Bifurcation

“There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks in which decades happen.”
—Vladimir Ilytch Lenin

The current news cycle reflects the latter. Every day, it seems, “breaking news” happens.

Societal changes often do not follow smooth trajectories; they occur via irregular starts and stops.

When a physical system begins to evolve rapidly, it begins to bifurcate onto new paths more and more swiftly, reflecting the increased acceleration of events. Perhaps this is also true of social events.

In physics there is a phenomenon called bifurcation. In the study of dynamical systems, a bifurcation occurs when a small change made to the parameters of a system causes a sudden change in its behavior. If this occurs rapidly, we can get something like this:

Source: https://www.marksmath.org/classes/Fall2016FractalLAC/demos/BifurcationDiagram/shadedBifurcationDiagram.png

In Period 1 (Decade 1, let’s say) the society is stable and is just humming along. Then in Period 2, a significant change is introduced (let’s say, a pandemic), which causes a bifurcation. Then the system begins to change so rapidly that you can hardly keep track of events and chaos results.

Systems can evolve chaotically and when they do, they usually settle down and stabilize, as shown in the next diagram:

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bifurcation_theory#/media/File:Chaosorderchaos.png

On the left, a chaotic system settles down to one state. This carries on for a while until changes occur that evolve the system to a new state. The file is aptly named “ChaosOrderChaos.”

My guess is that this is how evolution occurs: first a slow change, then more and more rapid changes and evolution to a new, stable mutation. If social systems evolve in this way, where are we right now in the US? I’d say in the chaotic period. No one knows to which state our social system will change to: it could devolve to a barbaric state or even destroy itself, or it could evolve to a higher state.

You can connect the right side of the diagram back to the left side to get a repeating pattern. This pattern is called “human history.”

Change in Social Systems

What causes changes in social systems? There are a lot of people smarter than me who have studied this, but I’m going to take a different tack. In a previous post I talked about a “Spiritual Overton Window,” which could also be called a “Social Overton Window.” Here, the decisions of the people within the society decide where the system evolves to. This may seem obvious, but it is of crucial importance.

A society composed of people who decide that the economy is going to collapse, or that WW III will destroy the planet, are creating that energy in the human consciousness, or what I call the Human ThoughtSpace.

The decisions of 8 billion people within the Human ThoughtSpace determines the permitted actions of any of the players. Some of the political/social actors on our planet (who are, in my opinion, mostly psychopaths) seem determined to create a dystopian future. But these actors are not more powerful than the rest of us. It may SEEM that they are because they currently control the levers of power and finance. But the ultimate destination of any social system is determined by all 8 billion human beings. The Game of Politics is, and has always been, to convince the public of a certain agenda. If people see that the powerful actors have decided to go in a downward direction the rest of us get angry and depressed, and begin to rail against and resist the “New World Order.” But this just entrains our thought to their agenda! Some of us get depressed and just give up, thinking that the common person is powerless. “What can I do to stop these nutjobs?” is the refrain.

But the common person is not powerless. The collective consciousness determines the permitted actions of all players in society, including those who currently hold power. The problem is that so many of us feel a sense of unworthiness, whereas the psychopaths feel an unwarranted sense of entitlement; that all of their goals, even if they are selfish and destructive to the common good, are divinely ordained.

However, there is one thing almost every sane person in our rage- and hate-filled society can agree on: that people should be prosperous, and that human life should be respected. (The psychopaths are less than 5% of the population, so they are hopelessly outnumbered in the Human ThoughtSpace.)  

Democrats, Republicans, Liberals, Conservatives, can all agree on that. In this conception, the thought streams that enter and flow from the Human ThoughtSpace determine what can and cannot be done, because broad agreement from billions of people is an overwhelmingly powerful force. This powerful “thought force” naturally entrains thought and belief to it.

We’ve all experienced what happens in a group when everyone agrees on something and you are the only one who disagrees. Can’t you feel an actual force pressing on you to agree? People on juries experience this if they are the one holdout preventing a case settlement. Now imagine the power of millions of people all rejecting the current paradigm of war and death, and agreeing about peace! Thought is a very, very, very powerful force.

The so-called “Powers That Be” can only operate if we go into agreement with them. Let’s not do that! The psychos and the nutjobs are only looking out for themselves anyway, and they are in the overwhelming minority. Their power in the Human ThoughtSpace is minimal compared to the rest of us, unless they can convince us that it’s all hopeless.  That’s the Narrative/Information Game that is being played out on the planetary stage, for the  hearts, minds, and souls of humanity.

We can move the Social Overton Window to higher and higher states if we understand that the spiritual system on our planet empowers us. This might not be obvious, but it is part of the evolutionary process humanity is going through. Human evolution is a spiritual process, where humans reject the negative and focus on the positive.  

Did you enjoy this edition of the newsletter? Tell us what subjects most interest you!

Please take the
 Spiritual Wisdom Newsletter Survey

Ken is a freelance writer and editor who lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. Since childhood, Ken has been thinking about the Big Picture and how to increase spiritual understanding in the world. 

http://www.kjmaclean.com (Ken's Personal Website)

http://www.macleanediting.com (Professional Editing Services)

http://www.thevibrationaluniverse.com