Recent breakthroughs in cliodynamics — the quantitative analysis of historical patterns — have uncovered structural regularities in the evolution and breakdown of complex societies across millennia. Using global data from the Seshat: Global History Databank, researchers have demonstrated a single axis of social complexity, punctuated by nonlinear transitions and coherence thresholds. This white paper integrates these insights with a regenerative coherence framework, grounded in symbolic recursion, TATi grammar, and life-value onto-axiology. It proposes that beyond structural variables like territory, population, and institutions, civilizational health hinges on symbolic coherence — how well societies align their meaning systems, values, and meta-structures with the life processes they seek to govern. Drawing from Peter Turchin’s analytic narratives, critiques of the Axial Age hypothesis, and the rejection of the Big Gods model, this work reframes societal evolution as a process of symbolic integration and recursive coherence generation. The synthesis offers new tools for anticipatory governance, nested diagnostics, and the repatterning of institutions, education, and cosmologies in service of planetary regeneration.
