Cycles and Forteana

Why Study Cycles?

The topic of cycles should be of primary interest to any Fortean researcher for two reasons. For one thing, cycles have only been recognized as occurring in certain phenomena within the past twenty years. The fact that such phenomena obey complex cyclical behavior has led to all sorts of amazing insights. For one thing,we would expect our predictive ability to be enhanced. But the problem is that many cycles, such as the weather, are driven by such inordinately complex systems which are terribly dependent on initial conditions. Because most systems 'feed back' on themselves, their cyclical behavior - while strangely orderly, regular, and repetitive - is often impossible to predict with perfect accuracy. Chaos lurks even in that most trustworthy of timekeepers, the pendulum. One area of particular interest for some 'fringe' researchers is how social cycles may be influenced by natural cycles - such as the interdependence of climate and culture. (And astrologers have long maintained that our behavior follows certain regular repetitive behavior on the part of the stars.) Or sunspots and the business cycle. Ultimately, it is clear that the cycles are a holistic subject, which is why they are appropriate for the systems approach of our age.

The other reason why cycles interest many Fortean researchers is that non-ordinary occurences display cyclical behavior as well. Fortean occurences do appear to be governed by certain temporal patterns, the primary one being that they tend to break out in geographically and temporally localized "flaps." This "flap" phenomenon was first noted by UFO researchers, and David Saunders has devised a basic 7 1/2 year cycle for UFO waves, which may be applicable to other Fortean phenomena. Since Fortean occurences seem to defy the laws of physics and 'normality' that govern our world, it seems surprising why they would show such regularity in their incidence. It is therefore of the utmost importance to examine why this is the case. For the presence of cyclical behavior indicates either that a phenomenon is cybernetically (self-directed) driven or that some external intelligence is manipulating it. If either is true, both have astounding implications. The nature of Forteana is such that they seem to have something strongly to do with time in some fundamental way - they seem to suggest that, perhaps, our linear model of the 'flow' of time may have flaws.

Properties of Cycles

According to standard geometry, cycles have four basic variables which describe their mathematical description: amplitude, phase, duration (or wavelength), and frequency. In discussing most waveforms in nature, such as sound or light, all these variables are important. When we say that the sunspot cycle is an 11-year cycle (actually, it is closer to 11 1/3 years, but I digress), we are really saying that the sunspot peak has a duration of 1 year, reaching its maximum once every 11 years, and always falling to a minimum before the next cycle begins. Some cycles may have "troughs" and variable "peaks" (amplitudes) - so there are two patterns. One is the regular "peaking" of the cycle and the other is the repetition of certain amplitudes. But most cycles researchers generally look at only the final variable, frequency: namely, how often does the cycle repeat? Fourier analysis offers us an important tool in describing cycles mathematically, so that we can break them down into smaller sub-cycles. If the sunspot cycle is examined carefully, it apparently really consists of two 5 1/2 year interlocking cycles that appear to be an 11 year cycle.

Cycles have several important properties. Most are homeostatic: that is to say, they are able to respond to outside perturbations and return to their original state. Occasionally, once so 'perturbed,' the fluctuations of the cycle may become irregular and unstable, until the cycle basically becomes completely nonlinear: this state is known as bifurcation . Cycles also often obey the principle of 'phase locking': they are brought into phase with other cycles through friction or other forces. Planetary rotations fall into common phases due to tidal forces, but there are many other cycles which are "synchronized" this way. And almost all cycles are entropic, meaning that their frequency starts to decrease as a function of time. For example, it has long been known that the Earth's rotation is slowing down. Most importantly, cycles inevitably are additive, so that amplitudes may cumulatively increase; or, when two cycles are 180 degrees out of phase, they may cancel out completely. Apparent cyclical behavior may be the result of the additive properties of numerous sub-cycles.

Natural Cycles

Some of the most well-known cycles in the natural world are the ones by which we order our lives. The changing of the seasons, the phases of the moon, the circumpolar movements of the stars, and the slow movement of the setting sun all provide the basis for our calendars and clocks. (Today, clock time is measured from one of the most accurate cycles of all - the oscillations of the atomic nucleus. Atomic clocks will probably only lose 1 second every million years or so, as compared to the Earth's rotation, which is slowing noticeably quicker.) In the natural world, we find ecological cycles upon which all life depends, such as the carbon and rain cycles; biological cycles, such as the circadian and ultraradian rhythms of life; and zoological cycles such as the boom-and-bust of animal populations and the seventeen-year locusts. The sexologist Kinsey found that human sexuality was a deeply cyclical affair, a fourfold phase of arousal, excitation, 'discharge,' and relaxation. Many of the so-called 'occult sciences' claim to make predictions of future events from perceived cycles in emotional, physical, and intellectual life (the so-called Fliess "biorhythms" found in the curious behavior of the phallic nose) or repeating conjunctions of celestial bodies in various sectors of the sky (astrology.)

There are also various geological cycles, such as the periodicity of the eruption of geysers such as "Old Faithful" and outbreaks of earthquakes and vulcanism; astronomical cycles such as the Platonic Great Year in which the precession of the equinoxes returns to its origin point and the ever-so-famous sunspot cycle; and the chemical cycles such as the Krebs reaction. Geometers have found that many of the cycles in nature seem to be based on fundamental harmonic ratios - in particular, the constant phi , otherwise known as the Golden Ratio, upon which the Fibonacci series is based. The equiangular spiral, symbol of the never-ceasing cycle (which sprawls outward toward infinity), may be constructed from a series of ever-diminishing Golden Rectangles. Perhaps the first observer of such fundamental harmonic properties in nature was Pythagoras, who realized that the musical scale was based on repeating multiples of tones, and who also deduced that the orbits of the planets - since they also appeared to follow a harmonic pattern (i.e. Bode's Law) - must eke out some heavenly Music of the Spheres. This deduction - that bodies in nature followed precise ratios of repetition and vibration - would also prove to be true at a quantum level as well: the idea of the "quantum" is based on the observation that photons appear to move in discrete packets of energy.

Social Cycles

Perhaps the first commentator to point out the key importance of cyclical phenomena in the social world was the Renaissance philosopher Giambattista Vico. Other social scientists have followed in his stead. Almost everyone is familiar with Arthur Schlesinger's 30-year cycle of American politics and how the public continually oscillates within that cycle between the poles of isolationism and interventionism, liberalism and conservatism, and optimism and pessimism. But not many know of the sociologist Pritirim Sorokin's division of human history into centuries-long phases which he termed Ideal, Rational, and Sensate; or the economist Kondratieff's discovery of "Long Waves" in the business cycle of which the smaller 'boom/bust' or seven year 'recession/growth' cycles are but mere ripples. Yet other commentators focusing on military history have pointed out the regularity of war in human affairs, which at times almost appears to be a continuous cycle which is merely 'interrupted' by outbreaks of peace. "Chronosociologists" have observed the pace of various societies in completing their daily round of activities - by calculating the average amount of time to complete various tasks - and have concluded that Japan may be one of the most "sped up" societies in the world today. Those societies which have a great history - such as those in the Middle East - eulogize their past cycles through ritual commemoration (such as the Teshah B'Avah ceremony in Judaism, which supposedly coincided with multiple tragedies in Jewish history.)

Those who know something about Hindu religion know it divides cosmic time into yugas , of which this current one is the last, the Kali Yuga. This fourfold cycle is repeated in Maya and Greek cosmogony. Students of literature have found a fourfold cycle which some have connected to the very origins of drama and storytelling in seasonal nature ritual. Literature appears to pass through phases of Romance, Tragedy, Satire, and Comedy, with the cycle coming around always to romance at the zenith of an era and Satire or Irony at its nadir. Close examination of the arts & letters and popular culture in the 1980s reveals that our society was in the throes of a romantic period, after the bitterly satiric and later comedic art of the 70s, and that in the ascetic, grim "falling down" 90s we have entered another phase of tragedic writing. Some commentators on history, having observed that it is basically cyclical, sometimes utilize this idea as a potentiator for transformation (Marx's Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte - "history always occurs twice, once as tragedy, then again as farce.") Others, like Nietzsche, confronted the old Stoic idea of Eternal Recurrence - "all that was, will be again; there is nothing new under the sun" - and emerged with a deep, inescapable pessimism: no progress could be made, ever. But those who understand the nature of cycles know that in Cartesian space, they move ever further out from the center, attaining the same points, but always further from the origin.

Interconnected Cycles

Do some natural cycles influence behavior in the social world? Is some of the cyclical behavior we can discover in human history a result of natural forces? Certainly some "climate-culture" researchers feel so. Biometeorologists have gone to great lengths to establish the connections between the weather and biological systems. Many people are highly weather sensitive, and feel great discomfort during changes in pressure, temperature, or humidity. One can assume that this might directly influence their behavior. But other climate researchers focus on how climate might affect such things as food production, migration, and social organization, and such a focus might help illuminate better the "long wave" climate-culture connections. Since there is a strong correlation between sunspots, solar magnetic flux, and the weather, some biometerologists feel they have their long lost link between sunspots and behavior! In any case, it is possible that ancient astronomers did establish a link between the rising of certain stars and certain seasonal changes (i.e. the flooding of the Nile) and then what effects those climate changes might have on societies; this could have been the so-called "scientific basis" of astrology.

One climate researcher feels that there is a basic 100-year climate-culture pattern. One can divide the centuries of history into a basic set of three phases, he claims: a 25 year "warm-wet" phase, a 25 year "warm-dry" phase, and a 50 year "cold phase" (with its own wet/dry division.) According to this author, there are sharp changes in economic behavior, philosophical beliefs, scientific attitudes, aesthetics, and political systems during these periods. In the "warm-wet" phase, one might find periods of centralization, idealism, imperialism, classicism, and impressionism. In the "warm-dry" phase, those might be succeeded by eras of despotism, decline, slavery, absolutism, moral decline, surrealism, fanatacism, intoversion, and general decline. These are then often followed by "cold" phases in which the domination skeins are individualism, exploration, materialism, realism, naturalism, and taxonomic pursuits. The climate-culture researcher strongly feels that science, reason, equality, and democracy make their greatest leaps forward during such cold (especially cold-dry) periods. Not surprisingly, he often points to the long-believed racist 'fact' that cultures in hot, tropical climates never 'progress' to civilization to buttress his argument, and cliams that the northern European societies made their advances during the Little Ice Age period which encompassed the Renaissance and Reformation. (These 100-year cycles are apparently subcycles of "long wave" 500-year grand climate transforms, but that's a whole 'nother story.)

The Law of Fives

In Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus! trilogy, he discusses the supposed Law of Five which originated with that Bavarian magus, Adam Weishaupt, who killed George Washington and then grew hemp as our nation's first predient. The Law's essential principle is that civilization passes through a fivefold cycle: Verwirung (Chaos), Zweitracht (Discord), Unordnung (Confusion), Beamtenherrschaft (Bureaucracy), and Grummet (Aftermath). From a Hegelian point of view, one might call those historical phases Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis, Parenthesis, and Paralysis: "after the tricycle always comes the bicycle." Wilson probably derived his Law of Five from averaging the Laws of Three and Seven (the Octave) proclaimed by Gurdjieff, although he really says it comes from the sum of the digits of the mystic number 23. Another character relates it into the Chinese elemental system - the Chinese cognized a fivefold universe of wood, metal, wind, fire, and earth, all of which fed and canceled each other in harmony. Their system derived a fivefold elemental cosmos from the binary yin and yang , unlike Aristotle, who derived his four elements and humors from the principles of aridity (wet/dry) and temperature (hot/cold). Whereas the cycle of Western literature derives from this fourfold wheel of seasons and elements, Chinese literature, medicine, and philosophy derives from their fivefold way. (They also had a fifth season, which they basically called "Midyear.")

Whether Weishaupt ever articulated such a system outside of Wilson's imagination is not known. But certainly his (or Wilson's) sources would have come out of the Chinese cultural experience. It has long been believed that the main obstacle to the Chinese civilization's "progress" is that they never had the linear cosmos and time of the West, created for it by the Persians and Christianity. Joseph Campbell makes this thesis explicit: all of the Asian philosophical systems - Hinduism, Taoism, Shinto, Jainism, etc. - are based on what he calls the "Round of Being" cosmology, which in the West was replaced (and completed) first by the linear Nordic Ragnarok which puts a coda in history, and then by the Christian Armageddon. While the Hellenes had a cosmology of decline (from Gold to Silver to Bronze to Iron), their philosophers were also cognizant of an earlier philosophy, learned by Solon from the priests of Egypt. That cosmology was that "civilization" had stood where it was now many times before, and had been shattered many times, through a periodic cleansing of the planet by flood and fire, with mankind always making the same perilous ascent and the same inevitable slow decline.

Are Fortean "flaps" social or natural?

One of the famous episodes in the sociological literature pertaining to the sociology of health and medicine is the so-called "Junebug Epidemic." A worker in a factory was bitten at a factory picnic by a "junebug" and shortly thereafter came down with a debilitating medical condition whose symptoms included dizziness, nausea, headaches, muscle aches, and fatigue. Medically, nothing could be found wrong with him. No toxins, bacteria or other biological agents, or allergies could be found. Yet shortly after his contraction of the "disease," the Junebug 'epidemic' began to mysteriously spread to other workers, who began to manifest a similar set of symptoms. Lest one think this was all a clever scam cooked up by their union for comp time, doctors did determine that the workers' symptoms were quite real - but the causes also wholly psychosomatic. The only ones who contracted the "disease" were associates of the original "infected" worker. But the key thing to understand here is that this was spread by social contagion (like rumors) and not by physical contact. The workers did not share utensils, glasses, or any other such germ vectors. A similar phenomenon may be at work in the so-called "sick building" syndrome. Ventilation of a so-called 'sick building,' which would have removed any sort of indoor pollution or disease vector, did nothing to reduce the incidence of the syndrome's symptoms in the workers in the building.

The story is here to illustrate a key point. What seemed to be a natural epidemic was in fact social in origin. A close analysis of the Junebug case revealed a high degree of tension between workers and management, which revealed itself "physically" through the "epidemic." So, we must ask, are Fortean "flaps" natural cycles, like the others described above, driven by some unknown force? Or is the "flap" phenomenon in fact (as Ulrich Magin and others have claimed) a result of social dynamics in our society pertaining to the transmission of stories and anecdotes? Do "flaps" break out because one person sees a (mistakenly) anomalous event, and then the need for 'me-tooism' causes people in contact with that person to want (and thus encounter) similar experiences? Can the regularity of "UFO flaps" be correlated closely with cultural dynamics, such as the changing 'temperature' of the Cold War or the perceived threats facing humanity, as researchers like Thomas Bearden have claimed? Are the cycles of social psychology, such as the collective anxiety which inevitably governs changes in a society's folklore, at the root of Fortean cycles?

Inevitably, this may often be the case. We must be too anxious to 'naturalize' the unnatural, Forteana. Bigfoot sightings do follow a certain periodicity that some researchers have analyzed as a basic migratory pattern, if one was dealing with a creature whose behavior was as normal and regular as lemmings, locusts, or hibernating bears. UFO sightings do seem to follow a 6 1/2 year cycle, which might seem to be the time they take to "report home" and come back, if we are dealing with outer space visitors. Fortean "falls" and other manifestations also display certain critical annual and multiyear cycles, as Loren Coleman and other researchers have noted, almost as if Charlie's "Sargasso Sea in the Sky" filled up every couple of years. What is most curious is that those cycles seem to repeat within the same "window" areas, as if a "gate" to some borderland world was swinging open and shut with a mysterious regularity... it almost seems to suggest a cosmos where other dimensions slowly swing in and out of the 'orbit' of our own universe, if one want to run with that metaphor. The deep cyclicality of Fortean outbreaks may be a result of hidden laws of nature we have yet to fathom: for where there are cycles and periodicity, there is a governing organizing principle.

Steve Mizrach

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