Pendulum

Somewhere in one of my undergrad history classes, the notion of the pendulum of history was discussed. The concept has stuck, and become part of my analysis of life and the world.

As you know, the pendulum’s path is governed by three forces: gravity, momentum, and friction. There’s actually a fourth force -the rotation of the earth- but for now we’ll leave that out of the discussion.

If you suspend a heavy weight on a cord and release it from a height, it will swing downwards to a point, then continue upwards to another point almost as high as that from which you released it. From there, of course, it will swing back to very nearly its starting position, and so on, back and forth, back and forth, until eventually it comes to rest, hanging straight down.

It’s gravity, of course, which draws the weight downward to its low point, but the momentum accumulated by the downward swing will carry the pendulum further and upward, until the force of the momentum is equal to the force of gravity. At that point, the pendulum stops, and reverses, first drawn by gravity, then hurled by momentum. The pattern continues, and continues, and continues, and would sustain forever but for the depradation of friction, which exerts a tax which little by little exhausts the forces of gravity and momentum.

Life is very much like that. The price of gasoline, for example, shoots up to unconscionable heights, all of us screaming in terror, then before we know it, swoops back down to levels that have the petroleum industry in a panic.

In political life, conservatives hold sway for a while and remake the world in their own image of hard-nosed laissez-faire, until voters become disgusted with the brutality of the raw markets and toss the SOBs out in favor of kinder, gentler, liberals. Until, that is, liberal wooly-mindedness gets so far out of touch with reality that it’s time to restore some market “reality” and the conservatives get another turn. And so it goes.

It was my dear old Dad who counseled me not to throw out my wide neckties when narrow ties came into fashion, because, he said, in ten years or so, your wide ties will be all the rage again. Ditto for the narrow ones. And he was right.

That’s just life. Trends come, and trends go, but very often, they just cycle back, kind of like pendulum swings.

Now, this doesn’t exactly allow us to predict the future with any certainty, but it at least helps us avoid hyperventilating about change. Because there’s a very high likelihood that today’s crazy trend will reach some extreme, then reverse itself. What was in vogue before will be in vogue again, just updated a little. And then that too will fall out of fashion, to be replaced by what used to be, more or less. And the pendulum continues.

Perhaps the best lesson is to avoid being whacked in the head by the pendulum when it swings back.