I highly recommend Matthew Parker’s new book, Panama Fever – The Epic Story of One of the Greatest Human Achievements of all Time — The Building of the Panama Canal. (See Non-Space MEPs, Wave Guide 8) Parker dazzlingly explains how the greatest macro-engineering project (MEP) of the last 200 years – until the Apollo Moon Program of the 1960s — set the stage for the “American Century” and dramatically accelerated globalization. Indeed, the Panama Canal of 1914 was the equivalent of Apollo for the early 20th Century Maslow Window.

Just as Apollo captured global attention and passion during the 1960s, “Panama Fever” spread through the early 20th Century Western World, despite the fact that the cost, management, and technological challenges of the Canal were unparalleled. And the tragic war-like death toll exceeding 25,000 — although the “war” was with disease and disasters — indicates the high international stakes associated with the Canal.

Roughly every half century during periods of unparalleled economic booms, exceptional societal affluence makes monumental MEPs financially possible, and the associated ebullience (as society ascends the Maslow Heirarchy) makes them, at least momentarily, politically irresistible. Panama and Apollo show how compelling this combination of affluence and ebullience can be. As I remarked in the Wave Guide 8 Perspectives piece, there is no shortance of early ebullience on display around the world today. Perhaps the most impressive example is the Panama Canal Expansion project. The overwhelming political support by Panamanians for this risky, estimated $ 5+ B MEP (more than original cost) is stunning. It’s precisely the sort of early ebullience we’d expect within 10 years of the rapidly approaching 2015 Maslow Window.

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