mute as well from their traditions of decorative and symbolic adornments. The new boxes would feature stark and uncomplicated design. This is what became known as the international style of architecture. This style was the classic bands of glass with some featureless material separating the glass bands. The world appeared to be hurtling towards a subject-less horizon. Everything was simply a study in material or color, simply for exploration's sake. It was the efficient use of materials and space at the expense of the individual's comfort, as a result of the removal of all references to anything concrete.

Artists and architects who sought to express meaning in their creations were ridiculed and minimized throughout their careers as a result of the prevailing existential thinking of the day. The modern movement in architecture, painting (abstract expressionism), sculpture, literary existentialism and communism would experience their peak at the same moment in time. That moment in time was the end of the 4th long wave (late 1960s – early 1970s) when the industrialized nations, particularly in the West, was experiencing the typical economic downturn and stagnation associated with the last phase of a long wave and the first phase of the succeeding long wave. Therefore, at that time the heavily socialist and communist governments appeared to have been the better choice from a comparative economic perspective.

End of the 4th & start of the 5th Long Wave

The "postmodern" movement attempted to build on the momentum of the modern schools. With the decline in popularity of these disciplines as well as in the governmental models, postmodern movements would find a very short and narrow time span to work within. Nations began taking themselves apart as the experiment in completely socialized, economically-controlled governments began to fail globally (former USSR, all of the European eastern block nations and Yugoslavia). Where the heavily socialized governments were not toppled by the people, there began a trend in reduction in the totality of government controls, permitting much more economic freedom for their peoples (Cuba & China are examples). The movement towards centralized governmental control, the international style of architecture and total abstraction in painting began to exhibit cracks. Suddenly a future that seemed so very assured in art, architecture and literature disappeared as the way into the future almost overnight.

The American abstract expressionist school, hailed as the leading edge at the mid-century mark, very quickly began to run into structural problems. Expressionist paintings consisted of subject-less and totally abstracted works of art. Popular painters who were the poster children for the abstract expressionist school, such as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, literally ran out of color and form to abstract in their subject-less paintings. This resulted in depression for Pollock as he became an alcoholic and quit painting entirely. He died in a crash while driving his car in a drunken stupor after having lost all reason to paint. As was starkly visible in Rothko's late work, the limitations of abstraction had literally left him with nowhere to go in his exploration of his painting style. He committed suicide four years after having painted his completely black series of paintings. Many of the fathers of existential philosophies would experience depression and/or essentially self medicate themselves via drugs and alcohol. A few others went totally insane and some sadly committed suicide.

The traps that these two painters succumbed to exemplifies the same issues that shut down the whole train of thinking from the abstract expressionist painting school and the growth of the international style in architecture, the existentialist writers and the centralization of socializing government. The painting community would ultimately see its complete death as no school has ever emerged in its wake over the last 30 years. For the people who felt that these movements were the coming update to the Western survival guide, things began to look very bleak indeed.

The nations that had undertaken the running of these experiments by instituting completely government-controlled economy during the 20th century had taken a step backwards in their economies and living conditions for their citizens. National Socialism (Nazi government) and the communist controlled governments were the source of friction which turned the 20th century into the worst century the world has ever witnessed in terms of the number of humans killed, tortured and maimed. Humanity had seen slaughter from the wars in antiquity in the hundreds of thousands rise in the 20th century to the hundreds of millions. Total disaster was the end result for humanity in their first attempts to remove government by birthright and nationalism while attempting to foster liberty and equality for the many.

The reason why communism and the international style of fine arts were discarded at the very same time in our history is because they were all predicated on achieving the same goal. Individuals and societies were attempting to construct a secular socialist utopian state. This is where the intelligentsia had set their sights and why once one area crumbled, all of these seemingly unrelated subjects collapsed together. They were in reality not separate subjects but separate branches on humanity's tree. One could not exist without the other.

The industrialized nations today are still trying to define an economic model where the governments intervene where necessary in order to enable the growth of their economies while providing protection for their citizenry. The leg of public policy which gets most of the attention is in the policy where the government works to protect its citizens from the periodic economic shifts that occur in industrialized market economies, because of cyclical speed in the development and utilization of new technologies. In spite of some success in public economic policy, these pages in our survival guide are far from completed as witnessed by the banking industries meltdown currently underway.

Next stop the current K-wave, wave number five.

Onto Wave Five The Current K-wave or Model Index