BREAKING THE LINEAGE: MODELLING THE TRANSMUTATION OF ECONOMIC TRAUMA THROUGH GENERATIONAL MORAL DISRUPTION AND SPIRITUAL REALIGNMENT
Keywords:
Intergenerational trauma; moral disruption; spiritual transformation; economic resilience; generational healing; bounded rationality.Abstract
Economic trauma, shaped by histories of colonization, structural inequality, and generational
poverty, often persists across lineages through psychological, economic, and cultural mechanisms.
This study proposes a novel agent-based model simulating seven generations of family agents with
dynamic traits—conformity, spiritual openness, economic status, and stress—to examine how “moral
breaks” (ethically grounded disruptions in inherited trauma patterns) can enable transgenerational
healing. Drawing from existential philosophy, systems theory, and behavioural psychology, the model
formalizes moral break as a threshold-based function triggered by stress and spiritual openness.
Mixed-methods triangulation with interview narratives and ethnographic cases reinforces the
internal validity of this mechanism. Results show that when spiritual openness is present, agents who
undergo moral breaks demonstrate accelerated economic recovery and reduced psychological stress,
with compounded benefits for subsequent generations. However, trauma levels show non-linear
trends, particularly under systemic shocks, indicating both model limitations and real-world
parallels. The findings underscore the importance of culturally rooted, spiritually integrative
interventions in breaking cycles of economic trauma.
