In 1947 Oxford University Press published a summary of the first six volumes of the work “A Study of History,” by Arnold J. Toynbee. This summary probably does a better job of capturing the essence of what Toynbee’s approach to history was all about than anything done before or after. Toynbee saw history as a process of the development of civilization by societies that entered into this development as a result of meeting challenges from the environment. As this process went on, three elements were particularly important, the internal proletariat (lower classes inside the society), the external proletariat and the dominant minority. The dominant minority might encourage the withdrawal of a society, or withdrawal and return. When the society failed to meet challenges resulting from the above, a time of troubles might encourage the dominant minority to encourage militarism and the creation of a universal state.
Universal states were not necessarily good things in the view of Toynbee. There were only a few of them still in operation, according to Toynbee’s earlier version of this idea. Western Civilization had emerged from the disintegration of Hellenic Civilization and the universal state that was the Roman Empire. The Greek speaking East had created a universal state in the form of the Greek Orthodox Empire centered in Constantinople. When the Persian Empire (a product of Syriac Empire) was replaced by an Islamic universal state, what emerged was Islamic civilization. Toynbee saw universal churches, like the Roman Catholic Church, like the Moslem religion, as responses of universal states to the needs of their internal proletariat.
In other places we have used the Chinese Book of Changes, the I Ching to analyze relationships like that above. When we use the I Ching, we do not use the second arrangement and the hexagrams which have more to do with the dynamics of polarities and the subtle relationships of these polarities shown in the hexagrams, but rather we use the original arrangement of the trigrams which reduces these dynamics to their primitive sources. For example, in the Early Heaven arrangement of the trigrams, the Heaven trigram at the top is opposed to the Earth trigram at the bottom, source to product, challenge to response, originating society to developed civilization, in the material presented by Toynbee.
Flame, on the left is opposed to Water Pit on the right, showing relationships like the opposition between Sun and Moon, between brightness and shadow. Flame would symbolize the external barbarian and the external proletariat raiding a society and challenging it from outside. Water Pit would be the order, the universal state that the society might develop in order to organize its response to such challenges. As we move from Flame to Water Pit, there is the Lake trigram, the Heaven trigram, and the Wind trigram. Lake represents the development of a response in the internal proletariat, such as a universal church as a way of meeting the external challenge, Heaven represents the creativity of the society in respect to its environment, as it faces challenges. Wind would represent the dominant minority and what ever philosophy it develops in its time of troubles in response to challenge and Water Pit would be the universal state that might result,
Next to Water Pit is Mountain, which represents the option of withdrawal, then is Earth, the product, the response that society generates, Thunder is vulgarization, disintegration, what happens when the control of the dominant minority, the penetrating Wind, the philosophy, the voice of the dominant minority fails. Finally, Thunder may give way to Flame, to the rise of the external proletariat and raids by barbarians, resulting in an interregnum as a new civilization, a universal church; a new universal state emerges in response in the Lake trigram.
Various civilizations seem to have an excess of the one quality over the other. The Indic, Hindu civilization seems to specialize in the Wind phase, in giving its dominant minority special status through mechanisms like the caste system and philosophical systems such as the dursanas. In contrast the English speaking aspect of Western civilization seems taken up with vulgarization and disintegration as it spreads the commercial and market aspect of the Western civilization. The Sinic, and Far Eastern cultures seem to be particularly good at lake, at synergy, synthesis, and accommodation of the internal proletariat, for example the Southern Sung dynasty of Imperial China. In contrast, the Japanese variant of the Far Eastern seems to emphasize Mountain, and withdrawal. The Islamic civilization seems to have done more to accommodate the barbarian and the external proletariat, Flame trigram, while the Orthodox and Russian seem to be caught up more in the idea of a pure universal state, the Water Pit trigram aspect, to resist the barbarian generated chaos. Finally the Spanish and Portuguese language aspect of the Western civilization seems to have absorbed many of the aboriginal societies and abortive civilizations, thus, the aboriginal peoples of the Amazon, the Mexic, and the Andean abortive civilizations. Thus, Heaven, the aboriginal sources of civilization. While the German and Italian language aspects of Western civilization have been forced more by their exclusion from the earlier phases of the exploration of the world, to concentrate on science, industry, and culture, thus, Earth and the cultural response, the cultural product.
But, all of this is only the development of society from speaking to writing. Civilization is the written stage. But, the nation state is not a city state, is not a product of Anthros to Demos, of the tribe to the civilized levels of organization, but of the Demos to Thermos, of the rise from civilization to industrialization. Now new processes are involved in which new creations like the Euro area emerge as industrialization (the Thermos) organizes media systems (the Atmos) and computer interactions (the Astros) and finally the internet and web (the Synos) as super system derivatives of printed, electronic, computer, internet and web, and virtual reality derivates of the social reality that is physiological response (Bios), psychological response (Psychos), oral language response (Anthros) and written language response (Demos). Just as society (Heaven) to civilization (Earth) generates a new level of organization, so Western civilization has gone from a civilized beginning in a new Heaven to generate a new level of Earth and now appears to be repeating the same magic not just once but several times more.
If the tribe is the primitive unit in the oral language system and the city is the primitive unit in the written language system, so the nation seems to be the primitive unit in the printed language system (industrialized civilization) and the market area in the electronic language system (based civilization).
There were thousands of tribes and thousands of languages, but only a few have written scripts and even fewer have risen to the level of organization necessary to complete in the media based electronic market system. English is the current winner in this race with other language systems following it, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, German, French, Portuguese, Japanese, Hindi, and Russian emerge as possible contenders, with the great nation states: America, Germany, France, Italy, Britain, China, Japan, India, Brazil, and Russia pushing their own systems. But, there are issues here. Some languages, Spanish, are sponsored by lesser states like Mexico, Spain, and Argentina. Some states, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, sponsor more than one language. The media system is yet too primitive to fully understand what is going on.
Yet, consider much of our current warfare to be nothing more than competition among these systems for dominance, first of the emerging industrial world, thus Spanish against Portuguese, then English against French. As English began to win, German and Italian and Japanese rose up to try to take their place, then Russian, now Arabic, as the written language systems of the old civilizations fight for a place in the new emerging post industrial world. The great nation states, Russia, USA, and China can be seen as nothing more than sponsors of a contending media language.
I like to use a tetrahedral version of the trigrams based on the tetrahedron of the primitive elemental dynamics of systems. Fire as the elemental tendency of systems to break open and Pottery as the contrary tendency to close up. Water as the elemental tendency of systems to combine and recombine and Salt as the contrary tendency to segregate and separate out. Earth as the elemental tendency of systems to generate a product, a phenotype, a measurable presence in the world, and Heaven as the source of that product, the creative beginning. Air as the set point of a system, its purpose, ideas, ideals, and Dust as its expression. In trigram terms Earth is Earth and Heaven is Heaven. Water is Lake and Wind is Air. The Pottery that holds the water is Water Pit and the segregated out Salt becomes a Mountain trigram, as Flame becomes Fire. Dust, as expression of the air, of the wind, is also Thunder.
Consider the Early Heaven version of the trigrams. Lake and Wind sit on the right and left of Heaven. Mountain and Thunder sit on the right and left of Earth. Thunder differs from Earth only in its bottom line yang line and Wind differs from Heaven only in its bottom line yin. It makes sense, then, the real meaning of bottom line yin, at least in this reductionist arrangement, is information and of bottom line yang is energy. It is energy that allows Thunder to disturb things and it is genetic information that allows living things to take in Wind (air) to make the cellulose from which they will make Wood, the other aspect of Wind in the Wind trigram.
Lake differs from Heaven in a top line yin and Mountain from Earth in a top line yang. It follows that top line yin is all about the ability to associate things into groups, thus water gathered into a lake or marsh, and top line yang is the contrary ability to isolate.
Flame differs from Heaven in a middle line yin and Water Pit from Earth in a middle line yang. Fire breaks things apart and changes them and Water Pit brings them into a rut and controls them. It follows that middle line yin is about parts and middle line yang is about integration into wholes, just as Flame cracks what it dries and Heaven, Water Pit, Lake, and Wind all bring moisture, at least in the Early Heaven sequence that can hold things together. Using this approach, we generate a tetrahedron of four faces: Fire-Flame trigram, Water-Lake trigram, Air-Wind trigram, and Earth-Earth trigram. Each face has a vertex on the opposite side of the tetrahedron: Flame to Water Pit/Pottery, Earth to Heaven, Lake/Water to Mountain/Salt, and Wind/Air to Thunder/Dust. There are now six sides to this tetrahedron: Bottom line yin opposite bottom line yang, middle line yin opposite middle line yang, top line yin opposite top line yang: Thus, information to energy, integrated whole to disintegrate part, association to singularity.
We can trace the movement of developments across this tetrahedron as aboriginal societies begin at the Heaven point, mutate and compete as barbarian raiders in Flame, withdraw and settle down in cities in Mountain, become aristocratic and develop a dominant minority aristocracy in Wind, generate a universal state in Water Pit, develop a civilization in Earth, disintegrate and vulgarize in Thunder, develop a universal church and enter an interregnum in Lake. This might be the Homeric stage of Hellenic civilization in Flame and the Greek city states in Mountain, Athens in its glory in Wind, and Hellenism and the Roman universal state in Water Pit. The movement toward equality in the later empire might be Earth and vulgarization and disintegration in Late Empire might be Thunder. The coming of the Christian Church and the so called fall of the Western empire might be Lake, which will develop the Romanesque and then the Gothic as the Lake phase of the Hellenic passes to the romantic Heaven of so called Western Civilization. As a result of wars and raids, its city states will mature into aristocratic monarchies and absolute states and empires. This will give way to industrialization and commercialism and finally to an interregnum as Heaven (aboriginal Germanic and Celtic society) gives way to Flame (wars and raids) and Mountain (Florence and the Renaissance) and Wind (Mannerism) and Water Pit (Baroque) and Earth (realism) and Thunder (expressionism) and a new synthesis in Lake.