The early 20th century was by far one of the most tumultuous of times. The rapid number of inventions that changed the world on a larger scale also changed the way people lived too. From faster communication to faster commuting. From new energy types to new information types. The technological advancement of compressing time, including constraining decision-making, intensified the loss of continuity - both identity and lives at large scale and in rapid succession.

China during the 1900s to 1950s was fraught with multiple short bursts of identity crises which often overlapped with each other, and was in many ways wrought by the very people attempting to shape its future. That period — roughly the fall of the Qing dynasty through the civil war — is one of the most violently compressed transformation eras any society has gone through. Within a single lifetime, people lived through:

• Collapse of a 2,000-year imperial order

• Warlord fragmentation

• Foreign concessions and occupation

• Economic shocks from the global depression

• Total war with Japan

• Civil war between competing visions of China

For someone born, say, in 1900, they might start life in a Confucian imperial structure and end it under a revolutionary socialist state.

That is not just political change, that is language shifts, value shifts, dress shifts, gender role shifts, authority shifts, economic logic shifts, and identity shifts. It is a civilizational whiplash.

During the same period, Russia and Germany went through similar whiplash but were mostly ideological - what they believed in. Russia and Germany experienced ideological ruptures layered onto state collapse, while China’s upheaval more directly challenged its civilizational identity.

History has lessons for us not to repeat this identity crisis, but unfortunately many have chosen to mechanize it again. In doing so, the historical signal begins to echo once more — reminding us that if we do not recognise it in time, we risk repeating what we never truly learnt.

Inventions that can bring about the heavier mechanization of war or “war” at a larger scale can question the very foundation of civilization that we all thought were stable. “War” today is a combination of blood spilled at a larger scale, at a faster speed, in rapid succession and now with mind spill. This is where Thin-Core comes in - avoiding the loss of minds.

Thin-Core is called such because when the environment around it gets thinned, the core that was designed to endure carries us through VUCA periods and comes out of it intact - both mind and identity. Together with SI, which preserves continuity of intent, the continuity of humans during times of VUCA can bring structure and stability - the natural fundamentals of growth.

History may repeat itself… this time in a Thin-Core way.

History: Repeating Itself