Seasonal Hero Cycle: The Autumn Hero

This series looks at a new civilisation cycle theory I’ve been developing called the Seasonal Hero Cycle. You can read the introduction here.

Here is a reminder of the Seasonal Heroic Cycle:

This article investigates the Autumn hero.

After the Spring and Summer comes the Autumn. It is were the culture falls into a time of stagnation. The Summer hero wasn’t able to return back to the Spring and now a new type of hero is required.

This is the time of the trickster. The Autumn brings forward a new interpretation of the civilisational paradigm. The same structures are standing, it’s just they need to be reordered or reformed. The hope is this Autumnal process will reignite the dying fire and return the civilisation back to Spring, starting the cycle again.

The Autumn hero performs a sleight of hand, unveiling a new opportunity or reveal a forgotten truth. They are normally the unexpected candidate, the one that people discount because of age, gender or thought of as a bit of a fool. If the Autumn hero fails, then the civilisation continues the cycle into the Winter, and the time of collapse.

After the assassination of Caligula, the emperorship was taken by Claudius. He was considered weak, due his disabilities, tremors, foaming at the mouth and speech impediment. However, even though unassuming, he was able to bring Rome back to greatness. He was the first emperor since Augustus to greatly increase the size of the empire. He focussed on the rule of law and encourage moral behaviour amongst citizenry. The next emperor, Nero, barely capitalised on this return back to Spring and the empire quickly headed towards the Year of the Four Emperors.

Another example of the Autumn Hero is Mikhail Gorbachev.

After a succession of short lived and failing Soviet leaders, the relatively youthful Gorbachev took the post of General Secretary of the Communist Party. He ‘thinks the unthinkable’ and began to reform the Union. He chose a path of glasnost or openness. He worked to implant perestroika, the market reforms to increase more economic freedoms. He increased engagement with the non-socialist countries.

Unfortunately, he was unable to bring the Soviet Union back to the Spring in the civilisational cycle. Even though he tried to re-order the complex Soviet structures, his reforms faltered and the Union fell into the Winter and soon collapsed.

Mary Tudor is another example of an Autumn Hero. After the death of her half-brother Edward, she ascended to the throne of England. Under King Henry and King Edward, the currency had been debased. Maybe she thought this was related to the move towards Protestantism. The solution was to return the country back towards the Catholic Church. She began reforms to bring this about, but did not have time to realise them as she died after only five years in power, leaving the country in a worse state of division than when she first took over.

Margaret Thatcher is probably the best example of the Autumn hero in modern British history. As a woman, she was an unexpected leader of the Conservative Party. Once in power, she reordered the post-war consensus and encouraged free markets. It brought the country out of the doldrums of the 1970s into a new era. With the Falklands Islands conflict, she became the Spring Hero bringing a new civilisational cycle for the UK.

Another Autumn Hero is Donald Trump. A highly controversial leader to some and greatly admired by others. When he ran in 2016, he was indeed the unexpected candidate. He is highly charismatic and a master at manipulating language and the media. Even though he put forward the idea of Making America Great Again, the reforms did not bite and his legacy was soon unpicked by the following administration.

Boris Johnson was another Autumn hero, sometimes called the ‘British Trump’. Again he was able to expertly manage language and sidestep the media. He was a master at the art of debate. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the political will to bring about the necessary reforms to make Brexit work.

The Autumn Hero is a hard trick to pull off. I think Mao had elements of this in his time as the Chairman of the Communist Party, returning China back to the Spring. But it seems a rare feat.

Once the Autumn passes and the stagnation is built into the system, the civilisation begins to head towards complete collapse. Only a Winter Hero can save them now.