Pendulum swings don’t stop and reverse direction at the limit of your past experience or current presumed capacity for pain. They do so at the extremes of the dynamics of the phenomenon. A lot of idiomatic language reflects this.

“You think this is over? It’s just getting started”

“You’ve seen nothing so far”

“It’s always darkest just before it turns pitch black” (Douglas Adams version of the “…before dawn” original)

“The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent”

This phenomenon is particularly marked when the pendulum swing involves human traits. People who are like you share your limits, but people you don’t know have very different limits. For example when sadists dominate the world can keep getting crueler longer than you think. This is the dual of regression to the mean. Excursions to the extreme. Societal swings will always be wide enough to periodically reflect the extremism of any group with enough critical mass to acquire leveraged control.

Pendulum swings don’t stop at the limits of your pain or experience—they reverse at the extremes of the dynamics. Excursions to the extreme define the world:

“It’s darkest before pitch black.”
“The market stays irrational longer than you solvent.”

Extremes outpace regression to the mean. 🌌