Ages Of Discord: A Structural-Demographic Analysis Of American History, by Peter Turchin

In reading this book, I was struck by the fact that there are really two types of books by this author, and both of them are great kinds of books. One sort of book is where the author lets his inner nerd take over and explore the periodicity of cycles through elegant mathematics, demonstrating the rigorous logic and statistical reasoning behind his ideas, which is where this book belongs. The other sort of book is where the author restrains his inner math nerd and writes elegant prose explaining his ideas in layman’s terms so that they may be understood by a wider audience, which is where his more popular books sit, including the book which inspired the name of my blog. I am enough of a math nerd myself, I must admit, that I understood what the author was getting at, but in reading this book I can fully understand why it is that the author’s prophecy that the United States would enter into a time of crisis in the 2020s was entirely missed by the journos who might otherwise have picked up on his savvy understanding of underlying structural dynamics within the United States that would indicate the high likelihood of a crisis occurring as we speak, which we are definitely in. The fact that this prophecy was made before Trump’s election, Covid-19, and the collapse of legitimacy post-2016 in the American nation towards institutions of government on both sides of the political spectrum is impressive and indicates that the author is really onto something even though he hedges his bets as far as how the crisis will resolve.

This book is a bit less than 250 pages in length, and is divided into four parts and 14 chapters. After a short preface, the first part of the book discusses the theoretical introduction to the work (I), which discusses the multi-secular cycles in historical and modern societies (1) as well as the way in which structural-demographic processes are mathematically modeled (2). This is followed by an overview of notable and important structural demographic variables from 1780 to 2010 (II), namely demography and wellbeing (3), elite dynamics (4), the state (5), and dynamics of sociopolitical instability (6), like political violence. This is followed by a discussion of the complete secular cycle from the American Revolution to the Great Depression from around 1780 to 1930 (III), divided by a discussion of long term trends (7), the antebellum era (8), the road to the Civil War, which provides a dynamical model of America just before the Civil War (9), and the period from the Gilded Age to the New Deal (10). The last part of the book then looks at the incomplete current secular cycle from 1930 to 2010 (IV), with chapters on long-term trends between 1930 and 2010 (11), a dynamics model of the period from the New Deal to the Reagan Revolution (12), the social pressures for instability that have continued from the 1970s to today (13), and a conclusion about two ages of discord (14). The book ends with references cited and an index.

Indeed, This book indicates that it is likely going to be a crisis period for a while, barring any massive changes in the United States that would deal with the underlying causes of American misery–wages that have been stagnant to declining for 50 years already, and a corrupt and incompetent elite along with way too many elite aspirants who are convinced (not wrongly) that they could do it better. How exactly things will turn out depends on the little decisions of history, such as the perceived fairness and justice of elections, the graciousness of losers to vacate office and seek to enter retirement communities to open up positions to new elites, as well as the cessation of efforts to demonize the core demographic within the United States and the recovery of some sense of opportunity for the mass of ordinary people. Those who are pessimistic about how people will act as well as the quality of leaders we have and will have within the next couple of decades will likely not be optimistic about how this crisis is going to turn out, since we appear for a variety of reasons to be in a secular crisis within the English-speaking world, the sort of time where people fight it out over religion, politics, immigration, morality, and legitimacy throughout the English-speaking world. The signs, in other words, don’t look good, even if you can only read the text and not understand the underlying mathematics.