Many say that history repeats itself like being in a cycle, but this is not true in my opinion but somewhat close. This phenomenon of similar events repetition is called historic recurrence. Maybe a closer representation of history could be a spiral. And an even better one, in my opinion, a spiral that its center (imagine it as a vertical spine in 3D or the irregular moving position of the eye of a hurricane) is moving (maybe following also another spiral movement) causing different-sized epochs or eras, commonly periods.
A good representation is what I drew in the image above. Imagine that when time changes, its center is moving and its width is either expanding or shrinking.
This 2D representation can cause an optical illusion to one’s mind and imagine it as a 3D drawing.
Also, another interesting factor to notice is that there is no direction. In the 2D the spiral can be expanding to the outer but it can also be shrinking to the inner.
We can create different spirals for history given the same center and different distance-deviating from center equations.
Now this is how I imagine the historic recurrence. When we draw a straight line segment starting from the spiral-center like in the picture above, we can find different line-spiral intersects representing historic similar events in history's time-spiral (let [a1, a2, ...]) for which we believe the history was repeated. But, not all historic similar events are happening in the same timing-deviation from the other historic similar events that we measure.
Imagine that we draw another straight line segment starting from the spiral-center that intersects in the spiral in different places (let [b1, b2, ...]). If we compare these two sets of event-similarities in history, they have in common that they follow the same equation of time-deviation between events. This is not close to what we call historic recurrence. So, we need also to "shake" the spiral to get different widths, or to create infinite spirals starting from the same starting (or ‘history’-ending) point and having different time-deviation equation. That way is a representation of historic recurrence is closer to having a more appropriate shape.
We can also measure history linearly (by unrolling the spiral in a straight line). Say, for example, abstract events happening continuously in history from similar causes (pre-event period) and having some similar effects (post-event period). Given a specific time-‘length’ on this line we can find the repeating ‘eras’ and even smaller time periods that are repeated. The smaller the event's time-sample, the more occurrences we can find in which this event is repeated. This happens because the most data taken as reference in a short duration just before an event, the surer you are about the immediate effect after the event. This is also a proof that short-period predictions are more accurate than longer period, but this is another story for another blog-post. :)
Anyhow, I created this post to mention that storytelling and history reading is sometimes boring, but I found the pattern that catches the attention (at least my attention), when reading, watching or listening to stories, and which distinguishes the good storytellers from the rest.
Good storytellers that I have come to recognize and that I find their stories more appealing are the ones that try to persuade me with 'stories' in which they don't just follow the spiral equation (the approach of a step-by-step creation of the spiral), but they construct a spiral little by little by giving me sets of points taken from straight line segments that intersect the spiral.
Try to imagine the spiral equation as an image that loads from the top-left corner to the bottom-right corner. Now try again, but this time the points are taken from the intersection of straight lines segments starting from the spiral-center with the spiral itself. This should be imagined as a fading-in image till you reach the full image resolution.
The spiral of course is the whole story with all the details. But it is boring to start narrating/reading/watching/listening to all the details from the beginning. The receivers will fast lose their interest. So, in order to maintain the receivers’ interest when narrating the whole story to them you should be cheesy with them. You should reach the story goal/end, a lot of times, again and again, giving hints that are coming from different straight segment line paths intersecting the history’s spiral.
Trying to find a GIF spiral to visualize history, I read about the Euler spiral, which is was very interesting. Take a look if you like.
Finally, the GIF trying to describe the 4dim (after illusion-ating motion as time) is the below: