Socio-economic inequality: essence, cyclicality of the dynamics

The article considers socio-economic inequality as a social phenomenon inherent in all historical forms of society, which is characterized by the exploitation of wide circles of population by the elite. It is generated by the basic economic law of each historical form of antagonistic society and is expressed in the periodic aggravation of class contradictions. The most important component of social inequality in capitalist society is economic inequality. There is a relationship between the economic growth and inequality of income that S. Kuznets was one of the first to prove. P. Sorokin, justifying the hypothesis of the cyclicality of fluctuations in the average level of welfare and income within a certain society, appealed to the existence of "small business cycles", and explained by the existence of Kondratiev waves the tendency towards the increase in the average level of income and welfare, manifested in the second half of XIX century in some countries. The author analyzes the close relationship between the dynamics of inequality and social processes, whose driving force is violence – "four horsemen of the equalization": the war with mass mobilization, the transformational revolution, the decay of the state and the lethal pandemic, – as established by W. Scheidel; it is the "four horsemen of the equalization" that reduce the gap between rich and poor, that is, the social inequality is temporarily smoothed destructively. It has been established that during large-scale wars, revolutions, the destruction of states there is a permission of cyclically exacerbating contradictions of social development, which generate the deployment of long-term socio-economic cycles (cycles of changing the forms of society; hegemony establishment cycles in the world-system, long political cycles, Kondratiev waves, etc.). Therefore, the changes in the levels of socio-economic inequality generated by these "horsemen of the equalization" are also cyclic.

The Book of Revelation: Plagues as Part of the Eschatological Human Condition

Although plagues and disease do not feature prominently in the book of Revelation, specific images from the book, including the four horsemen (Rev. 6) and bowls of wrath (Rev. 15–16), have been used in certain traditions in which epidemics and pandemics have been, and still are, being interpreted as part of the eschatological human condition: they are seen as inflicted on humanity, ultimately by an angry God, whose wrath will lead to a final judgment.

A Pragmatic Comparison of Four Different Programming Languages

Programming language debates are extremely common among programmers, computer science students and of course, software engineers. However, all of the above-mentioned professionals can concur that different languages excel in different scenarios. Software Engineers and programmers working on different projects can easily use different languages for different tasks during their work. Every year different programming languages are designed and created. In this Research, we will keep in focus the Four Horsemen of programming languages: C, C++, Python and Java; with respect to the criteria of time, speed and simplicity. The same optimized piece of pseudocode is used to write the code of the different programming languages mentioned above by following their respective syntax and rules. The results of the comparison will be displayed with the help of a table in order to simplify the final results for the reader.

Connection

This chapter brings to life how successful relationships in and outside the workplace are established and maintained. The chapter recounts the development of attachment theory and how our earliest interactions set the stage for all our future relationships. Individuals who benefited from secure relationships are likely to navigate the tenuous nature of the modern workplace more effectively. The chapter also takes a tour of John Gottman’s Love Lab, which has become famous for its ability to break down the ingredients of long-lasting and happy marriages, a finding that has profound implications for professional relationships. When the Magic Ratio of positive to negative interactions becomes unbalanced or if any of the Four Horsemen of criticism, contempt, defensiveness, or stonewalling rear their ugly heads, those in a relationship are forewarned to act quickly and decisively.

A PHANTOM COACH: FROM FOLKLORE TO FICTION

The image of a phantom coach is very common in British folklore and, like its predecessors – Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and the Wild Hunt, it is closely associated with death and bad omens. Quite understandably, it was widely used in ghost stories written in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. There are stories close to the folk tradition of storytelling, but much more often the authors create their own versions where the legends about phantom coaches are contaminated with other sources (such as ballads about demonic lovers) and lose certain elements which are essential for archaic mentality but can be easily neglected in modern fiction, e. g. death as punishment for doing or seeing something forbidden, church service as something that can drive away ghosts and demons. According to the rules of the genre, a coach turns into a kind of liminal zone, a subspace where the laws of the rational world do not work, a time capsule where the logic of a folktale prevails. There are versions where a coach is a means of communication between the world of the living and the world of the dead or demonic creatures. In later texts a coach gives way to a car, with all the functions preserved; this change is not connected with fears caused by the relatively new means of transport, the old image is merely transformed according to certain changes in everyday reality. The ancient themes of revenge, punishment, meeting the dead are recreated here, but sometimes the symbolism changes, it becomes more closely connected to the idea of time and memory. The analysis of how the image of a phantom coach works in ghost stories can help to understand certain tendencies in the development of the genre (what happens to folkloric sources, narrative principles, the ideas of time and death etc.).