Collective Gout
Imagine that you're at a mead hall. That's a bit volkish right? Pretty volkish pretty cool, right? Anyway, picture a mead hall in medieval times. It is high roofed and warm lit, wooden with tall beams stretched up to bend across into a domed enclosure. A long lobby stretches almost beyond what your eyes can see. There are expanses of wooden mess-tables set on each side of you and one in front of you. Sitting on the tables are huge swaths of extravagant food. Chicken, venison, partridge, wild boar, stews, fresh breads and fine indulgences stretch beyond the eyeline and seemingly go on forever. Sitting at each table, packed shoulder to shoulder, is everyone in your village. Every man, woman, child and elder has found a seat at the feast and is already enjoying the food and company by the time you enter the hall and take in it's homely vastness. You walk around, looking for a seat, for quite some time. It's almost a challenge to locate a place to sit and the hall is very much packed full. But lucky you! You eventually find a seat next to a good friend and begin to enjoy the feast with everyone else. At the back end of the hall, farthest from the entrance, there is a platform raised only a few inches from the ground that everyone else sits at. On it is a single horizontal table, not dissimilar from the one you eat at, but much smaller in size. At it sits your chief. He is a stocky and somewhat plump man with a red face and a log beard. His chin proudly and permanently angles up as a symbol of pride as he regards his creation; the fruits of his labor, all of his work and devotion and achievements physically laid before all of his people as sustenance and grandeur for them to consume. As he scans the hall, his eyes meet your own. You stare at each other for a silent moment before he raises his horn, full of mead, and nods to you. It is a small gesture, but imparts significant meaning nonetheless. It's as if to say in solidarity: "Enjoy".
In less than a year a famine hits. The earth is untillable clay and the livestock that you and all of your people have been breeding fall to disease. An early winter covers the land that you live in frost and bitter cold winds. The effects of nature's wrath are not limited to where you live, it stretches for miles and miles and miles beyond even what you have ever imagine to see or travel to. A fire consumes the granary and your stores are ruined. The hope and joy that you remember painted on the faces of those around you that sacred day at the mead hall has now turned to cold sneers and cracked, crooked lips. The hall has been abandoned and in desperation, many have stripped it in parts for kindling. Now all that remains of it are a few tall, roofless beams supporting a broken and drooping wall in some areas. The chief, to find food, ventured out beyond the boundaries of what is known along with several other hunters. None of them ever returned. By the time the winter passes, all have either starved to death or left the village-- presumably to starve to death somewhere else. As you lay dying next to your emaciated family, the taste of roast chicken and mead is on your bleeding chapped lips and your bone dry tongue.
Not an unrealistic scenario to imagine. Of course, throughout most of human history most people have had food as their main concern in life. They would have been unsure of where their next meal would come from and their life and decisions would, overall, be built around choices regarding food security. Villages, hunting parties, and most systems that people would participate in were formed to ensure food security.
Now we do not worry so much about food, in particular in the western world. We are fairly well "cared for" in that regard and most people don't even need to have a basic understanding of how to care for livestock or how to grow a fruiting plant in order to survive. Some people view this as a good thing, others view this as a bad thing. I am not going to take a stance on that, because that's not really what this essay is about.
The fact that most people don't need to actively work towards their own survival shows an evolution of the systems that were previously in place. But we can say the same is true-- as is between the period of medieval times and their necessities and current times and their necessities-- for other periods of time. There was an evolution of the necessities for life between the bronze age and the iron age. And between the iron age and the classical age and so on and so on. Every age with discernible technological innovations and developments has had equally discernible changes to requirements for life.
Cycles can be observed continually but on different scales in regards to their inputs. This is a really simple idea but it's something that people don't often think of in regards to cycles. Overall it is fair and right to say that cycles will always continue in the same repetitive and predictable nature, but will differ in time elapsed and magnitude.
Here is an illustration to explain what I mean. The nodes (A1, B1, A2, B2, etc.) represent either points of time of great collective ecstasy, as with the nodes charted highly; or points of time of great collective misery, as with those charted lowly.
From this we can get a picture of what the great feast at the mead hall would look like on a graph, as well as what the horrible winter and famine would look like. They would be opposite of each other, occupying an 'A' and a 'B' point respectively. They signify each other, each point when hit leads into the next point being hit and so on. The points change over time in magnitude, time elapsed between them and point of time; but the repetition itself does not change, it just evolves.
A better way to understand it, a more literary way perhaps, is by thinking about two diseases. Gout and cholera. Gout is inflammation of the joints caused by excessive eating. It was called the disease of king's in the past because those who were affluent and had access to multitudes of food and drink were likely to develop it. Conversely, cholera is an infection which causes rapid weight loss, dehydration and malnourishment. It is caused by bacteria in food or water that has not been properly cooked or (more likely) properly sanitized. Cholera can be thought of as the poor man's disease as those who are desperate for food or water are more likely to develop it.
Imagine the feast at the mead hall, point A, as gout. A bulging toe that makes it hard for the obese fat body possessor of the extremity to walk. All because he ate too much fried partridge and buttered bread. Now imagine the winter famine, point B, as cholera. A draining sickness that quickly takes what little strength you have left from you all because you were desperate enough from thirst to drink muddy water.
We are in the stage of collective gout right now. It's not hard to see that. Everything is good for the average person. People feel they can game speculation markets like real estate, stocks or crypto. Commodities that are sold and resold are expensive, far beyond what their true value should be. The average person, even in the middle of a "global pandemic" is not struggling to find food or shelter. In fact, most people have gotten significantly fatter in the past year.
The average person is not supposed to have it very well, and when they do have it well it is not a good sign for things to come. It means that punishment and misery are soon due for an extended visit. And the better things gets, the happier the masses are, the more fortune they receive in times of excess; the worse things will get, the more pain will be inflicted and the more suffering and torture will be added to their upcoming sentences.