Societies cycle between hardship that breeds strength and prosperity that breeds weakness, each producing the other in turn.
The four-line cycle comes from G. Michael Hopf's post-apocalyptic novel Those Who Remain (2016), and spread widely online, especially among conservative and self-improvement audiences. Its shape echoes older cyclical theories, such as Ibn Khaldun's account of dynasties rising on group solidarity and decaying in comfort.
In practice
- A company founded by hungry founders grows comfortable under their successors and is overtaken by a leaner rival.
- A family's first generation builds a business and its third sells it.
- Possible explanations
- One explanation is incentive: hardship rewards effort and cooperation, while prosperity relaxes both. Another is selective memory: people notice decline in comfortable times and recovery in hard ones.
- In its favour
- Resembles long-standing cyclical theories, including Ibn Khaldun's asabiyyah, and captures a common intuition about complacency.
- Against it
- Historians find no regular cycle of this kind, and strength and weakness are defined after the fact to fit the outcome. Critics note that many prosperous periods were followed by further prosperity, and that the saying romanticises hardship.
- Standing
- Contested as history; historians have not found a regular cycle of this kind. Compare asabiyyah and the dynastic cycle.
- Subject
- Sociology & Culture
- Essay
- How societies hold together, sort people, and change