A3 Secular Crisis

Topic

The secular crisis—also known as the "age of discord"—is the phase in which a society simultaneously accumulates several distinct structural tensions: elite overproduction, real wage stagnation, state fiscal stress, and polarization. Along with the economy, the secular crisis is one of the two themes that the "resource regime" track carries forward whenever it shifts to a new stage. As long as these four tensions appear in isolation and do not coincide, society does not enter a secular crisis; each tension can be absorbed individually without triggering it.

The secular crisis is triggered by the co-occurrence of these tensions, not by the intensity of any single one of them; society enters the secular crisis when at least three of the four—elite overproduction, real wage stagnation, state fiscal stress, and polarization—coincide simultaneously. The coincidence of only two of these tensions is insufficient to trigger the secular crisis; at least three of the four must be present for the crisis to take hold.

Therefore, identifying the secular crisis does not mean monitoring elite overproduction, real wage stagnation, state fiscal stress, or polarization in isolation, but rather tracking how many of these four structural tensions are active at the same time. Once three or more coincide, the secular crisis ceases to be a latent risk and becomes an ongoing phase—the very phase that, generation after generation, is recognized as an age of discord.

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