11 Historical Perspectives through the Lens of Solve

The next section, Historical Perspectives Through the Lens of Solve, will be the final section of our exploration of solve. It will also be the longest section of this book, and will be the section which is most liable to see significant additions in the years to come. It consists of two parts.

The first part, The Cycle of Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis, lays out my fundamental view of history, the top-level context for all of my views about where we are as a species, and what we’re supposed to be doing.

The second part, Applied Solve, consists of  a series of case studies about specific issues afflicting the modern, Western world. While Cycles of Thesis and Antithesis is necessary to understanding these chapters and should be read first, these case studies are topic-specific and can be read in any order (though they reference each other freely). These case studies are:

• Hysteria Spirals, which explores the consequence of the mass-adoption of 3c ideology, a pattern of hysteria which gave rise to the Holocaust, as well as lesser tragedies such as the Red Scare and the War on Terror.
• Capitalism’s Apotheosis in Fascism, which examines the Second World War, and the ways in which Nazi Germany epitomized the antithetical cycle embodied in Capitalism, as well as the changes which Western society has undergone in its attempts to avoid repeating this terrible outcome.
• Models of Change Across Historical Epochs, which discusses the sheer breadth of change across cycles of history, and what this might indicate regarding the feasibility of Communism
• The Four Classes of American Politics, which lays out a system of classes which intersect with the 9 dispositions to explain almost every political movement in the modern US.
• Hookup Culture and Mass Romantic Incompatibility, which uses Pathological Compatibility to explain falling birth rates, growing loneliness, and the collapse of Western romantic life.
• Nonparticipation and Building a Holocaust-Proof Society examines the extent to which it’s possible to sustain an industrial economy without backsliding into Fascism, and the techniques of mass, spontaneous resistance which might be capable of defusing authoritarianism
• Bourgeois Morality: The Social Phenomenology of Capitalism, which explains the ways in which the norms of modern society are derived from and sustained by the 3c disposition.

These case studies represent the most abstract applications of the Framework’s analysis. While at first glance they might seem divorced from your everyday experiences, and the solve process in which you are likely embedded, keep in mind that the purpose of solve is to locate ourselves within the range of human experience, to see precisely what our “damage” is. Top-level context is just as important to this process as immediate context is— in fact, it’s often more so, as you can frequently derive the conditions on the ground from the conditions of society overall.

So, as we continue into these more abstract discussions, please keep this question in mind: Where do you fit into all of this? It’s not a question I can answer for you, but it’s absolutely a question you’ll have to answer for yourself,  if you want to achieve complete self-knowledge and bring the solve process to its conclusion.