Cycles in Nature, Politics and Religion

We generally don’t think of our lives in terms of cycles except those related to tides and seasons. With the exception of the celestial cycles, we live in the present, rue the past and hope for the future. The world, however, behaves cyclically in many ways. We mortal creatures are born, mature, age and die. The length of the cycles varies greatly. The human cycle in this day and age in the industrialized world is about 80 years long but a millennium ago it was half that. An insect’s cycle, on the other hand is less than one year. The Roman Empire rose and fell. Governments go through cycles, some long, some short with some ending gradually while others come to abrupt ends. The British Empire had a life cycle of several centuries and is still in the process of a very gradual decline. The Mongol Empire started by Genghis Khan, conquered much of the civilized world and lasted a few generations until the black plague sent them back to retire quietly in Mongolia. The Aztec Empire came to an abrupt end at the hand of a small number of superiorly armed Spaniards. The Inca Society disappeared into the jungles for reasons yet unknown. The Soviet Union rose and fell in mere decades. Its demise, though abrupt, was not violent. Our countries position in the world will also fade some day. Will our decline be orderly as was the Brits and take centuries or will it end abruptly in a violent war. Will we hold our position another ten, one hundred or one thousand years? The answers will, to a great extent, be determined by the skill of our leaders and our wisdom in selecting them.
I read or heard somewhere years ago that, unlike the specific cases cited above there are general cycles in governance. These are continuous. A monarchy evolves into a democracy which leads eventually to anarchy. To restore order requires a tyrannical regime and as order is restored, the powers in place continue ruling and become a monarchy. The cycle repeats. The Soviet Union is an example of a very quick cycle lasting only one lifetime. The monarchy was overthrown followed by a very brief attempt at democracy. Russia fell into anarchy bringing in Lenin followed by one of the most tyrannical leaders in history, Stalin. Order was restored and, though not a traditional monarchy with kings and crowns but one with a strong ruling class was established. Their control lasted till the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is not clear to me where Russia is in its cycle now. In a few decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union it may have gone through the democracy, anarchy stage, has passed the tyranny stage and is sliding into a monarchy under Putin.
The big question since man has had the ability to reason is how did we come to be and how will we end? The followers of the God of Abraham (Jews, Christians and Muslims) have a narrative that has man starting with Adam and Eve and ending at some point. Many, if not most, in the industrialized world believe man has evolved over many millions of years much as was described by Darwin. Much of Fundamentalist Christendom, on the other hand, believe that man literally started in Eden a few thousand years ago and unlike their kin, envision a full cycle from beginning to end. They believe that the end is near and if the Anti-Christ is not already here, he will be soon leading us into an Armageddon and in the Rapture.
The Hindus believe that there is a very long cycle within which are numerous minor cycles. Intellectually it makes sense to me. (If I am not mistaken, we are currently just beginning the downward slide). After all we have the rises and falls of empires, the comings and goings of ice ages and the beginnings and ends of species and beliefs. The large cycle could be the appearances and disappearances of “intelligent” beings.
All of the above was really only my excuse to segue into one of my favorite stories. A Sage in India (I believe it was The Buddha) was once asked how long this major cycle called a Culpa, really is. His response went something like this: Imagine a dove carrying a silk scarf in its beak drags it over the peak of the Himalayas once every hundred years. A Culpa is the amount of time it will take the dove to wear away the mountain. The thing I like about this measure of time is that it is finite, giving a real sense of a very, very long time. Unlike terms like eons, endless or infinite everyone hearing the story comes away with a similar sense of this time. In fact an engineer with nothing better to do with his life, could calculate a reasonable estimate. They would figure out the mass and consequently the number of molecules currently in the Himalayas. They will need to determine the average length of the dove’s trip as the mountain erodes, calculate the number of molecules the scarf moves as it glides over the surface and finally project the number of years.
So we have hundreds of narratives with many theories about the cycle governing our existence on Earth from the several thousand to the answer the calculation above would yield. Unfortunately many of us are absolutely convinced that our belief in the cycle of man is the right one but the probability is very high that none of us may even be close.