Learning about the economic baseline of “on seven fat years will follow seven lean years”: In biblical times, several good harvests in a row caused population to grow so quickly that a period of famine was sure to follow.

Interestingly this is not at all the implication I remember from the bible reference, where it always seemed to be related to fate. This proved to be wrong, as mankind managed to leave this cycle by its own means, with adaptions like four-field crop rotation, import of high-yield crops and later-marriage traditions.

The teleological idea of “what goes up, must come down” seems to have survived though, for example in the “good times create weak men”-meme.

What goes up, must come down (if there are no better ideas).