The Socionomic Perspective

The purpose of this blog is to provide a socionomic perspective on current world events. What is a "socionomic perspective", you ask?

Simply put, socionomics is the study of social mood. It is the science of social analysis based upon the socionomic insight.

The socionomic insight is a revolutionary way of viewing the world, world events, and society in general. To quote Robert Prechter, father of the science of socionomics: "The socionomic insight, as opposed to the conventional belief that social events determine the character of social mood, is the understanding that in fact social mood determines the character of social events."

This concept can be difficult to grasp because we've been taught over the years, implicitly if not explicitly, that world events affect and determine the mood of the population. Conventional theory teaches us that exogenous causes and events determine the direction of the collective social mood. Socionomics turns that belief upside down and says, no, actually, there is an endogenous mechanism within all humans that creates and propels the collective social mood. It is believed that this endogenous mechanism is related to an unconscious herding impulse generated by the brain's limbic system.

And socionomics goes further than that in saying that not only is social mood endogenous, but, as Prechter states: "... patterns of aggregate human behavior are self-causing, self-regulating, self-reinforcing and, to a far greater degree than has heretofore been imagined, predictable."

That's right, predictable, because the patterns in social mood follow a repeating, self-similar form known as a "fractal". In the case of social mood, this fractal is called a "robust fractal". In other words, the repeating form is self-similar but not identical, and has numerous variations that follow certain identifiable rules. These rules are part of what is known as the Elliott Wave Principle, the foundation for the science of socionomics.

Briefly, R.N. Elliott, while studying patterns in the stock market back in the 1930's and 40's, identified a repeating, self-similar form that followed certain identifiable rules. He formulated the Elliott Wave Principle based on his studies. Robert Prechter stumbled upon Elliott's published works and began using the Elliott Wave Principle to forecast movements in the stock market in the 70's. He enjoyed tremendous success and still does today. Fairly early into his work he observed that many areas of mass human activity displayed the Wave Principle, and he embarked on a journey to study this insight. Thus, today, we have the new science of socionomics.

I've presented a very brief and superficial explanation of the short history of socionomics, and I would encourage anyone who is interested to do some additional research for a more in-depth understanding of the Wave Principle and the science of Socionomics. The purpose of this blog is to apply the socionomic perspective to shed a different light on world events, and perhaps offer some insight as to why events are occuring as they do at this critical time in world history.