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Notes -
I’d say the five categories (ID-advocacy-critical-fragmentation-dissolution) are describing a real phenomenon. The problem is that it’s not the only life cycle. Sometimes an idea just really is appealing!
This is my understanding of, say, early Christianity, which saw strong growth in the fringes despite active persecution by the elite. No Client ID, since the entrepreneurs of Christianity largely were their underserved population. Advocacy based on building power structures which happened to conflict with elite ones like tax collection. More importantly, the Critical Mass for Christianity either lasted up til the modern era, or passed into Fragmentation immediately! It was actively gaining social capital even through its early schisms and heresies.
When growth is powered by geeks instead of sociopaths, the framework doesn’t make sense. There’s a rival life cycle that describes sincere movements. Call it “technology adoption,” where the underlying idea is strong enough to spread in the absence of status games.
Once you have a rival model, though, you have to ask which one fits each fashion. How do you decide?
Apologies for the lateness of this reply; I go through long stretches of inactivity here. Maybe both geeks and sociopaths can be driving growth concurrently? At any given time, in any given movement, you can have participants along the whole spectrum of motives. Its probably also true that some movements have "better tech" than others; they're more likely to take root and have lasting impacts. The various Abrahamic monotheisms come to mind as movements with really strong tech. If anything, its probably that the better the underlying idea, the more status to be gained by getting in on the ground floor.
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