Editor’s prefatory comment:

Will & Ariel Durant’s, The Lessons of History, was published in 1968. Their comment on sexual impulse as “river of fire” (see masthead quotation above), with dire potential “to consume in chaos both the individual and the group,” was well in line with J.D. Unwin’s findings of 1936. The Durants, doubtless, were familiar with the Oxford professor’s monumental work; but then, the famous historians likely needed no coaching on this precept.

shirt-sleeves to shirt-sleeves

There’s an old saying among business analysts: “shirt-sleeves to shirt-sleeves in three generations.”

A grandfather, let’s say, many decades ago, had an idea to build a better widget. The project began on a shoestring budget, in a barn or garage. His vision was to produce widgets more economically than others. The hours were long and hard. He had to work on this project in the evenings after his day job. With many start-up costs, and mortgaging his house to secure working capital, there would be no net income for some considerable period. However, after a time, word got out that his widgets were in fact high quality and at a good price. Sales began to pick up. Now the grandfather hired two part-timers to keep up with demand. Soon the old barn no longer provided adequate space for the growing enterprise, and a warehouse was leased, along with the addition of full-time staff. Growth continued, under the watchful and savvy eye of the industrious grandfather.

Fast-forward 25 years. The business has expanded its domain to include many warehouses and many workers. The grandfather, in shirt-sleeves and blue collar, though getting on a bit now, still comes to work every day. His son has graduated with an MBA from The Wharton School. More and more, the son assumes the reins of leadership. He grew up knowing of dad’s enterprise, had helped a little along the way, but lacked an intuitive experiential sense of the sacrifice, risk, and peril of starting a business from nothing. Even so, the son, with his pin-striped suit, understood high finance and what was needed to take the business public – things that the grandfather really had little knowledge of.

Another 25 years go by. The grandfather has passed on. The son has done fairly well expanding operations. It’s now a Fortune 1000 company, a respected small-cap on Wall Street. Also, a grandson has graduated from college. His major was not business but general studies. The son has encouraged the grandson to take his place in the family enterprise. But the grandson has only a vague idea of the nature of what granddad’s project has become, and even less motivation to find out. The family is now quite wealthy and the grandson has no plans to secure an actual career.

The son dies somewhat prematurely of a heart attack. The grandson, suddenly finding himself as majority shareholder of the corporation, reluctantly takes the helm. With no perspective on the marketplace for widgets, he assumes that policies and procedures that had done well during the past decades should continue to perform adequately enough. What he doesn’t realize is that new technologies have arisen which will soon make obsolete his grandfather’s legendary widget. Sales begin to decline. With alarm, there is a debate within the company whether to invest more in R&D to retool the widget, or should they buy a new business, a new product, which might rescue dwindling revenues? The grandson decides for the latter and takes the company in a new direction, for which there is a lack of expertise. He and his staff are uninformed that this kind of departure from a familiar core product does not have a high success record. Rival companies with the same product, which know their field well, assault sales of the grandson's business. Opportunistic short sellers, smelling blood, drive share prices down dramatically. Rather than risk a hostile takeover in this precarious environment, the grandson decides on a plan that isn't much better - proactively selling his severely price-depressed shares for a fraction on the dollar.

A family fortune has been lost. And now it’s shirt-sleeves, and back to shirt-sleeves, in just three generations.

Dr. Unwin makes a not dissimilar observation concerning societies and civilizations of history.

His research led him to conclude that this “three generation” crucible of change affected all 86 societal groups under review. The details of his findings should be considered by every thinking person.

'monotonous repetitions'

So predictable were some phases and outcomes for these 86 societies that Unwin asserted: "The history of these societies consists of a series of monotonous repetitions."

Here are source-and-commentary documents that will aid us in our survey:

Sex And Culture, the original 700 page work

Sex And Culture, a summary in 26 pages of selected quotations

Sex And Culture, a review in 6 pages by kirkdurston.com