Appendix 3- From Equilibrium to Disequilibrium

Hello, and welcome to Revolutions. Appendix three, from equilibrium to disequilibrium. Before we get going, I wanna remind everybody that I'm doing ticketed live shows in October, and those dates are coming up fast. I will be talking about history and narrative building and how we situate ourselves in the world by telling historical stories about ourselves and our societies and the whole world. Historical storytelling is often treated as merely a subgenre of literature when, in point of fact, it is literally the way humans organize their existence. I mean, think about it. Anytime you start trying to describe your own individual life or explain the society you live in, you're almost automatically doing historical storytelling. So I will have deep thoughts on all that and then take any burning questions you might bring with you. It's a great night, so I hope everybody will come to see me October 3 in Austin, Texas at the Paramount Theater, October 4 in San Francisco at the Palace of Fine Arts, October 5 in Seattle at Town Hall, and then October 25 in Chicago at the Vic Theatre, October 26, Boston at the Wilbur Theatre, October 27 in Washington DC at the Lissner Auditorium, and then finally, October 29 in Newark, New Jersey at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. Links to the tickets are in the show notes, and I can't wait to see you all there. Now last week, we talked about the prevailing sovereign regimes from which our revolutions emerge. Now the first thing to note is that revolutions are rare. They are not common events, and it's why when they happen, we are so gripped by them and so fascinated by them. Most regimes, most of the time, do as the British are so fond of saying they do, which is simply muddle along. Sovereign regimes are typically either just responsive enough to their perpetually fluctuating socioeconomic base to remain in power via slow evolutionary transformation, or they are so tyrannically repressive that they don't care, and they don't have to care. They successfully eliminate the slightest hint of opposition. Now, obviously, the most successful sovereigns do both. They both change with the times and prevent the formation of any true threat to their power. They preside over and maintain a stable political equilibrium where all possible threats are either mollified, co opted, or repressed. And last week, we noted that all of our Ancien regimes achieved this kind of stable equilibrium for decades before faltering and then failing, and then falling. And what we are gonna talk about today is how the faltering begins, how a regime that has achieved stable equilibrium politically and economically and socially enters a period of disequilibrium. Because the kind of historical events that go down as revolutionary triggers, the kinds of things we're gonna talk about next week, wouldn't have happened or they would not have mattered at all in a stable political regime. It is only because the system …