The cyclicality of history means that we may welcome a particular progressive step but at the same time understand that it brings us closer to the next collapse—when we fight for freedom, we also set in motion the process that will eventually enslave us again. This is what it means to be part of a cycle: when we pull ourselves away from a bad segment of the circle, we still move closer to the beginning of that segment. People tend not to want to accept this because, obsessed with perfection as they are, they believe there can be something with only sunny sides. They are simply too emotionally exhausted and broken as individuals to commit themselves to negativity in any way. People need their particular messiah; they need to believe that salvation is possible, and so they keep striving blindly for it, often causing irreparable damage in the process, to themselves and to others. But with cyclicality comes the realization that there is no savior, and that one must resign oneself to living with negativity, with the ever unstable and ever changing and evolving.
— Benedict Beckeld, Western Self-Contempt: Oikophobia in the Decline of Civilizations