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By Barry Buzza
Last week I wrote about the 3 views of time and history -- chaotic, linear, and cyclical. We all hold one view, and the way we see the flow of history will affect how we approach our future.
A chaotic view, which is at its root atheistic, is that there is no Master Creator or Planner, so there is no rhythm or planned direction that the world will naturally follow. A linear view which I call "the American Dream" is that if we don't make any colossal blunders, life will just keep on getting better and better.
The third view (belief in a higher power) has been held by believers, whether occult or religious, for millennia. That perspective sees history as cyclical. It goes round and round in an 80-110 year cycle. Each 360 degree turn of history will predictably follow season-like quarters. These 20-25 year seasons will be distinct -- the spring quadrant is like March in BC with new hope, promise of life, growing prosperity, health, and happiness. Summer season will be alive with artistic color, fruitfulness, new ideas, increased light, and gaiety.
The Fall 25 year season still carries the blessing of summer, but disintegration and disillusionment are in the air. The promises of summer fade and the sky grows colder and darker. As sure as fall has come, winter always follows.
The winter quadrant begins with one crisis or more and carries with it a pervasive darkness that influences the mood, economy, and social structure of the populace.
In our recent history, the four past 20 year seasons are easily identifiable. October 29, 1929 was crises #1 that brought an abrupt end to the roaring 20's. Crises of drought, disease, locust plagues, and windstorms quickened our fall into the dark winter season which extended through the depressions and war years.
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May 1945 brought WWII to an end and opened the spring season. I was born and raised in that 20 year stretch of family stability, growing prosperity and optimism. In 1967 the summer season blossomed. Color (do you remember the clothes we actually wore?), design, art, music, and religion, burst wide open in full bloom. We threw out the past, bathwater, baby and all! It was a new day -- life would never again be dull, boring, stiff, or restrictive again! We were free at last -- so we thought!
But the fact is that summer has a very predictable way of ending. And fall follows. From 1967-1987 we have been living in a fall season. Rather than continued linear growth as a society, we have begun to unravel. Marriage, family and friendships are disintegrating. We abort children we don't want; we euthanize the infirm or elderly. Disease is rampant. Terrorism sits threateningly at our door, and we feel an impending doom.
Those with a linear view of life are optimistic though. "We'll defeat poverty, drugs, disease and terrorism. Our environmental, social, and political problems will be overcome. We'll somehow crawl out of our record high personal debt!"
But history is cyclical and always has been. A storm is brewing just beyond the horizon.
I'm a very positive person who always sees the cup as half-full rather than half-empty, but based on history's 100 year cycles, I feel safe in predicting a soon coming crisis. I'll come back to this subject next week.
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Barry Buzza, a veteran pastor, is the president elect of the The Foursquare Gospel Church of Canada. www.foursquare.ca
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August 2/2007
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