Transformation vs. Era Transitions

I've been thinking a lot about what I want to write about, and there's something I'd really like to explore over the next few years. I've been strongly influenced by two books - W.R. Clement's Quantum Jump: A Survival Guide to the New Renaissance and Peter Drucker's Post-Capitalist Society. I've written a little about Clement's book here before, but just to sum up, his basic thesis is that we are currently in the midst of an era transition brought about by a rise in the level of abstraction. That rise in the level of abstraction sets in motion a cascading wave of ideas and events that sweep away the existing status quo and create a new world-view. The only comparable event to this in our experience was the original Renaissance, in which the discovery of perspective "brought on a vigorous and profitable series of invention cycles through applications of the new science" and largely created the world we live in today.

Drucker's thesis isn't as radical as Clement's; the changes he sees are the kind of transformation in Western society that happens every few hundred years, and he gives the examples of the re-emergence of the city in 13th Century Europe, the period from the invention of the Printing Press to Luther posting of his 95 theses (1455-1517, the peak of the early Renaissance), and the events of 1776 (not just the American Revolution, but also James Watt's Steam Engine and Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations). 40-60 years after the beginning of one of these transformations, "there is a new world. And the people born then cannot even imagine the world in which their grandparents lived and into which their own parents were born".

It's almost a cliche to say that we're living in a time of rapid change; most people seem to have accepted this as the norm. But I don't think they expect (much less want) really profound change. Someone (I can't remember who) once said that it wasn't that a few people were ahead of their time so much as it was that most people were behind theirs. And I think that's the case here; profound changes are coming, will occur in my lifetime (in fact, have already begun), and will reshape society, polity, and, most of all, our worldview and our epistomology (how we know what we know).

So the question in my mind is: Is this a transformation - a regular occurrence to be expected every 200-300 years or so - or an era transition? An era transition is a much rarer and more profound event. Human nature being what it is, I prefer the more dramatic interpretation of events - it's more exciting to believe you're living in one of those epochal eras of history. But it seems to me that if we can carefully examine what's going on in the world and somehow manage to shed some of our cultural baggage in order to think more clearly and dispassionately, we can at least glimpse the outlines of what's happening and what the magnitude of change really is.

The idea of an era transition seems exciting but Clements points out that, based on previous experience, era transitions are dangerous and difficult times. It's no accident that his book's subtitle includes the words "survival guide". One way we can detect whether or not we're in a real era transition is the level of danger and difficulty.