Time of Troubles

Every civilizational transition Toynbee studied included a Time of Troubles: a period during which the old structures were failing faster than new ones could be built, the old organizing principles were losing their hold faster than new ones could be articulated, and the population at large experienced the compound effects as vertigo, anxiety, displacement, and suffering. The Hellenic Time of Troubles lasted three centuries. The Roman lasted approximately one. Previous civilizational transitions played out over generations or centuries. The AI transition's Time of Troubles is compressed to years, and the compression itself is the defining feature — it alters the window available for generating creative response, the speed at which costs arrive, and the distribution of suffering across the population that happens to be living through the transition.