"A massive four-alarm blaze which tore through a more than century-old vacant church building in Santa Ana last week has been deemed an arson." Source: CBSN Los Angeles (May 14, 2020).
Santa Ana, CA. May 7, 2020.
More recently (July 11,2020), the Catholic News Agency reported that "A Florida man has been arrested after he reportedly admitted to crashing a minivan into a Catholic Church and then setting it on fire."
Video posted July 11.
In San Gabriel, CA, "A fire early Saturday destroyed the rooftop and most of the interior of a [249-year-old] Catholic church in California that was undergoing renovation to mark its upcoming 250th anniversary celebration." Source: AP (July 11, 2020).
"...The cause of the fire was under investigation, [fire captain] Negrete said. He said the recent toppling of monuments to Junipero Serra, the founder of the California mission system who has long been a symbol of oppression among Indigenous activists, will be a factor in the investigation."
Odds are that this was another arson.
On Feb. 11, 2020, Fox News reported that "A Florida man is behind bars after he tackled a deacon in the middle of a Saturday evening Mass."
This lunatic may have been off his meds.
On May 21, 2020, "A north Mississippi church that filed a lawsuit about a month ago questioning the city’s restrictions on gatherings burned to the ground with a disturbing, misspelled message scribbled just before its steps: 'Bet you stay home now you hypokrites.'" Source: Washington Post.
"First Pentecostal Church in Holly Springs, which sits at the border with southern Tennessee, collapsed into smoldering ashes and rubble early Wednesday after an explosion ignited the sanctuary, Fox 13 Memphis reported."
These are only a few of the attacks on churches in the US which have occurred in 2020. There have been several highly publicized church-shootings in recent years as well. The problem has been getting bad enough to become a Homeland Security concern:
""On May 20, 2019, in a response to 'recent attacks against synagogues, churches, temples, and mosques,' then-Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan requested that the Homeland Security Advisory Council convene a Subcommittee 'Focused on the security of faith-based organizations around the country.'" Source: DHS (PDF)
The government can't do much of anything, of course. We are rapidly reaching the point where churches will have to be turned into fortified compounds with metal detectors, CCTV cameras and 24-hour security. In some places, congregations are already packing heat.
The Hindus believe that we're living in the Kali Yuga, an apocalyptic Dark Age ruled by the demon Kali, the source of all evil and destruction. The Kali Yuga, also known as the "Age of Vice," is a period of warfare, chaos, social decline and spiritual decadence brought about by Man's separation from the gods. Kali himself is frequently pictured as a deranged figure dancing on corpses and wearing human heads as jewelry. I don't believe in demons, but this bloodthirsty lunatic with ten arms is the perfect symbol of human history.
Most writers use the term Kali Yuga to mean "end times" or the "last days," but technically this isn't accurate. The Hindus see Time as a cycle of four ages or Yugas known as the Yuga Cycle. The other three periods are called the Satya Yuga, the Treta Yuga and the Dvapara Yuga, and they all go spinning around like a cosmic ferris wheel. So the Kali Yuga isn't the end of the world. It's just the end of one cycle and the beginning of the next.
The Yuga Cycle describes a fall from grace--a loss of enlightenment. The first age, the Satya Yuga, is a golden age of supreme goodness when the gods rule and the average human lifespan is thousands of years long, but, like the Garden of Eden, it's all downhill from there. The other Yugas follow in order, the gods withdraw, the situation deteriorates and bottoms out with the Kali Yuga, then the whole thing starts all over again. Time is a circle--an infinite, recurring progression of Yugas in which the gods advance and retreat like the tides or the phases of the moon.
Now, this is good stuff and very ancient, but is it an accurate description of reality? That probably sounds like a strange question to ask. The Yuga Cycle is a symbolic, mythical cosmology based on the Hindu concepts of samsara, karmic cycles, rebirth, reincarnation and cyclic change. Taking it literally misses the point, but is it possible that Time is actually circular? Does the Yuga Cycle or at least its concept of Time have some basis in fact? Personally, I think the idea of circular Time is more interesting than the linear Christian view of history as moving in a straight line from Creation to Apocalypse, but I don't see any evidence that the universe actually runs in cycles like this.
Time is a one-way thing. The future changes into the present which changes into the past in an infinite stream of Becoming. There are cycles in nature, but they're more like recurring patterns with thousands of variations and they never repeat themselves in exactly the same way. The fossil evidence shows a gradual evolution from the simple to the complex punctuated by catastrophes, mass extinctions and sudden bursts of new life forms like the Cambrian Explosion. If there are cycles in nature, they are cycles of chaos in the mathematical sense. The gods of this world are fractals and strange attractors.
Human history repeats itself, but only in the sense that high cultures are subject to universal laws of growth and decay as described, for instance, by Oswald Spengler. Personally, I think there's a good argument that civilization in general has deteriorated over the last two thousand years, but I'm more inclined to blame it on the Second Law of Thermodynamics than the Yuga Cycle. Entropy and chaos are the natural state of things and organized systems tend to deteriorate over time. It takes energy and intelligence to keep a civilization going and both are in short supply.
The Yuga Cycle is appealing because it explains the decay and turmoil we see around us and because it suggests that things will change for the better as the cycle turns once again. Unfortunately, these cycles are so long that they don't really have any meaning for the human race in general, never mind individuals. The Kali Yuga is supposed to have started around 3000 BC and they say it will last for 432,000 years, almost half a million years. Considering the fact that only 5000 years or so have passed since the Kali Yuga started, we've got a long way to go.
Note: Many cultures have legends about a mythical Golden Age and a subsequent fall from grace. For instance, "Both Hesiod and Ovid offered accounts of the successive ages of humanity, which tend to progress from an original, long-gone age in which humans enjoyed a nearly divine existence to the current age of the writer, in which humans are beset by innumerable pains and evils. In the two accounts that survive from ancient Greece and Rome, this degradation of the human condition over time is indicated symbolically with metals of successively decreasing value." (Wikipedia)
This brief piece from the History Channel (2013) blames Julius Caesar for the destruction of the Library of Alexandria as if this is a proven fact.
Whatever the case, it's true that Caesar was widely blamed at the time:
"The prime suspect in destruction of the Library of Alexandria is Julius Caesar. It is alleged that during Caesar's occupation of the city of Alexandria in 48 BCE, he found himself in the Royal Palace, hemmed in by the Egyptian fleet in the harbour. For his own safety he had his men set fire to the Egyptian ships, but the fire got out of control and spread to the parts of the city nearest the shore, which included warehouses, depots and some arsenals." Source: Ancient History Encyclopedia.
That's the story, anyway, but it probably isn't true:
"In his book The Vanished Library, Luciano Canfora interprets the evidence from ancient writers to indicate the destruction of manuscripts stored in warehouses near the port waiting for export, rather than the great Library itself." Furthermore, "[t]he great scholar and stoic philosopher Strabo, was working in Alexandria in 20 BC and from his writings it is obvious that the Library was not at that time the world-renowned centre for learning it had been in previous centuries." (Ancient History Encyclopedia)
In other words, Caesar may have inadvertently burned some manuscripts stored in warehouses, but he couldn't have destroyed the library itself if Strabo was working there more than 20 years later. Strabo's writing does show that the library had gone through some kind of decline over the years.
Clip from Cosmos (1980). Note the standard assumption that the library was deliberately destroyed.
The Christians have been blamed for destroying the library as well, but it doesn't look like they did it, either:
"The second possible culprit would be the Christians of the 4 th century AD. In 391 AD, the Emperor Theodosius issued a decree that officially outlawed pagan practices. Thus, the Serapeum or Temple of Serapis in Alexandria was destroyed. However, this was not the Library of Alexandria, or for that matter, a library of any sort. Furthermore, no ancient sources mention the destruction of any library at this time at all. Hence, there is no evidence that the Christians of the 4 th century destroyed the Library of Alexandria." Source: Ancient Origins.
So if Caesar wasn't responsible and the Christians seem to have been exonerated, then who destroyed the library and its priceless collection of ancient texts? Strangely enough, considering how widespread the traditional story is, there's a possibility that the library wasn't destroyed by a fire in the first place. The truth may be radically different and a lot less dramatic.
"Though it seems fitting that the destruction of so mythic an institution as the Great Library of Alexandria must have required some cataclysmic event ... – and while [riots, fires and other disasters] certainly took their toll on the Library - in reality, the fortunes of the Great Library waxed and waned with those of Alexandria itself. Much of [the library's] downfall was gradual, often bureaucratic, and by comparison to our cultural imaginings, somewhat petty." Source: "The Great Library Of Alexandria?" by Heather Philips (PDF).
This article appeared in 2010, I think. If Heather Philips is right, her version of events would radically change the traditional history of the destruction of the Great Library, but that would be a good thing for those of us who want to know the true story. The traditional history has always been highly speculative since no one really knows what happened.
If Philips is right, we'd lose some dramatic stories, though. For example, her revisionist view would demolish the historical accuracy (such as it is) of the excellent 2009 movie, Agora, which tells the heavily romanticized story of Hypatia of Alexandria and blames the destruction of the library on a rioting Christian mob.
Agora is a good flick, highly recommended, but it's undeniably a work of anti-Christian propaganda. That doesn't bother me particularly, but some people get all worked up about it. For instance, here's a harsh attack on the movie (2010) by David Bentley Hart who admits he never saw the film but argues that its premise is completely ahistorical, which seems to be the case. Considering their record of destroying pagan shrines and writings, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the Christians destroyed the library, but it looks like they weren't involved.
Various other individuals and groups have been blamed for the destruction of the Great Library --the emperor Aurelian, the Arabs, Pope Theophilus of Alexandria -- but if Heather Philips is right, the library may never have been "destroyed" at all, only damaged over the years in various wars and riots before it went out of business due to budget cuts. That doesn't make for a good movie, however, so if that's what really happened, I doubt if the story will ever make it to the Big Screen.
"A statue of ancient Roman leader Julius Caesar was vandalised in the Flemish village of Velzeke-Ruddershove over the weekend, with some linking the vandalism to ongoing Black Lives Matter protests." Source: Breitbart.
"The statue is located in the Roman square in the sleepy Flemish town and was reported as damaged on Sunday. Vandals had ripped off one of the hands of the statue that had carried a lance and graffitied the word 'krapuul' — Flemish for 'bastard' — on its base."
Note:According to the Brussels Times, "It is not yet clear whether there is a link with the wider backlash that started in the context of the Black Lives Matter movement, but Zottegem [East Flanders] has said it does not assume a connection to wider actions across Belgium."
These "wider actions" have included attacks on statues of King Leopold II.
Sir Desmond Swayne and the always entertaining Jacob Rees-Mogg recently discussed the desirability of tearing down Stonehenge and getting rid of all traces of the imperialistic Roman occupation of Britain. This was in response to the vandalization of British historical monuments such as a statue of Churchill in Westminster and a World War II memorial to the London Bomber Command.
Swayne and Rees-Mogg were mocking the protests, of course, but the logic here is inescapable. After all, if we're going to get rid of culturally insensitive monuments, why stop with recent history? The Romans were brutal occupiers -- never mind the fact that Britain descended into a primitive Dark Age after the empire collapsed -- and Stonehenge, as Rees-Mogg points out, is associated with human sacrifice. Why not tear Stonehenge down? In fact, why not get rid of everything associated with the monarchy and the colonial British empire? Let's demolish Buckingham palace, the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey and all the other historical buildings in the UK.
Nigel Farage, former head of UKIP and current leader of the Brexit Party, called the protestors who want to destroy these memorials the new Taliban, so his radio show was immediately canceled.
These attacks on statues and memorials remind me of the Christian culture war against paganism that took place after Christianity became the official religion in Rome. Make no mistake. What we are seeing is an attempt to erase history and destroy Western civilization.
These protestors definitely needed some instructions for how to safely destroy our cultural heritage.
Archaeologist and remote-sensing expert Sarah Parcak, described as a "culture hero" in this 2014 National Geographic video, recently came out to offer protestors some advice on how to safely destroy "racist" statues:
"Amid protests across the country in the wake of George Floyd's death, a University of Alabama at Birmingham professor provided a step-by-step guide along with a figure drawing explaining how protesters can 'topple' Confederate monuments." Source: Washington Examiner (June 1, 2020).
"Sarah Parcak, a well-known archaeologist who received a Guggenheim fellowship in 2020, shared on Sunday 'handy' information about how to destroy public property she considered 'racist.'"
I don't know what to say about this. The idea that an archaeologist would support the destruction of historical monuments of any kind is truly breath-taking. Unfortunately, this kind of thing is all too typical in our current climate.
"Parcak cheered on protesters who defaced property during the five days of nationwide demonstrations and told her followers to 'celebrate' once they have toppled the statues, which she said represented 'racism and white nationalism.'
"WATCH THAT SUMBITCH TOPPLE GET THE %^&* OUT OF THE WAY IT WILL SMASH RUN AWAY FROM DIRECTION," she tweeted. 'Then celebrate. Because #BlackLivesMatter and good riddance to any obelisks pretending to be ancient Egyptian obelisks when they are in fact celebrating racism and white nationalism.'"
Parcak said she doesn't want people to destroy actual ancient Egyptian obelisks, but I'm not sure why she draws the line there. After all, the Egyptians owned slaves themselves:
"The Chattel slaves [in Egypt] were mostly captives of war and were brought over to different city and countries to be sold as slaves. All captives, including civilians not a part of the military forces, become a royal resource. The pharaoh would then resettle the captives by moving them into colonies for labour, giving them to temples, giving them as rewards to deserving individuals, and giving them to his soldiers as loot. Some chattel slaves began as free people who were found guilty of committing illicit acts and were forced to give up their freedom. Other chattel slaves were born into the life from a slave mother." (Wikipedia)
Why not destroy the pyramids as well? Like the obelisks, they're symbols of an ancient slave culture.
"We recognize that Nature is one of the white institutions that is responsible for bias in research and scholarship. The enterprise of science has been — and remains — complicit in systemic racism, and it must strive harder to correct those injustices and amplify marginalized voices." Source: Nature (June 9, 2020).
Comment: According to the prestigious science journal Nature, their field is biased because blacks and Hispanics only make up 9 and 7 percent of STEM workers respectively. Their bizarre conclusion that "science is racist" is based on the disparate- impact argument which has been incorporated into US law:
"Disparate impact in United States labor law refers to practices in employment, housing, and other areas that adversely affect one group of people of a protected characteristic more than another, even though rules applied by employers or landlords are formally neutral [emphasis added]." (Wikipedia)
In other words, the fact that some minority group is under-represented in a particular field is de facto evidence of institutional racism. What other reason could there be?
The groveling and self-flagellation on display here is truly mind-boggling.
Comment: This is an interesting lecture. I can see the generational change he talks about in my own family. My grandparents were highly religious, my parents less so -- though still churchgoers -- and I'm probably the first outright atheist to come along in my family in a very long time. I might even be the first one, for all I know. Some of my relatives still pay lip-service to going to church, but the churches they belong to are of the Unitarian variety which don't really have any shared creed at all. None of my friends are religious in any way whatsoever. It's not something relevant in our lives.
In the United States, various forms of fundamentalist Protestantism are still thriving, religions like Islam are growing, and there's a fairly large New Age movement which has turned away from traditional Christianity altogether, but things have changed radically over the last century and for all practical purposes we live in an almost entirely secular society. The situation is even more dismal for religion in Europe, where Christianity is basically dead and the remaining churches are little more than Liberal/Socialist community organizations preaching the usual "progressive" gospel of self-destructive Cultural Marxism.
The same liberal disease has infected the more moderate Protestant denominations in the US, which seem to have turned into cults of social work and have been losing members for decades. As for the Catholic Church, it's been shaken repeatedly by corruption and pederasty scandals and the current Pope is just another Social Justice Warrior demanding that Europe open its borders to the immigrant invasion. Christianity is expanding into the Third World, but collapsing in the developed West, and the historical rise and fall of the religion is becoming very clear now.
Once it was established as the official state religion of the West, the Catholic church became so corrupt that it led to the first schisms as well as the rise of dozens of different "heresies." These heretical movements were a direct reaction to the orthodox church's worldliness and hypocrisy and had to be suppressed with torture and executions. For more information on the church's really incredible level of corruption back then, read the first chapter in A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, by Henry Charles Lea. Highly recommended.
Plagues, corruption and social decay undermined faith in the orthodox church, leading to the Reformation and eventually the Enlightenment. The schisms within the church continued over the centuries, setting off a chain-reaction of schisms within schisms which led to a proliferation of different denominations -- a process of institutional disintegration that was concealed for a while by the continued religiosity of the masses. But Christianity and religion in general couldn't survive the rise of science and the spread of secularism and rationalism that created the modern western world.
Religion is an archaic survival from thousands of years ago. Like the belief in magic, it's what we would now call a Third World or primitive way of interpreting reality. Spengler predicted that the final decline of the West would see a religious revival that he called the Second Religiousness. Many Spenglerians argue that the rise of Christian Fundamentalism fits the definition. If so, the surge in Fundamentalism with its gigantic megachurches is a sign of the West's terminal decline rather than its rejuvenation.
Spengler identified the West with Christianity in many ways -- he saw the great Gothic cathedrals as symbols of the spirit of western culture in its youth -- and he would have said that pre-Christian paganism was a feature of a completely different Classical world culture. Seen from a purely Spenglerian perspective, the New Age movement is yet another symptom of decline. Too muddled to be described as a real religion, too culturally alien to be a revival of an ancient tradition, the movement is a resurgence of the irrationality common to the masses of drifting Fellahin existing outside of history.
Whatever the case, religion has very little future here, at least for the time being. That could change, though. If these Third World invasions continue, I wouldn't be surprised if religion makes a comeback, just as various diseases thought to have been eradicated are making a comeback. This is where the lecturer in the first video gets it wrong, I think. Religion can make a comeback in the West, but if it does -- if these statistics regarding generational change and secularization reverse themselves -- it will be a sign that the demographics of the West have changed completely.
If that happens -- if religion makes a big comeback -- it will mean that the West no longer exists.
"The Nika riots ... Nika revolt or Nika sedition took place against Emperor Justinian I in Constantinople over the course of a week in 532 CE. They were the most violent riots in the city's history, with nearly half of Constantinople being burned or destroyed and tens of thousands of people killed." Source: Wikipedia.
The Nika revolt was set off by the Greens and Blues, two factions who supported different chariot-racing teams, but the outbreak of rabid violence that almost overthrew Justinian was a lot more than a simple sports brawl like the soccer riots we have today.
The Greens and Blues were loose political, social and religious associations vaguely similar to today's political parties. And chariot-racing itself was more than just a sports spectacle. According to Wikipedia, "The chariot races were important in the Byzantine Empire, as in the Roman Empire, as a way to reinforce social class and political power, including the might of the Byzantine emperor, and were often put on for political or religious reasons."
Justinian's government wasn't exactly popular with the rabble. The riots were a protest over political corruption, high taxes, budget cuts, legalized brutality, the slow pace of reforms, and a variety of other reasons too complex to go into here. His legitimacy as a ruler had also been called into question by military setbacks such as the Byzantine defeat at the Battle of Callinicum in 531 AD (one year before the riots broke out).
Tension had been growing in Constantinople for a long time and the lowborn emperor and his wife, Theodora, weren't just unpopular with the masses. Some of the legal reforms the emperor managed to push through "made him unpopular with the aristocracy from the start, as they made it impossible to use obscure laws and jurisprudence to avoid unfavorable verdicts, further angering the aristocracy." (Wikipedia)
I'm skipping over a lot of history here -- a detailed description would require an entire book -- but the tensions finally boiled over into what can only be described as a massive insurrection against an emperor the historian Procopius described as a demon in human form.
The Secret History by Procopius is one of the most vicious and entertaining political hit pieces ever written.
The bad feeling against Justinian came to a head in the crowded Hippodrome of Constantinople when the rival Greens and Blues united against him:
"On 13 January 532, as the Emperor took his place in the Hippodrome and gave the signal for the games to begin, his appearance was greeted by an uproar. Suddenly, he realized that, for the first time, the Greens and Blues were united; and that their clamour was directed not at each other but at him. 'Nika! Nika!' they cried, using the normal word of encouragement -- 'Win! Win!' -- by which they cheered on the charioteers. In the past, however, each side had tried to shout down the other. Now, they were speaking with one voice; and that voice was not pleasant to hear." -- A Short History of Byzantium, John Julius Norwich, p. 63. (Highly recommended.)
Justinian managed to escape from the Hippodrome, but the city descended into chaos. According to Norwich, "the mob poured out of the great circus, hell-bent on destruction" and "for five days and nights the smoke lay thick over the city." The fires destroyed the Hagia Sophia, the most important church in Constantinople.
The violence made the riots we're seeing today look like child's play. To make a long story short, the situation got so bad that it almost brought Justinian's rule to an end. He was on the verge of giving up his throne and fleeing the city when Theodora convinced him to stay and fight, and once he made up his mind he didn't screw around:
"Fortunately, two of the Empire's best generals were present in the palace. The first, a Romanized Thracian named Belisarius, was still in his twenties. The second, Mundus, was an Illyrian who happened to have with him a sizeable force of Scandinavian mercenaries. Secretly the two slipped out of the palace, rallied their soldiers and, by separate routes, marched on the Hippodrome." (Norwich, p. 64).
The rioters had gathered in the Hippodrome to crown a new emperor, one of Justinian's relatives named Hypatius, and the two generals caught them by surprise:
"...they burst in simultaneously on the mob, taking it completely by surprise. No quarter was given; Greens and Blues were slaughtered indiscriminately. Meanwhile the commander of the imperial bodyguard ... had stationed his men at the principal exits with orders to cut down all who tried to escape. Within a few minutes, the angry shouts in the great amphitheatre had given place to the cries and groans of wounded and dying men; soon these too grew quiet. (Norwich, p. 64).
> Video from 2015. Ancient Apocalypse was a 2001 BBC documentary series.
Note: "Dick Gill [featured in the documentary] was a most unusual person to put forward a bold new theory explaining the collapse of Mayan civilisation. When he started his hunt for clues, he was actually a banker." Source: BBC (2011). Gill spend a considerable amount of time investigating his theory that a major drought led to the collapse and believed that he had found conclusive evidence that this is what had happened:
"The drought theory holds that rapid climate change in the form of severe drought brought about the Classic Maya collapse. According to the particular version put forward by Gill in The Great Maya Droughts ... '[Studies of] Yucatecan lake sediment cores ... provide unambiguous evidence for a severe 200-year drought from AD 800 to 1000 ... the most severe in the last 7,000 years ... precisely at the time of the Maya Collapse." (Wikipedia)
The drought theory seems to be widely accepted now. LIDAR scans support the theory, according to Wikipedia, and Gill's evidence is apparently pretty solid -- I haven't found any sources questioning the evidence itself. Still, it's possible that drought may not be enough to explain what actually happened.
"David Webster, a critic of [Gill's] megadrought theory, says that much of the evidence provided by Gill comes from the northern Yucatán and not the southern part of the peninsula, where Classic Maya civilization flourished. He also states that if water sources were to have dried up, then several city-states would have moved to other water sources. That Gill suggests that all water in the region would have dried up and destroyed Maya civilization is a stretch, according to Webster, although Webster does not have a precise competing theory explaining the Classic Maya Collapse." (Wikipedia)
Earthquakes may have played a big part in the collapse as well:
"A study published in Scientific Reports in 2016 showed that between 750 and 900 a cluster of four earthquakes affected the wet tropical mountains south of the Yucatán lowlands, which are not vulnerable to drought, and include such important cities as Quirigua and Copán. These earthquakes left detectable destruction in several Maya cities and led to the abandonment of Quirigua. The study hypothesizes that repeated destruction combined with declining trade with the Maya kingdoms of the Yucatán lowlands to propagate the collapse to the southern part of the Maya realm." (Wikipedia)
Note: Megadroughts aren't uncommon and they can last for a long time. For instance, there was a 200-year megadrought in the Sierra Nevada in the 9th - 12th centuries. Parts of the western United States could be heading into one of these destructive dry spells right now.
The Kali Yuga
Most writers use the term Kali Yuga to mean "end times" or the "last days," but technically this isn't accurate. The Hindus see Time as a cycle of four ages or Yugas known as the Yuga Cycle. The other three periods are called the Satya Yuga, the Treta Yuga and the Dvapara Yuga, and they all go spinning around like a cosmic ferris wheel. So the Kali Yuga isn't the end of the world. It's just the end of one cycle and the beginning of the next.
The Yuga Cycle describes a fall from grace--a loss of enlightenment. The first age, the Satya Yuga, is a golden age of supreme goodness when the gods rule and the average human lifespan is thousands of years long, but, like the Garden of Eden, it's all downhill from there. The other Yugas follow in order, the gods withdraw, the situation deteriorates and bottoms out with the Kali Yuga, then the whole thing starts all over again. Time is a circle--an infinite, recurring progression of Yugas in which the gods advance and retreat like the tides or the phases of the moon.
Now, this is good stuff and very ancient, but is it an accurate description of reality? That probably sounds like a strange question to ask. The Yuga Cycle is a symbolic, mythical cosmology based on the Hindu concepts of samsara, karmic cycles, rebirth, reincarnation and cyclic change. Taking it literally misses the point, but is it possible that Time is actually circular? Does the Yuga Cycle or at least its concept of Time have some basis in fact? Personally, I think the idea of circular Time is more interesting than the linear Christian view of history as moving in a straight line from Creation to Apocalypse, but I don't see any evidence that the universe actually runs in cycles like this.
Time is a one-way thing. The future changes into the present which changes into the past in an infinite stream of Becoming. There are cycles in nature, but they're more like recurring patterns with thousands of variations and they never repeat themselves in exactly the same way. The fossil evidence shows a gradual evolution from the simple to the complex punctuated by catastrophes, mass extinctions and sudden bursts of new life forms like the Cambrian Explosion. If there are cycles in nature, they are cycles of chaos in the mathematical sense. The gods of this world are fractals and strange attractors.
Human history repeats itself, but only in the sense that high cultures are subject to universal laws of growth and decay as described, for instance, by Oswald Spengler. Personally, I think there's a good argument that civilization in general has deteriorated over the last two thousand years, but I'm more inclined to blame it on the Second Law of Thermodynamics than the Yuga Cycle. Entropy and chaos are the natural state of things and organized systems tend to deteriorate over time. It takes energy and intelligence to keep a civilization going and both are in short supply.
The Yuga Cycle is appealing because it explains the decay and turmoil we see around us and because it suggests that things will change for the better as the cycle turns once again. Unfortunately, these cycles are so long that they don't really have any meaning for the human race in general, never mind individuals. The Kali Yuga is supposed to have started around 3000 BC and they say it will last for 432,000 years, almost half a million years. Considering the fact that only 5000 years or so have passed since the Kali Yuga started, we've got a long way to go.
Note: Many cultures have legends about a mythical Golden Age and a subsequent fall from grace. For instance, "Both Hesiod and Ovid offered accounts of the successive ages of humanity, which tend to progress from an original, long-gone age in which humans enjoyed a nearly divine existence to the current age of the writer, in which humans are beset by innumerable pains and evils. In the two accounts that survive from ancient Greece and Rome, this degradation of the human condition over time is indicated symbolically with metals of successively decreasing value." (Wikipedia)
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