content: Have you ever heard the term, "history repeats itself,"?  Terence Mckenna uses ancient Chinese liturgy to quantify that phenomena.  His theory is that time and novelty are related and repeating in a fractal nature.  His phrase that, "Rome falls 9 times an hour," suggests that since the conventional end of his model dates to 2012, the entirety of history must be playing out within human nature at an increasingly rapid rate.  Although it should be said that this speech is older than the upload date on youtube (Mckenna died in 2000), and that 9 times an hour is an exaggeration because this was prior to 2012, cannabis legalization in  Colorado does mark the point of origin whereas novelty hits singularity. Drugs are a big topic when following Mckenna, and although it would be nice to see his reaction to this if he was still alive, I am sure that he would not be surprised in the slightest. edit:  The model is fractal when viewing consecutive repetitions and also in itself as a single unit.  Parts of the model can overlay upon itself and quantify philosophical moments in history, such as the philosophical implications of jews in ancient Egypt versus jews in Nazi Germany.