Deathblow

You can see the seeds of destruction in a complex civilization - or at least in this one - far before the final outstripping of ecological supports, as well as the exhaustion and disintegration of surrounding extraction colonies.

A collective purpose is lost, guiding ideals are shattered, a feeling of innocence or naivete or even righteousness is lost, however misplaced it is, leaving only the pursuit of private power as a guiding impulse, which generates sympathetic impulses wherever it arises, all of which reinforce each other and amplify each other.

And then it is so that this outpouring of fragmented wills set against each other contribute to their mutual instability, causing them to grow tighter in compensation, proceeding to a hypercritical state.

The advent of this outpouring and this unravelling is the true deathblow; ecological collapse, catastrophic conquest, and cannibalization is only the logical end.

Power Fear

In Western culture, there is this instinctual fear that one might lose power if one cedes any power to another, as if one has to clutch one's ration of power for dear life, and that another, upon gaining power, may ride that power up and away, and become one's permanent master.

But the truth of the matter is that someone who is starved for power just wants some power, a bit more than they have had previously, and that giving someone a little power is not tantamount to opening the flood gates. Most human beings will be satisfied with the basic power to live a decent life.

It is the pervasive fear among the powerful, that they may lose their power, and that they refuse to cede any of it, that produces and reproduces the existence of the power starved, who, upon being starved, continue to strive for it, producing a tension which does end up resulting in oscillations of power, as the forced seizure of power must result in an inertia in which power is accumulated once again.

This is because the trauma of perpetual starvation and the seizure of power is such that one wants to always keep power, so that it cannot happen again, so it must be accumulated once again.

And so the refusal of both sides to give - the just refusal of the poor to lie down and be destroyed, and the unjust refusal of the rich to cede power - produces a universal and binding tension, which at its peak, results in a reversal in which some new group takes power and fights tooth and nail to keep it. 

Look Over Here Now

The social energy seems to move away from that which is oversaturated (to the point of a positive reality curdling) to points of high potentiality and promise. 

For example, mass concerns with material and political realities alternate with concerns about spiritual realities as the energy moves. This is better explained here.