Keeping Together in Time

Early in his career, Historian William McNeil decided to embrace speculation as a core function of his investigations and research. It was risky but it paid off as he shot to notoriety with his early initial work, Rise of the West.

Perhaps more significant was his willingness to speculate about the future, another bold move for an Historian. In Keeping Together in Time he predicted current national and global social and economic systems would fall and will be replaced by local and tribal social and economic systems. Humans need and cannot survive with out the strength of genuine and recognizable social bonds.

Ritual, marching, dance and military drill as necessity for forming and maintaining social bonds. Even physical entanglement of these rituals (not just mind based)