The answer to how this happened is seen from the Undercurrents Period at the end of the agricultural era. During that time the English, amongst others, had removed the Roman Catholic Church from their economy. This was as a result of Henry the VIII's quest for a male heir and his multiple marriages which ran him and England afoul of the Catholic Church. In so doing the resulting financial drain from Church taxation put more investment monies into their economy. They quickly formed the requisite investment institutions which leveraged the sudden excess of available capital. The second key was in the shift in worldview which allowed new thinking to occur which had been suppressed on mainland Europe during the undercurrents transition period of the agricultural era. By examining the technology waves which originate with the Industrial Revolution this can be seen quite clearly.

When nations shift their thinking in worldview, the shift must be seens as the expression of people voting with their feet. Had the English citizenry not agreed with Henry the VIII's decision to split with the Catholic Church they would have gone back to the Church once he was no longer in power. We saw this much earlier in the Agricultural Era when the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhnaton had outlawed all God's except the sun God Ra. This in effect invalidated the worldview of every town and city as each had their own animal based type of God at that time. This decision did not resonate with his people and therefore upon his death all of the Egyptian Gods were restored. The same thing would have occurred after the death of Henry the VIII if the citizens really believed that what he had cast aside was a true reflection of Godhead for them.

First technology wave 1768CE
The improvement in automation to the cotton spinning frame would in short order bring down the prices for cotton textiles starting in 1768CE. This launched the Industrial Revolution. The first wave was cored in technology enhancements for cotton mechanization and wrought iron production.

worldview would react as it always had to visible changes in the world. The French Revolution took place during the this time and sent shock waves into the industrial eras conception of what constituted government. They not only overthrew their King but they also outlawed the Catholicism which contained 95% of the French population as members prior to the onset of the French Revolution.

The French Revolution inspired new thinking and a group known to us as the Romanticists formed during the first technology wave of the industrial era. The Romanticists attempted to build on the humanistic thinking in a more nature based conception of God. At the core of the Romanticist group was a young man called the boy philosopher, Friedrich Schelling, who began to try to formulate a new system in philosophy. Though he was unsuccessful in creating a new philosophic system, his ideas would launch the updates to worldview for the group, via governmental thinking and in the conception for the individual. Philosophically speaking one can see this as the industrial eras attempt to address the classic dualism problem which has existed since antiquity.

2nd technology wave 1829
The second technology development was cored in developing technologies in steam engines and the railroads. This technology wave would speed human communication and world trade as would all of the subsequent technology waves for the industrial era.

worldview would begin to take on increasing refinement as a result of Schelling's popular Berlin series of lectures. Attending those lectures was Friedrich Engels, who immediately wrote of the lectures to Karl Marx. Also attending the lectures was Sören Kierkegaard, known as the "Father of Existentialism." His ideas were founded upon his reaction to Schelling's ideas which affected him so profoundly that he would write a book about only Schelling's lectures titled the Concept of Irony. Marx would formulate his ideas as a negative response to Schelling and in the 1848 write the Communist Manifesto which was an attempt to refine thinking relative to government. Kierkegaard would refine it for the individual through his famous book Either/Or in 1843. These two branches from Schelling became the foundation of how much Socialism a government should use and the foundation for doubt in western thought regarding the Christian concept of God. These ideas form the boundaries of industrial investigation in attempting to resynchronize worldview inside of their new economy.

The 3rd technology wave 1875CE
The age of steel, electricity and heavy engineering were the core technologies powering the third wave of the industrial era. During that 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. Communication speed takes another enormous step forward.

In 1848 Fyodor Dostoevsky was sentenced to death and would spend years in a labor camp for attending a single meeting where increasingly popular socialist ideas were discussed. Upon his release from the camp where the prisoners were brutalized and lived in squalor, he would never go near the issue of socialism again. His writings during the 3rd wave were to become the fuel for the later existential writers, who subsequently embraced and considerably extended his wretched characters' paradoxical and meaningless existence. He cited Kierkegaard as having been influential in his thinking.

Tolstoy who was already famous for earlier novels would write My Religion in 1884 where he provided a rationalist view of Christianity. 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 and executed after the Communists came to power in Russia, his ideas would live on to reach the likes of Mahatma Gandhi and later Martin Luther King Jr.

The ruling monarchs dealt with the rising tide of socialism decisively and during the 3rd technology wave socialist thinking was forced underground. However it is still visible to us from Plekhanov forming the Bolshevik party during this time. As you might have surmised inspite of the updates which occurred in reaction to the techno-economic changes in the world, worldview updates for the individual as well as the group were moving in tandem.

The 4th technology wave 1908CE
The fourth wave was powered quite literally by the age of automobiles, oil and mass production. Communication around the world dramatically increased as the telex, cablegram and analog telephones were also quickly developed and adopted worldwide. The speed of this new world would sound the death knell for government by birthright.

Updated thinking in worldview was a major factor for this in that WWI marked the end of monarchies in Europe. The existential philosophical thinking originated by Kierkegaard in the 2nd wave, refined by Dostoevsky in the 3rd wave, 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. Eliot published the poem The Waste Land in 1922, James Joyce wrote Ulysses in 1922 and Franz Kafka wrote The Trial in 1925. The effect these authors served to produce was an absurdity which was intended to underscore the meaninglessness of human life. These ideas were transmitted, translated and expressed in all of the arts as a result.

The removal of decoration in architecture, called the International style translated this thinking into plain bands of glass and steel. In painting as in sculpture, the movement called Abstract Expressionism would emerge in the fourth wave. Those art works built from the increasing abstraction of modern art would arrive at totally subject less art works.

Those updates in worldview would peak during the fourth wave. The fourth wave also marked the end of the Inheritance Period for the industrial Era and therefore what resonated has remained in the form of socialism, which almost every industrialized nation has embraced some form of. The issue today is how much government mangement of the market economy is a good trade off between the health of the economy and the welfare of the people. The individual worldview update via existentialism has not resonated for the many and therefore that update for worldview is on the decline following the path of heavy socialism such as communism.

We have covered the four completed technology waves and in order to show updated thinking for worldview in the current wave we must take on the precarious task of looking at virtually current events which any historian will tell you is a very difficult task indeed. However with the aid of the model it is actually much more straight forward than with prior unaided attempts.

We have been referencing technology waves in a rather summary manor as the mechanism which changes the world during economic eras. Our next step will be into a greater understanding of these macro economic waves which are known as long waves. The discussion will be in purely non technical or economic terms but unless we review them then the fidelity of the model will remain an open question for the reader.

Next stop understanding macro economic long waves.

Onto Wave Five Long waves as the engine propelling economic eras or Model Index