Cycle Lords

Sauron as depicted in Lord of The Rings;
Perhaps The Ring is a metaphor for cycles.

All is cycles. The day, the seasons, the beat of a human heart, the menstrual cycle, the roaring Solar Cycle. Men and women as individuals are subject to cycles, nations and regions are subject to cycles, and indeed all life on earth is subject to mega-cycles of plate tectonics and the changing power output of our Sun.

In an agrarian or pastoral society humans are subject to the seasons and to the rains and the fertility of the soil. Life and death depend on the cycles and the favor of the gods. Human beings lived that way for countless generations, really back to the beginning of time.

Incan Human Sacrifice

Rulers rely on the priest class to enforce their connection with the gods and their control of the cycles. In ancient times the priest class celebrated the cycles of the seasons, and in some cases participated in ceremonies to attempt to propel the cycle. One of the most extreme examples is the ritual human sacrifice performed by the Inca.

Our modern western world is entirely artificial, it is a man made world and the day-to-day effect of cycles are not as obvious and many can be controlled. Indeed some people believe they are not even subject to the cycle of life and will live forever. In the case of transhumanists, they believe it literally, but for average people it is just a case of denial aided by sports cars, plastic surgery, and Viagra.

In the modern world, technocrats and bureaucrats replaced the priests role in control of the cycles and pleading with The Disembodied Math God (More on It Later).

The best example of this is the supposed control of the "business cycle", or at least since 2008, an attempt to eradicate the business cycle. A large portion of that control is spent training masses of people to follow numeric representations of the economy: GDP, unemployment rates, and other statistics. These statistics are mathematical models of imagined things.

The belief that technocrats are in control of the cycles is as delusional as the Incan's belief that hearts offered to the Sun propelled the day or the seasons, but the belief in the technocrats is built on the very solid foundation of cycle driven myths.